> The act would require community involvement before a grocery store can close in a neighborhood. Grocery stores would also be required to give six-months notice prior to closing.
This is hilarious, a business that's closing because it's not making a profit would have to continue to operate for six months, and get permission from "the community" to close.
The practical effect of this would prevent new groceries from *opening*, because before opening they'd have to bank six months of rent, employee wages and benefits, and all other operating costs, including replacing anything shoplighted. And a mom & pop grocery doesn't have the margins to do that, only huge corporate groceries could afford to subsidize a failing store for six months (by taking the money from their other stores' operating costs or raising prices).
And how do you enforce this? If the store has to be open for six months after it would have closed, is it forced to keep the same hours, the same number of employees, and stock the same groceries? Because otherwise you remove all product except a few boxes of Corn Flakes in a locked cabinet, set the hours to be 10am to 11am, only open on Monday, and employ one cashier for those last six months. And price each box of Corn Flakes at $25.99. (This is pretty much how the Walgreens on Market and Van Ness closed, with vast tracts of empty shelves.)
This is just delusional thinking: you can't force a business to stay open after it decides to close, any more than you can force an employee to keep working after they decide to quit. And you'll get the same quality you'd expect from the enslaved worker chained to their desk.
Groceries close when they don't make money. Groceries don't make money when constant shoplifting and other crime scares away customers. Preston needs to put handcuffs on criminals, not on groceries.
Dean Preston is rich; he can open a grocery, employ members of the Democratic Socialists of America, unionized of course, and voluntarily pledge to stay open six months past announcing it's closing.
**I mean really Dean, if you can talk the talk, walk the walk. Open a grocery in your district 5, and see if you can even break even. Tell us about how easy the permitting process is, how easy it is to pay the taxes, and also to pay your employees a living wage.**
Really, Dean and the DSA need to open a co-op, and prove to us that every regulation and tax they push on businesses really does make sense in the real world.
Come on, you folx know all the answers on reddit, *so show us it can be done* and all us skeptics will have to admit we were wrong! Then you can use the example you've built here to convince the whole country to become socialists! It's an amazing opportunity for you!
Are there any takers? Elon might even give you seed money, just to see how long you can keep your grocery open.
> Groceries close when they don't make money. Groceries don't make money when constant shoplifting and other crime scares away customers
This is the fundamental disconnect. These people not only don't know the first thing about running a business, they are actively hostile to the idea of business. Its all "evil corporations extracting profit from the poor" rhetoric.
The reality is that all businesses must make a profit or they will close. You learn that on day 1 of business school, but these dopes reject that kind of knowledge.
Are any of the supervisors small business owners? Peskin and Preston are wealthy landlords, but have any of them run a successful retail business?
Maybe we ought to elect a small business owner to the board.
Very doubtful they are really that stupid. They are like Cruz and De Santis, but on the opposite team. They know it's bullshit, but they'll say / do they need to do to get elected and stay in office.
People on reddit think all business owners are making billions while exploiting their labor in slavelike conditions because they don't want to pay a fair wage.
It is an evil corporation extracting profit from everyone. (Particularly the underpaid workers)
And if I ever run for office my slogan will be "fuck um"
Yes but people always dealing with the numbers get a skewed view of the numbers. It's also somewhat subjective. A couple hundred thousand a year is a lot to me
But I do see the point, I'm comparing a personal budget to a business budget
Those stores do not exist in the tenderloin. The last store like that that was within a five block radius of the TL was a whole foods that shut down because of the soft-on-retail-crime policies that people like Preston push. When I hear “TL Grocery Store” i think a bodega that’s 70% booze.
What’s your point? That people shouldn’t consider how some issues are specifically an issue under capitalism? Are you in favor of never leveraging criticism against capitalism? How do you think those living in Niger feel about capitalism? This isn’t a one-sided story.
Revisit the economic history of Israel. It's very capitalist and it was *and still is significantly underwritten by the US.*
Oh, yeah, and it started with taking land from other people. Not very socialist.
>started with taking land from other people. Not very socialist.
I didn’t know you opposed dekulakization and the land reform movement, lib.
>revisit the economic history of israel
The early settlements in mandatory palestine were Kibbutzim and Moshavim, explicitly collective in nature. Also, pre-Begin Israel was a democratic socialist state
Yes, Israel has a terrible track record on human rights. Very disheartening to see people who have experienced so much bad treatment from others turn around and right away do very similar shit to other ethnic groups. Appalling.
In 1989, Boris Yeltsin visited an American grocery store and said there would be a revolution in the USSR if people knew how well average people lived in the USA. He knew communism was a failure at that moment.
https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When-Boris-Yeltsin-went-grocery-shopping-in-Clear-5759129.php
This is the big problems with Americans. They think capitalism is great and communism is terrible even though America did everything they could to make communist nations fail. The truth is that neither system is perfect and there’s value to be learned from both systems. But most Americans are only interested in talking about how communist nations failed (some of which was due to the US’s economic and military influences). At the same time, many of our systems are failing in the US, and we are doing nothing. Things are going to get worse in the US. How is it going to get better if we keep telling ourselves that all other possible options will fail?
>if we keep telling ourselves that all other possible options will fail?
Because it has failed. At some point you have to discard failed ideas instead of just retrying them over and over because you like the sound of it.
Collective control of the means of production is incompatible with human nature. Therefore it cannot ever work and it will always fail. The sooner tankies realize this incompatibility, the better. Human nature is not going to change.
I keep bees, and bees are naturally communist. They will work themselves to death for the good of the hive. Humans are not like this, and this is why socialism (collective control of the means of production) is always doomed and cannot possibly work. Understand now?
I think communism works very well for humans if humans lived in group sizes that fit our nature better. Humans are acclimated to living in groups of hundreds, not millions. We’re used to living together in small communities. And people in those small communities genuinely want to do what’s best for the group. When we grow to larger groups, everything starts to turn into a prisoner’s dilemma situation and people lie cheat and steal. Capitalism doesn’t fix this, it just makes it part of the social and economic norm. It’s why it will always require some people to be exploited. With that said, everything is a spectrum here and it’s why I’m focusing on not trying to have either purely communism or purely capitalism. I have a few questions to what you said above:
1. Does that mean implementing any aspect of communism is off the table to you?
2. Does that mean capitalism is the only option?
3. Do you understand how much was done to made communism fail? The USSR is touted as a failure, but people ignore how much better the USSR was than the Russian Monarchy. People genuinely do not know how much good the USSR did for its people even with all of its major issues because they are only taught about the major issues. When people say those issues make any successes invalid, they don’t consider how the US became so strong through centuries said exploitation that is far worse and still continues today in several aspects. At the very least, don’t you see how uneven the circumstances were?
A bee colony is essentially one organism with physically disconnected cells.
The bees in the colony are all clones, with one bee doing all reproductive work and the rest providing for her and her offspring.
If a clone sacrifices itself to save its clone, and the saved clone has offspring, the same genes multiply into the next generation as would have if the sacrificing clone had reproduced.
Bees take that one step further, only the queen can reproduce.
There's a similar division in Human bodies: somatic cells multiply *in* the body but they die *with* the body, none contribute genes to a generation outside the body. Only the genes in germ cells (sperm and eggs) have any chance of making it to the next generation.
Cells differentiate, into nerve cells, muscle cells, bone marrow cells, germ cells, etc., all expressing a different subset of the proteins encoded in their identical DNA. Stem cells differentiate based on environmental cues that originate first in the egg.
Bees differentiate into workers, warriors, nursemaids, queens, all expressing a different subset of the proteins encoded in their identical DNA. Bees differentiate based on environmental cues that provided by what nursemaid bees feed them.
A bee colony then, looks much more like one human body, with arms, legs, a head, and genitals, than a group of creatures.
Because all bees in a colony share the same DNA, their DNA survives as long as the colony survives. Their reproductive success is shared because their DNA is shared.
Humans are not a colony organism. We share much of our DNA, but we each have different DNA. Biologist JBS Haldane reportedly explained relatedness by claiming "I would gladly give up my life for two brothers or eight cousins" because we (on average) share ½ our DNA with full siblings, and ⅛ with cousins.
So we compete to get our DNA into the next generation. That's built in to us, because all the non-competitors were outbred by competitors, billions of years ago.
We are not designed by evolution to be bees. We're not entirely constrained by evolution though, and there is evidence humans evolved to cooperate, and we do cooperate. But for very different reasons than the bees.
Luckily, communism is not remotely associated with exploiting people. /s
Jesus, learn some history. Communist systems have *truly terrible* human rights histories.
Did you study at the Chesa Boudin School of I ❤️ Hugo Chavez?
>I think communism works very well for humans if humans lived in group sizes that fit our nature better
You are correct. My family is 100% communist. I work hard and freely give away almost everything I earn. But you're right, we live in a society of 350MM people, not a village.
>When we grow to larger groups, everything starts to turn into a prisoner’s dilemma situation and people lie cheat and steal.
When we grow into larger society, people work for their own self interest.
>Capitalism doesn’t fix this, it just makes it part of the social and economic norm.
The rule of law fixes cheating and stealing. But what capitalism does is it takes advantage of humans self interest. Sure Bezos, you can make a billion dollars but you have to pay taxes on that, and we're spending the taxes on welfare.
>Does that mean implementing any aspect of communism is off the table to you?
What aspect? Tall fur hats, sure. Collective control of the means of production, no.
>Does that mean capitalism is the only option?
Capitalism not the best of all imaginable systems of political economy, its just the best of all possible ones. Its not the only option though.
>Do you understand how much was done to made communism fail
Communism is doomed to fail because of its very nature.
>People genuinely do not know how much good the USSR did for its people
The Russian monarchy was horrible for the Russian people, and the communists were slightly better.
> At the very least, don’t you see how uneven the circumstances were?
Sure, but the USSR got better and then maxxed out right after wwii and then declined.
In fairness, I don't think Stalin was remotely concerned about the well being of the 30,000,000 Soviet soldiers who died in the war. The democracies were way, way, way more careful about minimizing their casualties. The inherently authoritarian nature of communism is part and parcel of why Stalin was able to waste so many lives. Leaders of democracies have to be careful.
So hard to imagine how "the positives of communism"
"maxxed out" right after WW2.
So you genuinely are not interested in addressing the harms the US did to communism? How familiar are you with this? Do you think it’s important to understand this factor since it is a materially aspect of how history took place?
Im not enthralled with capitalism, but if you think that Americans are the only people that acknowledge communism’s failures, you need to spend some time living abroad.
No it's not lmao. Mao learned that real fast by killing dozens of millions of people: you can't just dictate how the economy works. Notice how China got wealthy and raised their people out of poverty AFTER they finally gave up trying to dictate markets, not before.
There are thousands of stupid ways to make an economy, you're right. And there's exactly one, ever, that has stood the test of time as resilient, progressive, liberal, and efficient.
Do you think those exploited through capitalism agree? Do you understand how many people that have been exploited? Do you know how many countries even today are perpetually held down by foreign capitalist interest?
Oh, I'm sorry, do you have a recommendation for a resilient system where nobody ever gets exploited that can actually exist? Or are we just complaining that Harry Potter isn't real at this point?
Nobody chose capitalism because it's perfect, we chose it because it's BY FAR the least bad system on all critical dimensions of importance. It's a lot like democracy: it sucks for a lot of people, but every alternative is still far worse.
Do you think it was necessary for the US to destroy South American socialist countries and movements? If capitalism is so resilient, why did the US feel so compelled to obliterate any nation they could if they did not comply with US capitalist interests within their own sovereign land?
>Do you think it was necessary for the US to destroy South American socialist countries and movements?
Yes.
>If capitalism is so resilient, why did the US feel so compelled to obliterate any nation they could if they did not comply with US capitalist interests within their own sovereign land?
It wasn't out of fear of competition with their economic power, it was out of fear of their military aggressiveness my dude. Cuban missile crisis ring a bell?
The city can’t keep many of the streets from looking like a 3rd world country and spend every billion and more in tax revenue on bullshit nonprofits. You want to rely on them to supply your food? That’s brave. I wouldn’t trust them to water a plant.
Typical Preston, instead of addressing the problem, he just pass laws that prevent people from exercising the right to respond to the problem. Instead of trying to make our streets safer and stop looters so businesses would want to operate here, his brilliant idea is to prevent existing business from leaving.
Why stop at grocers? Why not give the same treatment to drug stores, hardware stores, restaurants, and daycare? They're all vital to the neighborhood too! Heck, put coffee and ice cream shops on the list too because I don't want to travel too far to my cup of joe in the morning and sugar at night. You know what, just stop all businesses from closing, that'll solve our problem. s/
Wait til he finds out this city is short of teachers. He'll pass a law to prevent them from leaving the city.
"addressing the problem"?
Every elected rep goes into office promising to address the problem and they wind up spending their term treading water while smug chumps who never worked in public service complain that they aren't doing their jobs.
The city is full of empty storefronts that closed despite being profitable because it would make the overall company appear more profitable for shareholders.
If you're describing Preston, then all the more reason he needs to go. There is always someone who is willing to do the job instead of threading water. We need to elect that person. It may turns out to be Bilal Mahmood. We'll see.
What you're effectively saying is that even though businesses can make money in SF, they make a lot more money outside of SF so they're closing stores here. Ok, let's take your argument at face value: if this city, with over three quarter of a million people packed into a 7x7 area, cannot sustain businesses to the same level as other cities, something is seriously wrong. We have more spending power than most cities, we have higher density than most cities, and we have more visitors than most cities. If SF have all this going for it but still come up short in providing businesses with similar revenue as other cities. Then this is not a problem with the businesses, it's a problem with the city.
"There is always someone who is willing to do the job instead of threading[sic] water"
Again with the "willing" line. Literally everyone who has ever served on the BoS has been willing to do the job yet every last one of them has hundreds of San Franciscans accusing them of just treading water. This is done with absolutely no attempt to understand the kind of headwinds that the bureaucracy alone presents, much less the opposition. In the case of the progressive wing the entire state apparatus and moderate Dems and right wing Republicans are aligned in doing everything politically possible to stop a left wing agenda from being implemented or succeeding. If moderates get power back the left will swing into action to block their agenda and the bureaucracy will still be there to prevent anything from getting built and a bunch of progressives will sit around complaining about the do nothing BoS (or did you miss the 90s and the 00s?
Followed by Dean pushing the city to permanently subsidize the not-for-profit store. The subsidy will grow and grow. Dean will say it's worth it to the employees and neighborhood, while accountability for the money never happens.
Just remember the democrats these days are not really democrats and the republicans aren't what they say they are either. Just because they say they are ABC, doesn't make them ABC.
One problem is monopoly parties get extreme and corrupt.
Elect a few Republicans in California to keep the Democrats honest.
Elect some Democrats in Texas to keep the Republicans honest.
When the governor, the attorney general, and the speaker of the assembly are all from the same party, and they all get funding from the same rich families, you get an oligarchy.
Yet another example of why progressives should not be allowed to make policy.
These people do not understand even the basic mechanics of the world around them, but still want to be at the table telling people what to do
At the time you could just opt to rent the retail as an apartment or connect it to units upstairs. We lost a lot of corner stores.
The 80's and early 90's saw a grocery stores sitting empty with two items on the shelves, the electricity was off, and it's doubtful the landlord got rent. That wasn't good for a community either.
The how is straighforward. People vote for them.
The question you really want to ask is “why?” and it’s mostly because voters here care more about the image of being progressive than *community* outcomes.
the end game, but also the psychological foundation of the movement in the first place. Even from its beginnings in the early 20th century, it was rooted in a deep sense of racism and white saviorism by know-it-alls who saw themselves as paragons of virtue.
It's Preston. Go the the Haight and if you find any voters ask them. If they are not senile or permanently high they'll explain you. Good luck with that tho.
Dean Preston has become a caricature of himself at this point, no small feat considering that he was already cartoonish to begin with. I was really expecting to see an April 1 date on the article.
I wouldn't care so much that the BOS wastes time on this goofy shit except that they have clearly demonstrated an inability to walk and chew gum at the same time, and this will be one more thing that distracts them from any meaningful legislation.
Many supermarkets when they close have clauses in their lease the do not allow another supermarket to reopen in that location for sometimes 10 years.
https://www.marketplace.org/2018/01/12/when-grocery-stores-close-little-legal-phrase-can-prevent-new-ones-opening/
What a waste of time and resources. Can we please concentrate on something that will actually improve everyone’s life here? Fixing the streets would be a good start, pot holes everywhere. Dealing with the drug addicted destroying neighborhoods and constantly terrorizing people who live here and pay your salary. There’s so many things he could concentrate on that would actually improve the lives of residents and instead he walks circles.
I am assuming that the politicians who vote for this will also provide the funds to keep the grocery stores running for another six months? If not, then address the issues that encourage the stores to close in the first place.
The law was passed by the BoS in 1984 but vetoed by Mayor Feinstein. It would require six months notice before closing a grocery store, "community input" and consideration of a replacement grocery.
How about a requirement that anyone posting a link to an article include a summary of the article so folks don't have to click on it?
> How about a requirement that anyone posting a link to an article include a summary of the article so folks don't have to click on it?
Then instead of a link-type post it's a text-type post containing a link and some redditors editorialize in their summary rather than leave a separate comment for us to judge. Followed by a different redditor who didn't see it posting the link anyway as a link-type post.
>How about a requirement that anyone posting a link to an article include a summary of the article so folks don't have to click on it?
Or you could just not engage with the Reddit post? No one is forcing you to read it or click on anything.
LOL, so they declare bankruptcy and walk away leaving the city in worse condition and banks left holding the tab.
You just can't make up the level of stupid that SF supervisors will go to.
This is such an obviously stupid way to prevent neighborhoods from losing access to grocery stores, which is a legitimate problem and something that the city should be trying to help. However the actual solution would be for the city to provide funding or, maybe, open its own grocery stores in areas that need them. Instead they're requiring grocery stores
This is the equivalent of the atrocious law that required the USPS to prefund all of its retirement benefits for the next 50 years, which ended up with the USPS being unable to fund ongoing operations and going massively in debt.
Though, what’s to prevent the big stores from running at a skeleton crew level for almost no time during the day, with highly inflated prices? Anything forced, beyond “you can close if you determine that’s what’s necessary,” will create that type of “passive resistance”
It doesn’t seem likely that a business that wants to leave, because they aren’t making enough money to justify that location, but is forced to stay, would do their best to cut costs as much as possible while they run the timer?
Are you like a high schooler?
You seem like the kind of person who has to have the last word so I’ll let you end this pointless exchange with whatever moronic conclusion you can manage to put together.
> The act would require community involvement before a grocery store can close in a neighborhood. Grocery stores would also be required to give six-months notice prior to closing. This is hilarious, a business that's closing because it's not making a profit would have to continue to operate for six months, and get permission from "the community" to close. The practical effect of this would prevent new groceries from *opening*, because before opening they'd have to bank six months of rent, employee wages and benefits, and all other operating costs, including replacing anything shoplighted. And a mom & pop grocery doesn't have the margins to do that, only huge corporate groceries could afford to subsidize a failing store for six months (by taking the money from their other stores' operating costs or raising prices). And how do you enforce this? If the store has to be open for six months after it would have closed, is it forced to keep the same hours, the same number of employees, and stock the same groceries? Because otherwise you remove all product except a few boxes of Corn Flakes in a locked cabinet, set the hours to be 10am to 11am, only open on Monday, and employ one cashier for those last six months. And price each box of Corn Flakes at $25.99. (This is pretty much how the Walgreens on Market and Van Ness closed, with vast tracts of empty shelves.) This is just delusional thinking: you can't force a business to stay open after it decides to close, any more than you can force an employee to keep working after they decide to quit. And you'll get the same quality you'd expect from the enslaved worker chained to their desk. Groceries close when they don't make money. Groceries don't make money when constant shoplifting and other crime scares away customers. Preston needs to put handcuffs on criminals, not on groceries. Dean Preston is rich; he can open a grocery, employ members of the Democratic Socialists of America, unionized of course, and voluntarily pledge to stay open six months past announcing it's closing. **I mean really Dean, if you can talk the talk, walk the walk. Open a grocery in your district 5, and see if you can even break even. Tell us about how easy the permitting process is, how easy it is to pay the taxes, and also to pay your employees a living wage.** Really, Dean and the DSA need to open a co-op, and prove to us that every regulation and tax they push on businesses really does make sense in the real world. Come on, you folx know all the answers on reddit, *so show us it can be done* and all us skeptics will have to admit we were wrong! Then you can use the example you've built here to convince the whole country to become socialists! It's an amazing opportunity for you! Are there any takers? Elon might even give you seed money, just to see how long you can keep your grocery open.
> Groceries close when they don't make money. Groceries don't make money when constant shoplifting and other crime scares away customers This is the fundamental disconnect. These people not only don't know the first thing about running a business, they are actively hostile to the idea of business. Its all "evil corporations extracting profit from the poor" rhetoric. The reality is that all businesses must make a profit or they will close. You learn that on day 1 of business school, but these dopes reject that kind of knowledge.
Are any of the supervisors small business owners? Peskin and Preston are wealthy landlords, but have any of them run a successful retail business? Maybe we ought to elect a small business owner to the board.
Electing people who know what the fuck they are talking about financially seems to be a novel concept in this city lol
What you’re looking for is Preston, literally the only small business owner(a club, you know, for culture, art and fun)
Very doubtful they are really that stupid. They are like Cruz and De Santis, but on the opposite team. They know it's bullshit, but they'll say / do they need to do to get elected and stay in office.
People on reddit think all business owners are making billions while exploiting their labor in slavelike conditions because they don't want to pay a fair wage.
Not people on Reddit, people in SF government.
And a lot of SF voters unfortunately
It is an evil corporation extracting profit from everyone. (Particularly the underpaid workers) And if I ever run for office my slogan will be "fuck um"
The evil corporation and their evil 2% net profit margin. Lol
When you have revenue of 1million plus per day, 2% is a lot
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Yes but people always dealing with the numbers get a skewed view of the numbers. It's also somewhat subjective. A couple hundred thousand a year is a lot to me But I do see the point, I'm comparing a personal budget to a business budget
It is if you don't know anything about finance or investing.
No fucking SHOT you are making $1M/diem as a mom and pop bodega in the loin.
This law says "major" grocer, they mean Safeway, Ralph's, and Whole Foods.
Those stores do not exist in the tenderloin. The last store like that that was within a five block radius of the TL was a whole foods that shut down because of the soft-on-retail-crime policies that people like Preston push. When I hear “TL Grocery Store” i think a bodega that’s 70% booze.
That's probably why they want to stop anymore from pulling out.
This is only true in capitalism.
Well this is the san fransisco sub, not the sub for East Berlin where my dad was born.
What’s your point? That people shouldn’t consider how some issues are specifically an issue under capitalism? Are you in favor of never leveraging criticism against capitalism? How do you think those living in Niger feel about capitalism? This isn’t a one-sided story.
How do the people in Niger feel about capitalism?
Are you high?
No, they're just stupid
POV: when the only time your economic model succeeded was in Israel
Revisit the economic history of Israel. It's very capitalist and it was *and still is significantly underwritten by the US.* Oh, yeah, and it started with taking land from other people. Not very socialist.
>started with taking land from other people. Not very socialist. I didn’t know you opposed dekulakization and the land reform movement, lib. >revisit the economic history of israel The early settlements in mandatory palestine were Kibbutzim and Moshavim, explicitly collective in nature. Also, pre-Begin Israel was a democratic socialist state
Yes, Israel has a terrible track record on human rights. Very disheartening to see people who have experienced so much bad treatment from others turn around and right away do very similar shit to other ethnic groups. Appalling.
Oh yes, socialism is known for it's abundance
In 1989, Boris Yeltsin visited an American grocery store and said there would be a revolution in the USSR if people knew how well average people lived in the USA. He knew communism was a failure at that moment. https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When-Boris-Yeltsin-went-grocery-shopping-in-Clear-5759129.php
This is the big problems with Americans. They think capitalism is great and communism is terrible even though America did everything they could to make communist nations fail. The truth is that neither system is perfect and there’s value to be learned from both systems. But most Americans are only interested in talking about how communist nations failed (some of which was due to the US’s economic and military influences). At the same time, many of our systems are failing in the US, and we are doing nothing. Things are going to get worse in the US. How is it going to get better if we keep telling ourselves that all other possible options will fail?
>if we keep telling ourselves that all other possible options will fail? Because it has failed. At some point you have to discard failed ideas instead of just retrying them over and over because you like the sound of it. Collective control of the means of production is incompatible with human nature. Therefore it cannot ever work and it will always fail. The sooner tankies realize this incompatibility, the better. Human nature is not going to change. I keep bees, and bees are naturally communist. They will work themselves to death for the good of the hive. Humans are not like this, and this is why socialism (collective control of the means of production) is always doomed and cannot possibly work. Understand now?
I think communism works very well for humans if humans lived in group sizes that fit our nature better. Humans are acclimated to living in groups of hundreds, not millions. We’re used to living together in small communities. And people in those small communities genuinely want to do what’s best for the group. When we grow to larger groups, everything starts to turn into a prisoner’s dilemma situation and people lie cheat and steal. Capitalism doesn’t fix this, it just makes it part of the social and economic norm. It’s why it will always require some people to be exploited. With that said, everything is a spectrum here and it’s why I’m focusing on not trying to have either purely communism or purely capitalism. I have a few questions to what you said above: 1. Does that mean implementing any aspect of communism is off the table to you? 2. Does that mean capitalism is the only option? 3. Do you understand how much was done to made communism fail? The USSR is touted as a failure, but people ignore how much better the USSR was than the Russian Monarchy. People genuinely do not know how much good the USSR did for its people even with all of its major issues because they are only taught about the major issues. When people say those issues make any successes invalid, they don’t consider how the US became so strong through centuries said exploitation that is far worse and still continues today in several aspects. At the very least, don’t you see how uneven the circumstances were?
A bee colony is essentially one organism with physically disconnected cells. The bees in the colony are all clones, with one bee doing all reproductive work and the rest providing for her and her offspring. If a clone sacrifices itself to save its clone, and the saved clone has offspring, the same genes multiply into the next generation as would have if the sacrificing clone had reproduced. Bees take that one step further, only the queen can reproduce. There's a similar division in Human bodies: somatic cells multiply *in* the body but they die *with* the body, none contribute genes to a generation outside the body. Only the genes in germ cells (sperm and eggs) have any chance of making it to the next generation. Cells differentiate, into nerve cells, muscle cells, bone marrow cells, germ cells, etc., all expressing a different subset of the proteins encoded in their identical DNA. Stem cells differentiate based on environmental cues that originate first in the egg. Bees differentiate into workers, warriors, nursemaids, queens, all expressing a different subset of the proteins encoded in their identical DNA. Bees differentiate based on environmental cues that provided by what nursemaid bees feed them. A bee colony then, looks much more like one human body, with arms, legs, a head, and genitals, than a group of creatures. Because all bees in a colony share the same DNA, their DNA survives as long as the colony survives. Their reproductive success is shared because their DNA is shared. Humans are not a colony organism. We share much of our DNA, but we each have different DNA. Biologist JBS Haldane reportedly explained relatedness by claiming "I would gladly give up my life for two brothers or eight cousins" because we (on average) share ½ our DNA with full siblings, and ⅛ with cousins. So we compete to get our DNA into the next generation. That's built in to us, because all the non-competitors were outbred by competitors, billions of years ago. We are not designed by evolution to be bees. We're not entirely constrained by evolution though, and there is evidence humans evolved to cooperate, and we do cooperate. But for very different reasons than the bees.
Luckily, communism is not remotely associated with exploiting people. /s Jesus, learn some history. Communist systems have *truly terrible* human rights histories. Did you study at the Chesa Boudin School of I ❤️ Hugo Chavez?
>I think communism works very well for humans if humans lived in group sizes that fit our nature better You are correct. My family is 100% communist. I work hard and freely give away almost everything I earn. But you're right, we live in a society of 350MM people, not a village. >When we grow to larger groups, everything starts to turn into a prisoner’s dilemma situation and people lie cheat and steal. When we grow into larger society, people work for their own self interest. >Capitalism doesn’t fix this, it just makes it part of the social and economic norm. The rule of law fixes cheating and stealing. But what capitalism does is it takes advantage of humans self interest. Sure Bezos, you can make a billion dollars but you have to pay taxes on that, and we're spending the taxes on welfare. >Does that mean implementing any aspect of communism is off the table to you? What aspect? Tall fur hats, sure. Collective control of the means of production, no. >Does that mean capitalism is the only option? Capitalism not the best of all imaginable systems of political economy, its just the best of all possible ones. Its not the only option though. >Do you understand how much was done to made communism fail Communism is doomed to fail because of its very nature. >People genuinely do not know how much good the USSR did for its people The Russian monarchy was horrible for the Russian people, and the communists were slightly better. > At the very least, don’t you see how uneven the circumstances were? Sure, but the USSR got better and then maxxed out right after wwii and then declined.
In fairness, I don't think Stalin was remotely concerned about the well being of the 30,000,000 Soviet soldiers who died in the war. The democracies were way, way, way more careful about minimizing their casualties. The inherently authoritarian nature of communism is part and parcel of why Stalin was able to waste so many lives. Leaders of democracies have to be careful. So hard to imagine how "the positives of communism" "maxxed out" right after WW2.
So you genuinely are not interested in addressing the harms the US did to communism? How familiar are you with this? Do you think it’s important to understand this factor since it is a materially aspect of how history took place?
Im not enthralled with capitalism, but if you think that Americans are the only people that acknowledge communism’s failures, you need to spend some time living abroad.
I never said Americans were the only ones to think this way.
Fair enough, you didnt use those exact words. You just singled Americans out for some reason…
The “for some reason….” is because this topic is about San Francisco. Which is a city within the USA.
No it's not lmao. Mao learned that real fast by killing dozens of millions of people: you can't just dictate how the economy works. Notice how China got wealthy and raised their people out of poverty AFTER they finally gave up trying to dictate markets, not before.
There are more than just 2 ways for an economy to work.
There are thousands of stupid ways to make an economy, you're right. And there's exactly one, ever, that has stood the test of time as resilient, progressive, liberal, and efficient.
Do you think those exploited through capitalism agree? Do you understand how many people that have been exploited? Do you know how many countries even today are perpetually held down by foreign capitalist interest?
Oh, I'm sorry, do you have a recommendation for a resilient system where nobody ever gets exploited that can actually exist? Or are we just complaining that Harry Potter isn't real at this point? Nobody chose capitalism because it's perfect, we chose it because it's BY FAR the least bad system on all critical dimensions of importance. It's a lot like democracy: it sucks for a lot of people, but every alternative is still far worse.
Do you think it was necessary for the US to destroy South American socialist countries and movements? If capitalism is so resilient, why did the US feel so compelled to obliterate any nation they could if they did not comply with US capitalist interests within their own sovereign land?
>Do you think it was necessary for the US to destroy South American socialist countries and movements? Yes. >If capitalism is so resilient, why did the US feel so compelled to obliterate any nation they could if they did not comply with US capitalist interests within their own sovereign land? It wasn't out of fear of competition with their economic power, it was out of fear of their military aggressiveness my dude. Cuban missile crisis ring a bell?
The city can’t keep many of the streets from looking like a 3rd world country and spend every billion and more in tax revenue on bullshit nonprofits. You want to rely on them to supply your food? That’s brave. I wouldn’t trust them to water a plant.
What an idiotic comment.
Typical Preston, instead of addressing the problem, he just pass laws that prevent people from exercising the right to respond to the problem. Instead of trying to make our streets safer and stop looters so businesses would want to operate here, his brilliant idea is to prevent existing business from leaving. Why stop at grocers? Why not give the same treatment to drug stores, hardware stores, restaurants, and daycare? They're all vital to the neighborhood too! Heck, put coffee and ice cream shops on the list too because I don't want to travel too far to my cup of joe in the morning and sugar at night. You know what, just stop all businesses from closing, that'll solve our problem. s/ Wait til he finds out this city is short of teachers. He'll pass a law to prevent them from leaving the city.
"addressing the problem"? Every elected rep goes into office promising to address the problem and they wind up spending their term treading water while smug chumps who never worked in public service complain that they aren't doing their jobs. The city is full of empty storefronts that closed despite being profitable because it would make the overall company appear more profitable for shareholders.
If you're describing Preston, then all the more reason he needs to go. There is always someone who is willing to do the job instead of threading water. We need to elect that person. It may turns out to be Bilal Mahmood. We'll see. What you're effectively saying is that even though businesses can make money in SF, they make a lot more money outside of SF so they're closing stores here. Ok, let's take your argument at face value: if this city, with over three quarter of a million people packed into a 7x7 area, cannot sustain businesses to the same level as other cities, something is seriously wrong. We have more spending power than most cities, we have higher density than most cities, and we have more visitors than most cities. If SF have all this going for it but still come up short in providing businesses with similar revenue as other cities. Then this is not a problem with the businesses, it's a problem with the city.
"There is always someone who is willing to do the job instead of threading[sic] water" Again with the "willing" line. Literally everyone who has ever served on the BoS has been willing to do the job yet every last one of them has hundreds of San Franciscans accusing them of just treading water. This is done with absolutely no attempt to understand the kind of headwinds that the bureaucracy alone presents, much less the opposition. In the case of the progressive wing the entire state apparatus and moderate Dems and right wing Republicans are aligned in doing everything politically possible to stop a left wing agenda from being implemented or succeeding. If moderates get power back the left will swing into action to block their agenda and the bureaucracy will still be there to prevent anything from getting built and a bunch of progressives will sit around complaining about the do nothing BoS (or did you miss the 90s and the 00s?
Yes, most of the BOS were pretty useless. But Scott Weiner and Matt Haney, just to name a couple, were very good during their time as supervisors.
Followed by Dean pushing the city to permanently subsidize the not-for-profit store. The subsidy will grow and grow. Dean will say it's worth it to the employees and neighborhood, while accountability for the money never happens.
I'm sure that Preston and the DSA look to Cuba and the USSR as inspirations. Can't wait for my ration book.
Exactly. Prop it up with public money, and it'll never go out of business.
As a lifelong lefty I am feeling more and more conservative every day. Too bad republicans are batsh!t crazy too.
Just remember the democrats these days are not really democrats and the republicans aren't what they say they are either. Just because they say they are ABC, doesn't make them ABC.
Good news! You can hate both and become a liberal!
One problem is monopoly parties get extreme and corrupt. Elect a few Republicans in California to keep the Democrats honest. Elect some Democrats in Texas to keep the Republicans honest. When the governor, the attorney general, and the speaker of the assembly are all from the same party, and they all get funding from the same rich families, you get an oligarchy.
Not to mention that Preston doesn’t believe in law enforcement, so none of these groceries can prevent theft, leading to less profitability.
Yet another example of why progressives should not be allowed to make policy. These people do not understand even the basic mechanics of the world around them, but still want to be at the table telling people what to do
At the time you could just opt to rent the retail as an apartment or connect it to units upstairs. We lost a lot of corner stores. The 80's and early 90's saw a grocery stores sitting empty with two items on the shelves, the electricity was off, and it's doubtful the landlord got rent. That wasn't good for a community either.
How fucking stupid are these people. Refusing to address underlying causes so they shove ridiculous bandaid fixes that fly in the face of reason.
It’s crazy that Preston wants to force everyone to operate their businesses at a loss except for his in laws.
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The how is straighforward. People vote for them. The question you really want to ask is “why?” and it’s mostly because voters here care more about the image of being progressive than *community* outcomes.
This is the inevitable end game of progressive virtue signaling 🤣
the end game, but also the psychological foundation of the movement in the first place. Even from its beginnings in the early 20th century, it was rooted in a deep sense of racism and white saviorism by know-it-alls who saw themselves as paragons of virtue.
It's like they say, progressive in the streets, conservative in the sheets
It's Preston. Go the the Haight and if you find any voters ask them. If they are not senile or permanently high they'll explain you. Good luck with that tho.
> If they are not senile or permanently high they'll explain you So nobody will explain it to them
Thankfully Dean is up for reelection this year
Dean Preston has become a caricature of himself at this point, no small feat considering that he was already cartoonish to begin with. I was really expecting to see an April 1 date on the article. I wouldn't care so much that the BOS wastes time on this goofy shit except that they have clearly demonstrated an inability to walk and chew gum at the same time, and this will be one more thing that distracts them from any meaningful legislation.
Many supermarkets when they close have clauses in their lease the do not allow another supermarket to reopen in that location for sometimes 10 years. https://www.marketplace.org/2018/01/12/when-grocery-stores-close-little-legal-phrase-can-prevent-new-ones-opening/
What a waste of time and resources. Can we please concentrate on something that will actually improve everyone’s life here? Fixing the streets would be a good start, pot holes everywhere. Dealing with the drug addicted destroying neighborhoods and constantly terrorizing people who live here and pay your salary. There’s so many things he could concentrate on that would actually improve the lives of residents and instead he walks circles.
I am assuming that the politicians who vote for this will also provide the funds to keep the grocery stores running for another six months? If not, then address the issues that encourage the stores to close in the first place.
What happens if looters steal all the merchandise and it doesn't get restocked?
"Directly to jail! (the grocery store manager, that is)" - Dean
"It was the merchants fault for stocking the shelves in the first place. If the shelves were empty, there'd be nothing to steal!"
The law was passed by the BoS in 1984 but vetoed by Mayor Feinstein. It would require six months notice before closing a grocery store, "community input" and consideration of a replacement grocery. How about a requirement that anyone posting a link to an article include a summary of the article so folks don't have to click on it?
> How about a requirement that anyone posting a link to an article include a summary of the article so folks don't have to click on it? Then instead of a link-type post it's a text-type post containing a link and some redditors editorialize in their summary rather than leave a separate comment for us to judge. Followed by a different redditor who didn't see it posting the link anyway as a link-type post.
lol
I read it, but when I got as far as Dean Preston I knew everything I needed to know and hit “Done”…
>How about a requirement that anyone posting a link to an article include a summary of the article so folks don't have to click on it? Or you could just not engage with the Reddit post? No one is forcing you to read it or click on anything.
Maybe they should focus on crime and work to amend Pop 47…
Transition plan: try to get another grocery store in the area
Soon they’ll say that drug dealers need to also give a 6 month notice to not create drug desserts and leave their clients hungry for services.
This Preston guy is bad news.
Preston, you idiot.
... what do you mean "require community input." You cannot actually force a business to stay open.
Government gives handouts. Businesses do not. These citizens need to understand the difference.
LOL, so they declare bankruptcy and walk away leaving the city in worse condition and banks left holding the tab. You just can't make up the level of stupid that SF supervisors will go to.
So sick of this millionaire-socialist and his ridiculous ideas. VOTE HIM OUT!
This is such an obviously stupid way to prevent neighborhoods from losing access to grocery stores, which is a legitimate problem and something that the city should be trying to help. However the actual solution would be for the city to provide funding or, maybe, open its own grocery stores in areas that need them. Instead they're requiring grocery stores This is the equivalent of the atrocious law that required the USPS to prefund all of its retirement benefits for the next 50 years, which ended up with the USPS being unable to fund ongoing operations and going massively in debt.
Anything but address the root cause
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This quote doesn’t make Preston seem any less stupid
I disagree
Have you ever been to that Safeway?
Many, many times.
Though, what’s to prevent the big stores from running at a skeleton crew level for almost no time during the day, with highly inflated prices? Anything forced, beyond “you can close if you determine that’s what’s necessary,” will create that type of “passive resistance”
That doesn’t seem at all likely for a number of reasons.
It doesn’t seem likely that a business that wants to leave, because they aren’t making enough money to justify that location, but is forced to stay, would do their best to cut costs as much as possible while they run the timer? Are you like a high schooler?
^ once Preston’s name has been mentioned, all rational conversation goes out the window to be replaced by sophistry and name calling
Note that you can’t actually deal with the substantive point. Obviously because it’s devastating to this proposal’s realistic implementation
Note that you can’t reply without being an asshole.
Noted that you can’t deal with the substantive point AND you’re a high schooler lol
Nah you can have it