[jungler]

As one SF Chronicle article put it in describing CA Governor Newsom, SF politics are a lion's den that produces strong candidates for the national stage.

Which in perspective says not that SF functions well, but rather that it functions so poorly that you have to have immense skill to survive.

And like other established cities with some history, there is a vein of the upper crust - people whose parents owned property, went to the local prep schools and now own some property themselves. That's a thing that contributes to the quagmire, since it creates more complex entanglements than the basic economics would suggest. A lot of the tech billionaires have made moves to muscle in on this scene, which has perhaps helped it from getting too stagnant, but contributes to its overall incoherence.