The Everyday Boycotts of San Francisco

On the San Francisco Chronicle's editorial page, a witty rejoinder:

...This city is losing revenue every day as a result of inaction from City Hall. They might not use the term "boycott," but the businesspeople and tourists who don't return because of their disgust with the condition of the streets or concerns about their safety represent lost dollars. So do the entrepreneurs or developers who go elsewhere because of the regulatory thicket here...

Read the whole thing.

If boycotts are to be how we settle internal differences in this country, then San Francisco is deserving. The health-care bill for which they share a good deal of responsibility--who sent Pelosi to the House?--affects us far more than SB 1070 affects them, and what it does to people, assuming that "Probable Cause" means in SB 1070 what it has always meant, is more morally repugnant.

But that aside, yes, there's good reason to "go elsewhere". San Francisco is a great place to eat, and the architecture is cute, but it's frustrating in ways even this ex-New Orleanean can't take. Very recently I attended a scientific conference in San Francisco at the Moscone Center, their convention center. I don't recommend Moscone at all. It isn't that there was anything wrong with the facility, but the staff were overwhelmingly rude at times it counted the most. Among other things, a very rule-oriented, European mentality was displayed. For example: After having been jerked around the night before by staff and getting there early, nobody could put up posters at 7:55. Not until 8 AM sharp. A handful (or two) of incidents such as this made it such that I and many others recommended not going there in the future.

In Phoenix the staffers may have voted for Sheriff Joe, but at least they're polite and have American attitudes.

I can has boycott?

A few remarks on the "Boycott Arizona" idea:

1. SB 1070 doesn't go into effect until 90 days after the end of the legislative session.
   
2. ICE decides which police forces can and cannot enforce immigration law, and can render this moot.
   
3. Governor Brewer has noted that AZ law enforcement will be expected to comply with Constitutional standards of reasonable suspicion and probable cause. To remark--before the law goes into effect--that SB 1070 will bring about violations of basic rights is premature. It will do so if the various police forces and Sheriff's departments screw up.
   
4. In light of the above, if Brewer is right, this is a policy that at worst willhurt AZ policing by tying up police time (and wasting taxpayer money) on doing ICE's job and enforcing bad Federal policy.
   
5. The people pushing for a boycott, mostly Democrats, are hypocrites until they call for an open-border immigration policy. By "protecting" union labor against competition, they created this problem--this problem exists because there is not an open immigration policy--and leftists are largely responsible for the popular misconception that open immigration hurts Americans. That this was picked up by populist reactionaries on the Right doesn't change history.
   
6. This is really a bad road to go down.
   
   Shall we boycott Vermont because they sent someone who identifies as "socialist" to the Senate? (If socialism isn't as morally repugnant to you as racial profiling, you need to think harder about socialism. It's government interference in almost everything in life that matters.)
   
   Or, getting to more practical concerns: Shall we boycott every state that has a Democratic senator? The ban on major-medical insurance (and the killing of HSAs that will result), the tighter coupling of health care to health insurance and health insurance to employment, the mandate of community rating, all of this harms people at least as much as the racial profiling that will supposedly result from SB 1070. And given the opportunity to pass sensible reform, decoupling insurance from employment, moving the US off of the insurance-as-insulation model, the Democrat health care bill was a disgrace. Shame and harm. Where's the boycott of California? Arizonans have as much reason to boycott San Francisco--San Franciscans put Nancy Pelosi in the House--as San Francisco would have to boycott AZ were the hyperbolic claims about SB 1070 actually true. And why didn't we boycott Massachusetts when they enacted a Europe-style health care system, one that has been a failure yet served as a model for the Democrat bill?
   
   Why aren't we boycotting Chicago (responsible for IL's backwardness) over firearms policy?
   
   Oppressive firearms policy and health care policy is, again, at least as bad as the cynical fantasy versions of SB 1070. If boycotts will be the response, we might as well dissolve the Union.
   
7. Talk of "revealed preference" is usually bluster--it fails to take into account irrationality--but it applies directly to boycotts. Talk is cheap. That ordinary people--not publicity whore celebrities--will cancel trips to the Grand Canyon or conventions in Phoenix is doubtful.