San Fransicko

Article

San Fransicko is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between June 23, 2022 and June 29, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as “What about San Fransicko’s main point”; “San Fransicko’s description of Amsterdam solving its drug and crime problems”; “One possible criticism of San Fransicko is that it makes a good and valid criticism”. It most often appears alongside Amsterdam, Bay Area, California.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: June 23, 2022
  • Last seen: June 29, 2022

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

June 23, 2022 · Original source
Last month I discussed the platforms of twenty-six candidates for California governor. One candidate, author and activist Michael Shellenberger, objected to my characterization of him, so I read his book San Fransicko to learn more and decide whether I owed him an apology.
San Fransicko is subtitled “Why Progressives Ruin Cities”. It builds off the kind of stories familiar to most Bay Area residents:
This is a good introduction to San Fransicko. It adequately telegraphs what you’ll be getting in the rest of the book: scenes of devastating human misery and urban decay, little-known tidbits from California history, and very precise statistics.
June 29, 2022 · Original source
"San Fransicko’s description of Amsterdam solving its drug and crime problems matches the other sources I found, although I’m confused about how much harm reduction was involved."
One possible criticism of San Fransicko is that it makes a good and valid criticism which statistics will naturally contradict because everyone’s doing the statistics wrong, and instead of arguing this, it tries to massage the statistics.
In this context, San Fransicko strikes me as an immensely useful and mostly accurate corrective, and any minor factual issues are unimportant.