Häagen-Dazs or no Häagen-Dazs, I feel that SF's moral compass is screwed in slightly tighter than Beijing's.
The sheer arrogance of Swedes dissing US is also annoying. Go to our new ghettos and inspect the great equity the progressives have established lately.
Source: Heritage foundation's economic freedom index (Sweden does very well: http://www.heritage.org/index/country/sweden)
Waste is treated like an benign abstraction here: an assumed given of "bureaucratic overhead" that nothing can be done about except occasionally talk and handwave over.
I'd guess you'd need to have a culture that encourages whistleblowing, snitches, and oversight to make fiscally conservative socialism work. Such a culture doesn't exist here in the US.
There is a huge difference in how you would read that. The interpretation that you should go for is "The socialist being less socialist for the time being". In other words, they toned it down briefly. They're certainly at it again now.
That said, there is plenty of waste and bureaucratic excess/largess in Sweden - and it's very hand-wavy and nothing can apparently be done to reduce it when you start talking about it.
The last part of your comment I did not quite understand. What do you mean by having a culture that "encourages whistle blowing, snitches and oversight"? You mean that in order to have some kind of socialism to be fiscally conservative - you'd need whistle blowers that would rat out largess and snitch on people who waste State resources?
If that is what you mean, we have some of that (whistle blowers) - but we also have way more waste than what covers whatever gets surfaced. They're also few and far between..
> What do you mean by having a culture that "encourages whistle blowing, snitches and oversight"? You mean that in order to have some kind of socialism to be fiscally conservative - you'd need whistle blowers that would rat out largess and snitch on people who waste State resources?
Yes, precisely. The culture of the US still favors lawlessness, and I don't mean that negatively. Unfortunately, for us all to get along in such an unregulated environment, we have to be civil with one another, be fair dealing, and be intolerant of corruption.
But the US system has grown too fat, and too many selfish and corrupt people are taking advantage of the good graces of the rest of the populace. And the corruption is allowed to run unchecked.
Also, the regulations and bureaucracies and debt and corporations have all crept up on us. So the system is no longer operating to spec, and no major redesigns are planned. I just don't see where we go from here. The presidential candidates we've selected are indicative of system failure.
But it is now quite segregated (not unlike France with its banlieus) full of not-homeless, but, unfortunately, un-assimilated population.
A blog written by an American living in Sweden (check out the other posts on the blog as well):
https://swedenreport.org/2015/05/18/police-yes-there-are-no-...
There are also a few homeless people of Swedish origin, but they are mostly either drug addicts or otherwise mentally ill, making them unable to keep an apartment. Money shouldn't be a big issue as you qualify for social security payouts that cover essentials and rent if you can't get it by other means. However, mentally ill might fail to get this money, it requires a monthly visit at the local social services office and they can require participation in activities as job training as well as accepting any job you can get.
Does that mean the United States is hopelessly economically segregated, with permanently unassimilated redneck populations that refuse to join the urban mainstream? If that's an unfair interpretation, why make the same kind of rhetorical leaps about European cities?
If you checked the blog I referred to, entitled "Police: Yes, there ARE No-Go Zones in Sweden" you would learn that there are essentially lawless areas where the police concedes that they have indeed lost control.
So "segregated" is the right word.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-go_area
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/01/par...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-14/debunking-...
The source article from the blog states "In the autumn of 2014 reported the National Police for 55 neighborhoods in 22 cities around the country where "local criminal networks is considered to have a negative impact on the local community." It's about neighborhoods that are characterized by "open drug sales, criminal dealings that manifests itself in serious violence in a public place, various forms of extortion and unlawful influence and acting out grievances against society."
The blog post you mention (the author makes no mystery of his ideas), and the source article, seems to take an official report stating that 55 zones have seen a worrying rise in crime and mixing it with anecdotal evidence and unrelated quotes to come to the conclusion that there are 55 "no-go" zones where "swedish law no longer applies", to spin a particular story for their readers.
Mind, I'm not claiming liberal leaning press is any different and, as with everything, the truth probably stands somewhere in between.
I've spent over 30 years of my life in Nordic countries. These stories of embedded lawless mini-Afghanistans ruled by local Sharia tyrants don't reflect any reality I've ever seen.
But there is enough evidence to state that there is segregation.
"Segregation (noun): the action or state of setting someone or something apart from other people or things or being set apart."
I'm not convinced that having everyone "assimilated" is a realistic goal. People of different social classes tend to not want to associate themselves with one another. And social class is about more than just income.
That is the difference between Sweden and SF. SF allows unrestricted migration from the rest of the continent, Sweden does not.
Sweden, on the other hand, forces people to learn the language before they can even get a job. Those who won't or cannot do that end up in Germany instead.
https://mises.org/library/how-modern-sweden-profits-success-...
The city is a buzzing growth center, as wealthy on the surface as San Francisco, but without any of the obvious problems with "homelessness, the mentally ill, the dirtiness & shabbiness of the city" (which the grandparent poster wanted to blame on liberal government).
You make it sound like Sweden in the '80s was a pseudo-Cuba. That was never the case.
"The Mises Institute, founded in 1982, teaches the scholarship of Austrian economics, freedom, and peace... Accordingly, we seek a profound and radical shift in the intellectual climate: away from statism and toward a private property order."
That's a bold assumption to make.
Facts are objective by definition, but their interpretation it's often not.
The moment you state your objective if promote free market economics it's clear that you will give an interpretation of facts that goes towards validating that view.
You can promote your views this way, but cannot expect people not to take a critical view of them.
Just read anyhting from Paul Krugman on the NYT, and you will see equally partial interpretations of facts that come to very different conclusions.
No problem in promoting your views, just not expect people to take them at face value, or as an "impartial examination of facts", when they are not.
Of course not. But no one asked you to take the views of the Mises Institute at face value. It appeared to me that you were implying they were biased, meaning not credible, based on the fact that they have endorsed free market economics since the 1950s. Which is an assumption that a group that regularly endorses a particular school of economic thought is biased toward that school of thought for reasons other than sound and impartial economic analysis.
If I was misreading what you were implying, then I of course take my previous comments back.
You will find that this type of governance only works in homogeneous societies - where the people can agree and identify with one another (and also have qualities such as good work ethic, social responsibility, love for their country or place, etc).
Once you bring in variously diverse groups into the picture, half of which are only seeking benefits, those same polices tend to produce the opposite effects.
SF is the most disgusting city I've ever seen. The smell of human shit is a block by block experience. Nobody makes any effort to pick up trash on the ground. It's shameful. People just blame the homeless when nothing's stopping them from pitching in themselves.
Don't want to? Don't complain; just pretend it's not a problem, that you don't see it, or even that it gives the city character. That's certainly the norm.
As for what the Clintons did in the 90s, not everyone has a rosy picture of their work. They weren't beacons for progressivism except maybe in education, and many of their reforms including the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act are still very controversial on the left. Other reforms like the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act are widely reviled. The Clintons have always been centrists, that's how they got where they are today, and calling them progressive because they have to appease an anti-establishment wing in their party is extremely disingenuous.
> You are not voting for the platform, you are voting for the Clinton dynasty and the predominant wing of the Democratic party at the expensive of true progressive reforms that would bring us more in line with European social democracies.
There's no other option. I voted and campaigned for Bernie, but he didn't make the nomination. I could vote for a third party, with the same issues (Jill Stein is an anti-vaxxer, the libertarian party is too idealistic to see reality). But there's a time for campaigning for personal issues and a time for campaigning for votes, and I've moved from the former to the latter. I still call my representatives, but I don't think pushing my ideal platform is going to help with the presidential election.
So, maximizing my vote means evaluating and voting for the platform I prefer because the alternative is to become apathetic. Nobody wins then. Clinton has a long history of campaigning hard for things, and I don't think her platform is a bad fit for that type of work ethic.
All I'm saying is let's not be disingenuous. Not all politics are opportunists, her primary opponent is a case in point, but the Democratic party electorate chose and so we are stuck with her.
Also, to be clear, the DNC official platform is the most progressive on record in large part because of Bernie's "revolution". Whether or not Clinton backs the platform on a point by point basis is entirely unclear. If Trump doesn't help the Democrats carry at least one chamber of Congress, then we'll have a centrist warhawk in another appeasement loop with an obstructionist legislature. I don't see a way through this where we actually get anything done for the next four years, whether it's Trump or Clinton, unless the Democrats take control of everything and Clinton is forced to truly court the left of left constituency.
Sorry to comment again (I can't edit anymore)—but it wasn't an absurd law to begin with. Much of the black community was in support of such laws, and the only controversy around Hillary specifically of which I am aware was the "superpredator" comment. Bill's another story yelling at BLM supporters for being ungrateful, which was stupid but understandable given the crime rates of the early nineties that millenials never saw.
That said, you're absolutely correct, they're centrists to the core. She's a warhawk who worked to censor violent video games and Eminem. I'll be watching her like a hawk.
Are we talking about the welfare reform that put 5 year absolute limits on public assistance? Does that sound progressive to you?
It also has many ongoing consequences. Poor, working class mothers have to choose between accepting assistance or living with their child's father. If neither made enough to live on the father was forced to leave the household. I don't see anything progressive in destroying poor families.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Responsibility_and_Wo...
That depends on which services are being cut, and why.
If policies do not achieve liberal goals, even if those policies were initiated by liberals at some point in the past, it makes sense for today's liberal politicians to modify or eliminate those policies.
For example, if a welfare program is keeping people in poverty indefinitely, it doesn't work. A liberal or progressive would want a program that lifts people out of poverty. That was Bill Clinton's argument for welfare reform.
Basically take terms we are used to see used in a social context, and reframe them to a economic context without informing the reader/listener.
This is true of all large cities as most in the US lean liberal. A lot of social programs are targetted at the homeless and poor, panhandling isn't illegal, easy access to transportation makes getting around easy and cheap, popular tourist areas make it easy to find suckers, etc make it attractive to them. I'm not in SF, but I work in downtown Chicago and see this everyday.
Meanwhile in autocratic police states these people are just tossed in jail or put in work camps or something no liberal would ever approve. Yet we have a Swede liberal here who sees a police state oppress its people thus no signs of discord and thinks everything is honky-dory, instead of realizing that the boulevards are kept clean via beatings and jailings. Reminds me of how the US communist party would talk about how clean and efficient communist cities were. Well, when you have gulags for "undesirables" and jail everyone who isn't at work (not working was illegal), yes, I imagine they are clean and orderly.
So I got a bit confused by the usage of liberal and progressive on this sense as they're fuzzy definitions by themselves.
San Francisco does that, but it has also cut back on the most important social service for those who aren't impoverished: policing. By refusing to punish people for defecation in public, bathing in public fountains, panhandling &c., as well as by offering standard welfare service, SF has made life very easy for the homeless and mentally-ill. Unsurprisingly, there are many of them.
It's also made life not so nice for those who aren't homeless and/or mentally ill and aren't wealthy enough to afford to live above the mess, but I don't think the SF political class cares about them.
Utah has a lot of problems (and is really conservative in most other ways), but you have to give them props for actually trying to solve the homeless issue[0] rather than hiding it or sending it out of town. Although the same state turned down Medicaid expansion funding which would have helped those with mental illness, so it isn't all rainbows and sunshine.
[0] http://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic...
http://abc7news.com/news/data-shows-sf-has-2nd-highest-homel...
... and property values rising near $1,000.00/square foot does indeed seem screwed on very tightly excepting for a few percentage points at the top.
So I have a hard time understanding what compass you are speaking of exactly.
I think one of the better explanations I have heard about the network effect (most recently explained by Reid Hoffman, although probably have heard it from others) is the big advantage occurs when a successful start up goes in to the scaling phase. Many people feel or say SF/SV sucks, its too expensive, I can do the same thing somewhere else, etc. and for almost everyone that is probably correct.
Is this in reference to China? Because in that case it's quite clearly false. There's cartoon level inequality in China. You literally see 19 year old guys in Ferraris, which they can barely drive, go past 55 year old ladies sorting trash on the sidewalk. The redeeming quality, except being hard to ignore, is that China is changing rapidly. Few knows what will happen, but it seems clear that it at least won't be the same.
I feel people who go vacation in Thailand is far more hypocritical than someone who goes to work in China. But at the end of the day, it's about the people not the government.
I think my time in New York was negatively colored by having an office right in Times Square, but even so it was a really meaningful experience and a great place to be in. You definitely understand why it's the city that never sleeps, and it felt much more like a melting pot than California did. I enjoyed listening to and engaging with street preachers, I was grateful for all the talented musicians in the subway, and I never ran out of exciting new cuisines to try.
On the negative side, though, I did feel that New Yorkers (and by this point in my life, Americans in general) could be hard to get close to - easy to approach, but hard to connect with. I don't know who I would have turned out to be if I had stayed in New York, but I imagine that would have been a great adventure of its own.
Beijing feels similar to New York in many ways, and many expats that leave Beijing opt to move to New York. Facebook groups with hundreds of members help ex-Beijingers congregate in both New York and San Francisco, and I don't know that that's a coincidence.
Maybe, if nothing else, I want to argue that Beijing deserves to be in the international spotlight and cultural consciousness the same way that New York and San Francisco and London are.
I have found this to be true, especially after living in Germany and finding somewhat the opposite: people are hard to approach, but once you get to know them, you connect with them on a much deeper level than I ever did with people in the US. But of course, these generalizations certainly don't apply to all Americans/Germans.
Sure, at some point reality will dawn but I'm sure he'll have learned a lot and will have a lot to add if he ever moves back. Or he may stay, a perennial outsider he may remain, but finding purpose in a place he might find impact. My main wish is that he forget the expat community, leave it behind and get mixed in with the locals. Too many expats (immigrants) hold on to their communities too long and fail to discover the true host country.
https://backchannel.com/when-it-comes-to-china-googles-exper...
The social problems of SF are certainly a bit of a shock coming from Scandinavia, and I can understand the author's excitement about Beijing. But there are a couple of deal-breakers about China that would make it very tough for me to consider moving back:
* You'll always be an expat. You can become an American both legally and culturally, but you cannot become Chinese in either sense. As someone who grew up surrounded by US culture, it makes more sense to live in the US than in China.
* Your business is always going to be at a disadvantage compared to native businesses. I don't have any first-hand experience of this, but from what I understand, government connections are necessary to get anything going, especially in hyper-competitive China.
* There's no public debate. The government has little oversight. The internet is censored. There are plenty of policies that I consider indefensible. The US has plenty of flaws too, but at least there is an open discussion about these flaws and a pathway towards fixing them.
SF can be a bit insular and self-absorbed at times, but I felt more at home there than I did in Beijing.