Post-Trump Reflections: Fixing Blue Cities
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Welcome to econ one or two, where economist newest Smith and I makes sense of what's happening in the news, technology, business and beyond through the lens of economics. Let's jump in IT.

Hello, sir. How you doing?

I don't alright, just spit in my beautiful same to the school apartment in the middle of an insane, decaying world. By the way, I just reheard .

IT looks like Michael. I've might not win. I thought I man, that's scary. Yeah.

late votes came in and it's it's down to the wire. So yeah.

hope he wins. I mean, it's actually a good coincidence because at the end of last episode we briefly hinted about sam s go and we should know get get garage, someone else on IT at some point to dedicated episode go. But you spoke up you just rote about blue cities and and why there's a big opportunity if they want to talk about things, you to start with blue, blue cities. And he talked about how IT wasn't always the case, that two cities are in the position that there are now that there was actually a time where where they're much Better. And so when you when we get into into that case and maybe talk about how things used to be and what what change, what happened and how do we get back to IT.

you know, around twenty twelve, right? Cities like new york sentences go los Angeles, seattle, boston, dc. And set of these were the greatest places to live in america.

These are just wonderful places to live. And I remember that area. We all make fun of the hipsters, right, with their, with little wax musta hed in their artifical mean to bar chocolate shops and whatever.

But they were just one particularly iconic manifestation of an urban cultural renaissance had happened. You know, if you look at pictures of city of american cities in the seventies, he looks like they were hit by bombs. You know, you see to see just huge vacant lots, you know, buildings left, empty trash everywhere.

They were just absolute. How holds of crime? It's hardness. Even imagine the amount of crime that city dwellers in dured at that time that ended through the eighties, into the early nineteen, in one hundred and ninety two.

I think new york had two thousand, two hundred and forty five murders. New york city, that's a warm like twenty two hundred murder in a year in one city that's insane. And but that, you know, in the seventies our cities became that way using taxi driver, right? Yeah, taxi driver. You know, you seen sort of like violent, alienated, dirty, corrupt city.

This this became how american sort of city and so if you if you talk to anyone over the age of like thirty five, you will say the word inner city and they'll still no exactly you mean but that's, you know, that's a hold over from the seventy's and eighties, right? When inner cities became these extremely sort of for second dangerous places and then moved out of the suburbs, you know, rising crime and then just sort of the attractiveness of suburban life made people move out in the and, and this has happened. This is started earlier, right? This started, honestly, IT started in the one thousand nine, but then IT really picked up in the minds century with the explosion of crime.

People just abandoned the cities. And and then there was this revival starting. I actually put IT to the mid eighties, but but they really only became noticeable in the ds.

People started moving back to cities. why? Well, the first reason was a change in our industrial structure.

So we had knowledge industries, IT, finance, business services, bio farmer, you know, whatever, even including government in my dc. And that really drew people back to the cities. You have the creative class. You ever really, Richard floris, the rise of the creative class.

Yeah.

long time ago. Yeah, it's us, man. It's it's us urban, you know, like Young of our class, White city.

We see here on our laptops with our little bunny muggs drinking, you know, fancy t from nepal. I think my t is today is from nepal. Yes, were the creative of class, I think daily books about bobo's and paradise.

Oh yeah, no, you know that one yeah. And and you know this this narrative continued, intensified. We got, you know, dating apps made IT. So that was super easy to, like, meet people of your same social class and match with people of your social class, right? or.

And then we got little shopping villagers, even if you had kids you could like, still go to like pizz coffee and some like, like artisanal home, good store involve lot like an inno valley or coal valley, or one of these place in severity, go. So these cities became great places to live. They weren't perfect, but they were really great.

And also they were very diverse because immigrants piled in these cities, especially high skilled immigrants to work in the legging cities, but also those skilled immigrants to do, you know, childcare and construction and all of things that cities needed really piled in, in like the the eighties and nineties of the two thousands, right? And then, and and so liberals could point to the citizen, they look, these cities are super diverse, and yet, and and then crime fell, by the way. So in the nine hundred and ninety years, this massive drop in crime. So remember how in in thousand nine hundred and ninety two there were twenty two hundred and forty five murder in new york by twenty fourteen IT was I think two hundred thirty murders in new york was this july oni.

What LED to this change will Juliane is part of that.

I mean, like there know bunch of mayors really crack down sort of a and is cracking .

down just adding more police? Or what is cracking down me?

Yeah, adding more police. New york became the most police city in big city in the nation. They just hired insane amount of police. They're on every street corner.

And then and then they did broken winters policing, which meant that if we saw you creating a disturbances, arrest you for some minor things. So Better not do that. And then IT also, that also just removed the people who can't control themselves from the street.

And then Michael bomberg came in and did stop in risk, which basically got rid of all guns, like how we're going to enforce. You can control all unless you stop in first people. You're not.

So he stopped in first people. And then, you know, remember red, by twenty, twenty, everyone hated stop in the first of rose's microblog. But that work, but stuff first actually worked.

They worked. Of course I worked. Yeah, because I got rid of guns and then broken with us policing. Got rid of the dissertations ty people I think broken with us seems on .

what should we've given him more of a .

chance of bloomberg? Michael blood, absolutely. IT would been a great president.

But anyway, whatever. Like no one, no one was interested in that. Short, too short. He's he's a very short guy. I ort kings.

yeah, short kings.

fine to new ork, but not necessarily like, you know, oh, I arent necessary going to go for that. They want tall. They want to do. We need to do different dutch people partner.

as I was just get us back on track, but I was just like new ork crime decreased.

York crime really fell. And that was the most spectacular, the foundation. But IT wasn't the only one.

L, A had a huge crime decrease, and disco had had a reason. Fisco is never that murderer of the city. But IT really decreased a lot, a percentage wise.

And then you had, there were few cities were crimes. Ed didn't really go down like a big bottom. Oor, said, Lewis, please, like that, but you know those places nobody cares about. Bolt, more sane.

Lewis, right? You bought more famously with the subject to the show, the wire, which i've never actually seen because, you know, I want, I I don't I don't want to fetishize the the crime problems of poor cities. I just want to, you know, help people not have that.

But so I always felt like, I always thought like, you know, violence tourism. But the point is, people were able to watch the wire and go. I don't live in that because they were living in new york was safe.

And where people were acting like in the cast of friends or never for sex, the city, unfortunately. So that happened. And then you had all these shows, signifies x in the city. Friends, I met your mother, all these ones, even girls, which, which was the worst and suckers to the bunch.

Bt, yes, some of us show sucked, but like they depicted this, this wonderful urban life that you could live, and you could, because crime is low, because knowledge industries gave everybody a job, because increasingly, the internet allowed people to match with people their own city and find people their own social class within the city. But yet that way wasn't just sorting, you know, like people love to like in new york, people will will mingle with people of different classes. Is like maybe not same for this, I don't know, but but know.

So there are all these cool things that you could do in cities and the internet made city school because that allow, allowed you to more easily find cool stuff to do. Find that arrest will be to buy our chocolate job in bushwick, whatever, right? William burg, you know, find the, find the drinking draw and go to the drink and draw, like you could just find anything, and you could do anything.

And where is in the past? You have to be part of subcultures to really find some these. And so these cities were great.

They were booming economically. People were moving in. This is all through the two thousands, right? People are moving in.

They were great places to work, and yet they had already shown the seed that are destruction. And so they they made a bunch of a bunch of critical mistakes. And one of those mistakes was fiscal.

So they started to spending way, way, way too much money on everything. Sometimes this was for nonprofit group to do stupid stuff, you know provide city services, the outsource services and the Price will go up when you outsource. Oh, we privatize that.

Now the Price went up because you're still footing the bill. You're just not monitoring output. So the Price went up and then we're just overpaying oversteps contractors. So there's the same a story two thousand seventeen and I think called the the most expensive mile subway track on earth is about the the new new york subway line, which is basically like construction crews hired about five times as many people they needed. IT was a giant paye of scheme.

You wonder, why didn't they just pay themselves higher wages instead of, instead of hiring all the extra people? Because the extra people vote, and that's called clientelism. You pay you essentially finding ways to pay people to vote for you with targeted government and its and so that is called clientele them.

Anyway, the more people you have, the more power you have because we have a one person, one vote system. We're th paying yourself wages, just getting more money. And the guys who are doing the negotiations, we will get more money anyway personally because they're not the the regular workers anyway.

So there there's a little bunch of its quai corruption, you know I don't know if I want to call corruption, but it's it's certainly stuff the city felt comfortable paying for because there was a giant boom. And IT felt like nothing could kill this book. IT felt like, you know, the network effect is invincible.

People never move away, and we can just do anything. We can raise city taxes. We can spend, you know, profit tly on super expensive stuff.

We can make regulations. So nothing is built. So, so regulatory stuff is a problem.

We started really overregulating, and the story of why we did is complex. But in seventies, we really started doing that. And and by, we never really stopped. So if you look at the amount of housing the places build, it's like tokyo o like, you know paris, london, new york is in the basement. And so you know, our cities built very little.

This city, the city looks like IT looked when I was a college kid twenty years ago right now would come into the city and see, you know, thanks for this ago. This IT looks the same, like there's a couple of you built their self first tower that wasn't there, but this city looks the same, nothing it's built. And so that was typical cities around the country.

And then so a regulatory stuff and and also namba ism, but like you know, a lot was was regulation to zoning. And and then the third mistake came later on. So in the in the twenty ten.

So so those mistakes came early on, right? You started to see the city spending too much money in the nineties, and they just just got worse and worse over time. And then you started like, as soon as they could spend that much money, they did.

And then and then you saw over regulation from the seventies, like that was the problem the whole way through. And I, just as you got these these knowledge workers moving in the cities, got more and more obvious problem. But IT IT took a welfare to catch up, right? Cities were cheap in the nineties because they have been basically bombed out by crown right city.

If you have twenty two hundred forty five murders a year in one city, who's going to want to pay rent in that city? Well, a few people did. So you have the gentry fires. Famously, gay people were the first people who had moved in to identifying neigh'd. So real state investors camp this strategy, follow the gaze, because gay people were less afraid of the urban crime disorder, more more willing tolerate IT.

And therefore, when they moved in, and like nothing bad happened, then the the hipster artists would move in after them, and then the, you know, professional workers, like tech people who ever removed in after them, and eventually then you to have a gentile ed newton od, and then all the first wave gentian ers would hate all the second wave, third wave gentian ers. And then you know and see he had that bit is all just gentil fier on gentian y violence. And the poor people moved out because the rent is too high.

Then in the twenty mid twenty tens, you around twenty fourteen, you had the third big mistake. So the first big mistake, fiscal. Second big mistake, enter development regulation.

And the third big mistake was what I call anarchy fair. Anarch is a form of welfare. People just decided, let's be incredibly permissive to a crime, drug use, public disorder, just incredible permissive ness.

And cities, you know, you had the the famous progressive da movement, progressive prosecutors like just wen. You have laws like caliph's ia prop forty seven, which said that it's now only a misdemeanor. You only steal less than nine hundred fifty dollars of stuff.

You have that that obviously mainly fix cities. And then you had the you had all kinds of just a lot of directionally choice at the city level. Let's let the drug users use drugs on the street.

And so if you look at IT, for example, you know drug overdoses, you see the nation there was a rise. And then time for disco, it's just like off the chance. And so property crime there was like, oh, it's just property.

You had left to saying that kind of seven then. And that really made IT to the at the local level. Left is got themselves, progressives.

And so progressives, so I did just property. Why would we want to let security guards shoot and kill a person and is just trying to steal to feed their family? Dude, and, you know, and so you had restrictions on use of force to stop shop lifters.

Guess what happens then people shop, lift the stuff and then the stores close and then the people don't, you know? Then poor people don't have any word a shop. So anyway, we'll get to that layer bit. But I think that was the third mistake.

So just tolerating and then and then tolerating fair jumpers on trains you had like these creepy bucking people on train just, you know, writing free because those people don't have the money to pay for trains, but they ride the train so they can like, you know, lear IT women and koto harassing, intimidating women and maybe getting to fight or maybe buy some drugs on this in station forever. Like it's people really the idea that public trands that ought to be free, not to be a free utility, instead of something people pay, a service people pay for. Like that idea was very poisonous to public trans t so public transit became very dirty in the sense when I say dirty, I mean scary people.

Public transit became filled with with scary people. In fact, dirty is not a great euros m for that, because it's not dirt. If people are dirt, but they can be scary. And so so like the anarch that that prevailed after about two thousand fourteen or so, really h started using qualities of life in the cities as well, until finally there was an urban crisis. And now we're seeing cities on the verge of bankrupcy from the fiscal problems.

And then cover hit and sort of knocked over this house of cars that was sort of like he was ready to be knocked over, but then cover hit and knocked over. And so people started moving out of the cities for cover also because they were just fuck and fed up with bull ship, you know. And they realized, like, I can go, like a lot of people aged out, like the big milenio generation, sort of aged datta city life to some degree, or started to thread by homes in the suburbs, just like the parents and idea that this would never happened.

The millennial s were these like, you know, permanent, rebellious teenage generation. IT wasn't any more true for the millennial s and IT was true for the boomers. And now we've got the big chill.

You ever see the big chill. No one ever thought, oh mad, see the big chill. It's the the bom eppy movie. It's the it's all these guys who who were in who went to university michigan. And that's the thing. There were a bunch of you mih gmn and women, and they were all a bunch of leftest revolutionary when they were in college. And now they've all just got Normally happy lives like a couple of them got like one of them is like a successful business man, and the other is like a successful, like a lawyer, I think.

And then there's one is like a famous journalist and then they all gather together and then they're just sort of remembering their college days, like when they would just sleep around and have fun and be revolutionary and and all their friend who's having costs actually killed themselves. And it's implied they never said that he didn't want to become a yy, that he said he wasn't into. He didn't want the new world of the eighties, right? He wanted to stay in, in the late sixties and early seventies forever.

I mean, you know, these people are like early thirties people. Millennial is delayed this a bit longer, but eventually the same thing happened. I just remember, red, yeah, these two guys going for a job and that one guy to say, guy says, back in college, you everything, we'd make this much bread and then I see that everywhere, you know, among the millennial generation.

And part of that is not not wanting to tolerate urban crime disorder. So baby boomers in eighties, really, we're like, why am I tolerating urban crime and disorder? And so then now, millennia s like, why do I tolerate urban crime resort? So this is this echo of the past millennia. Following in the footsteps of their .

parents will continue your interview in a moment .

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There was this group called the capital steps. You know, the capital steps? No, probably never heard them.

They were this group of saturius, washington, dc. People who would sing parody songs. They were like, weird, all the antiquity for politics.

And they would, they would sing songs. And I remember this parity. You know, when I was a little kid, my parents would play this for me. Remember when I was like a little kid, I was like, no, no, one thousand, nine hundred and ninety two or something.

I would just remember hearing the song and I I could always remember all songs and IT was a period of like a roling stone by bob delon, you know, that are like a road stone had to feel anyway, that's the cold opener me seeing about Dylan, even worse, bob Dylan. But it's it's just about anyway, the parity is about is about these these bombers becoming like suburban drones and it's called like a suburban drones. I'm i'm looking I have I the lyrics somewhere here because I can possible to find but then he says stuff like but now you go out to dance in a yellow thain polyster pants.

Now you talk like your dad. Now you wear mattress pad and say, do you want to barbecue? How does that feel to have a cellular phone and a colonial home like a suburban drone?

How does that feel to be a nineties man with a miami ten and be a radian fan, a republic ican? And I feel like the milenio generation just went through that at least know a substantial portion of IT know people are just like enough enough with this bullshit. I'm just going to .

go for truck and and as mention in the local elections, there are some changes. Well, oh yeah.

that totally you know little iron pest can didn't win mayor. But I don't think anyone to really expect them to. But the number of progressive supervisors were were given the boot and will wait for the final results as exactly how many of them we're given the but then you know proposition forty seven, the thing that allowed that like made stop living in mister er IT was repealed and now it's a family again.

And then there are just a bunch of other like tough on crime. The progressive da are all getting recalled and losing. Like who are they like descent and they I think crashin philadelphy, he might still be there. But then hamilton Price lost. I think about half nationwide, this election kicked out about half of the so called because the service standard.

How did they even win in the first place? Is the power of soros funding machine? Or visit that the voters sort of felt for their promises?

sure. You know, you need funding to run in local elections, like funding matters more the local level than the national level, right? Because at the national level, like the national institutions, like the big media helped you a lot, and the national party and all these things and then packs.

But at the local level, like funding, is that gets you attention, like money gets your eyeballs. And then so so of course, people like soros funding those progressive is helped a lot. But but I think you can just doesn't control people's minds anymore than any rich don't know control of people's minds, you know, people.

There was a essentially what I think happened was that crime had been low in these cities, and crime was like going down and down and down. And people just thought that this was structural. This, that we have the surplus of safety that we can afford to spend, is this infinite surplus.

And that, like, we can afford to be permissive toward criminals and you know, whoever basic criminals because nothing can derail our invincible cities. And I think that that was also the case. This is the common theme I see through the fiscal stuff and regulatory stuff.

It's like we don't have to build housing, everyone, you know, like it'll be fine, like we don't have to you we don't have to have have bounce our budgets so we don't have to actually control costs. We can afford to pay like ridiculous amounts of money for a mile subway and it'll be fine guys. We can afford to outstart everything that it'll be fine.

You know, there was this attitude in the twenty tens of like it'll be fine. Like cities will be fine. They just like cities are this way that doubt by god with with, you know, just pardi ness and and that turned out not to be true.

That turned out that the the way those cities were very nice in the out in the two thousands was highly contingent on a lot of stuff that cities had done to come back from the devastation of the seventies. Low crime was a result of diligent efforts, including massive amounts of policing and incarceration to lower crime like IT crimes just didn't, you know, go away. And people told themselves all, all, all these things like, I was LED IT was unladed.

We got very little gas and crying went down viva. They told themselves that was just like bounty from god, like we ve got red lead and the crime when away was just LED guys. But then when you look at meta analysis, let explains like around somewhere between zero and ten percent of the crime decline.

That's what the hard news research tells us. It's not nothing. I get rid of LED pipes. It'll be fine, but it's not. Or was just abortion.

We legalized abortion and then all the criminals got a boarded that that turned out to be wrong. Research finding IT was coding errors. And that people who built their careers around that, around that startling finding where wrong, they built IT around A A mistake.

And they got really popular and they did frequent mixes and got millions, millions of dollars. And that was a mistake. In fact, we don't really know why crime fell IT, but I think it's increased in policing and incarceration.

Probably had a lot to do that you know you but the criminals in jail, then you don't have anymore like but you know anyway, I could go on the attention, but the point is that you know cities really added to work card to baLance their budgets in the seventies, like new york, almost in bankrupt in one thousand nine hundred seventy five. And so they really had to do that regulation. Cities never actually deregulated about.

The point is that crime made housing so cheap for a while that all like the older housing stock spec of Victoria, and the this go got really cheap because nobody wanted to live in your crime. And when crime went away, there was a leg before the Prices caught up in which you could actually live in the mission for super, super cheap in two thousand, two and all the hooding wearing rebels that created twitter and whatever, like they, they went there to be bohemians. You live the bohemian life.

Tech visible thing thing. If you didn't want to work for you know microsoft, oracle or any the big you tech companies of the time, you know you didn't want to work on the peninsula and where I tied to work, you would come up to sam disco, you put on a hoody and you'd and you'd you know just like code, you know, fun apps that would let people that would give a voice to the voice lesson, let everyone share opinions. And that was twitter lunch bohemians.

They would go to ray, if you read the book catching twitter, it's like, and it's like they're all going out raving. The burning men culture grew out of that. Now it's, you know, it's like a bunch of you know middle aged people like sort of doing drugs had bringing them but like undercover cops had bringing man, it's kind of dead.

The real actions moved other parties. But but, but yeah, like IT was that was the bohemian light down. You could afford that because I was cheap, because crime had had bombed out the cities and made no one who want to live there.

And then suddenly hipsters were willing to move to the cities in crime decrease. But there was a information lag. People didn't know that crime was low in, by two thousand, two crime was pretty low in a lot of these cities.

But people didn't know that IT wasn't low in the international sense of like europe or japan. But IT was, IT was IT was low, very much lower relative to what of them I was like, are usually about a three quarters decline, two thirds between two thirds and eighty percent decline in prime. There's a big decline, right? Like that's big.

And so that that increase in safety took while the percussion, but he made stuff cheap. And so he had this, the hipster, bohemian, gentrified era of twenty years before rents caught up. And then, and yeah and so so IT was just total profit acy, total complacency, the idea that you had infinite money to spend and you could be infinitely permissive to crime and nothing bad, whatever happened to you. And you know, it's like, then bad things happen to you because people, few people were refused, were unable to look through to the consequences. Have you ever heard the expression film?

rebeca? No.

I have IT. It's a latter phrase, meaning like think of the consequences. Like think of what will happen if you do this, if you become more permissive and crime, think crime, we will go up, sir.

If you regulate housing, you so the knowing can build any housing IT will will get more expensive. Like if you if you just keep spending money, you will with you know you're more and more, you eventually go bankrupt. T if everything costs way too much, you'll want to go back like think to the consequence.

But they didn't. They live. Cities lived for the moment, and now the moment has come up with them.

This is about the cranking for second because there's this distant where you see in the stats cramb going down least in this go. We also see like stores they want to open our stores close down. Or how do you explain this? This is a little bit right where people need to feel less safe or stores are actually closing. That is a possible that both that maybe crime is down because people are reporting at less or because people are, I don't know, spending less time there or something or IT.

So crime is down nationwide from, crime is down nationwide from you know, twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty one wait down. But that was a big increase. So you know, IT went up and then I went down and it's not quite down to where IT was before IT went up, right? Still a little bit higher.

It's way down over the last couple years. This this is the theme of entire biden years. Everything got worse in like twenty twenty one, and some things got worse in twenty twenty two.

And then everything got Better in twenty twenty three and two thousand and twenty four. And IT wasn't I guess IT wasn't long enough for people to care or they care about other stuff. Like, okay, I don't know, but like but this is the story that by nears, everything's gotten Better recently.

But IT got worse for a while and IT, it's a leg before people understand this thing. Then there's certain area. So property crime and temple, this goes still incredible high.

That's still way higher than used to be. That increase started in twenty fourteen or their bouts. And then that has that has continue increasing.

Maybe it's fAllen a tiny bit this past year, but it's like it'll be a long time before before we get a control of that. And so so first of all, murder is different. So so murder primary effect like Young men and very poor neighbor.

D like in america, yeah like you're not going to get murdered. Red, like a few people do get murdered. Like there was that that product, I think facebook product manager in the mission who actually I got shot twenty twenty in a gang fight, right? IT was cross fire.

Very few people get murdered. And then you had like a murder of of a rich tech guy, turned out to be another rich tech. I was mad because he was like sleeking with the sister, or something like that.

IT was there was some sort of honor killing by like really conservative ironies like that. That's the kind of murder you get among like rich people like but the property crime is absolutely vassie. It's like your packages will get stolen.

Your car we've broken into blob a blaw. You've got to just like have your house of fortress like stores get looted. So there's like no stores downtown.

Property crime is off the charts, murders down. Like I care more about murder than I care about property crime, but that doesn't me. I don't care about property crime.

And then there's urban disorder, which doesn't even rise to the level of like a prosecutable crime, which is just like I mean, I guess there is like maybe you doing fenton on the street could get you prosecuted, but like that's not really how you stop IT. You stop IT by just like to kick people off the street and homeless ness. Homeless people are primarily victims, right? Their victims are expensive housing, and then their victimized by crime.

Like most homeless people are not criminals. Most of the people are criminals are like know methods who actually have homes, who come out to victimized the homeless and like grape them and take their meager possesion and beat them up or whatever, like the methods going craon them. Maybe some of the methods are homeless do, but like a lot of the methods are not the almost the points, like it's methods is not.

People always say all it's the homeless. I've got attacked by a homeless by homeless person like this probably wasn't. It's probably just a method. But regardless, like the police are not doing anything about IT.

Then they did because of she's en in seized and pink came and you know and then they cleaned ed up part of the city like city hall. The area in front of the city hall still has like, no, like how most people, street people IT did like during coffee. They were like all over that, like lawn, all that self.

Now you go out, there's like a line is like an invisible line with like the little statues and whatever, from civic center to the the to the city hall, from civic center station from like market street around like temp or whatever to city hall. There's like a little place where there's like you see like three people on the street and then none. We can control this stuff, but we don't because we think anarchy is a form welfare.

And being permissive toward bad street behavior is a way of making our city a welcoming place for everybody. In truth, that that makes IT a welcoming place for nobody. IT just pollutes and destroys the commons.

And we've had this tragedy to comment. Yes, what do you think? Tell, tell me you live them to. This goes well. And I, you moved to here, what, a year ago.

Then I I moved to here in twenty fourteen but then during the pandemic, I spent time uh a couple years in in miami. And before that I was a year I was on up for .

a year sure sure that you're mame, but move back yes.

I came back about about yeah a year ago.

And then and then do you have you perceived even before then you would visit a lot? You perceive a decrease in in disorder in the last a year, year and half. Because I do.

I do. I will say, you know, when I live to you in when I moved to actually moved in the tender line, like I lived in the tender line for two years, went I went twenty fourteen and I was like, this is, you know not great, but it's but like, I would walk around and like, it's manageable. And then I don't know if I actually got worse or if twitter just made IT thing worse.

But now I I couldn't even imagine walking through the time line as much as I did, like at night and alone. Or you know, this kind of thing. That said, in the year you and a half that i've been here come back yeah hasn't at least where i'm you know i'm i'm his valley pa hill, russian hill the mission IT doesn't seem that back so I find myself, you know telling people what people say.

All you live in service, how do you do IT like where i'm mad? I don't. I don't see any, any, any problems. If you go to the worst parts, it'll be some, you know, sort of famous people to look like zombies, which is really sad and unfortunate.

But other than that, like I don't see any break and you know nothing happening to me now I do have some friends that have had house breakings and stuff like that. But yes, they say crime don't climb or something. So you don't hear .

that much about home invasions in itself.

You not a just just a couple yeah .

like in an arbour I knew people who have their homes invaded. Oh really oh yeah. I need two two cases of home invasion our but then I I don't know anyone I said is that own invasion? yes. So then so I mean, maybe because the houses are constructed hard to get in or maybe like, yeah I don't know bit, but I have seen people description car and about daylight .

yeah many .

times like i've seen i've vents seen someone smash a car window, but i've seen i've heard IT, but I haven't seen IT. But then yeah like like i've seen people stabbed, seen a couple of people aftermath of stabbing with blood on the ground. And those are homeless people.

Probably stabs by either other homeless people are just by drugges. They were like, guys on the street said that the wrong thing, the wrong person, someone just can't instep them. They're bleeding out the paramedic for that. I've seen some assaults, some random assaults in sf.

Will continue your interview in a moment .

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Has same disco always had this homeless problem? Or when did you really get worse? Actually.

simply, sco always has. But on the west coast, it's gotten worse than the last, a lot worse since like the twenty tense and the twenty tens, I got really bad. But then safety sco is actually a very long standing ding thing.

Safety isco is one of our it's actually the second densest large city in the country. Saf disco is a much more walkable city than L A, than seattle, houton. Even than chicago.

Like safety goes more walkable than chicago, sorry, chicago. And like the fight, chicago to listen this podcast will be like, no, not chicago, the most workable. Shut up. Anyway, you have good picture though. I like that anyway, sam, to disclose the second most walkable city, the nation, and so that know and has the best weather.

So IT was if you're going sleep on the street, it's the place to be because you can pen hand, because there's a higher foot traffic density, like, and because you can sleep outside because the weather OK. I mean, I get called a night, but like not that cold and you know it's always pretty much the same temperature IT to dry IT doesn't rain like you can't sleep on the street and sea at all like right? I mean, you can, but you have to find a note of crane and cover yourself for a bunch of oily stuff.

It's really hard to sleep in the street there. In new york has seasons, you know, new york, i'll get snow like really, it's really hard. The weather makes IT really hard to sleep outside for much of the year.

But tempt sc doesn't. So so are you know, our geographical characteristics and our urban development pattern made septimo always a real homes man. Also there know the hippy era seven, this goes always been extremely impermissible compared to other cities, IT can get less or more.

But it's always been like if if the tech people managed to like take over, everything is going like cracked down and do a julio I on this place, this that will be the first time like that will be new. That will be the first time that ever happened. Where is in new york that happens. IT goes to cycles, right?

Is a july any possible in times school, you think?

sure. I mean, we don't have a stronger mayor, but we can hire cops. We can just get get really tough days.

We can have more state funding for prisons, and we can just do broken windows placing you. We don't necessary need stop in first because we don't love done in the city. We could we do stop in risk and in the mission. And all the rotten eus and serenities, you know, will get there, get stopped in france.

I get there is S I have like a really bad game problem. Like is like actually .

did we have almost nothing we have. So it's interesting. I looked into this. There are two games, and sometimes to go the north anus and serenus. They are, you know, living of gangs.

The surrender ious means southern and means northern, the the notary ee's territory to the south of the syringe ous terrors. And that really early tes me. But the the, the neutrinos are much, they're like, they're much like there are a less of island are the higher class game than the serene us. And they so have you ever noticed that the area around twenty fourth and mission bar stop is a lot like has a lot less like homelessness and disorder and like whatever. Then the area and sixteen street mission parts stop.

no, I haven't taking the part at time, so ever noticed. But yeah.

if you walk on the mission, you'll notice that there is a dividing line. I forget what the exact dividing line is, what the what the street is, the divides. And I think that might be twenty first, I remember, but then there's a dividing line.

And then south of that dividing line, things are lot cleaner because that gangs is a lot you know more friendly to local businesses and people where you know they're are less violent. They're just anyway, those who gangs fight. And if you're on the border between that those gangs, you know you could get shot but you won't like you know that one guy did, but it's like not that many shootings. So like that's our one gang area is like mission street and but it's it's like not much. You know you probably even meet those guys.

So however the like there's not like and like if someone threatens to you do the things that you mentioned, they're not like a personal risks. So there's not like a huge you know multibillion dollar drug whatever like you know I like is not like we don't have you know like a paramilitary you know in service score.

right? We do not have a paramilitary. We do not have either.

just like common criminals who can .

you know like a lot of that stuff is is know someone that self is real, a lot of itself is fake. You know, ms thirteen, that's a real gang, emr teens, basically defunct. Now that we could, I put all the eh thirteen people in a giant prison.

Like he's like, oh, you have a tattoo, you new home is prison. And then like the M S thirteen people got very prominent tattoos, and then i've got the same ones, and then they're like, go to prison. And then like the M S thirteen here has been cut off.

So it's just like a local, you know like ethnic sva or and ganging that will you know disappear eventually. And is basically there is very like mexican movie and a little central american mafia stuff. But that's the or tani's and serenus are they are mafia. They are gangs that primarily form in prison.

We could actually the most important thing we could do to stop gangs in amErica is actually have prison, be more solitary, like if we if people just SAT around in prison and like did like roth their dissertations and talk to gp t in a comfy room like they do in my sweet and or whatever, instead of just going out in the break in rocks, in the yard together and like you don't do in push PS in the gym together and like you know making drug do and drug fields and arranging their their crime empire, you know through like corret guards and that they pay off and which is the way prison is now in america. If we made prison a lot more solitary, they would never chance to do this. In prison, gangs were informing, and we kill our guns problem mostly, yes, it's it's prison gang more than street gangs.

And so then when they get out on the street, of course, those people are filled with these gangs. But there's not like leadership that's outside the leadership is all in prison, like those people are all prisoners. And so it's like throw the leadership prison.

That's where they Operate from the prisons. And so like the people outside, they are just like little Young people. And then to the degree that gangs are violent, it's because it's just the Young people are out of prison because they haven't gotten arrested yet.

They haven't got to prison yet. And like our guys to get out of prison and then go recruit more foot older on the street to eventually go and do their time in prison, which is a bad of hour. And then like you then meet the senior guys in prison and then they're in the gangs for life and its prison where gangs Operate.

It's not like they don't have like some some like apartment building in time of disco that like they control with, like machine guns involved law like you, the Philippines of car assumpsit, right? You not like that. You know, these things of that.

Oh, the venezuelans go over this apartment building. Well, yeah, maybe have some like venezuelan guys living in an apartment building who are failure with the game that can happen. But like the leadership all in prisons, no one understands anything.

Something like because nobody cares is enough to read about this. Something like you can just read. There's much a post like medium about this.

I don't know why, but yeah, they were like people will write these things are or facebook posts like there's these groups are people just like post the stuffer like old forms can go from like the two thousands and look and like you know like local forms and just watch people just talk about these gangs and how they work and all this stuff. Wikipedia, probably resource you can tap. yeah.

So like if people are just like they just imagine these gangs, they don't image how the gangs actually work. And then most people imagine gangs, imagine like smuggling gangs, like drug. The economics of like drug cells starting with overseas, like the grow, is in columbia and cell to the mexican middleman who then know distributed by street gangs and then guys with like pages on the street, or like shooting each other over turf. I yes, there is the act that that exists, right? But then you can throw all those guys in prison and then they may have a print day.

okay. So let's say way to the the the blue and blue city revival. What what we talked about sort of the the problems of the history, what's the what's what's the game plan?

The game plan is that basically you just elect people who will be more like the people, more like the Michael bloomberg types. You know, you like people who be tough on crime. You will like people who will control costs, who will do all these things with crime. You've basically just have to crack down on crime.

Like, can they be democrator? Do we need like our own choice? You know, to republican?

I have no idea. I don't really know how this this stuff works. I don't maybe republicans can make a come back in california. Maybe they can is probably different from city to city. Like in some cities you probably do you have like republican mayors and whoever supervisors and get elected.

But then in in some cities it's like everybody is is so everything come one who thinks they are democrats and so you have like democrator as other democrats don't know i'm not an expert in these parts of politics things, but then but then in I do think that it's really important to control costs the way you do IT is you bring stuff in house instead of just instead of just cutting everything off and just destroying and just not building instruction cure, not providing city services. Some city services you can probably get you know get by without like some city services are just like support for drug dealers and you can get rid those things. But like most, most city services are necessary stuff, you know, like education and or housing stuff, know just like, and then infrastructure is really important, like you need stuff to take people from place to place.

And so bringing this in house, having burek rats to do this, is often the solution. And not outsourcing IT to consultants, nonprofits and and you know, whatever, like actually I my impulses, my instinctive ves to say that democrats will be more willing to beef up the bureaucracy. Then republicans will be because republicans will be like letters, not have the city do anything like this cut at all, slash IT, you know.

And then people get mad because there's no infrastructure, there's no services, and then they elect progressives again. Sort of state capacity types will actually build up the city's capacity due stuff cheap and instead of outsourcing of expensively to these know grifters. And so I think that that's that's why I am a little more optimistic about about democrat doing something itself.

The problem is that that sometimes if you never have republicans win, then you can then there's no like external threat, like guys as you Better clean up our act or else these guys will win, there's the threat of actual urban determination in decay. But that, as we've seen, takes decades to play out and IT can be very destructive. If you have the republicans, you can say, guys, we need to be stronger and crime or all republicans will win next week.

And so lets let toughen up right now so they don't win next three. And so I think it's a shorter cycle of of like threat and getting serious with a two party system. So I want a two party system.

And at the same time, I think it's more likely to be democrats who build up state capacity that we need to replace the grifter nonprofits and all those people. Does that make any sense? Yeah yeah.

But I don't know what the baLance is there. Like I don't know how to get any of that done or where that can get done or who will do IT. Like, I have no idea.

not a partin politics guy, right?

I just grow stuff continues to win and I got okay.

So your saying is the plan for a blue I ties is basically like bomberg ask sort of leadership .

yeah now and I think that's what growth wants, basically have A A functional a functional high capacity city instead of you know instead of the approach of like lets, instead of the approach of the cities is a cash cow to be rated which is the progressive of or the city as a as a just something to be defunded, like which is the one which is one prominent republicans probe.

So I know there's actually lots of really good republican like a mayors who there they're like motor republicans or governors like this. There's that's why talking about this in paris and terms is so hard because so logo, right? You'll see republican mayors that actually want higher capacity in a reasonable type of people who don't just want to defund everything.

You'll see those all across america, especially red states. I think in red states, you're more likely to get a responsible republican area because everyone thinks i'm a republican. And so I can text us, you will you'll get that and and whatever OK hoa maybe .

talk a little bit about the difference between blue cities and red cities and maybe it's too broad of a of of a term. I guess, you know we've talking about blue cities this episode. What what is the state of some prominent internists are .

red cities are doing much Better. They're building lot more stuff. They're sprawling more, but some are densify. So, so like cities in red states often vote blue, although less so this cycle.

A lot less so this cycle, they became, they still voted for her on baLance, but they became more baLance. But then you see, houston is like one of the champions of densification because houston has this microbe igher hood control system. We're basically a few city blocks get to vote on whether you have apartment buildings.

And some people want apartment buildings because they make more money that way. And some people don't want apartment buildings because they have more noise. And you know, whenever dirty, icy people, I don't up, so then that you control at the micro block level.

And if the people three streets down want to build some apartment buildings, you don't get to say no. They get to say yes. You know, it's so it's it's actually leveraging local control for embassy and houston like there is the famous like houston apartment building.

I wish we could pull pictures for the fox, but it's like a low Price apartment building that is great for density. You don't need anything density that looks like what they have in japan. Heston's built a train line.

There's a train in histon now is free. All just runs like, you know, one way, just one line. But it's cool. And so houston is is turning itself slowly into like a real city even though it's a red state city.

So we can call the red city but votes blue on baLance, I guess, although he has lots of republicans there too. But it's it's it's a healthy city. It's it's doing well, huston and doing well.

It's all in a giant floods down and may get destroyed by global warming, but other that it's doing very well. And and so what are the cities are doing really well? All england in Virginia's doing well, seattle doing well, seattle of bluster. Seattle is building much a housing. They did have anarchy period, but I think they're y've sort the way from that partner is doing terrible portal land, just like all the hipsters became a went absolutely erl, like all those people from port lands, a just became complete zombies and then out, you know.

And so if you could wave a wand, let's say we get this bloomberg like leadership in centro A L A A. Is the man the main interventions that you'd be most excited about our housing and and crime .

housing and policing basically yeah so so fiscal housing and and crime policing are the three things. Those are the things we need and and we get those we get those things city .

get fixed that's IT yeah and let's say we had, you know Michael or Carrier, such a one of these kind of sf you know people have dedicated to fix and sf on the on the podcast which which would do that soon. What what would you want to ask them? What questions do you think we would have for them? Or what what do you care about? You know.

how do you control fiscal cost? How do you deregulate to get housing and how do you cracked on a crime?

What are the specific things that you can do and what are the political barriers to getting those done? Like why haven't we're done this yet? I can speak in general terms about sort of complacency and this this complacent that developed, but in terms of like actual interest groups that block things, actual political structure, like too many powers on the board of supervisors, whatever, like they'll get into the needy, greedy of those politics .

things yeah I hope Joshua peo, or whoever is the future of the left can can take on some of the intellectual foundations that people like you and ezra Derek Thompson have laid out. What sort of the abundance yeah .

to pure absolutely can yeah .

I think it's do you see that started happen or do you think that that's possible?

I see that starting happen. I even start saw here, I tried a pivot. No one paid attention to believe the pivot.

But yes, I saw, I saw her tried to pivot heart for that. I think that's not the end of that, right? Harris will go down.

History is being affiliated ated with weakness, not as being the person tried to pivot to century because no one really noticed the centuries pic and the patriotic pivot. And you saw this with, you saw this with like walter model. Walter model was a centre back up peg as the leftest, and regan absa crushed him.

And then Michael to caucus was the center who got pegged somewhat half peg to the left us. And he got pretty crushed by George w. bush. And then bill clinton just did what those guys were doing, but communicated IT Better. And then he won yeah and then so yeah like like that yeah that is .

interesting. You I don't know this is actually going to happen, but trump had this video the other day, where is like, let's get rid of the department of education and let's just leave everything up to the states. And I wonder if that's indicative of this approach more broadly, which is more will just be left up to to the states, which we mean. What we're talking about is even more important because local governance will have more .

of republicans can for always are gunning for the doe partment education because he doesn't really do much like educations already reserve for the states like the states do, do all the schools of curriculum, all that stuff. State universities. We don't have federal university, except with the military.

We should, but we don't. We don't have federal universities. Basically the D O E.

They're going to try to get get rid of IT because basically like they think it's woke and it's like telling local people to be more woke. It's not going to like they provide funding for stuff. They they give people money to go to college.

Will we can college? We need to do a whole other podcast about the institution of college and how trump could actually change that and how that is changing already our society from various other changes that nothing do with trump. And so that's that's a huge topic for another day and I will write .

a post on that third yeah oh IT to to read that. What the give me gives a little bit more of a clifty er what's the what's the thing the intervention you you're excited about or what's the well.

college became our one functional institution for the forty percent of people go to college. It's like IT became the church and community organization and bowling league and IT taught people how to, like, live in a community and how to rate each other, and how to like, have function relationships and have morals and all these things, how to be healthy and all these things that community or institutions like church used to teach, right? Or IT.

IT totally replaced institutions that were local. We d localize our society, and, you know, the car in the internet, delocalized society college became our one institution, and then IT. Unfortunately, IT would subject a lot of the same complacency.

Profit y that a lot of the cities were, the progressive cities were, and started just wasting a on the money, which meant IT had to charge students wait too much. So IT overPriced itself and was not prepared for the the sort of like end of that gravy train which is now over. And so the age of college is now windowing IT.

We're going to see that's the biggest that's the biggest change. I think IT the diminishment of colleges, this this institution or you know IT will still be important, but IT will be less important. And we need other institutions especially, you know, if we're going to unite the classes, if we're going to like, have amErica be healthy again, people don't go to church anymore.

Well, they never really went to church all the time, but they, they don't, do not members of churches anymore. Local institutions, people bowl alone. College was the antidote to that.

That only worked for forty percent of people because we get up to, according to the intelligence that we tried to stop, get keeping IT. That failed with the test, getting rid of standards test. And so anyway, that there's a teezle preview. But basically, college became like everything to the educated class, like everything. And now it's diminishing and educate class get up to deal that and amErica is going to deal that because we need, we need institutions that unite the classes.

We need people like you and me to spend time with working class people in our youth and in adult to, but youth is more important, performative, you know, and and learn what working class people are like and and get a sense of national unity that we don't yet have. Just voting for trump every four years or or another trumpy type of candidate is not going to provide national unity by itself. We need institutions that provide CoOperation and you know commonality on a data day basis and that teach consensus, morality and health. And you provide community. That's the preview, a great preview.

I have one last question for here. You are here, which is this maybe stupid question, but is there also a private sector sort of solution or sort of supplement on on some of the crime stuff? You for example, on the national level, we see things like potier and and and and and companies that helped out of enable. And in some ways, you serve the role that public. You know, it's SpaceX, of course, serve the role at nasha used to in some capacity know our friend and growing Daniel is doing a please, please start up is is there are there private selector duc people getting like but blocks organizing to get security you know for for the block?

Like no, no, I think that they're always be contractors. And so like that like you know dangerous companies is very useful. But I think that there's a statement, apple and use of violence. And when you start seeing private security takeover of public security is a problem because that means public security broken down. You must have one one organization with the guns, you know, and that's the cops so no, I think contractors, yes, providing services, working with the city government, yes, but you need statement up and use of force or vanardy.

Yeah no, privatize the police force otherwise yeah, he could be, yeah, can be used against. Yeah.

I will. More importantly, it'll only be used in a few places in the rest will become in our exam anyway. All right, gotta go until next time.

Great stuff. As always, on the next time .

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