Scott Alexander

And tent encampments are hard to measure nationally.

In San Francisco, they are below pre-pandemic levels.

All of this is compatible with a story where disorder levels mostly track crime levels.

rising from 1970 to 1990, declining from 1990 to 2020, and rising a little after 2020.

Crime began falling again around 2023, but the evidence on disorder, while too spotty to say for sure, doesn't seem to include such a reversal.

So here are three theories of perceived rise in disorder.

Theory one, these concerns stem from the small compared to secular trends bump in these problems around 2020.

Since then, crime in tent cities have declined, but people still haven't updated because of a combination of lag time and maybe some other forms of disorder still increasing.

This feels wrong to me.

People aren't comparing the present to the golden age of 2019, they're comparing it to the golden age of their parents' and grandparents' generation.

So let's take a longer view.

Theory 2.

Modern disorder was effectively impossible before 1950.

There was little litter.

Cheap packaging and disposable bottles had not yet entered into common use.

There was no graffiti.

Spray paint had not yet been invented.

There were no boom boxes.

They hadn't been invented either.

There were no cheap polyester tents.