San Francisco historian Charles Fracchia recalls Mayor George Christopher’s ploy after his plan to lure the New York Giants to San Francisco hit a snag in the late 1950s. It all hinged on building Candlestick Park, and doing that hinged on buying land in Hunters Point from real estate magnate Charlie Harney for $65,000 an acre. The trouble was, the city had sold that same land to Harney only five years previously for a fraction of the price.
“There was opposition to this from high-minded people in San Francisco,” Fracchia says. “So Christopher got his opponents as well as his proponents together, and had 10 cases of scotch delivered up to this meeting at the Pacific Union Club. The scotch was drunk, and everyone came to the conclusion — yes, keep Candlestick Park.”
When it comes to mismanaging a city, San Francisco has pulled a 180 — in half a century, we’ve gone from “city fathers” (if you liked them) or “oligarchs” (if you didn’t) operating with limited input from the people to a hyperdemocracy. Overpaying for a Candlesticklike bad land deal today wouldn’t be settled during a drunken soirée, but via years of high-decibel public meetings, developers being made to bleed funds to nonprofits of city supervisors’ choosing, and any number of bond measures or other trips to the ballot box — all of which, when put together, could conceivably cost as much as the bad land deal itself. Maybe more.
For all its scotch-soaked flaws, the city of yore did not suffer from these problems. While archaic and stridently antidemocratic by today’s standards, the system of government cobbled together by a citizens’ commission in 1931 largely did what our forebears wanted it to do — mind the store and eliminate rampant corruption.
From 1932 until 1996, much of city government was handled by a powerful chief administrative officer (CAO), appointed to a 10-year term and tasked with overseeing the city’s largest departments. The job was to take politics out of city management. (Today’s San Francisco is so intensely saturated with politics down to the minutiae that the supervisors’ recent appointment of a transit expert to a transit board — and not a union plumber — was seen as a deeply political move and an affront to organized labor.) The CAO was charged with making the city’s largest decisions in an apolitical manner; the major portion of the job was keeping the books on the most vital departments and making sure they were running smoothly. In a manner of speaking, the CAO was a living, breathing accountability measure. The city certainly made its share of lousy calls, but the sloth, waste, and dysfunction emblematic of today’s city government would have been shocking.
Over time, however, the CAO’s purview was replaced by that hyperdemocracy. The reasonable notion that the people of San Francisco should have input into how things are run has turned into the democratic equivalent of death by a thousand cuts; as everybody gets a voice, democracy votes accountability down. When everyone’s in charge, no one is. “In the old days, they ran roughshod over opposing views,” Fracchia says. “Today, all ya got is opposing views. Pick your poison.”
Wait maybe he has been reading Unqualified Reservations?
There are ways San Francisco can maintain its rampant democracy while establishing a system that abhors waste and incompetence:
Return much of the day-to-day control of city operations to an unelected, long-term city manager — who would also be responsible for negotiating union contracts.
Institute detailed citywide planning to avoid waste and duplication of services, while ensuring essential city functions are provided for.
Emphasize best practices in each individual city department, and let go of workers who aren’t needed because of productivity gains.
Eliminate all budget set-asides and mandatory staffing levels, and let the city develop budgets that meet the needs of today and tomorrow, not yesterday.
Fire people who are incompetent — and that includes those at the top-heavy manage-ment level.
Instead of telling us how much money has been spent on a problem, focus on whether the problems are getting solved.
Yet it would take a seismic event to spur the city to shake off caked-on layers of status quo — a literal earthquake, or a figurative one. (Perhaps a meteor vaporizing City Hall in 2012.)
The far more likely scenario is that nothing will happen. The city will continue its orgy of waste and incompetence. San Francisco can afford plenty of both: We’re rich — and getting richer all the time. According to the controller’s office, San Franciscans’ per-capita income jumped from an already-generous $58,244 in 2004 to $74,515 last year.
Of course, for many San Franciscans, those numbers represent another failure. They point to an exodus. The city’s middle class is melting away faster than polar ice. With them, economists and demographers say, goes any realistic hope that voters will demand serious change in search of long-term reform.
On second thought maybe living in San Francisco and thinking about it too much makes you sound like Moldbug.
You are on record as saying that you don’t like the level of political discussion on this site. Adding more political discussion from your favored side is not an intervention likely to decrease the frequency of political discussion on this site.
You think this post (and the comments in response) raise the level of political discourse on this site?
I think this post is about on par (in terms of quality) with other recent posts. Konkvistador has explicitly said that he thought those posts were lowering the quality of discussion here. My question for him is why he thinks this post will do better, as opposed to presenting a viewpoint he agrees with—a reasonable but very different goal.
Note that I quoted the part that was not that far away of some of my policy preferences and more explicitly questioned the instrumental usefulness of democracy in a comment not at the centre of discussion (opening post).
I stated it because I wanted to share that the article caused me to update away from “Moldbug has a lot of insight into the failure of democratic government” towards “Moldbug has a lot of insight into the failure of democratic government in SF and may be wrong about other places”.
My question for him is why he thinks this post will do better, as opposed to presenting a viewpoint he agrees with—a reasonable but very different goal.
In theory we should be more reasonable when discussing means rather than goals since clippy and a baby eater can both easily agree on which strategy is paper-clip-maximizing given the same information and resources. I honestly didn’t expect this article to be seen as being partisan or political because the author explicitly endorses the goals San Francisco seems to pursue and just criticizes the means by giving examples of how they don’t seem to be working well.
Despite its good intentions, San Francisco is not leading the country in gay marriage. Despite its good intentions, it is not stopping wars. Despite its spending more money per capita on homelessness than any comparable city, its homeless problem is worse than any comparable city’s. Despite its spending more money per capita, period, than almost any city in the nation, San Francisco has poorly managed, budget-busting capital projects, overlapping social programs no one is certain are working, and a transportation system where the only thing running ahead of schedule is the size of its deficit.
I find it amusing that if I was to write out a well argued or researched post questioning whether any particular item among these should be a goal for San Francisco to work towards it would probably be considered less political. This seems to indicate that doing politics, at least here, is not only not about policies as Robin Hanson says, but it may not be about values either.
In theory we should be more reasonable when discussing means rather than goals since clippy and a baby eater can both easily agree on which strategy is paper-clip-maximizing given the same information and resources.
You might think so, but when the means include getting the compliance of other people, I’ve seen some very nasty flame wars. My theory is that most people’s models for getting people to comply are established early in life, emotionally fraught, and not reconsidered. Almost any method can look as though it works some of the time.
If anything we used to talk about politics in the sense I did, giving real world examples of possible institution failure or success, much more in the old Overcoming Bias days. And while before karma the worst comments where much worse and before Politics is the Mindkiller we where less careful about how we approached it, I would say we where still less mindkilled and more capable of discussing it.
In the example thread TimS gave the goal was already assumed and not made explicit, this would be less of a problem if it was an academic exercise rather than directly tied to changing the LW community. And I should emphasise that since I don’t believe in most kind of political activity a citizen is supposed to engage in the governing style of SF for me really is an academic question with little real world implications beyond tangential lessons on how to organize a non-profit or for-profit company.
Recall that in my recent comment I also stated I was distressed no one else wrote the arguments I did. I believe we are seeing evaporative cooling of users belonging to ideologies besides the dominant one. This is I think bad for our explicit goal of “refining the art of human rationality”. I should emphasise see little evidence of quality thinkers and rationalists who used to disagree having changed their mind in the direction of it as much as given up on the site.
If you check my older comment history especially on the Rational Romance thread I have changed my position on how best to deal with this several times I think based on reasonable grounds. I don’t think it is an easy question partially because I mistrust myself on it. So your input on the issue would be most welcomed! Maybe even a new open thread discussion so we clear away the object level baggage from here.
Also unless we are capable of discussing San Francisco’s governance and competence at achieving a set of goals its inhabitants or employees would like it to, I can’t see how we could be capable of talking about economics at all.
And we really should because that field is where so many of LW’s assumptions and data about human minds as well as strategy come from!
Recall that in my recent comment I also stated I was distressed no one else wrote the arguments I did. I believe we are seeing evaporative cooling of users belonging to ideologies besides the dominant one.
Given that other users are worried about apparently the same thing in respect to certain classically non-dominant ideologies, this seems more likely to be some variant of the hostile media bias effect than anything else.
Why assume both are wrong rather than just one of them being wrong? Also we do have weak statistical evidence that LW has been drifting in the direction I think it has and strong evidence the positions I talk about are a vulnerable minority here to begin with (see Yvain’s polls).
Why assume both are wrong rather than just one of them being wrong?
Because the prior given the standard cognitive biases here is that these sorts of claims in general are so inaccurate that the impressions from people are barely informative if at all.
we do have weak statistical evidence that LW has been drifting in the direction I think it has
I would agree with a slightly modified version of this. On LessWrong libertarian politics is the neutral baseline of economics and liberal politics is the neutral baseline of morality. All other options are “mindkilling”.
In addition to this I will note our similarity to academia. Much of the tribal attire of “libertarians” is endorsed among economists and much of the moral tribal attire of “liberals” is endorsed by bioethics and philosophy. Not that these are necessarily good signals…
It’s annoying and stupid, as it precludes any attempt to use the supposedly superior powers of rationality found hereabouts on quite a range of actual practical problems. Worse yet, whenever someone does try, the proscription proves well-founded. Sigh.
Also I just plain enjoy well written and well thought out defences of Libertarian economic and Liberal moral positions I disagree with that only happen when they actually get challenged. I recommend Yvain’s blog for the latter btw.
As someone who makes weekly forays into San Francisco, I strongly suspect that many of Molbug’s more extreme beliefs regarding the current state of US politics are a result of him generalizing from living in SF. I also suspect I’d be far less sympathetic to Moldbug if I grew up in, say, rural Texas rather than the Bay Area.
Wait maybe he has been reading Unqualified Reservations?
On second thought maybe living in San Francisco and thinking about it too much makes you sound like Moldbug.
You are on record as saying that you don’t like the level of political discussion on this site. Adding more political discussion from your favored side is not an intervention likely to decrease the frequency of political discussion on this site.
The level and the frequency are two different things.
You think this post (and the comments in response) raise the level of political discourse on this site?
I think this post is about on par (in terms of quality) with other recent posts. Konkvistador has explicitly said that he thought those posts were lowering the quality of discussion here. My question for him is why he thinks this post will do better, as opposed to presenting a viewpoint he agrees with—a reasonable but very different goal.
Note that I quoted the part that was not that far away of some of my policy preferences and more explicitly questioned the instrumental usefulness of democracy in a comment not at the centre of discussion (opening post).
I stated it because I wanted to share that the article caused me to update away from “Moldbug has a lot of insight into the failure of democratic government” towards “Moldbug has a lot of insight into the failure of democratic government in SF and may be wrong about other places”.
Presumably Konkvistador is posting with that intent.
And I’m trying to alert him that he may not have achieved that intent. Further, the intent and the action may be hopelessly mismatched.
In theory we should be more reasonable when discussing means rather than goals since clippy and a baby eater can both easily agree on which strategy is paper-clip-maximizing given the same information and resources. I honestly didn’t expect this article to be seen as being partisan or political because the author explicitly endorses the goals San Francisco seems to pursue and just criticizes the means by giving examples of how they don’t seem to be working well.
I find it amusing that if I was to write out a well argued or researched post questioning whether any particular item among these should be a goal for San Francisco to work towards it would probably be considered less political. This seems to indicate that doing politics, at least here, is not only not about policies as Robin Hanson says, but it may not be about values either.
You might think so, but when the means include getting the compliance of other people, I’ve seen some very nasty flame wars. My theory is that most people’s models for getting people to comply are established early in life, emotionally fraught, and not reconsidered. Almost any method can look as though it works some of the time.
This.
If anything we used to talk about politics in the sense I did, giving real world examples of possible institution failure or success, much more in the old Overcoming Bias days. And while before karma the worst comments where much worse and before Politics is the Mindkiller we where less careful about how we approached it, I would say we where still less mindkilled and more capable of discussing it.
In the example thread TimS gave the goal was already assumed and not made explicit, this would be less of a problem if it was an academic exercise rather than directly tied to changing the LW community. And I should emphasise that since I don’t believe in most kind of political activity a citizen is supposed to engage in the governing style of SF for me really is an academic question with little real world implications beyond tangential lessons on how to organize a non-profit or for-profit company.
Recall that in my recent comment I also stated I was distressed no one else wrote the arguments I did. I believe we are seeing evaporative cooling of users belonging to ideologies besides the dominant one. This is I think bad for our explicit goal of “refining the art of human rationality”. I should emphasise see little evidence of quality thinkers and rationalists who used to disagree having changed their mind in the direction of it as much as given up on the site.
If you check my older comment history especially on the Rational Romance thread I have changed my position on how best to deal with this several times I think based on reasonable grounds. I don’t think it is an easy question partially because I mistrust myself on it. So your input on the issue would be most welcomed! Maybe even a new open thread discussion so we clear away the object level baggage from here.
Also unless we are capable of discussing San Francisco’s governance and competence at achieving a set of goals its inhabitants or employees would like it to, I can’t see how we could be capable of talking about economics at all.
And we really should because that field is where so many of LW’s assumptions and data about human minds as well as strategy come from!
Given that other users are worried about apparently the same thing in respect to certain classically non-dominant ideologies, this seems more likely to be some variant of the hostile media bias effect than anything else.
Why assume both are wrong rather than just one of them being wrong? Also we do have weak statistical evidence that LW has been drifting in the direction I think it has and strong evidence the positions I talk about are a vulnerable minority here to begin with (see Yvain’s polls).
Because the prior given the standard cognitive biases here is that these sorts of claims in general are so inaccurate that the impressions from people are barely informative if at all.
Can you expand on this?
But libertarian politics is the neutral baseline; it’s other politics that is mindkilling.
I laughed. But Moldbug is authoritarian, not libertarian. Any government, for-profit or otherwise, with absolute power is not liberty friendly.
I would agree with a slightly modified version of this. On LessWrong libertarian politics is the neutral baseline of economics and liberal politics is the neutral baseline of morality. All other options are “mindkilling”.
In addition to this I will note our similarity to academia. Much of the tribal attire of “libertarians” is endorsed among economists and much of the moral tribal attire of “liberals” is endorsed by bioethics and philosophy. Not that these are necessarily good signals…
It’s annoying and stupid, as it precludes any attempt to use the supposedly superior powers of rationality found hereabouts on quite a range of actual practical problems. Worse yet, whenever someone does try, the proscription proves well-founded. Sigh.
Does this happen for issues besides feminism?
I agree.
Also I just plain enjoy well written and well thought out defences of Libertarian economic and Liberal moral positions I disagree with that only happen when they actually get challenged. I recommend Yvain’s blog for the latter btw.
As someone who makes weekly forays into San Francisco, I strongly suspect that many of Molbug’s more extreme beliefs regarding the current state of US politics are a result of him generalizing from living in SF. I also suspect I’d be far less sympathetic to Moldbug if I grew up in, say, rural Texas rather than the Bay Area.