Los Angeles: A Shining City Upon a Hill With an Apocalyptic Mentality; Dirty and Dangerous Streets, Unkept Promises, and Unflushed Toilets

HOW URBANIZATION OF LA LEADS TO HIGH POPULATION DENSITY TURNING US INTO MUMBAI, MANILA, OR BAGHDAD AND NOT SINGAPORE OR HONG KONG!

Any urban planning experts will confirm that the high density of the population coupled with lack of infrastructure, lack of law and order, and lack of efficient city management causes pervasive chaos and poor quality of life for city residents.

There are densely populated cities in the world like Singapore or Hong Kong that are well-run, safe, and enjoy high standards of living. However, the majority of densely populated cities like Manila, Mumbai, or Baghdad suffer from a multitude of problems ranging from lack of basic utility services, problems with outdated infrastructure, trash collection, pollution, traffic congestion, expansion of slums and poverty,  rampant crime, etc. Until recently, Los Angeles was blessed with a relatively low density of the population and private homeownership. However, we still had our crime-infested trashy ghettos and our slumlords and traffic congestion before urbanization, so imagine how much uglier it will all get WITH urbanization! All these desperate attempts to “gentrify” the city are futile because it doesn’t eliminate infestation with homeless encampments; doesn’t reduce crime, doesn’t require building more parks where homeless are banned, doesn’t add more parking space or wider streets.  Gentrification by building new residential high rises in the midst of trashy downtown doesn’t contribute to a higher quality of living. Downtown living in cramped conditions in “maximum security” mixed-use “jails”  without the ability to enjoy going outside because downtown is dirty, trashy, dangerous and because its parks and streets are infested with unhoused zombies is a sad reality and doesn’t lead to a better quality of life for normal people. 

Moving the homeless encampments from one place to another or forcing these zombies into shelters built in the midst of residential neighborhoods doesn’t solve the problem of homeless infestation – only their complete removal from the city limits into remote isolated maximum security clinics does. The current government and a large number of residents do not believe in the removal of the homeless from the city limits because in their view it’s inhumane and defies their moral principles of compassion for the defective people. In addition, there are some legal and constitutional hurdles that efforts to remove the homeless from the city would need to overcome, and large sums of money would need to be authorized by voters to accomplish the task of building clinic facilities and infrastructure around them in remote areas of the state. Neither the government nor perhaps the majority of the current population has the appetite for such measures so we all end up living surrounded by homeless encampments, facing dangers that come from crazy people and drug addicts on the loose or in shelters located next to our houses and apartment buildings. In contrast, Hong Kong or Singapore societies don’t have a major drug addiction problem that contributes to homelessness because drug trade and drug use are heavily criminally penalized especially in Singapore and unlike in California law enforcement there is not limited in its capacity to prosecute drug offenses severely enough to deter drug trade and addiction. In addition, in Asia, people are less isolated from their extended families who carry a moral obligation to take care of the mentally ill family members or place them in psychiatric institutions, and social services in those cities are capable of efficiently preventing dysfunctional people from living in the streets.

LA urbanizers dream of a shining city on a hill

 In the past 10-15 years our local authorities tired of dealing with the passive resistance of homeowners and small business owners to government expansion decided that it was time to urbanize LA to gain more control over the population and increase tax revenue.   They started working with developers to build as many mixed-use developments as possible, demolish single-family dwellings, and build apartment buildings instead, and now they are trying to rezone formerly single-family dwelling areas to allow the construction of large multi-family complexes. 

Our authorities are also trying to build infrastructure to support the projected higher density of the population – for example- they are building a subway network, and encouraging people to use public transportation and bicycles instead of cars to reduce traffic congestion and “carbon imprint “.  LA leaders believe in urbanization and high density and don’t want Angelinos to own single-family dwellings, don’t want people to enjoy their gardens with fruit trees under the pretext of saving water, and don’t want us to enjoy the privacy of our comfortable private cars under the pretext of fighting fossil fuels and climate change. The vision of the future LA leaders are trying to sell to us is the “shining city on a hill” where Angelinos of all ethnic and social backgrounds will happily share rather congested space with each other trapped in these huge high rises that have grocery stores and all other facilities in the same building or building next door, commuting to work by bus, metro or bike and enjoying local parks but not their own gardens.   LA leaders somehow believe that they are capable of turning LA into Hong Kong or Singapore. The reality, however, will not cooperate with our leaders’ utopian ideas. 

Why we are not going to turn LA into an exemplary Hong Kong or Singapore? 

• Our LA government is self-serving, corrupt, and dishonest with us, and Singapore or Hong Kong governments enjoy the unanimous trust of the population because they are not corrupt and are actually acting in the best interest of the locals and largely delivering on whatever promises they’ve made. Singapore and Hong Kong are efficient and have a merit-based system. We are dysfunctional and our system is an anti-merit affirmative action system where government hiring is identity and race-based instead of qualifications-based. Our tenured bureaucracy is inefficient, lazy, rude, and entitled; government employee unions are protecting the worst officials and government employees from being demoted and fired, and our bureaucrats including city council members are extremely corrupt as evidenced by multiple corruption scandals. There is no personal responsibility for city officials’ wrongdoing – they are shielded by rules they’ve made to protect themselves from public scrutiny and accountability. They are sitting in cozy offices, taking 2-hour lunches, going home at 4 pm, getting taxpayer-funded benefits and pensions, and rarely have a good work ethic. Try calling any city office or showing up there to discuss some practical issues like getting permits for construction, getting the city to crack down on public nuisance businesses like pot dispensaries that attract criminals to your area, or getting the city to pave major streets with potholes – they ll give you a run-around, they ll stone wall you, ignore you and pretend like they are so overwhelmed they can’t get to you.

• Our system is not merit-based so it is unsustainable and inefficient. LA is not capitalist like Hong Kong or Singapore – our surviving businesses are operating in an extremely hostile environment with labor unions, labor rights advocates, government anti-business regulation, draconian taxation forcing many out of business or out of state, cutting into profits and subjecting small businesses to existential threats of frivolous extortionist lawsuits by disgruntled employees. The tax base for the city is shrinking and whatever taxes are being collected the city squanders on its own bureaucracy, and on handouts for its voter base – huge ghetto populations that depend on the government subsidies and do not wish to work or run a business to become a self-sustaining group.

 

• In Hong Kong or Singapore, the subway is safe and clean – our subway is dirty and dangerous, infested with homeless thugs and criminals.  Our public transportation infrastructure that we paid so much of our taxes to build is inconvenient, dirty, infested with homeless thugs, and plain dangerous to use, especially after dark, but really at all times during the day. We have an entire zombie army of homeless thugs roaming around the city and using public transportation as their turf to pee, use drugs, rob people, relax, and enjoy learning new masturbation techniques, and simply live there.  The homeless zombies are moving from one station to another, from one bus bench to another, and congregating outside metro stations to harass passers-by.  Career criminals attack the elderly who use public transportation too especially while they are waiting for the bus, criminals also attack poor undocumented migrants who cannot afford to buy a car at bus stops and on the metro.  Metro connects crime-infested ghettos with civilized areas like Westwood and Beverly Hills so that those criminals who prefer to use public transportation can easily reach wealthier areas to conduct the robbery and burglary business there. Homeless thugs and zombies also use public transportation which helps them to spread into previously nice and civilized areas that are now getting trashier because of the homeless zombies.

• Hong Kong and Singapore are homogenous communities of people who follow the rules and we are a random collection of diverse communities each with different rules or no rules at all. Singapore and Hong Kong are made up of mostly middle and upper-class populations that are also majority East Asian. They came from countries where people follow a very elaborate set of rules of behavior and respect the rules – not just the law, but social etiquette, and everyone understands what that social etiquette is. Singapore and Hong Kong populations generally agree amongst themselves on how people should treat each other, what behavior is acceptable and what behavior is not acceptable and they operate under pretty tight social pressure to behave properly and espouse a collectivist mentality. The rules that they adhere to require people to be polite with each other, maintain cleanliness, arrive on time, and practice a work ethic of the highest caliber no matter what you do or how much you get paid, to be self-sufficient and above all  – WELL ORGANIZED AND DISCIPLINED.

Our population is very diverse but unfortunately homogenous only in one way – most Angelinos are FLAKY – that’s the standard … We never call to cancel – we just don’t show up; if we get an invitation we are not interested in or a request we don’t like we simply ignore it, we don’t text back with some explanations/ apologies  – politeness is not part of our set of tools.  Other than that everyone plays by their own rules. Some of us are very respectful to people we like, some of us are clean and polite, and many others are uncivilized, messy, and rude. Even in affluent areas at upscale restaurants people often don’t flush toilets!  Forget about doing it somewhere at more modest establishments in inner city areas. There is no social pressure to behave – everyone is free to act in accordance with their upbringing or lack thereof and this is what is happening on a sliding scale. 

Road rage is almost impossible in Hong Kong or Singapore – in LA it’s almost a celebrated tradition that sometimes turns deadly. A lady shows her middle finger to the wrong guy who cut in in front of her and…. boom ! .. . he pulls out a gun while driving and randomly shoots into her car killing her son! Had she not shown that middle finger, her little son would have been alive, and had the killer been just a little more civilized he would have not cut in front of her, or perhaps waved his hand saying sorry, or worst case scenario responded with the same middle finger, but no!  His ego was so hurt that he had to actually take out his gun and shoot. And this is not about “gun control” – l absolutely not! Guns may be the last line of defense we have in this dangerous environment with enormous inner-city criminal populations that are scouting our neighborhoods to burglarize our houses. This is about the general state of mind – we are a society of very angry stressed-out people who are struggling to survive not just financially, but emotionally surrounded by strangers each playing by their own rules. There is no cohesive sense of community. It’s nice that individuals are not being restricted by social norms, but on the other hand these individuals feel very isolated and lost, they know that they sometimes can’t even trust their own family, let alone some unpredictable and unreliable strangers. 

It doesn’t mean that In Hong Kong or Singapore, everyone loves their neighbor, they might even passively aggressively hate their neighbors who operate too close for comfort, but Hong Kong and Singapore people know how to exercise SELF RESTRAINT not to allow this passive-aggressive tension spill out of their subconscious, self-restraint to be polite and not get violent!

We don’t even know what self-restraint is!  We just operate like animals with our instincts – both best and worst. For example, our best instinct tells us, “I like this person, let me hug them.”  Well, Maybe they don’t want to be hugged, it’s too close for comfort, it’s a violation of their private space,  but we don’t care – we are going to hug them anyway… Our worst instinct tells us: “Your stress justifies taking it out on someone else even if they didn’t cause it” – no self-reflection whatsoever. We know perfectly well by now that fast food, especially sugar, and carbs are poison for our bodies, but we lack self-restraint so we enjoy those pizzas, sandwiches, and hamburgers and then get fat, develop diabetes, and all kinds of other health issues and complain about high medical bills or narrow seats on a plane.

• Poverty is not the reason for urban devastation and is not an excuse so capitalism is the right remedy  for social problems

Unlike in Hong Kong and Singapore, and despite lower population density than that of Hong Kong or Singapore, large swaths of our inner city and LA county are still considered “ghettos” with lower standards of living, higher crime rates, bad schools, more pollution, less vegetation, and dirty, dangerous and unwelcoming streets.

Progressivist city politicians especially when they run for office, advocate higher taxation for homeowners and businesses to “lift” the “disadvantaged populations” out of poverty and to “decriminalize” certain behaviors that contribute to crime, like loitering or shoplifting.  

They want to give young criminals a second chance by not sending them to prison long term even for very violent crimes because these young criminals are believed to be disadvantaged victims of neglect by society, by dysfunctional parents, and by racist criminal justice system. 

Our hypocritical populist progressive politicians refuse to address the root of the problem: bad upbringing and lack of personal responsibility. No matter how poor you are, you can always tell right from wrong; you always know that stealing is wrong or trashing your own neighborhood is wrong, but you just do it because everyone else around you does it and because you suffer no consequences for doing it.  The “disadvantaged” have no excuse for trashing their own streets, vandalizing stores, stealing or robbing normal people, not trying to get a job, or not planting a tree outside! Poverty has NOTHING to do with it – the wrong mentality has everything to do with it. As to the gangs and juvenile delinquents – there are so many examples of law-abiding hard-working immigrant parents especially in Latino households, teaching their children to be civilized, not to associate with gang members, to get a job, to be respectful, polite, and clean and yet children are just neglecting or resisting their parents’ mentorship. Teachers at schools guided by perverse progressive agendas are telling children that they don’t have to listen to their backward parents and can report them to the children’s services in response to parents’ attempts to be strict and enforce the family rules.    

Even children who are more receptive to parents’ upbringing are operating in an extremely hostile environment at school and in the neighborhood where being civilized and decent condemns you to being bullied. Good like trying to be a well behaved well dressed exemplary young man in the midst of the cesspool of tattooed gangster wannabees blasting rap music from their cars on high wheels and loitering outside of your house – you’ll get mocked, robbed, and beaten for refusing to join the gang! 

 Malicious peer pressure breeds violent ghetto culture!  Many young people are forced to join gangs against their will and out of fear; others develop gang mentality due to bad influence and lack of alternatives but this again has nothing to do with that “victim status” of a “disadvantaged “ group living in poverty. 

Hong Kong and Singapore do not have these problems because young people there are MORE RECEPTIVE to parental guidance that teaches them personal responsibility, good work ethic, basic decency, and proper behavior in society.  Middle-class values dominate among all social groups in Hong Kong or Singapore with the exception of some rebellious outcasts limited in number. As an example, if one views East Asian music videos – whether it be Chinese or Korean or even Vietnamese – for the most part what you see on the stage is nicely dressed clean looking young men and feminine tastefully dressed young women playfully trying to bring out the best, tender feelings to their audience. Even if they try to imitate some rap artists from the West, it still doesn’t come out dirty and degrading. When you see our performers they compete with each other for the most complimentary portrayal of degradation, heartlessness, and criminality.

 It should not be considered attractive or prestigious in any way to be a criminal period. Rap music that glorifies criminality must at some point face competition of a new culture of decency, elegance, sophistication and moral cleanliness where being better than others, more civilized than others will not be met with bullying but will gain popularity and admiration. A new youth culture must be developed where role models will no longer be brainless basketball players, rude and scummy thugs, or violent criminals but intelligent, well-dressed exemplary individuals with positive goals in life, inspirational entertainers that contribute to spiritual growth, talented actors, and scientists, emotionally intelligent writers but not woke writers!   With the new culture new mentality will arrive where being dressed like a gangster, listening to violent rap music or devouring primitive pop music and espousing criminality will be considered shameful low-class traits. No matter how poor, young people can change and grow if they are guided in the right direction, and if going in the wrong direction will be severely penalized. Penalties would include long prison sentences without second chances for juvenile delinquents who refuse to listen and commit crimes and shame and mocking for being low-class ghetto for those who are uncivilized but haven’t committed any crimes yet.

It’s much easier to do this in a low-density environment, with more sense of community in homogenous neighborhoods where there is less anonymity and dark corners for criminals to hide. In addition, there must be a change in education emphasizing vocational training, and apprenticeships over ideological indoctrination of inner city students brainwashing them into a mentality of an angry entitled “victim of oppression and social/racial injustice.” 

Not only in inner cities but in suburbs entire new generation of good-for-nothings grew up relying on the social safety network of government handouts, grants, and student loan forgiveness. Good-for-nothing don’t want to be successful or even productive, they are entitled, they only know their rights but not responsibilities, and they have a parasitic attitude towards society: “Give me, give me, give me” without offering anything positive in return, without good work ethic or sense of personal responsibility.  With this lazy entitled generation, this city won’t be able to function even if the government is purged of corruption and parasitic institutions. 

When the system changes to a merit-based system with a very minimal social safety network, formerly entitled young people will be facing starvation and homelessness if they are unwilling to improve their skills and work ethic and be productive. Those who will improve will survive and succeed, the others will have to learn the hard way. Merit-based capitalism with labor rights afforded proportionally to the work ethic and good performance at work is the best cure for this malaise of entitled parasitism.

SUMMARY:

To build a shining city upon a hill in Los Angeles, we need to change our culture and behavior, we need to clean up our minds before we clean up our streets, and we need to get rid of the wrong mentality.   We should purge our hearts of perverse compassion for encampment thugs and criminals and make their lives a living hell no matter whether they are adults or juveniles, no matter whether they loiter or rob people on the subway and in the streets, no matter what their identity is and no matter what their past was.  We need to try changing our government to a capitalist pro-business merit-based system.  We need low density and de-urbanization because urbanization only worked for Hong Kong and Singapore but won’t work for us given our profound social and cultural differences with these cities. If we accomplish all of the above, well-behaved Angelinos will enjoy living in Los Angeles free from government tyranny and corruption. Los Angeles would become a vibrant, clean, safe low-density, and suburb-like city populated by successful, intelligent, self-sufficient, and optimistic people living in their own homes with nice gardens,  driving their private cars, and raising new generations of decent, self-sufficient, and spiritually healthy young people.