Over the past few years, San Francisco has become emblematic of the dysfunction and ideological excesses of Democratic-run cities. The follies of the city's leaders shouldn't be understated, but—argues @Tinkzorg—there's more to the story of SF's dramatic decline than this./1
To see why, consider another once-great US city that experienced a precipitous collapse: Detroit. The pathologies that emerged there that anticipated SF's, and Democratic misrule played a role—but the real underlying factor was that the city's economic base had collapsed./2
When Detroit collapsed, the educated classes watched this process of decay play out and mostly shrugged their shoulders. Industry was yesterday’s model and for the people who were part of the 'new' economy, the resulting fallout was somebody else’s problem./3
The irony of SF's current predicament is that it is a hub of the very "new economy" that was seen as an improvement on the old one embodied in Detroit—and now, the basis of that "new economy" is being undermined. Hence, it may soon become the capital of a new "Tech Rust Belt."/4
One implication of all this is that the aggressive countermeasures to public disorder proposed by the right can only go so far—they may moderate the decay, but can't address the underlying trajectory of decline.
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