When Civilization Contracts

    I came across a couple articles the other day that, I believe, reflect a new reality: that civilization is contracting. The articles are:

• "Whole Foods Closes San Francisco Flagship Store Over Employee Safety Concerns"
• "Walmart shuts four stores in Chicago - halving its footprint in Illinois city"

    The first article relates that Whole Foods is closing its store on Market Street at 8th in San Francisco because of employee safety concerns. The piece also mentions that, according to a city supervisor, the closure will be temporary. I wouldn't count on that. Although no specifics are given, "the company cited deteriorating street conditions ... drug use and crime near the grocery store as a reason for its closure." In other words, a collapse of infrastructure as well as law and order was forcing the company to abandon that location.

    More generally, the article continues,

    Since the start of the pandemic, Downtown has suffered a massive loss in foot traffic due to remote work. Many small businesses have shuttered, while examples of extreme poverty and mental illness on the street have become more apparent.

    Fears of a “doom loop” in which a cascade of negative financial impacts compound have spread across the city, and City Hall officials currently expect a nearly $800 million deficit in San Francisco’s budget.

    The second article reports that "Walmart is shuttering half of its stores in Chicago, mostly located on the crime-ridden city's south and west sides," ostensibly because they have not been profitable for many years despite efforts to turn the situation around. According to Walmart, the stores have never been profitable, but that the losses have nearly doubled in the past 5 years; i.e., since 2017 or 2018. 

    While Walmart in their statement did not specify the exact causes for the continued losses over the years in the Chicago stores, some on social media immediately pointed to crime rates in the area. 

    To date in 2023 over 2022, thefts are up by 25 percent according to the Chicago Police Department while robberies are up 11 percent.  

    In 2022, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon had warned that theft in stores around the country could impact stores and cause additional closings. 

Walmart also indicated that its remaining four stores were suffering similar "business difficulties" but the closure of the four stores would better help them keep the remaining four open.

    Now it is possible that the Walmart closures are unrelated to crime: unlike the Whole Foods company, the Walmart statement did not directly mention crime. And it is also true that Walmart is closing other stores across the nation and laying off warehouse workers, in part because it is integrating portions of its retail and online operations to better compete against Amazon. 

    But on the other hand there have been numerous reports and articles indicating that organized retail crime, whether outright robbery or organized groups of shoplifters, has increased dramatically. Mostly this is due to various soft-on-crime approaches adopted by certain state or local governments and, dare I say, a growing sense of entitlement among certain demographics that "the world owes them a livin'." And it is well known among the law enforcement community that Walmarts are crime magnets. And a 2022 article about shoplifting in a Galveston Walmart noted that "Nationally, shoplifted merchandise costs Walmart about $3 billion a year, about 1 percent of its U.S. revenues, according to a 2016 Reuters report, although some estimates are far more." It's only gotten worse, according to all accounts. In fact, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said in December of last year that an uptick in theft is becoming such an issue at locations across the U.S. that it could lead to store closures and price hikes. And, in the video from Paul Joseph Watson below, he shows footage from one of these Chicago stores and a substantial amount of its products are locked up.  So, it is not unreasonable to assume that the Chicago closures are the result of crime.

VIDEO: "It's out of control."

Paul Joseph Watson (8 min.)

     Obviously businesses contract and close down (or close down certain locations) all of the time, and many people viewing those stories will just lump the accounts in with more general incidents of business contraction. "Those were just bad locations," they will think, "and it doesn't portend anything worse."   

     But these are not your normal business contraction. These closures represent civilization pulling back in the face of advancing barbarism. And while these particular businesses are high profile because of the size of the companies they represent, they are not isolated. News stories indicate that many businesses have closed or had to adapt to the higher crime in some urban centers. 

    The California Globe, for instance, reports that "[t]he Monday closure of San Francisco’s flagship Whole Foods supermarket is just the latest in a long string of both chain and small businesses in the city. Crime, drug use, and economic factors unique to San Francisco, have led many business owners to worry about their future in the city and where they could possibly relocate to." But while that is a recent article, a similar story played out last December:

    Outdoor clothing company Cotopaxi announced  on Tuesday that it would be closing its San Francisco store due to multiple break-ins and a rise in crime in the area, becoming the latest store to leave San Francisco due to crime.

    Since the beginning of the decade, San Francisco has lost dozens of different stores due to high crime, ranging from high-end stores to local grocery stores and drug stores. Walgreen’s alone has closed around a dozen stores in the city in only a few years, with many other drastically reducing night hours to avoid robberies.

    Clothing stores have been particularly hard hit by crime due to the ease in which merchandise can be taken and how stores are laid out. Even with many stores hiring private security guards or installing more security features, many clothing stores have left in the last few years, including the Gap, which closed their flagship store in the city in 2020, and other sportswear and outdoor brands such as Decathlon leaving. This has led to some famed shopping areas such as Market Street to have more and more empty store fronts.

    Joining them on Tuesday was Cotopaxi, with founder and CEO Davis Smith saying that rampant crime and fear for the safety of workers led to the company deciding to remove their store in the city.

    In a post on LinkedIn, Smith said “It’s sad, but San Francisco appears to have descended into a city of chaos. Many streets and parks are overrun with drugs, criminals, and homelessness, and local leadership and law enforcement enable it through inaction. One of the most beautiful and amazing cities in the world is now a place where many no longer feel safe visiting or living.

Leaving San Francisco

    “We opened a retail store a year ago on Hayes Street, the charming shopping district just blocks away from the famous Full House home. Our first week there, our windows were smashed and thousands of dollars of product was stolen. We replaced the window, and it immediately happened again (four times). We replaced with window with plywood as we waited for a month+ to get a metal security gate installed (demand for those gates is creating huge delays). As of today, we are closing the store due to rampant organized theft and lack of safety for our team. Our store is hit by organized theft rings several times per week. They brazenly enter the store and grab thousands of dollars of product and walk out. We started keeping the door locked and opening it only for customers, but even then, they’ll have a woman go to the door, and then hiding individuals rush into the store as soon as the door opens.

    “Our team is terrified. They feel unsafe. Security guards don’t help because these theft rings know that security guards won’t/can’t stop them. It’s impossible for a retail store to operate in these circumstances, especially when cities refuse to take any action (despite us paying taxes well above any other state we operate in). The city recently announced a reduction of police presence in this neighborhood, despite mass-scale crime.

    “It makes me sad that I’m now avoiding San Francisco, a city I used to love. Last time my wife and I went in 2020, a drugged up person ran up to my wife’s face and started screaming some of the most obscene things I’ve ever heard. She was terrified. During a previous trip, my rental car was broken into and everything was stolen out of our trunk. When calling the police to report the theft, they let us know this happens hundreds of times per day in the city and said it was our own fault for parking in the street. I grew up in Latin America and spent much of my adult life there, and I never felt this unsafe there. Something has to change in San Francisco.”

It's only gotten worse. 

    It's true that there are other factors at work. Prior to Covid, for instance, The Guardian reported on how high rents and business costs were driving businesses from San Francisco. Other businesses shut down in the face of the lock downs. Then, after the Covid lockdowns taught many tech workers they didn't need to work from an office, more affluent workers fled downtown San Francisco putting even more pressure on the businesses that survived the shutdowns (see also here). But then the drug use, homelessness, and crime exploded, driving away what remained of the customer base for many businesses. 

    We've seen this play out before. New York, for instance, had become, in many ways, a run-down hell hole in the 1970s, but was able to rebound in the 1980s and push back the darkness (although it, too, is floundering again). Other cities, such as Detroit and Baltimore, have never rebounded. Baltimore, for instance, has seen seven decades of population decline. In 1950, Baltimore had a population of 949,708.  In 2020, the Census pegged the population at 585,708. And, as befits a city falling into barbarism, it has a high crime rate:

    The crime rates in Baltimore are significantly higher compared to the national average. It is ranked as the 23rd most dangerous city in the world. Baltimore has a rate of 51 homicides per 100,000 population.

    In 2015, the city recorded the highest crime rate in its history, as the rates were 52.5 per 100,000. This translated to three hundred and forty-four homicides. 93.3% of the victims were African-American. In 2021, the city recorded a violent crime rate of 1,859 per 100,000 residents.

Civilization is always a battle against barbarism, but right now, in San Francisco, it appears that barbarism is winning.