
San Francisco, now with more dystopia - songzme
https://www.mhudack.com/blog/2017/10/1/san-francisco-now-with-more-dystopia
======
theyregreat
The root of the US problem: it’s turning into a poor country because the vast
majority of the greedy rich people hoarding trillions, that used to go to
middle class as wages and to general government funds, and their corrupt
politicians enabling this vicious cycle.

Social welfare and mental healthcare exist so people aren’t crawling on the
street. Every living person needs a basic level of respect, care and
dignity... if the can’t provide for themselves, falling through the cracks is
not a solution but a source of many more, more expensive and worse, problems.
So socialism for the rich and nothing for the poor isn’t sustainable and
people will eventually go “French Revolution.” A stable democratic country has
to balance competing tyrannies: rich vs. middle vs. poor, country vs. city and
community vs. individual.

~~~
golergka
> Every living person needs a basic level of respect, care and dignity...

Can you substantiate this claim?

~~~
NoGravitas
Sure[0].

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights)

~~~
Ygg2
As one SF writer once said. It's easy to claim Right to Individual bathroom if
there is one or more bathroom per person. Problem is what happens where these
twenty or more person per bathroom.

------
skmurphy
Concluding paragraph:

 _" San Francisco is in the future. San Francisco's future isn't pretty. It's
cold, hard, technological. It's fueled by both extreme poverty and extreme
wealth. By technology and heroin. It is the future of dystopian novels. It is
the future of Gibson and Philip K. Dick. It is the future of Blade Runner.
Someone needs to take hold of the dystopia dial and turn it back down.
Quickly. Before it becomes too late."_

~~~
remarkEon
I saw _Blade Runner_ (1982) in the theatre this last weekend. First time I’ve
watched it in probably a decade. It’s still an absolutely mesmerizing film,
but I couldn’t help but think of San Francisco and Los Angeles while watching.
The fact that it’s always raining in what’s supposed to be Los Angeles in 2019
foretells environmental disaster that seems not far off. The abject and gross
poverty reminded me of the tent villages in SF. It’s a timeline I have little
faith we’ll jump out of.

~~~
theyregreat
Life isn’t a movie: there are no mandatory self-fulfilling prophecies and
learned helplessness is optional. Also, you can break by the bystander effect
by actually doing something. Most people just pretend homeless people don’t
exist, don’t deserve to be treated like people and shouldn’t be helped. Be
different.

------
5706906c06c
San Francisco has become polarizing over the past decade(+,) though SOMA used
to be pretty much a shanty town in the 80s:
[http://ww2.hdnux.com/photos/42/55/37/9099221/3/rawImage.jpg](http://ww2.hdnux.com/photos/42/55/37/9099221/3/rawImage.jpg)

"Mayor Dianne Feinstein leads a group on a tour of Shantytown at Seventh and
Berry streets in 1986. The group includes her press secretary Tom Eastham
(left), Public Health Director David Werdegar and Thomas Dalton, “mayor of
Shantytown.”

One more: [https://www.wired.com/2015/01/janet-delaney-south-of-
market/](https://www.wired.com/2015/01/janet-delaney-south-of-market/)

~~~
DrScump
For reference, 7th and Berry is exactly 4 blocks from where AT&T Park is now.
Berry dead-ends at 3rd right smack into the Giants Dugout store.

~~~
ggg9990
Not really "four blocks" by the way that most people would measure blocks.
Berry Street stops at 6th Street and restarts on the other side of the
Caltrain tracks at 7th. On top of that, the blocks in that part of the city
are quite huge, probably 3 to 4 Manhattan street blocks.

There is still a shantytown that gets built up on 7th street every so often
and is torn down once it gets big enough. I saw a well-constructed hut there
that had a fire extinguisher mounted to the outside, with a building-code sign
saying "Fire Extinguisher" pointing to it.

~~~
DrScump
Was it the same back then? It looks like a body of water to the right, and
there is no water between modern 7th & Berry and the train tracks.

~~~
nostrademons
Mission Bay ends at Berry Street:

[https://goo.gl/maps/jkCgyCZVw4C2](https://goo.gl/maps/jkCgyCZVw4C2)

It looks like this photograph was probably taken on Berry street on the other
side of the Caltrain tracks, near the Embarcadero Freeway, and "7th and Berry"
is only an approximate location.

------
fhackenberger
Mike just removed the price he paid for the wine (25$) and for the meal (250$
per person). Makes me hope that he realised how hypocritic it is to accept to
pay that amount of money and complain that 'someone' needs to do something
about the situation.

Everyone is in power to change their own behaviour and inspire others to do
the same. That's the easiest way to change 'the system'. Refuse to accept and
inspire others.

------
holydude
So what is it there to save USA from dystopian future ? Is it social democracy
a la western europe. I kinda doubt that. I do not think that is sustainable
either. For it to work you need rich consumers (usa, china ) and extraction of
wealth from the weaker beasts in the forest ( eastern europe, africa , asia ).
What could we do to have a fairer system for everyone ?

~~~
spiderfarmer
Appoint leaders that have a strong sense of empathy and a great moral compass.

Educate the youth on the benefits of sharing and caring.

Use the tax system to redistribute wealth.

Use the defense budget for diplomacy and education.

Make a real effort to help grow the economy in third world countries.

~~~
yostrovs
You've summarized the political views of the majority of people in San
Francisco.

~~~
spiderfarmer
...and The Netherlands, Germany, France, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, UK, Belgium,
Switzerland, Austria and many more.

~~~
TomMarius
I'm not aware of Swiss people being fond of money redistribution through
taxes.

------
tschwimmer
I think an unintended takeaway here is that Deliveroo is likely to be looking
for office space either in the city or the South Bay.

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a3n
> San Francisco is in the future. San Francisco's future isn't pretty. It's
> cold, hard, technological. It's fueled by both extreme poverty and extreme
> wealth.

I don't think extreme wealth would agree that extreme poverty is "fueling"
wealth's future. At best, wealth might describe it as holding back the future,
or at least the view.

I think equilibrium will be reached when basic services are automated, the
poor have died, left or been pushed out, and $250 meals will be served by
human waiters shuttled in to the city that they can't afford to live in.

~~~
ubertaco
Sounds like San Francisco is exactly on pace, then.

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middleout
as someone that does not live in SF, it is mind boggling that a city with such
a high concentration of wealth, talent (both technical and non-technical) and
visionaries supposedly (not trying to be trite) trying to make the world a
better place have arguably failed miserably to make their own city a better
place... Silicon Valley's PeaceFair parody seems to ring true here

------
RestlessMind
In 2013, SF had[1] 7350 homeless population. In 2017, that number is 7499. So
in spite of spending $240M/yr on homelessness, the number just keeps on
increasing?

I would love to see detailed stats about: churn in homeless population (how
many left the streets, how many joined), where exactly do we spend our tax
dollars.

And then you see infuriating headlines like this[2] and wonder if "lack of
money" is even a problem or is it just entrenched interests on all sides which
won't let anything happen.

[1] [http://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/San-
Francisc...](http://hsh.sfgov.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/San-Francisco-
PIT-Executive-Summary-FINAL-6.21.17.pdf)

[2] [http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends-
record...](http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends-
record-241-million-on-homeless-6808319.php)

~~~
nine_k
$32k per homeless person a year?

If they relocated them somewhere with a low cost of living, and just paid this
money to each of them, all these people could just have a reasonably decent
life, even without working.

This is, of course, just a thought experiment; it is impossible for a number
of reasons.

------
rfreytag
The world OP describes SF as becoming is that of Atlas Shrugged where failure
is never misfortune but a personal failing with the poor reaping their just
desserts.

Ayn Rand is quite popular with the Silicon Valley technorati:
[https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/10/silicon-valley-
ayn-r...](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/10/silicon-valley-ayn-rand-
obsession)

------
8sfrealist
To be fair, most of San Francisco is not like this.

~~~
subwayclub
That only makes the dynamic even more exaggerated when you travel from a
reasonably clean, streetcar-suburb neighborhood like West Portal or the Outer
Richmond to the city core and are abruptly surrounded by a mass of bodies
failed by society.

~~~
Ygg2
Isn't that same for every city? Even London has its Peckham (well not anymore
it's been gentrified).

~~~
smikhanov
No other city has such a stark contrast between the areas. In London, the
poorest neighborhood is Canning Town, and even in its grimiest pockets,
immediately south of Newham Way, it’s not as bad as parts of Tenderloin.

~~~
RestlessMind
> No other city...

I would urge you to travel to Asia if you think so. Mumbai would be a fine
place to start.

SF is not "racing ahead" to a dystopian future; its merely becoming a regular
city where very rich and very poor cohabit. This egalitarianism is merely a
passing phenomenon, which lasted for ~50 years, and is now shrunk to
Western/Northern Europe and a few other small countries.

~~~
smikhanov
I, of course, should’ve said “no other city in a first-world country”, but if
you think that Mumbai is a fine goal for Californians to aspire to, so be it.

------
rdiddly
They're not poor _while_ you're rich, they're poor _because_ you're rich, in
some manner of speaking. "Somebody" turn that dystopia dial down.

~~~
TomMarius
That's not true. Wealthy people often do a lot of nice things for the
homeless, and most of wealthy people didn't get rich taking money from the
extremely poor.

~~~
etienne_p
Well thanks, i guess we'll have to trust you on this one? Are you suggesting
that money was taken from the "moderately" poor?

~~~
TomMarius
Usually middle class people are the largest buyers.

