San Francisco provides an insight into the economic collapse of leftist polities

Judge Engoron (and I always want to call him Erdogan, which I’m sure is Freudian) may have dealt an economic death blow to New York when he ruled against Donald Trump to the tune of almost half a billion dollars. Businesses and ordinary people have announced they intend to boycott New York, whether for self-protection or principle. But what happens when it’s the governing body that engages in boycotts? That turns out to be just as much of a death blow. The tale of San Francisco’s decision to boycott 30 states because the city disagreed with their politics is a wonderful example of leftist hubris and the economic havoc it wreaks.

In 2016, San Francisco announced that it would no longer do business with 30 states because they were insufficiently supportive of gay rights. As this surprisingly well-researched story from a local television station shows, that was a really stupid decision and one that cost the city’s taxpayers an enormous amount of money:

While I continue to be surprised that the Attorney General under Trump didn’t challenge the city’s regulation as violating the Commerce Clause, perhaps there was some wisdom to that decision. The thirty states on the banned list were almost certainly unharmed by one city’s temper tantrum, while the city itself suffered significant harm.

What happened to San Francisco is the kind of thing that Maria Montessori, who was wise about such matters, called a ”natural consequence.” When someone is on the verge of receiving a natural consequence, sometimes the best thing to do is to stand aside and let it happen.

First, did you notice that the policy isn’t being changed to help ordinary, taxpaying San Franciscans? Instead, it’s being changed to provide even more money to the homeless. One could argue that homelessness is a problem for all San Franciscans because it’s destroying the city, but the reality is that the city has (or used to have) laws in place that disincentivize homelessness. Now, it operates on the “if you build it, they will come” principle. And the city is still building.

Second, I believe that the best way to deal with a state, region, or company that makes decisions antithetical to people’s values is to let the people drive the marketplace. Conservatives affected Bud Light when it threw so-called transgenderism in their faces. (And I, for one, do not believe the company should be let off the hook until it explicitly apologizes.) Businesses are fleeing states that have hostile business climates, and individuals seek lower tax states.

However, governments have responsibilities, too. Conservatives have supported the boycott of Iranian oil and thought Trump was wise to put economic pressure on China. Moreover, state and local governments have huge budgets that come from taxpayers, so these governments, too, have a moral obligation not to send that money to tyrannical places that function in a way that is beyond the Pale. If this were 1938, I would be horrified to learn that my government was getting its pencils from Nazi Germany.

The problem is the choices that governments make when the lunatics have taken over the asylum. In other words, it’s not a sane government pushing back against insanity or tyranny; it’s an insane government having a temper tantrum against the world. As San Francisco has just discovered, that seldom works out well.

Image: San Francisco City Hall by Sanfranman59. CC BY-SA 3.0. (Random fact: When I was growing up, that green sward in front of City Hall was a beautiful fountain and pond, intended in part to keep people from loitering. When the homeless started using it as a shower and bath in the 1990s, they replaced it with a lawn.)