Mike Solana: Can San Francisco Be Saved?

Pirate Wires Editor in Chief Mike Solana discusses the lessons of San Francisco's politics, his vision for the future, and his critiques of libertarianism.

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Mike Solana: Can San Francisco Be Saved?

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Can San Francisco be saved?

San Francisco, the beautiful city on the bay, has become a national punchline. During his debate with Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom last year, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis displayed a map of citywide poop sightings, which were apparently reported to 311 more than 35,000 times in 2023, according to the San Francisco Department of Public Works. The city's population slumped starting in 2018, but has slowly crawled back. And a 2022 San Francisco Chronicle poll found 65 percent of respondents say life is worse in the city now than when they moved there.

Today's guest, Mike Solana, wants to be part of the solution. He's the chief marketing officer at Founders Fund—the Peter Thiel–founded venture capital firm—and editor in chief of Pirate Wires, a new media company covering tech from the Silicon Valley perspective.

Watch the full conversation on Reason's YouTube channel or the Just Asking Questions podcast feed on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcatcher.

Sources referenced in this conversation:

1. "This Map Shows San Francisco Is Covered in Human Poop"
2. "Updated! The San Francisco Poop Map By OpenTheBooks In Real Time"
3. San Francisco Chronicle poll: "How fed up are San Franciscans with the city's problems?"
4. San Francisco crime rates and statistics
5. Homelessness per 100,000 residents, 2022
6. Violent and property crime in San Francisco, 2010–present
7. Report: "San Franciscans Spend More and Get Less From Their Police Department Than Most Major California Cities"
8. New York Times article about Garry Tan
9. Report: What have been the results of Germany's drug reform policies?

Time stamps:

• 00:00 Introduction to Just Asking Questions
• 01:04 Introducing Mike Solana: A Voice for San Francisco
• 03:36 San Francisco's Current State: A First-Person Perspective
• 09:37 Homelessness and Housing Crisis
• 18:56 Comparing San Francisco to Other Major Cities
• 23:01 Crime and Policing in San Francisco
• 38:27 Education and School System Challenges
• 49:37 Funding and School Choice in San Francisco
• 52:33 Homelessness and Nonprofit Funding
• 54:45 Drug Decriminalization and Harm Reduction
• 58:14 Origins of the Opioid Crisis
• 01:04:59 Libertarianism and Policy Wins
• 01:12:36 Immigration and Social Welfare
• 01:35:24 Who Is Actually in Charge?

• Producer: John Osterhoudt

Comments

[Chumby]

No. That ferry has sailed. Too much poop in the streets and on the sidewalks.

[Uncle Jay]

“Can San Francisco Be Saved?”

Not if the proggies are running the city.

[Red Rocks White Privilege]

Maybe with the gentle kiss of a tactical nuke on the Tenderloin, but it certainly won’t be through any political means.

[shawn_dude]

“Nuke the poor!”

(But yeah, the Tenderloin is a mess. Most cities have these areas but SF being so condensed in size, it’s far more obvious.)

[Sevo, 5-30-24, embarrassment]

Fuck off and die, doooooooooooood!

[JohnZ]

The general consensus among business and investment is that Frisco will never recover.
Too many businesses have left the district and what remains are empty buildings with no one who will take their place. The values of those buildings have plummeted and left the owners holding the bag.
Entire streets and blocks are deserted thanks to the moronic ideas and progressive idiocy that is responsible for this massive failure.
Oakland is even worse.
They voted for it. This is what they deserve.

[Illocust]

Rich people still live there though. Those building will get filled with boutiques eventually unless the rich Californians move out permanently. Which while some of them do, many have not.

[Fire up the Woodchippers! (5-30 Banana Republic Day)]

Rich people are moving out.

[shawn_dude]

Citations needed for “the general consensus among business and investment…”

The city goes through these boom and bust phases regularly. This is a repeating pattern. It’s expensive to live there and requires high salaries to meet what most people would consider a standard middle-class living. It’s a great incubator for new technologies given its proximity to two world-renowned universities (Stanford and UC Berkeley) along with a handful of other universities. It hosts a significant financial industry presence which is key to funding emerging technologies. Once the tech goes mainstream and is no longer in startup mode, it will start to shift its presence to cheaper places and rely on cheaper labor. The “web 2.0” boom ended, COVID rocked the office lease market, and the downtown area lost a significant portion of its daily business consumer traffic.

However, housing costs barely dipped as demand to live here remained high, and those office leases are filling back up again–largely with bio-tech and AI at the moment. The city might be a “joke” in the right-wing media swamp because of the city’s famous liberal culture, but people still cannot seem to get enough of it.

You’ll have to be specific about which buildings are empty or streets that are deserted. It’s hard to believe such things when the median home price is still over a million bucks and homes are selling in under 30 days (with a 21 day minimum legal escrow, no less.) How do you square simple market economic theory with your belief that entire buildings and streets are vacant with a seller’s market?

[Fire up the Woodchippers! (5-30 Banana Republic Day)]

No one cares what you may or may not find ‘hard to believe’. When in fact, you are a democrat shill attempting to play a semantical game asking John to name which buildings are empty.

But I’ll give you a list anyway……

Retail Stores that Closed in San Francisco:

Saks off 5th
Old Navy
Anthropologie
Amazon Go
Whole Foods
Office Depot
Nordstrom
H&M
The RealReal
CB2
Banana Republic
Athleta
The Container Store
Crate & Barrel
Uniqlo
Gap
Companies Moving Out of San Francisco:

Meta
Twitter
Snap
PayPal
Airbnb
Slack
Salesforce
Block
Autodesk
Chime

https://reformcalifornia.org/news/heres-a-list-of-companies-fleeing-san-francisco-and-why

[Sevo, 5-30-24, embarrassment]

Eat shit and die, doooooooooood!

[Fire up the Woodchippers! (5-30 Banana Republic Day)]

Hey Shawn Dude, I gave your cite. No response?

Yeah, I figured you wouldn’t dare.

[Nobartium]

Nope. Raze it, then rebuild it from the ground up.

Then fully ban the people that ruined it. Then fully ban the ideas that those people implemented.

Then repeat.

[Fire up the Woodchippers! (5-30 Banana Republic Day)]

Better to use a neutron bomb, then go in and take the property and belongings. Call it reparations. Democrats love reparations. So they shouldn’t complain, right?

[Super Scary]

SHOULD San Francisco be saved?
Nah.

[middlefinger]

“Because the progressives want to see it”. “That’s pretty skeptical”

Here’s skeptical: California and NY are mafia states. There’s orders of magnitude more kickback money in human trafficking, NGOs, cash equivalent welfare, drugs, housing voucher landlords, insider trading and money laundering (which goes into family offices overseas) than working, governing, policing or running a city or state.

You’re Columbia in the 80s without the bombs (so far). See Narcos season 1 or the Menendez kid (who will win) in New Jersey.

San Francisco: Complete with a ring kissing or standing ovation for a Communist Dictator.

[Fire up the Woodchippers! (5-30 Banana Republic Day)]

It makes sense that democrat states are intrinsically corrupt. While democrats virtue signal, they have no values or integrity. They mostly care about pushing their bullshit on everyone like a bunch of little Stalins. So they are willing to accept, and even celebrate, democrat corruption, no matter how blatant.

Which explains people like Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Mitch McConnell.

[John C. Randolph]

For all his sins, McConnell did at least keep that scumbag Garland off the court, which is a vastly greater service to our country than most people will ever have the chance to do.

-jcr

[Sevo, 5-30-24, embarrassment]

If you browse the names and histories of the SF and CA elected officials, you will find very few who ever held a position where they could be fired for incompetence; they never actually ‘held a job’ as understood by most of the population. They have been slopping at the public trough since day one.
So as the whining about the SF gov’t has now become general, is simple to ask a question which doesn’t add to my popularity, but makes the issue clear:
Who did you vote for?

[charliehall]

San Francisco still has a lower homicide rates than such models as Houston, Dallas, Phoenix, and Jacksonville. And much less sprawl. Should Houston, Dallas, Phoenix, and Jacksonville be saved?

[Sevo, 5-30-24, embarrassment]

Pick them cherries, charliehall!
You.
Are.
Full.
Of.
Shit.

[John C. Randolph]

Saving SF would require a sharp increase in the intelligence of the voters, and that’s not going to happen as long as California government schools are protected from competition.

It’s a pity. SF used to be a great place to visit.

-jcr

[gabrielkunkel]

I like that Liz and Zach defended libertarianism. Libertarianism as a philosophy does not require its application to be pure, as if Democrats and Republicans don’t have idealisms which they negotiate toward. Solana is a bag of nonsense here. “Reason Libertarians” will put support behind sensible policies even if they’re not ideal. Go Liz and Zach!

[DRM]

Sure, SF can be saved.

Just prohibit any person who was registered to vote as a Democrat in the 21st century from voting, serving on juries, practicing law, holding public office, or being employed by the State of California (including its sub-units as defined in Proposition 209).