Friday, February 23, 2018

The Feces of San Francisco



By Robert Wenzel

Andrew Murphy emails:
Would be interesting to see a write up on this on Target Liberty.

"The NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit surveyed 153 blocks of downtown San Francisco in search of trash, needles, and feces. The investigation revealed trash littered across every block. The survey also found 41 blocks dotted with needles and 96 blocks sullied with piles of feces. "

"How dirty is San Francisco? An NBC Bay Area Investigation reveals a dangerous mix of drug needles, garbage, and feces throughout downtown San Francisco. The Investigative Unit surveyed 153 blocks of the city – the more than 20-mile stretch includes popular tourist spots like Union Square and major hotel chains. The area – bordered by Van Ness Avenue, Market Street, Post Street and Grant Avenue – is also home to City Hall, schools, playgrounds, and a police station. "

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/Diseased-Streets-472430013.html
Everything in this report is absolutely true. The streets of San Francisco are a pit.

This is an object lesson in the difference between the government sector and the private sector.

In the same areas are some of the most expensive real estate in the world. Including the Westfield Mall and the Hilton Hotel which border the horrific Tenderloin section. A few blocks down from the mall is the Four Seasons hotel.

There isn't a needle, trash or degenerates inside any of these properties, customers wouldn't stand for it.

The private sector responds to demands, with government you never know what they are going to shove in front of you, In San Francisco, it is literally shit.

Almost all the homeless on the streets of SF are deranged or severely strung out on drugs. But believe it or not, there are actually government powers centers that prevent these people from being taken off the streets and treated. The deranged on the street are a money raising tool by some organizations that target for donations the guilty rich, with the streets cleaned up, the money raising capabilities would shrink dramatically.

The streets need to be turned over to the private sector. They would then be cleaned up pronto. Then our taxes should be lowered so we can have more funds to give to legitimate charities that would be able to help these very left of the survival bell curve people.

Robert Wenzel is Editor & Publisher of  EconomicPolicyJournal.com and Target Liberty. He also writes EPJ Daily Alert and is author of The Fed Flunks: My Speech at the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Follow him on twitter:@wenzeleconomics and on LinkedIn. His youtube series is here: Robert Wenzel Talks Economics. The Robert Wenzel podcast is on  iphone and stitcher.

15 comments:

  1. Sounds like the streets of San Francisco look much like the streets of Haiti, Mexico or most any African country.

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    1. Re: Paul Hansen,

      Or New York during the 70's and 80's.

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  2. @RW, why are the streets of San Francisco much dirtier than 30 years ago? And related question, why is popular entertainment much more vulgar than 30 years ago?

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  3. Tragedy of the Commons. When everyone owns it, no one owns it and it degrades into a mess.

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  4. I had a very interesting and relevant conversation with a colleague yesterday on a very similar subject. She just got back from her husbands village in Mexico (I don't remember the city name). She has been there a bunch of times, and something that really struck her was that the people in the village never thought twice about throwing their garbage on the ground. That was what you did with trash. You threw it on the ground. The whole village was filthy. I don't know who owns what down there, but if people don't have the common decency not to litter up their own small village, why would they change that behavior when they go to a place they care even less about?

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    1. If you are trying to imply that it is Mexicans that are making the city filthy, you are dead wrong. The overwhelming filthy homeless are white, with almost all the rest black. The number of Hispanics and Asians in the mix is near zero.

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    2. No, some Mexicans just make other places filthy.

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    3. Absolutely not. The story was about Mexicans in Mexico, not Mexicans in SF. Some barriers to entry may be a good thing, such as do you litter? We have seen the streets of Paris where the immigrants there are assimilating nicely.
      https://youtu.be/EIH09HejU0I

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  5. The wealthiest use the homeless as a buffer against the middle.

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  6. Thanks for posting this Bob.

    "But believe it or not, there are actually government powers centers that prevent these people from being taken off the streets and treated."

    Do you think the libertarian inspired deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill that started back in the late 1970s is still an issue here? I know that for many progressive and libertarian circles Thomas Szasz's book-The Myth of Mental Illness is treated as a biblical text concerning mental illness.

    https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Mental-Illness-Foundations-Personal/dp/0061771228

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    1. thanks for posting that, I'd never heard of Dr. Szasz, who died in 2012. Very interesting that he told the truth about psychiatry , basically calling it a scam (he penned "Psychiatry: the science of lies" as late as 2008, nearly 60 years after his 1951 book) yet as a libertarian, he still approved the practice of psychiatry if it was between consenting adults. he opined that the establishment uses made up illnesses as an excuse for bad behavior. This incidentally is similar to what Venerable Bishop Fulton Sheen said. (that they've replaced sin with a complex.) The difference is that Sheen was attacked and derided for his position, by the big pharma regime, while Szasz, an honest Jew, was lauded with awards. Hmmmm.

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  7. "But believe it or not, there are actually government powers centers that prevent these people from being taken off the streets and treated."

    Don't worry, soon enough anyone who holds viewpoints outside the Overton window will be deemed mentally ill.

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  8. Modern liberalism at work. To reintroduce or endorce older generations' laws against vagrancy, begging, spitting, unseemly words etc would be condemned as racist and / or classist. It's all part of the anti-bourgeois values championed by the now dominant "bourgeois bohemians" - the "bo bos". Exactly how this is supposed to help the poor -at least in the long run -is not explained. State dependency is the only acceptable path. Littering laws presumably will go next. At least there there is a "green" rationale so maybe they will survive. You can defecate on the street, but don't you dare not to sort your recyclables!

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  9. The voters of San Francisco don't believe in the sanctity of private property. Soon they will have another impressive and austere State building in Sacramento "The Department of Homelessness". Next time you are in Sacramento, drive around the capital building area and you could easily convince yourself you are in the Soviet Union. Department of this, Department of that....All unconstitutional. The Park behind the capital is a shrine to war and statism.

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  10. Philadelphia has the Center City District, a non-governmental organization that cleans up the streets. Very effective. Did I mention non-government? https://www.centercityphila.org/

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