4 ms·

APEC proved that the laws on the books can be enforced, whereas for residents the powers that be elect when to enforce laws and not. They usually fret saying t

by mc32 3y ago

APEC proved that the laws on the books can be enforced, whereas for residents the powers that be elect when to enforce laws and not. They usually fret saying they don’t have the power to [clean up]. It also proved that they know the state of the city is not normal. Basically it proves they can clean up for superficial appearances, but when it matters to everyday residents they are incapable of acting.

ethanbond 3y ago
Breaking news: temporarily solving a systemic problem is a lot easier than permanently solving it This is pretty much a guaranteed characteristic of a systemic problem.
- scarmig 3y ago
  Keep on doing the temporary solution and you have a permanent one. Perhaps it costs more, but I'm more than happy to pay taxes to ensure public order and cleanliness are maintained. The problem being public safety, not the national homelessness crisis. Although I'd love to solve the latter, it's a separate problem that San Francisco clearly is not capable of solving on its own. The former problem, on the other hand, it can.
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    Curious what you think the temporary solution to public safety that’s repeatable with more money actually is? Usually it’s not lack of funding that prevents good solutions to public safety issues, but rather people’s individual rights (very strong in the US) rubbing up against the commons’ rights (very weak in the US).
    - scarmig 3y ago
      The solution San Francisco implemented during APEC is an existence proof that such a solution actually exists.
      - ethanbond 3y ago
        Primarily by moving them to other, less visible parts of the city? I don’t see how that’s a lasting solution. The same forces that cause congregation of homeless folks and drug users in every city in every era will do it again. As is evidenced by the article.
        scarmig 3y ago
        Start by making sure the densest and most economically productive parts of the city are clean and safe. Recover its tax base. Then start extending the same solution to improve the situation in more marginal neighborhoods.
        ethanbond 3y ago
        Are you cool with these folks getting relocated to your doorstep every other week or so?
    - throwaway4aday 3y ago
      The US and its various states have plenty of laws that prevent anti-social behavior in public. Many of them are simply not enforced, loitering, public intoxication, vagrancy, indecent exposure, public nuisance, and many more. The activities of homeless people, drug addicts, and criminals that everyone is sick of aren't protected by the constitution.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    > Perhaps it costs more, but I'm more than happy to pay taxes to ensure public order and cleanliness are maintained. This event apparently cost "$11.3 million in overtime", for an event one week long, so I'm going to just approximate that as $587m for a whole year, or $720/person/year (more per tax payer, but I don't know how many tax payers there are in SF). This may be OK for you, especially as that's out of a total budget of $14.6bn[0], so your total taxes would only go up in this case by x1.04. But that was funded by the expectation that the event itself would bring in about x5 as much extra economic activity as the increased costs. If you do this all year, perhaps it would also boost the economy, which would be good; or perhaps it will only displace the people with the issues, which would be bad, because where exactly the people are is a zero-sum game for your nation, while actually moving those people costs money… and your city government has to deal with the surrounding cities all deciding to respond in kind, which could make the cost of such displacement arbitrarily high, not bounded to just $720/person/year. [0] https://missionlocal.org/2023/08/explore-san-francisco-budget-2023-2024-2025/ https://missionlocal.org/2023/08/explore-san-francisco-budge... [1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/sf-apec-budget-overtime-police-security-breed-18552301.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/sf-apec-budget-overti...
    - mc32 3y ago
      I don't think that's a good extrapolation. It cost a lot because of the momentum of the current status quo. If they changed the status quo and set different expectations of what will be permissible and not, it would not cost so much to maintain. It's like comparing refactoring vs rewriting. One is a semi continuous process the other is a periodic thing that takes a lot of work.
    - scarmig 3y ago
      Much of that displacement was internal to San Francisco, and the movement of a constant number of homeless people from one area to another can still be net positive, if the area displaced from is denser and more economically productive. External areas would respond in kind. However, they will balance two possible responses: "anti-displacement" and provision of homeless services, depending on what's most effective. The latter does more than shuffle people around. In fact, that dynamic in reverse is how we got to the status quo: other areas have essentially no homeless services but plenty of appetite for displacing to places that do have homeless services, like SF.
- readthenotes1 3y ago
  And more breaking news: solving a systemic problem makes it impossible to get votes from it. That is a bit more cynical than your take, but it is possibly the more realistic one given that the people in power are there because they want power.
ben_w 3y ago
Of course the laws on the books can be enforced! The question is just, how well, how often, and what else would you rather do with the resources spent on that enforcement. For example, if you tried to fully enforce all the traffic laws, you may find that very quickly everyone's banned from driving (including the police). Perfect enforcement of copyright law would probably destroy all of the Hollywood studios and newspapers, for all of the newsworthy examples of the MPAA and newspapers suing individual pirates for copyright infringement. But in each case, while you're doing that, you get some combination of all the other crimes go unresolved and/or the costs go up massively, e.g. if the UK were to fully enforce the UK prohibition on heroin[0], it would need to triple the nationwide number of prison cells even if literally every other crime was ignored. [0] which I choose as an example of things nobody even wants to defend, not even if they otherwise think drugs are cool
- em500 3y ago
  I recall reading that having a lot of strict laws on the books that are very selectively enforced is the standard playbook of authoritarian regimes.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    It's everyone's playbook. One of the reasons I use heroin as a go-to example of "you can't fully enforce laws even if you want to" is that it's so widely understood to be bad, and yet the UK is economically incapable of fully enforcing just that one rule even at the expense of all the others.
- mc32 3y ago
  Laws are there but prosecutors are sometimes loath to enforce them. To wit, Ross Mirkarimi had to draw up a new sit-lie law to address the nuisance of intoxicated kids blocking access to businesses and housing. But we had plenty of laws already! It wasn't a problem in the 60s and 70s, or even 80s. But come the 90s, oh noes, we can't enforce them... so we have to draw up new ones...

by mc32 3y ago

ethanbond 3y ago

Breaking news: temporarily solving a systemic problem is a lot easier than permanently solving it This is pretty much a guaranteed characteristic of a systemic problem.

scarmig 3y ago
Keep on doing the temporary solution and you have a permanent one. Perhaps it costs more, but I'm more than happy to pay taxes to ensure public order and cleanliness are maintained. The problem being public safety, not the national homelessness crisis. Although I'd love to solve the latter, it's a separate problem that San Francisco clearly is not capable of solving on its own. The former problem, on the other hand, it can.
- ethanbond 3y ago
  Curious what you think the temporary solution to public safety that’s repeatable with more money actually is? Usually it’s not lack of funding that prevents good solutions to public safety issues, but rather people’s individual rights (very strong in the US) rubbing up against the commons’ rights (very weak in the US).
  - scarmig 3y ago
    The solution San Francisco implemented during APEC is an existence proof that such a solution actually exists.
    - ethanbond 3y ago
      Primarily by moving them to other, less visible parts of the city? I don’t see how that’s a lasting solution. The same forces that cause congregation of homeless folks and drug users in every city in every era will do it again. As is evidenced by the article.
      - scarmig 3y ago
        Start by making sure the densest and most economically productive parts of the city are clean and safe. Recover its tax base. Then start extending the same solution to improve the situation in more marginal neighborhoods.
        ethanbond 3y ago
        Are you cool with these folks getting relocated to your doorstep every other week or so?
  - throwaway4aday 3y ago
    The US and its various states have plenty of laws that prevent anti-social behavior in public. Many of them are simply not enforced, loitering, public intoxication, vagrancy, indecent exposure, public nuisance, and many more. The activities of homeless people, drug addicts, and criminals that everyone is sick of aren't protected by the constitution.
- ben_w 3y ago
  > Perhaps it costs more, but I'm more than happy to pay taxes to ensure public order and cleanliness are maintained. This event apparently cost "$11.3 million in overtime", for an event one week long, so I'm going to just approximate that as $587m for a whole year, or $720/person/year (more per tax payer, but I don't know how many tax payers there are in SF). This may be OK for you, especially as that's out of a total budget of $14.6bn[0], so your total taxes would only go up in this case by x1.04. But that was funded by the expectation that the event itself would bring in about x5 as much extra economic activity as the increased costs. If you do this all year, perhaps it would also boost the economy, which would be good; or perhaps it will only displace the people with the issues, which would be bad, because where exactly the people are is a zero-sum game for your nation, while actually moving those people costs money… and your city government has to deal with the surrounding cities all deciding to respond in kind, which could make the cost of such displacement arbitrarily high, not bounded to just $720/person/year. [0] https://missionlocal.org/2023/08/explore-san-francisco-budget-2023-2024-2025/ https://missionlocal.org/2023/08/explore-san-francisco-budge... [1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/sf-apec-budget-overtime-police-security-breed-18552301.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/sf-apec-budget-overti...
  - mc32 3y ago
    I don't think that's a good extrapolation. It cost a lot because of the momentum of the current status quo. If they changed the status quo and set different expectations of what will be permissible and not, it would not cost so much to maintain. It's like comparing refactoring vs rewriting. One is a semi continuous process the other is a periodic thing that takes a lot of work.
  - scarmig 3y ago
    Much of that displacement was internal to San Francisco, and the movement of a constant number of homeless people from one area to another can still be net positive, if the area displaced from is denser and more economically productive. External areas would respond in kind. However, they will balance two possible responses: "anti-displacement" and provision of homeless services, depending on what's most effective. The latter does more than shuffle people around. In fact, that dynamic in reverse is how we got to the status quo: other areas have essentially no homeless services but plenty of appetite for displacing to places that do have homeless services, like SF.
readthenotes1 3y ago
And more breaking news: solving a systemic problem makes it impossible to get votes from it. That is a bit more cynical than your take, but it is possibly the more realistic one given that the people in power are there because they want power.

ben_w 3y ago

Of course the laws on the books can be enforced! The question is just, how well, how often, and what else would you rather do with the resources spent on that enforcement. For example, if you tried to fully enforce all the traffic laws, you may find that very quickly everyone's banned from driving (including the police). Perfect enforcement of copyright law would probably destroy all of the Hollywood studios and newspapers, for all of the newsworthy examples of the MPAA and newspapers suing individual pirates for copyright infringement. But in each case, while you're doing that, you get some combination of all the other crimes go unresolved and/or the costs go up massively, e.g. if the UK were to fully enforce the UK prohibition on heroin[0], it would need to triple the nationwide number of prison cells even if literally every other crime was ignored. [0] which I choose as an example of things nobody even wants to defend, not even if they otherwise think drugs are cool

em500 3y ago
I recall reading that having a lot of strict laws on the books that are very selectively enforced is the standard playbook of authoritarian regimes.
- ben_w 3y ago
  It's everyone's playbook. One of the reasons I use heroin as a go-to example of "you can't fully enforce laws even if you want to" is that it's so widely understood to be bad, and yet the UK is economically incapable of fully enforcing just that one rule even at the expense of all the others.
mc32 3y ago
Laws are there but prosecutors are sometimes loath to enforce them. To wit, Ross Mirkarimi had to draw up a new sit-lie law to address the nuisance of intoxicated kids blocking access to businesses and housing. But we had plenty of laws already! It wasn't a problem in the 60s and 70s, or even 80s. But come the 90s, oh noes, we can't enforce them... so we have to draw up new ones...