[phpisthebest]

>>>San Francisco was a lovely city until landlords and real estate speculators turned it into a casino for gambling on housing and office space.

before I even begin to address your others points, many I probably agree with we need to stop with this gas lighting narrative.

landlords and real estate speculators are not the villains of the San Francisco of the story. The city government (and the larger state government) is.

From the endless zoning regulations, environmental regulations, and building regulations that make it impossible to build affordable housing, and a decades long process to build any housing at all to the activist prosecutors refusing to prosecute crime in the city, to the "de-fund the police" movement that has put the local police dept at a huge understaffed situation.... Those are the root causes of the problems. not landlords and real estate speculators

You want to have an honest conversation about corporatism I am game, but you are starting out with disinformation and lies so....

[bugglebeetle]

> From the endless zoning regulations, environmental regulations, and building regulations that make it impossible to build affordable housing, and a decades long process to build any housing at all

Who do you think it is exactly that demands that politicians enact these laws? The homeless? Renters? No, it’s the landlords and the real estate speculators who are trying to pump up the value of their investments. This is a very simple case of cui bono.

I’m not in anyway spreading “disinformation and lies,” you just seem to have a very distorted understanding of cause and effect. Here’s the order of operations:

Landlords and real estate speculators buy properties -> Landlords and real estate speculators pressure politicians to protect their investments -> New housing doesn’t get built as a result of this pressure -> Cities become unaffordable because of lack of supply -> Crime and homelessness spikes.

[phpisthebest]

Reality is many many many property owners, investors, etc are in active legal battles with the city to get permission to develop their properties.

I would love a citation to support your claims

[bugglebeetle]

Try reading a newspaper?

https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-pol-ca-gavin-newsom-san-...

[phpisthebest]

I try to avoid propaganda. The fact your authoritative source is the LA Times provides important context as to why you think the things you do

That said your link does not prove your claim, the fact that Newsom is supported by liberal elite is not news, and only 1 of the families in the story seemingly have connection to being landloards

The other were a oil company, a retailer, and 2 owners of hotels, of which all of them seem to be old money with seemingly no direct connection to current San Fran real estate market.

[jncfhnb]

The city government is controlled by the land owning elite.

[phpisthebest]

Is the city government elected? How do you square support for democracy, and stating the city government is controlled by "the land owning elite"

I am told questioning elections is a conspiracy.

[jncfhnb]

Well let me also tell you that proactively playing the victim and daring people to challenge you is cringey and gross.

I don’t really like our democratic republic setup personally. I would prefer a popular vote based democracy for presidential elections with federal holiday voting and no ID requirements. Same for city elections although the problems on that scale are different.

[phpisthebest]

Well good news, The local elections in San Fran I believe are already your dream.. How is that working out?

I really like our electoral college system, believe we need stronger ID requirements to vote, and believe we need to repeal the 17th amendment returning more power to the states, removing it from the federal government.

I will agree with one of your reforms, that of a voting holiday, though i would prefer instead to just have Voting week, starting on Sunday, ending on Sat, with no state allowed to release results until the next Monday eliminating the 24 hour news cycle on "election day" and eliminating problems like "voting day bugs" or "rain outs" etc. and the constant battle for "news" organizations to "call" an election 2 seconds into the voting

[jncfhnb]

Would you like the electoral college if something silly happened like Texas splitting into a Dallas dominated half and a non Dallas dominated half?

[phpisthebest]

My support for the Electoral College is not due to outcome.

My Support for it is because we are a Union of States, i.e the United States. Our founders rightly believed government is most responsive at the local level, as such they only engineer one 1/2 of 1 branch of the federal government to be popularly elected. I believe this is the correct measure.

Direct Democracy tends to devolve into dictatorship, and we have seen this in American History as we become more and more "democratic" in our processes, more and power power has shifted to the federal government, and as more and more power has shifted to the federal government that power is further concentrated not in congress but in the Executive Branch, and the Administrative State.

So much so today that agencies of the federal government on a whim or executive order can simply establish new regulations that make millions of people criminals, or completely change entire economic markets with no input from Congress or the people, and in fact it takes an act of congress (or worse the Supreme Court) to stop them.

This is a complete and utter bastardization of a republican form of governance.

Eliminating the electoral college further drives us towards a more direct democracy, something I oppose

[lightedman]

"Is the city government elected?"

We've had tons of voter initiatives totally steamrolled by lobbyists in Sactown and SF. We passed a law to restrict rent increases, a couple years later the corporatists got it shut down before it could become a law. doesn't matter if the citizens elect the city government when rich people and rich corporations can come in and literally bribe their way out of anything.

[phpisthebest]

I would love to read more about it, do you have a source of this bribing?

[lightedman]

The original law capped rent increases to 5%. Guess how that turned out for us? Instead, lobbying got it put up to double-digit percentage increases.