Living in Knoxville and loving it! Chattanooga is also great!

* Great Smoky Mountains National Park nearby

* Municipal internet being worked on in Knoxville, already running in Chattanooga

* University of Tennessee

* Oak Ridge National Lab - 2nd fastest supercomputer

* Elixir, Golang, Rust, Clojure if you know where to look

https://www.kub.org/about/about-kub/kub-service-areas/centur...

https://epb.com/fi-speed-internet/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summit_(supercomputer)

> Head down south. Knoxville is lovely, Nashville is booming. Atlanta is... Atlanta.

I personally wish people wouldn't say stuff like this. The reason urban places are terrible is because of the people and attitudes there. As soon as they move somewhere else, they're just going to ruin that place with regressive policies and idealistic goals too.

I'm moving near Knoxville for family reasons, and I'll be voting properly, to not ruin the area. I also fully intend to buy the most annoying truck possible, doing my part to keep Cali refugees from finding it desirable. I do know people who moved to the area from California, but they fit in wonderfully and think it's great when the 8-year-old grabs the Henry to go squirrel hunting.

Edit: By keeping busibodies who can't mind their own business out of the area, I will be adding value. I'll still take the Tesla on road trips, don't worry.

Willing to bet that the kind of person who holds views like the commenter above also harbors racist views

> I do know people who moved to the area from California, but they fit in wonderfully

ie, white?

No, actually. I'm talking about people who move to an area wanting to change it, in my experience typically (but not always) rich, white, never gone hunting, that sort.

This is completely ideological, not racial. If you want to correlate those two, that's on you.

True, this could specifically be a West coast thing.

I'm east coast for life, and the West Coast confuses me. If you do move to one of the lovely cities in Dixie, please don't vote or push for cultural changes until you're integrated.

This idea that people voted for what the West Coast became makes no sense. There were always many issues in flux and various camps involved. Ronald Reagan lay the foundation for what is there today. And many of the disgusting wash outs that accumulate in the gutters fled from conservative parts of the South and Midwest when the mills and small manufacturing got outsourced. Take some responsibility for your refugees mister careful with cultural changes integration master.

Or do vote how you want. Your culture is as valid as the inhabitants. Act like Americans do and drive out the locals. Be the pilgrims.

Would you make this same argument for Americans moving en masse to a small country with a rich heritage, and promptly trying to erase it? It happened in the past, doesn't make it right.

My comment was a bit tongue in check, where no people shouldn’t act like Americans did. BUT you shouldn’t have to integrate with “Dixie” culture, and bringing your culture with you (and exercising your right to vote) is not wrong. Americans didn’t just “bring their culture”, of course, they slaughtered locals and enslaved them and destroyed their lives. Voting against gun violence or against Christian-centric moral laws is NOT doing the same thing to “Dixie” as American colonists did to the earlier inhabitants, and is -i would say- still respectful.

> bringing your culture with you [...] is not wrong.

Is if it sucks, and has demonstrably ruined other cities.

Demonstrably, American south was already pretty ruined by that metric. Lots of people don’t feel safe being in most of those places alone, lots of them feel their voice isnt heard or respected, and there’s rampant discrimination.

But seriously, “demonstrably ruined” is a very one note take and not really useful. People deserve to have their culture respected and it’s totally fine to take it with you. That’s the whole point of American individualism. It wasn’t supposed to be about guns and group think it was supposed to be self determination and the freedom to make your own path. People come to America for freedom, not because they want to conform. When’d we lose that?

> Lots of people don’t feel safe being in most of those places alone, lots of them feel their voice isnt heard or respected, and there’s rampant discrimination.

That sounds like most cities.

Go ahead and demonstrate it.

Knoxville is still nice, Nashville is already ruined by progressive policies.

Homeless pissing on the sidewalk in broad daylight, hassling people as you walk out of buildings, etc.

I wish people that moved to places like Nashville and Austin would rethink who and what they vote for.

High home prices are the leading cause of homelessness. Everything mentioned here are marginal at best, extremely counterproductive at worst. Lock up more people? What happens when they get out of jail, it's harder for them to find a job and a place to live. Where do they end up, back on the streets. Unless the solution is indefinite detention of people, I'm not sure how criminalization solves homelessness.

> ruined by progressive policies.

I mean, I get it. SF's bad policies certainly encourage ne'er-do-wells. But if the other side of the spectrum is "run homeless people out of town and make them some other cities' problem" then color me unimpressed.

It's certainly not a prison of those two ideas.

As another user mentioned: cash free bail, decriminalizing drugs, those things have little to do with homelessness but do wreck the safety of a city.

Yes cities have homelessness, Nashville always had some, but it wasn't that bad, it's gotten much worse.

But from my perspective, the main problem is these people are now tweaked out in broad daylight, or shooting up, needles everywhere in the park.

These progressive policies incentivize people to act like this, which churns out more people on the street.

Focusing on jobs, mental illness, and rehab programs would be the best thing you could do for homelessness, not encouraging the behavior and building shanty towns.

Sure, but too many people take political credit for burying their crap in other's yards.

> As another user mentioned: cash free bail, decriminalizing drugs, those things have little to do with homelessness but do wreck the safety of a city.

It's worth pointing out that even in Western cities plagued by homelessness that crime rates are still pretty low. The crime per capita in Seattle or Portland is still only half that of Nashville. So I don't necessarily see a strong link between being tough on drugs/crime and managing homelessness. I still feel pretty safe in Seattle, but that doesn't change the downtown sucks now.

There's clearly an intersection here between zoning policy, availability of services, and leniency towards crime.

> The crime per capita in Seattle or Portland is still only half that of Nashville

I want to see a source. The 80th time you see drug addicts with their genitalia hanging out, do you call the cops or do you ignore it?

Personally, I don't think that'd be something worthy of calling the cops on the 1st or the 100th time. Nobody's harmed by it.

If you meant you'd call the cops because you were worried about them, not to punish them, that's a bit more reasonable. Then, it's just that it's unfortunate that the cops are the only service that you can feasibly call when you're worried about someone in that way considering how their response would often be inappropriate.

Is it really? If you report a crime in a major western city more than likely the police won't file a report. Also "crime per capita" is a very gross and broad statement.

This kind of sloppy thinking is why politics is such a sewer and problems endure. To start there are lots of different types of homeless. One of the biggest groups are long time working people who went bankrupt and can no longer work because of medical reasons or advanced age or both. Homeless populations are not generated by idleness or political movements but appear every time there is a major economic shock. This most recent boost to the homeless population are no longer dominated by young men but are the oldest and sickest group ever seen showing up in rescue centers. As long as the response is extreme simplification and criminalization of the problem then it will continue to escalate and ultimately we are all responsible regardless of how righteous our political stances have remained all through.

Actually I think your comment better represents sloppy political thinking and is part of the reason as to why we have these problems.

You ignore the no cash bail, drug decriminalization, and lax policing policies which don't just increase problems from the homeless, but others as well. Progressive policies incentivize criminal behavior, period.

Most homeless people have mental illness or drug problems. They don't need cheaper housing or to be ignored and stepped over, they need mental illness programs and rehab programs.

End no cash bail, end decriminalization (making it legal is fine), enforce public decency (no needles in the park, no shitting/pissing in the streets, no flashing people).

These things weren't problems in Nashville before progressive policies and relaxed enforcement.

Homelessness existed before then, it's not caused by homelessness, it's caused by leftists.

Be an adult and enforce the existing rules or we can't live in a society.

Where is the statistical evidence of this phenomenon?

Yes I've heard the talk points that Joe Rogan has said. But where is the evidence that these policies have led to these issues? Places like Texas have a high homeless population too, and many southern states have huge drug problems.

Do you need a study that being lax on crime will incentivize more crime?

It's a well known effect:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory

Continue to vote for policies that make your city a hell hole.

I don't really care anymore, I don't live there.

The "criticism" section is on that article and has many objections. It is not accepted fact.

> It has also been argued that rates of major crimes also dropped in many other US cities during the 1990s, both those that had adopted broken windows policing and those that had not.[41] In the winter 2006 edition of the University of Chicago Law Review, Bernard Harcourt and Jens Ludwig looked at the later Department of Housing and Urban Development program that rehoused inner-city project tenants in New York into more-orderly neighborhoods.[25] The broken windows theory would suggest that these tenants would commit less crime once moved because of the more stable conditions on the streets. However, Harcourt and Ludwig found that the tenants continued to commit crime at the same rate.

Still waiting on real evidence of causation.

Alright, people are all good, incentives don't exist, and there's no reason to enforce laws.

Have fun on the streets in your shithole city! Just remember it's made possible by voters like you!

Remember to step over the shit and broken glass, but don't worry the next person won't dare to shit in the same spot!

I don't really care if you believe broken window theory, I don't live around your policies.

"When the debate is lost slander becomes the tool of the loser"

Did I slander him? I criticized the policies he votes for and his thought process.

I did not slander him as a person, I criticized his way of thinking.

I did insult his hypothetical city, but we're discussing the cause as to why cities are shitholes, it's not slander when it's true.

He wants proof that being lax on crime perpetuates crime, yet ignores decades of basic criminology due to a wikipedia criticism section with no substance.

Words have specific definitions, not what you want to stretch them to to make your snarky point.

Or you could do what we used to: put them in mental institutions. But it's considered better these days to just have them on heroin and living in the middle of the street

I get it, Ronnie Reagan, that bastion of liberal woke culture... wasn't he the one who defunded most of those institutions?

Yes, he single-handedly did that. Amazing how he had the time.

My hometown is as conservative as it gets, yet there are agressive panhandlers and homeless everywhere. Cities are not ruined by politics, or politicians, but by the people who live there. There is no 'greater force', or 'them' to blame.

Nashville does have some of the problematic population, but thankfully it's balanced by the rest of the state. It's also far better than my mid-size Western NY city.

>progressive policies.

What are progressive policies?

Cash free bail, hard drugs being decriminalized, anti-gun/anti-personal-protection laws.

Other countries have decriminalized hard drugs without drastic increases in crime, haven't they?

What anti-gun/anti-personal-protection laws are you referring to?

Other countries have very different problems than the US. I don't think that's controversial.

Try getting a gun legally in NYC. It's next to impossible. I can carry in downtown Nashville, no problem. You'd be a lot less likely to carjack someone if you thought they might have a gun, right?

Carjackings are up in cities in multiple states including Chicago, New Orleans, Kansas City, Mo, Louisville, Ky, and DC to name some of them.

Even the cities in the list above where it is easy to get a weapon are showing drastic increases.

So those problems didn't exist during the "tough-on-crime" era?

Yeah, that about sums it up.