
Tech giants have turned San Francisco into a dystopian nightmare - tomohawk
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-7956517/IAN-BIRRELL-tech-giants-turned-San-Francisco-dystopian-nightmare.html
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georgeburdell
All major West Coast cities from Seattle to San Diego have massive
homelessness problems, so the title cannot be true. Reading the article
there’s a more plausible theory that runaway tolerance has allowed the issue
to metasthesize. However, that could be refuted by evidence that an
“intolerant” city has a massive homeless problem

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coleifer
It's unclear to me the connection between tech giants and the horrors of drug
addiction. Are the tech giants supposed to enforce laws on the street, or is
this the duty of law enforcement officers? Is it because of the great
disparity in wealth that makes "tech giants" culpable? I think that's
bullshit. The blame rests on the city officials, in my opinion.

~~~
Pfhreak
The connections are not simple to see immediately. There are many interwoven
systems at play here. For example, high pay attracts engineers, landlords
prefer high earning tenants. Other companies start in SF because there is a
lot of talent there. They grow and attract more engineers.

That's just one system that can contribute to a changing city, and there are
many others. (including city officials like you mention).

I'd encourage you not to dismiss the idea outright and try to fit it with a
simple root cause.

~~~
coleifer
The article points the finger at tech but in my opinion utterly fails to make
a connection.

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almost_usual
With Boudin as DA expect it to get a lot worse.

On a positive note SF’s homicide rate was 41 in 2019. That’s incredibly low,
hasn’t been that low since 1961 [https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/san-
francisco/san-fran...](https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/san-
francisco/san-francisco-officials-unveil-new-crime-stats/2218901/).

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imtringued
Why is it the tech giant's fault that the city failed to convert money into
housing? Why did the city let the tech giants in if they are so harmful? If
you don't want drug addicts to use their drugs on the street why don't you
build special drug clinics where they can clean drugs [0] for non inflated
prices [1] at controlled dosages [1] if they sign up for a program for
addicts?

[0] dealers often are addicts themselves, take their own cut and fill the
missing amount with foreign substances and more potent substitutes which then
cause multiple orders of magnitude more health issues (including death) than
the original drug

[1] when you have to spend $1000 per month on your drugs you are more likely
to become homeless, homeless people have to steal or become prostitutes to
fund their drug addiction

[2] physical dependency to drugs can be satisfied without becoming high. this
means you can have people that go to the clinic every week for the rest of
their lives but live completely normal lives but if you shut down the clinic
they will die a few weeks later because they overdose on street drugs like
every other drug user

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taylorlapeyre
I’m a little tired of people coming to San Francisco, staying only in the
tenderloin, spying on the homeless, writing about how disgusting the
tenderloin is, and coming to the conclusion that the city is a liberal
dystopia. Every city has places like the tenderloin, ours is just more visible
than yours. That doesn’t make San Francisco a dystopia.

The writer of this article should probably also visit Noe Valley, McLaren Park
in the Excelsior, Merced, Hayes Valley, visit Salesforce Park. Go on a walk in
Golden Gate Park on a Sunday, browse dive bars in the Mission, and see a show
at the Castro Theatre. Walk up Potrero Hill at sunset, get some coffee at at
Trouble in the sunset, visit the MOMA or Academy of Sciences, and sit around
at Washington Square.

Then write your article on how San Francisco is a shit-filled dystopia.

~~~
dleslie
I wouldn't be so quick to diminish the severity of SF's crisis. As per the
article:

> But one statistic stands out: almost half of homeless people in the United
> States are in California, according to a recent White House study.

> And San Francisco, a comparatively small city that is home to tech giants
> such as Twitter, Uber and Airbnb, has the highest rate of ‘unsheltered’
> citizens – at ten times the national level.

~~~
taylorlapeyre
Don’t get me wrong, we do have a homelessness issue. It’s just that the city
is also other things and other people.

~~~
dleslie
I live in Metro Vancouver, BC. We get our fair share of articles about street
crime, homelessness, and opioid abuse.

Rightly so, because we have a crisis. San Fran has a crisis, too.

Your city may be other things to you, but this crisis is coming to define it
in both the eyes of outsiders and in the lives of a significant number of its
residents.

~~~
taylorlapeyre
That’s a good point, I’ll think about it some more.

I suppose I just wish that writers could talk about the issue with a little
more nuance.

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tynpeddler
The article does not support the title. Tech companies are hardly mentioned at
all. The article devotes the entire length to blaming the city government and
lax criminal policies.

~~~
mieses
It could be that tech companies attract people who are more educated,
disciplined, and therefore more politically progressive than the average
person (because they think that policies that work for them should be applied
to people who are less educated and less disciplined).

~~~
TulliusCicero
SF was already highly tolerant of the homeless population before the recent
startup and tech boom moved there from Silicon Valley.

If anything, people have been complaint that techies are _less_ tolerant and
progressive.

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TulliusCicero
This has nothing to do with the tech companies, and everything to do with
failed local and national governmental policies.

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cameronbrown
Amazing how quickly this fell off the front page. I get that it's Daily Mail,
but there's still an important conversation to have here, right?

~~~
sys_64738
The conversation is that you shouldn't click Daily Mail links.

~~~
dang
On HN, we go by article quality, not site quality. No major media site is
reliably good, and even the reliably bad ones sometimes produce a good-for-HN
article, i.e. one that can support intellectually curious discussion. I
wouldn't say that about this post though. The topic is not only divisive, but
has been covered many times before, and curiosity withers under repetition.
But the call should be about the article, not the site.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%20%22article%20quality%22%20%22site%20quality%22&sort=byDate&type=comment)

~~~
masonic

      On HN, we go by article quality, not site quality
    
    

But you do ban entire sites[1] without explanation.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=ancient-
origins.net](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=ancient-origins.net)

~~~
dang
Of course. If we didn't, HN would be a spam site.

Explanations are always available when people ask, and we answer questions
like this every day.

We banned the site you linked to because promotional accounts have been
spamming HN with dozens of submissions from it, and because it appears to be
mostly blogspam, i.e. lifted from other sources. I just did a spot check, and
indeed the most recent submission ([https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-
history-archaeology/med...](https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-
archaeology/medieval-ship-0013178)) was lifted from
[https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/newport-
mediev...](https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/newport-medieval-
ship-opening-date-17288380). HN readers expect us to ban that kind of thing.
This isn't the class of sites I was talking about above (note the word
"major").

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ezoe
I don't get it. To me, everything the article mentioned about dystopian
nightmare sounds like a issue of the government, not caused by the private
companies.

The root of the cause is they aren't redistributing the wealth well. They
should offer the poor, an affordable medical care, a shelter, and just simply
hand them the money. The cost should be lower than dealing with daily thefs
and drug dealers crowded in the street. Most of them choose theft and illegal
drug because they can't afford the foods, houses, and medical care.

~~~
pinkfoot
> They should offer the poor, an affordable medical care, a shelter, and just
> simply hand them the money.

Surely, when news get to other poor people in the USA you will jet be rewarded
with a new, probably larger, batch of urban poor?

My guess is you will run out of money before the USA runs out of poor people?
(And that doesn't include the literally billions elsewhere who will be
motivated to join in the fun).

Sadly.

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nsnick
Nowhere in this article does it blame tech giants except the title.

~~~
dleslie
The article mentions, several times, the number of billionaires and
millionaires who live in the city, as a result of the tech industry.

The housing issues cannot be disentangled from the buying power and demand of
tech workers.

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mylons
“high tech feudalism” is such a succinct and accurate description

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EvanAnderson
I wonder how the tourism industry is doing. I visited friends in San Francisco
a number of times in the early 2000's, and spent two weeks there for my
honeymoon in 2007. I'd love to take my 6 y/o daughter to show her some of the
places she's seen in our photos, but it sounds pretty horrible out there.
(This article is the most over-the-top sounding coverage I've heard yet, but I
tend to think, based on what I hear from friends, that it's probably mostly
accurate.)

~~~
CapricornNoble
Apparently tourism is solid.

from:
[https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/A-...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/A-year-
after-calling-his-own-city-filthy-SF-13842394.php)

"Tourism is still booming, despite San Francisco’s miserable side making
headlines around the world. In 2018, 25.8 million people visited San
Francisco, up 1.2% from 2017. They spent $10 billion, which was also up
slightly."

As an anecdote, my S.O. watches a Youtuber, a Japanese airline stewardess who
makes typical travel/foodie content. She had a San Francisco vid a few months
ago.....which made the place look like heaven on Earth. I don't think she even
once touched on or mentioned some of SF's problems. I wonder how many other
foreigners are formulating travel plans based on similarly one-dimensional
picture-perfect content.

~~~
akiselev
I wonder how many of those tourists would even care. Income inequality is a
global problem and many tourists come from countries that have been rapidly
developing in the last few decades. The situation in SF might not be that
shocking to much of the cohort.

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ctulek
Pretty bad written article. I wouldn’t give any credit.

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nunez
Feels like clickbait.

