[throwaway1959]

I do not think that the current crime situation in San Francisco appeared by some fluke or an accident. Specific policies were put in place by the progressive government officials and progressive people in San Francisco voted for these policies. I think is a cautionary tale for the rest of the country on what happens when progressive utopia gets voted in.

[edrxty]

"Progressive Bad" isn't really the takeaway here. It turns out nuance is important. Questionable policies combined with a complex socioeconomic situation due to decades of perverse incentives isn't, in fact, an optimal strategy of governance.

[dude187]

What progressive policies would have helped?

Also, San Francisco is pretty much the quintessential example of such policies getting voted in place without challenge. So maybe you could argue that certain progressive policies were enacted that hurt so bad they significantly outweighed those that would have actually made things better. If that's the case, which progressive policies do you feel led to this situation?

[stjohnswarts]

Nah I think it's more "progressive needs the counterweight of some moderation and pragmatism" . Just completely ignoring "theft" as a whole category of crime because "you're likely locking up poor people who don't have a choice" is their game. They don't care about whether or not your get robbed, they only care about "poor people put in a harsh place and they didn't have a choice because they had a bad childhood and don't know any better" . How about we still arrest them and rehabilitate them. Instead of killing the police budget, why not rehabilitate and have some outreach to petty criminals. Just letting them run rampant helps no one other than the thief who will most likely end up dead at some point when he/she crosses the wrong person.

[throwaway1959]

I think it's hard to argue that the SF government is not comprised of people on the forefront of the progressive agenda. Am I wrong about this? Take a look at Chesa Boudin, for example [1]. All their policies are progressive (their voters would certainly hope so). Are you saying that San Francisco's progressive policies are not the right progressive policies? Which place has the right policies then? Chicago? Their crime rate does not seem much better. Or Chicago also implements wrong progressive ideas?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesa_Boudin

[edrxty]

To be honest, I think American progressivism as a whole is a bit compromised as it generally tries to accomplish its goals while first keeping the corporations pleased and second never truly taxing the rich. Further they need to consider the externalities they create. If a city or state is going to implement supportive policies, people from surrounding areas (areas not contributing to the tax base) may choose or be pressured to travel there.

This isn't to say progressivism is doomed in America or we must force socialist policies onto all outlying areas, just that the process of learning how to properly roll out socially responsible policies is still ongoing and one of the major issues is rapidly growing polarization with no interest in nuance.

[dude187]

> it generally tries to accomplish its goals while first keeping the corporations pleased

What goals are compromised to "keep the corporations pleased"? How would these goals be defined if the corporations were not be taken into account?

> and second never truly taxing the rich

You hold "taxing the rich" as some sort of high level independent goal to be done in and of itself. Can you quantify what the lack of funds are that available to SF from not "taxing the rich"? How much is the budget shortfall, and what would this extra budget go to if San Francisco were to "tax the rich"?

[phsau]

Which policies?

[laurent92]

Same as in France:

- Being lenient towards criminals because we need to have empathy towards all humans (real victims being forgotten here);

- Encouraging “deconstruction”, deconstruction of family values, of masculinity, of marriage, of traditional rules, replacement by state-sponsored benefits, which break the social fabric (a human as a free-spinning electron without roots may be healthy and wealthy, but at extremely high risk in case of unexpected event);

- Cult of female employment as their main role in society, which, in positions of power, happens to soften the stance towards criminals and deconstruct structures (hierarchies, things that worked to develop our nations, justice system). I don’t know the ratio for Cali but in France, 76 to 81% graduates of ENM (main school for judges) are female since 1977, and we basically free the criminals because they have compassion for them.

- Immigration and being ostracized when pointing out illegal immigration or rules about it, which leads to unreasoned immigration. Which turns into people with broken social fabric, which means they weigh on state sponsored rescue instead of family.

But the biggest danger about a California is that it impacts the whole rest of the world: they apply their cultural pressure using the soft power that is social media, which puts the sane parts of the world at risk of having the same ideas.

[zucker42]

> Cult of female employment as their main role in society, which, in positions of power, happens to soften the stance towards criminals and deconstruct structures (hierarchies, things that worked to develop our nations, justice system). I don’t know the ratio for Cali but in France, 76 to 81% graduates of ENM (main school for judges) are female since 1977, and we basically free the criminals because they have compassion for them.

Hmm, my first reaction to this is that it's just poorly considered sexism. Do you have any evidence that the gender of the judges is contributing greatly to the leniency crisis you seem to be proposing? And plus, it's even possible that there are some problems showing the direction of causation; for example, it could be that electorates/leaders wanting lenient judges tend to perceive female judges as more lenient. I'm naturally very skeptical that the gender of judges could have such a large causal effect.

I looked into this briefly and the two articles that I found quickly were [1] and [2], one of which finds an effect obscenity and death penalty cases in State Supreme Courts and the other which finds an effect only in sex discrimination cases. Neither seems to imply such a sweeping and consequential effect as you do.

And the apparent suggestion that women in position of power in general is causing problems for society seems to be an argument out of the last century. Am I correct that that's what your suggesting, and if so what would be the cause of it? That whole line of reasoning strains credibility in my mind.

[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/42864001

[2] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1540-5907...

[jmeister]

You must not be American, definitely not Californian because the points you make are extremely taboo.

In the US there are probably a handful of feminist-critics who dare to say these things in the mainstream, e.g. Camille Paglia, Christina Hoff Sommers.

What is the intellectual climate like in France? Can someone write what you wrote above in a mainstream newspaper column?

[laurent92]

French people consider themselves an exception compared to USA, but stats depict a stunning similarity: Our stats about male/female suicide, court judgements about family, female position in companies, are closeby the US ones, generally within 4%. The whole Western world, despite local specificities, are going through the surprisingly same questions as I’ve raised about California in the main trends, and local trends don’t offset the main direction.

Culturally, France systematically follows US trends with 10 years delay. My theory is that ideas are tested/tuned in US and reproduced with more intensity in Europe, with the additional help that France already has a strong socialist culture (a quarter of its workforce as public servants, tradition of organizing and demonstrating) so there is no counterpoint to the liberal arguments.

So we basically have similar laws to California. We even have a Ministry of Equality, which sound terribly dystopian.

[Apocryphon]

> - Encouraging “deconstruction”, deconstruction of family values, of masculinity, of marriage, of traditional rules, replacement by state-sponsored benefits, which break the social fabric (a human as a free-spinning electron without roots may be healthy and wealthy, but at extremely high risk in case of unexpected event);

This conflates social reform with economic reforms. Many of the postwar welfare states in Europe were instituted by moralistic Christian democratic governments looking to undercut the support that otherwise would've gone towards the communist parties. Certainly benefits rooted in Catholic social teaching such as the family wage have nothing to do with the cultural bogeymen mentioned in the post.

[natch]

Debit cards given to homeless people with auto deposits every month courtesy of the city, I guess would be one. I think it sounds like a kind, humane policy btw, even though I answered the question. But one that as you can imagine comes with some built in problems.

Edit: I do get that homeless does not equal criminal. But, see broken windows effect.

[throwaway_dcnt]

decarceration, even for repeat violent criminals and no penalties for property crime.

[Clewza313]

California already incarcerates 5x more people than any European country, and 10x more than the Nordics:

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/profiles/CA.html

There are many, many problems in CA, but putting more people in jail is not going to solve any of them.

[throw1123581321]

> California already incarcerates 5x more people than any European country, and 10x more than the Nordics

Well, most European and Nordic countries don't have 13% of the population committing 52% of the violent crime. So this is kind of an unfair comparison.

[Clewza313]

Why? Immigrants, various ethnic and social minorities, and repeat offenders are overrepresented in Europe's crime stats as well. If anything, Europe tends to have much shorter sentences, so reoffenders can commit more crimes.

[ggreer]

Isn’t our crime 5x more? The only way to get the same incarceration rate would be to imprison criminals 1/5th as much as Europeans do.

[Clewza313]

Or, you know, fix problems earlier down the line so you don't get 5x more crime.

[asdff]

I think the biggest disparity is the lack of any meaningful mental health or addiction treatment, and the law allows people who are out of their mind to refuse treatment and die on the street.

[xyzzyz]

Policies of not prosecuting criminals.

[codemusings]

Yeah. That's the problem. Might not be related at all to the SF housing situation, insane rents and the fact that the US still has no universal health care insurance. You know. Stuff people need to survive and not be homeless.

[ma2rten]

I actually don't know if the crime rate in SF is higher than elsewhere, but if it is I think cause is the opposite. It's what happens when capitalism goes unchecked. Cost of living is on the rise while wages are stagnant. Crimes are often committed by people who are desperate. Also there are no facilities for people who are mentally ill, who will go on to commit crimes.

[epicureanideal]

Capitalism isn't what's happening in SF.

NIMBYism, cronyism, inability to build, tons of regulatory red tape to do anything, high taxes, etc. is not capitalism.

[ako]

All of those may be true, but the bad effects of uncontrolled capitalism most likely also have something to do with the situation.

If you expect people to live by the rules, they should have a honest opportunity to do so. But if all they can get is a job that doesn't even pay for a small room, what are your possibilities to live a honest live?

If you remove punishment, but the only option people have is to break the law to survive, the only outcome to be expected is increased number of crimes.

[smsm42]

From all the videos I've seen of people robbing stores in San Francisco (and there are a few), none of them looked like people on the brink of starvation stealing food or medicine to avert certain death. They looked like a criminal gang taking expensive items with high resale value in order to make a quick profit. Because that's exactly what they were. They didn't do it because they couldn't survive otherwise. They did it because it's profitable and nobody was going to prosecute them for it.

[ALittleLight]

Those are the opposites of unconstrained capitalism. In unconstrained capitalism you'd have lots of building, building bigger multifamily residences and towers, no zoning getting in the way, little to no taxes, etc.

[ako]

I doubt that very much: building space is scarce in SF, as a property developer if you have a choice to build an expensive high revenue buidling versus a more affordable building for low income people, what would you choose?

In capitalism there is no driving force to ensure customer desires will or can be met, making profit is what drives it. You need constraints or laws to ensure commercially unattractive needs ar served.