I’ve done quite a few posts documenting the ongoing disintegration of the once and former Golden State in general and San Francisco in particular; here’s another take on that topic, in which a former SanFran entrepreneur “translates” statements from Mayor London Breed.  Excerpt:

Technology entrepreneur Joe Lonsdale provided a “translation” of a statement from San Francisco Democratic Mayor London Breed regarding the city’s collapsing tax base and budget woes.

Lonsdale attended Stanford University and launched Palantir, a defense software company, before starting venture capital fund 8VC. The libertarian-leaning executive said he moved the company from San Francisco to Austin two years ago because the Texas metropolis is more “tolerant of ideological diversity.”

In reaction to a social media thread from Breed in which she lamented San Francisco’s difficulties in funding government operations, Lonsdale offered a “little translation” for those who cannot follow “California politician-speak.”

When Breed said that the “structure” of downtown San Francisco has “shifted,” Lonsdale translated the statement to mean “dozens of businesses have fled” because “their workers are terrified of being assaulted” by “criminals and mentally-ill homeless.” Indeed, an influx of homeless residents occurred as a $160 million program offered them shelter in local hotels: there are now 56% more homeless people in the city since the initiative began.

The homeless problem in particular is mostly due to acts of staggering stupidity on the city’s government; what you penalize you get less of and what you subsidize you get more of, and the city has been subsidizing homelessness for some time now.  Add in a climate that allows sleeping outdoors all year ’round (although, amazingly, Anchorage has it’s own homelessness problem, in spite of frequent below-zero temps in winter), the decriminalization of shoplifting and the tolerance of public drug use, urination and defecation, and you get a city that makes medieval Paris or London look clean, safe and respectable.

The part that I find baffling is that the people of San Francisco – and Los Angeles, and Chicago, and Detroit, and any number of our major cities that are slowly (and recently not so slowly) collapsing, keep voting for the same people who oversaw the collapse.  Until that changes, nothing else will.