Can San Francisco save itself from the doom loop?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/san-francisco-crime-downtown-doom-loop-e5fcd7ba

by erehweb • 3 years ago

3 4 3 years ago

No. Doom loops are products of demography.

You need a certain number of people capable of doing enough valuable work and willing to accept a reasonable tax on the value of that work in order to run a functional city, let alone a metropolitan one.

As talent and corporations leave, these demos get worse. As they get worse more companies and people want to leave and the drop accelerates.

This leaves only those reliant on the city/area and drives away the actual producers of value that previously kept it alive.

The trick will be ensuring this doesn't occur again after the inevitable collapse.

Other municipalities should take note:

Keep your % of competent high earners high or your city will die.

xilinx_guy• 3 years ago

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present example #1. Detroit.

RelativeDelta2• 3 years ago

Detroit is a great example and also a stark warning.

Detroit never learned, and still hasn't learnt, it's lesson.

You cannot repair a broken population after a doom loop. Keeping it on life support merely entrenches dependance and makes it even harder to undo the damage even generations down the line.

Doom loops only end when the population that doomed the area consumes itself, if they are prevented from doing so though programs, nothing improves.

archo• 3 years ago

https://archive.is/LWN0e - https://archive.ph/LWN0e - https://archive.vn/LWN0e - https://archive.md/LWN0e

Can San Francisco save itself from the doom loop?

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