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San Francisco, the city in a perpetual death spiral. The number of bad "SF's gonna die!" takes on HN/twitter is so absurd I now read them with a "So bad it's g

San Francisco, the city in a perpetual death spiral. The number of bad "SF's gonna die!" takes on HN/twitter is so absurd I now read them with a "So bad it's good" type mindset. The number of times WSJ opinions alone have declared California dead is probably 20+. The thing that will stop the oft remarked upon "death spiral" is, ahem, the fucking CA housing market. Where there are fluctuations in expensive asset prices, people see opportunity. If housing prices in SF drop by 5%, it's not like all the wealthy individuals who can buy just sit on the sidelines. Younger people with lesser means see opportunities to get rent control at a decent price etc. I'm looking forward to retractions of all these level zero takes when rent prices spike in July. This is of course nothing new, for instance NY has gone through many ups and downs of its own and all along many in the media claimed "NY is dying!"

subsubzero 6y ago
It is laughable with the number of articles that state this recently, I do think things are different as large name brand companies have moved out very recently: Pinterest paid big money to break its lease to move out of SF, Stripe is moving out, Charles Schwab and McKesson, and Bechtel also moved their HQ out of SF and CA in general. These moves were all done pre-covid but as a bay area resident the past year has been horrible like none other, fires raging all summer and toxic smoke, pg&e shutting off the power all the time, crime is really, really bad. I had stuff stolen from my house, a first of living an entire lifetime in the bay area.
- foxtr0t 6y ago
  I'm a pretty pessimistic individual, at least my wife tells me so, but I am actually very optimistic about California and the Bay Area. I think COVID will end up being the kick in the pants it needs to start dealing with many of the problems in the state and region. A scare or two about companies fleeing the state is necessary to get the state/counties/cities to cut back on suffocating red tape for small businesses. And if there is one place in the world setup to fight a big climate problem like fires, it is the academic and technological hive mind of California. Back to the bad takes: from what I've read the takes are all from people who moved out of the Bay. Some people come here, start their careers, then have the luxury of leaving and working from wherever. That's great, but there will always be a batch of new grads looking for work and honestly the concentration there is so high they could lose 20% of the companies by market cap and this would still be the place to start out, along with a few other large metros. Just because you leave doesn't mean the city stops.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- zapita 6y ago
  > crime is really, really bad Actually violent crime is at an all-time low. See this article about homicides for example: https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/With-41-killings-in-2019-San-Francisco-sees-14943532.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/With-41-killings-i... It looks like you were thinking of property crime, but I wonder what the statistics say about that, too.
mikestew 6y ago
The number of times WSJ opinions alone have declared California dead is probably 20+. Where I first heard the idea that CA will collapse because "everyone is moving to NV to avoid CA taxes" was the WSJ...thirty years ago. I see that CA is still there, and far more populated than it was 30 years ago. A stopped clock might be right twice a day, but I'll be dead before the WSJ (or anyone) finally strikes gold with their "everyone is leaving CA" prediction.
- dcolkitt 6y ago
  The difference is that there's a hell of a lot more bandwidth available to the average remote worker than there was 30 years ago.
  - nostrademons 6y ago
    I suspect the next big tech wave is going to be software-enabled hardware (think 3D printing, or drones, or robotics) or software-enabled biotech (think Verily, Calico, or DeepMind's protein-folding breakthrough today). Neither of those can be done anywhere with an Internet connection; they're going to require close collaboration between software developers, data scientists, electrical/mechanical/biomedical engineers, and actual scientists (physicists, chemists, biologists, and material scientists). The Bay Area is excellently situated to take advantage of this, having 2 world-class universities, a number of smaller colleges, thriving industries in all of these, and lots of capital. Much of the rest of the country, not so much. I suspect that the days of SaaS and pure web or mobile app developers are numbered. That field is increasingly getting commoditized.
    - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      >I suspect the next big tech wave is going to be software-enabled hardware (think 3D printing, or drones, or robotics) or software-enabled biotech (think Verily, Calico, or DeepMind's protein-folding breakthrough today). Neither of those can be done anywhere with an Internet connection; they're going to require close collaboration between software developers, data scientists, electrical/mechanical/biomedical engineers, and actual scientists (physicists, chemists, biologists, and material scientists). The Bay Area is excellently situated to take advantage of this, having 2 world-class universities, a number of smaller colleges, thriving industries in all of these, and lots of capital. Much of the rest of the country, not so much. This comment is a great example of the SV bubble mindset. The Midwest, Northeast and gulf coast have far better existing infrastructure and workforces if your goal is to create products that have a physical existence in excess of what it takes to represent ones and zeros. I'll be the first to tell you that I'll vote for any despot who promises to screw the people of Boston but even I have to admit that if your goal is to do some BioMed thing the existing industry there is far better poised to take advantage of it than SV is. The Gulf coast is where you go if you want to do things with chemicals. The eastern midwest is where you go for heavy industry type manufacturing. Specialty composites, aerospace, electronics manufacturing capability is sprinkled throughout the area east of the Mississippi (though sprinkled less densely in the more agricultural parts of the south and midwest). It's just laughable that you think that SV, a place that's spent decades driving out anything that doesn't have tech-size margins, has the existing workforce and infrastructure to compete against the places that already have these industries.
rllearneratwork 6y ago
what do you expect? The city to actually disappear?? Of course not. But the quality of life in the city is in death spiral. A lot more crime and a lot more homeless and infrastructure is in disarray
- foxtr0t 6y ago
  I expect Detroit at the very least.
claydavisss 6y ago
This is a reddit-grade defense and strikes me as a weird rationalization. Are you suggesting that the Bay Area is destined to be some insulated District 1 that perpetually laughs at quality of life, economics, market forces etc? In any case there's nothing to debate, the exodus has been happening for years and has only been accelerated and highlighted by the Covid news cycle.
dcolkitt 6y ago
> This is of course nothing new, for instance NY has gone through many ups and downs of its own and all along many in the media claimed "NY is dying!" The same could be said of Detroit. Until the 1960s, it was unquestionably the fastest booming major metro in the US. But at one point or another, the "price discount of a lifetime" just becomes an attempt to catch a falling knife.
- jgwil2 6y ago
  The weather alone will ensure SF never becomes Detroit.
- foxtr0t 6y ago
  Detroit is an interesting comparison, it is hard to imagine right now, but I won't count anything out completely. Obviously the factors there were very different. Detroit collapsed because consumers went elsewhere, not the labor. Edit: clarification/wording

subsubzero 6y ago

It is laughable with the number of articles that state this recently, I do think things are different as large name brand companies have moved out very recently: Pinterest paid big money to break its lease to move out of SF, Stripe is moving out, Charles Schwab and McKesson, and Bechtel also moved their HQ out of SF and CA in general. These moves were all done pre-covid but as a bay area resident the past year has been horrible like none other, fires raging all summer and toxic smoke, pg&e shutting off the power all the time, crime is really, really bad. I had stuff stolen from my house, a first of living an entire lifetime in the bay area.

foxtr0t 6y ago
I'm a pretty pessimistic individual, at least my wife tells me so, but I am actually very optimistic about California and the Bay Area. I think COVID will end up being the kick in the pants it needs to start dealing with many of the problems in the state and region. A scare or two about companies fleeing the state is necessary to get the state/counties/cities to cut back on suffocating red tape for small businesses. And if there is one place in the world setup to fight a big climate problem like fires, it is the academic and technological hive mind of California. Back to the bad takes: from what I've read the takes are all from people who moved out of the Bay. Some people come here, start their careers, then have the luxury of leaving and working from wherever. That's great, but there will always be a batch of new grads looking for work and honestly the concentration there is so high they could lose 20% of the companies by market cap and this would still be the place to start out, along with a few other large metros. Just because you leave doesn't mean the city stops.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
zapita 6y ago
> crime is really, really bad Actually violent crime is at an all-time low. See this article about homicides for example: https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/With-41-killings-in-2019-San-Francisco-sees-14943532.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/With-41-killings-i... It looks like you were thinking of property crime, but I wonder what the statistics say about that, too.

mikestew 6y ago

The number of times WSJ opinions alone have declared California dead is probably 20+. Where I first heard the idea that CA will collapse because "everyone is moving to NV to avoid CA taxes" was the WSJ...thirty years ago. I see that CA is still there, and far more populated than it was 30 years ago. A stopped clock might be right twice a day, but I'll be dead before the WSJ (or anyone) finally strikes gold with their "everyone is leaving CA" prediction.

dcolkitt 6y ago
The difference is that there's a hell of a lot more bandwidth available to the average remote worker than there was 30 years ago.
- nostrademons 6y ago
  I suspect the next big tech wave is going to be software-enabled hardware (think 3D printing, or drones, or robotics) or software-enabled biotech (think Verily, Calico, or DeepMind's protein-folding breakthrough today). Neither of those can be done anywhere with an Internet connection; they're going to require close collaboration between software developers, data scientists, electrical/mechanical/biomedical engineers, and actual scientists (physicists, chemists, biologists, and material scientists). The Bay Area is excellently situated to take advantage of this, having 2 world-class universities, a number of smaller colleges, thriving industries in all of these, and lots of capital. Much of the rest of the country, not so much. I suspect that the days of SaaS and pure web or mobile app developers are numbered. That field is increasingly getting commoditized.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    >I suspect the next big tech wave is going to be software-enabled hardware (think 3D printing, or drones, or robotics) or software-enabled biotech (think Verily, Calico, or DeepMind's protein-folding breakthrough today). Neither of those can be done anywhere with an Internet connection; they're going to require close collaboration between software developers, data scientists, electrical/mechanical/biomedical engineers, and actual scientists (physicists, chemists, biologists, and material scientists). The Bay Area is excellently situated to take advantage of this, having 2 world-class universities, a number of smaller colleges, thriving industries in all of these, and lots of capital. Much of the rest of the country, not so much. This comment is a great example of the SV bubble mindset. The Midwest, Northeast and gulf coast have far better existing infrastructure and workforces if your goal is to create products that have a physical existence in excess of what it takes to represent ones and zeros. I'll be the first to tell you that I'll vote for any despot who promises to screw the people of Boston but even I have to admit that if your goal is to do some BioMed thing the existing industry there is far better poised to take advantage of it than SV is. The Gulf coast is where you go if you want to do things with chemicals. The eastern midwest is where you go for heavy industry type manufacturing. Specialty composites, aerospace, electronics manufacturing capability is sprinkled throughout the area east of the Mississippi (though sprinkled less densely in the more agricultural parts of the south and midwest). It's just laughable that you think that SV, a place that's spent decades driving out anything that doesn't have tech-size margins, has the existing workforce and infrastructure to compete against the places that already have these industries.

rllearneratwork 6y ago

what do you expect? The city to actually disappear?? Of course not. But the quality of life in the city is in death spiral. A lot more crime and a lot more homeless and infrastructure is in disarray

foxtr0t 6y ago
I expect Detroit at the very least.

claydavisss 6y ago

This is a reddit-grade defense and strikes me as a weird rationalization. Are you suggesting that the Bay Area is destined to be some insulated District 1 that perpetually laughs at quality of life, economics, market forces etc? In any case there's nothing to debate, the exodus has been happening for years and has only been accelerated and highlighted by the Covid news cycle.

dcolkitt 6y ago

> This is of course nothing new, for instance NY has gone through many ups and downs of its own and all along many in the media claimed "NY is dying!" The same could be said of Detroit. Until the 1960s, it was unquestionably the fastest booming major metro in the US. But at one point or another, the "price discount of a lifetime" just becomes an attempt to catch a falling knife.

jgwil2 6y ago
The weather alone will ensure SF never becomes Detroit.
foxtr0t 6y ago
Detroit is an interesting comparison, it is hard to imagine right now, but I won't count anything out completely. Obviously the factors there were very different. Detroit collapsed because consumers went elsewhere, not the labor. Edit: clarification/wording