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Because they're not rich enough to (1) afford ubiquitous personal car transportation, (2) isolate themselves from the effects of luxury beliefs like "we should prioritize the feelings and welfare of criminals over having orderly public places"
Right, rich enough to afford personal cars for most people, and luxury beliefs allying the guilty-feeling, effeminized elites and the underclasses.
This makes a lot of sense, but I know a number of residents of SF, Oakland and other places like that, who aren't in any way rich enough to avoid the effects of the luxury beliefs, and they still largely support the policies that led to them. I mean, they're certainly not happy about people pooping on the streets or open drug markets, not to mention unending car breakins and other criminality, but somehow they never make the conclusion the policies they support are responsible for it. They just think it's "wrong Socialism" and as soon as they figure out how to make "true Socialism, that has never been tried" - which is right around the corner, we only need to tweak a couple of things and spend a couple of billions more - and it all will be fixed.
I guess my question is where do these magical beliefs come from? They seem to be ubiquitous among Reddit users but also white collar progressives in general. I'd like to blame midwit tier intelligence, but I don't think that's it. In fact, I would guess that intelligence and socialist beliefs are positively correlated.
Why is socialist worldview so appealing, even when (or especially when) it fails time and time again? And why is the more practical worldview (that people respond to incentives) so looked down upon?
This will not be a great post because I'm exhausted today, but I remember reading an author who coined the (awkward) term "indiscriminateness" to describe the fundamental principle that led to the disconnect you describe. This principle has become a cardinal virtue in our society.
The idea is that judging someone is about the worst thing you can do. You can't disparage train shitters and train masturbators as "scum" or "bad people" or "degenerate" or even "a public nuisance" because that would be cast judgement on their actions or character. And you know who does that? The hated and reviled Outgroup! Not only are you an ignorant person for negatively judging someone, but you even sound like one of The Bad Guys. And so you will do increasing complex mental gymnastics to explain Why Some People Are Like That, continue to invent ever more complex epicycles to explain social decay.
I think this is a critical point regardless of worldview and also a common trap people fall into.
It is self-satisfying, comforting, safe, and easy to write off one's opponents as immoral or somehow irredeemable. It saves the trouble of having to engage with their point of view and/or arguments. One's in-group affiliation also strengthens ("Totally clapped back today, sis!" / "Owned this lib at the gas station!"). Eventually, however, you end up as an inmate in the echo chamber.
The (admittedly incomplete) method I try to use is trying to think through a different prioritization of values by the other party, leaving moralism out of it as long as possible (exceptions apply, see below). Trying to see past someone's surface level political / ideological / social arguments to identify their personal value system keeps them human (objects / boogeymen can't really be said to have values), punches through midwit argumentation (akhtually, crime went down when xyz happened), and helps you steelman without requiring a ton of intellectual calisthenics.
"This person has a MASSIVE investment into personal emotional comfort. This leads them to advocate for a lot of "outreach" style community services instead of traditional policing. Their relative value of community stability and common welfare is lower." Far more useful as a thinking aid and mental model than the more emotionally satisfying "These m-f'er wants to give free hotel rooms to crackheads?!"
Two caveats. First, this is not koom-bay-ah common-ground finding. That's one of the most bullshit concepts in all of politics / culture war. I'm not trying to find where you and I overlap, I'm trying to figure out why you and I have intractable disagreements. I don't really think I can change your value system, but I might be able to articulate something that shows you the cost and imbalance of your value system. I use business analogies and metaphors a lot because my life is a horrible series of nested spreadsheets but w/e I like it. If you have a stock portfolio that is 100% Tesla, you're taking on concentrated risk and there's a (potential or realized) massive downside. You really believe in Tesla? Ok, that's fine on its face, but you have to realize you're overinvested in a single thing. Applied to our culture war framework, Greta Thunberg (leaving aside the likely weird parental coaching) is 100% in on environmental issues and seems to actively ignore related economic, political, technological, stability impacts. There's not a moral argument there, just an examination of her value system.
Second caveat is that this does break down when you get to the real extremes. Obviously when someone's value system explicitly allows for physical violence in any case but self-defense (let's leave just war theory etc to the side for now) ... it's hard to really deal with them in good faith. The trickier part is when the other person stops short of endorsing physical violence but advocates for such a massive change to existing political order than the immediate second order effects seem to be violence. My favorite example (from right here in Motte-land!) is this post on the lunacy of Ibram Kendi. Obviously, he "values" whatever "anti-racism" is but he also clear values state-level coercion and illiberal and anti-democratic practices in support of that goal. I don't have a good workaround for that.
Your average laptop-class do-gooder millennial progressive, however, isn't anywhere near that. Yes, they will call themselves "anti-racists" to enjoy some in-groping (intentional typo) and mood-affiliation, but, by doing that, they're showing off their value system - pop culture virtue signalling, hipness with the times (so, social perception ability), and (ironically, imho) respect for conformity to prevailing ideas.
Again, this is, I think, a good means of understanding people better and doing some high-return thinking for yourself. As a tool of persuasion, I think this has close to zero value. I'm laughing thinking about that conversation - "You know, I think I understand your entire personal value system and can say confidently that you don't value community safety as highly as individual expression, regardless of long term social cost." You'd probably be better off with some nice Forer statements. "You're a creative soul who loves people, but sometimes find it difficult to fit in."
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