Comment on The Tech Plutocrats Dreaming of a Right-Wing San Francisco
nivenkos@lemmy.world 4 months ago
On the other hand it’s crazy that the richest city in the world is plagued with street crime - even to the extent that it disrupts delivery services, self-driving cars, etc.
I think Bukele put it best when he said that the public stuff should be the best. But that depends on enforcing the law well so that public transport and services aren’t destroyed by a minority of criminals.
Is it though? There’s no border between rural Alabama and San Francisco. You don’t have to do anything but get there. And it’s a hell of a lot better to be homeless there than in Florida or Minnesota for purely meteorological reasons. Add in that one of the consequences of its vast wealth is that poor people can’t afford shit there anymore.
Wealth disparity creates crime. Especially crimes of protest such as the ones often plaguing self driving cars.
Income disparity is a good thing though - it’s how you encourage people to study, work hard and invest in themselves and the future.
Accumulated wealth disparity is bad, and I agree with strong land value tax, inheritance tax, etc. to try to address that.
Some income disparity is good for the reasons you stated. I’m fully on board with a society where people can move from lower middle class to upper middle class. But too much and you’ve got people commuting 2 hours to serve fast food because they can’t afford to live anywhere near where their job is. Too much income disparity means some people make more than they can use and others make less than they need and areas crumble like that. If full time work doesn’t mean you get to live inside with less than ten roommates why not commit some crimes.
This also ignores the privilege inherent to being able to make these choices comfortably.
SF is rich but def not the richest city in the world.
AFaithfulNihilist@lemmy.world 4 months ago
If you maintain public goods for the good of the public you have a lot less crime. It’s precisely because there is such extreme wealth that is not paying to maintain the public goods that we have the crime.
The people destroying the stuff are doing that because they have been robbed of a place in society and their futures have been foreclosed to them.
Building hostile anti-human infrastructure, housing that costs 60 hours a week to live in, and unaffordable food that the government subsidizes to make MORE expensive are all not so subtle ways to tell these people that society does not value them.
nivenkos@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I mean I live in Sweden and in my building we have problems with people damaging common areas, dumping rubbish, etc. - but nothing can be done because only the police have the right to review CCTV here.
That’s the sort of issue I mean, just the actions of a tiny minority can ruin a lot of stuff - but it doesn’t need to be that way.
AFaithfulNihilist@lemmy.world 4 months ago
It really is so much easier to destroy than it is to build.
And I agree with you, A little bit of vandalism goes a long way to mucking things up.