Historically, San Francisco is progressive in a good way. They require airlines that fly into the airport to offer partner benefits and they marry homos and they close part of Golden Gate Park on Sundays to traffic to make it better for roller disco. Stuff like that.
Then there is the stuff that takes a nice idea and goes way too far. Usually that's in the form of our treatment of the homeless. It is the accepted opinion that the homeless have a right to be homeless and sleep on the streets, and they also have a right to a clean bed in a shelter and free residential drug rehab if they want it.So the city gives enough aid to the homeless in cash that homeless people make San Francisco their home because of the free money. Great idea! The police and the public treat the homeless with kid gloves and bus drivers let them ride for free.
You know you're a San Franciscan when you can identify the difference between the smell of a wet dog and the smell of a homeless person.
San Francisco has the worse homeless problem in the country because we are the most tolerant city towards the homeless. Like I said, it's a nice thought- we want to give everyone a chance to change their lives and sleep in a warm bed be able to eat, but what does it get us? It ruins all public space for the public. Streets are covered in feces and urine. The public library is almost unusable except by the homeless, who shave in the bathrooms and sleep in the reading rooms or treat them like party lounges. Most of the bathrooms in public parks are covered in vomit and plugged with paper and feces by the end of every single day. (If you need to sit down in the men's room, you're in trouble.)
But anyway, this rant isn't about the homeless problem. (Well, it wasn't supposed to be.) It's about nice, kind, liberal ideas that get out of control. In the past couple weeks, three pieces of legislation (two of them are now law) have passed that are further examples of what's wrong with legislating kindness.
Law 1: Public Smoking
It is now illegal in San Francisco to smoke in all parks, public squares, and some
other public places such as Pier 39. Was outdoor smoking really enough of a problem
that it needed to be legislated? I can understand that people don't want to sit next
to a smoker on a park bench in other crowded public spaces like outdoor concerts.
But if I'm walking through the middle of a grassy field smoking, is that
hurting anybody? Yes, it's adding to pollution, but probably 20000 times less than every
car and business and farting cow.
And part of the reasoning behind the law
was litter- cigarette butts thrown on the ground. But it seems to
me that you could just enforce littering laws which are already on the books.
Law 2: Pet Laws
As of this week, dogs in San Francisco are "entitled to a change of water once a day,
palatable and nutritious food in a non-tipping bowl, and a
dog house with a top, bottom and three sides." These things should
be the moral requirements for having a dog that's kept outdoors, of course, but
now they're laws. The legislation was written because of the problem with
abused pets who are chained to fences outdoors and mistreated. But will this law
protect more pets? Of course not. People who mistreat animals mistreat animals.
More likely, this law will be used by neighbors who don't like the next door neighbor's
dog barking so they call to report that it's food bowl tipped over to get
its owner (I mean, "pet guardian") in trouble.
Law 3: Plastic Bags
San Francisco's Commission on the Environment passed a resolution, which would have
to be approved by the Board of Supervisors, that all paper and plastic grocery bags
should have a 17-cent tax on them. With the rate that these people are passing stupid
laws, this one has a good chance of making it through.
They came up with that number because that's the
amount it costs to clean up the bags as litter and/or landfill. (Again with the litter!)
In the first place, the grocery stores should be charging a fee on the grocery bags, not the city. Most stores already give you a five or ten cent credit for each reusable bag you bring in. Now they just need to charge for ones going out. But even if not, these grocery bags a courtesy provided by the stores for the customers. If the city wants to tax someone, perhaps they should tax the grocery stores for each one they give away.
Furthermore, the 17 cents assumes that the bag will be discarded on the street and need to be cleaned up. I use mine for trash bags, as does almost everyone else I know. That fee is for other people littering, not me using it as a trash bag.
And if I'm not littering with the bag and am reusing it for trash, is that still bad for the environment? No, not really. The alternative is buying new plastic trash bags that come in a box and are only used once. That ain't saving the environment.
And you know, despite all that logic, I wouldn't mind paying a 5 cent tax, maybe even ten cents per bag. It's that other seven cents as a punishment I'm supposed to pay for some peoples' bad behavior that I'm not okay with. I'm not okay with not being able to use the public library or public bathrooms because of the homeless. I'm not okay with outlawing smoking because of littering and pollution when they could just enforce litter laws and fuel efficiency in cars. And I'm not pleased with legislating pet care in a way that seems more set up to punish people than to help pets.
Reducing litter, encouraging recycling, helping the homeless, etc.: all good ideas. The fact that they're now laws is what bugs me. There is a huge difference between choosing kindness and legislating (and being required to pay for) it. It doesn't make San Francisco a more beautiful, kind place. It makes it a place with a lot of stupid rules.