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A viral January 28, 2026 X post by Australian commentator Drew Pavlou uses an…

2026-01-28 · 10:25 UTC ·DrewPavlou ·11 min read

Brief

Drew Pavlou’s January 28, 2026 post is a polemical argument about urban disorder rather than a reported article. Using an alleged near-encounter with a knife-carrying man in the Times Square station on January 15 as the narrative hook, he argues that public safety is a prerequisite for successful transit, walkability, and dense urbanism. He describes reporting the man to transit staff and police, then broadens the claim into a diagnosis that New York—and by extension the United States—functions as a “low-trust society” in which residents cope with disorder by withdrawing into private spaces, avoiding intervention, and ultimately preferring cars or ride-hailing over transit.

The core policy thesis is his coined term “Dark Abundance”: pair pro-building politics—housing, public transit, high-speed rail, and even “1000 nuclear reactors”—with much harsher enforcement against violent, disruptive, mentally ill, or drug-using individuals in public space. He argues that abundance liberals such as Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson underweight the role of order, while traditional law-and-order politics underweight the need to build infrastructure. The post’s relevance lies less in its unsupported anecdotal claims than in its articulation of a recurring debate in urban policy: whether transit investment, zoning reform, and infrastructure expansion can succeed politically and operationally without visible improvements in safety, cleanliness, and system reliability. Because the piece is highly rhetorical, anecdotal, and openly punitive, it should be treated as an ideological argument rather than a trustworthy account or evidence-based analysis.

Why it matters

A viral January 28, 2026 X post by Australian commentator Drew Pavlou uses an alleged January 15 encounter with a knife-carrying man at the Times Square subway station to argue that disorder and perceived public-safety failures undermine urban transit and dense-city living.

Key details

  • Pavlou says he and a family member left the platform after midnight when they saw a man behaving erratically with a “massive kitchen knife” visible in his sweatpants, then reported the incident to a transit employee and an NYPD officer.
  • He generalizes from that incident and other anecdotal observations—people screaming in subway cars, a separate story involving his mother near the New York Stock Exchange, and photos of station decay, sleeping riders, and feces—to claim New York has become a “low-trust society” where residents adapt by ignoring disorder.
  • The post explicitly links public order to infrastructure usage, arguing that even if governments build more housing, transit, high-speed rail, or energy infrastructure, those investments lose value if ordinary people avoid shared spaces because they feel unsafe.
  • Pavlou frames his proposed synthesis as “Dark Abundance,” combining the center-left “Abundance Agenda” associated with Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson—more housing, nuclear plants, transit, and state capacity—with Lee Kuan Yew-style strict enforcement and mandatory removal of violent or severely antisocial people from public spaces.
  • The attached discussion shows limited engagement for a long-form viral-style thread—312 likes, 0 retweets, and 24 replies—and several replies directly dispute Pavlou’s characterization of New York or question his credibility.
Cleaned source text

title: @DrewPavlou: I almost got stabbed by a crazy homeless guy at the Times Square subway station ...

author: DrewPavlou

content_type: twitter_article

published: 2026-01-28T10:25:46+00:00

source_url: https://x.com/DrewPavlou/status/2016457665397076063

word_count: 2573

I almost got stabbed by a crazy homeless guy at the Times Square subway station on January 15.

I stepped down onto the platform after midnight to encounter a mentally insane homeless man with a vacant look in his eyes, lunging across the platform, tearing down random posters with a manic frenzy. His movements were jagged, menacing, unpredictable.

A massive kitchen knife stuck out from the back of his stained gray sweatpants.

My family member squeezed my arm. We wordlessly rushed back up the subway steps.

Times Square is supposed to be the beating heart of the Western world's most important city.

Yet I couldn't use basic public transport near Times Square without the risk of being stabbed in the lungs and vital organs by a mentally ill vagrant.

These new aristocrats of the commons seem to wield a permanent veto over public space in Zohran’s New York City.

As we retreated, I noticed that a young woman still sat on the platform, headphones on, eyes glued to her screen. The memory of Iryna Zarutska flashed through my mind. So I ran to find help.

The transit official, an African American woman, took my report seriously but quickly became exasperated by my reluctance to offer a racial description of the assailant. She looked at me with a puzzled expression: "Who am I looking for - White guy?! Black guy?!"

As a respectable middle class Australian taught in school never to define people by race, I was taken aback by her bluntness.

But I recognized her frustration. Here was a working class black woman who dealt with insane people on the subway constantly, and every second I delayed meant a young woman remained at risk.

"He was a black guy," I replied sheepishly.

She huffed and marched off while I found the nearest NYPD officer, who immediately summoned backup.

The Low Trust Society

I learned something from this experience: the United States is a low-trust society.

There are plenty of high trust people in New York City. But a high trust society is defined by its relative lack of defectors. And there are a lot of defectors.

People adjust accordingly.

New Yorkers had an "every man for themselves" mentality.

Nobody seemed to care much about the safety of the wider communal space, such that nobody thought it worth reporting the fact that a mentally ill crazy homeless guy was stalking about Times Square with a kitchen knife. He had just simply been allowed to wander down there unimpeded without a single person making a report to the NYPD or other authorities.

This complete atomization, this total lack of concern for other people's safety, bedeviled me throughout my entire trip.

Almost every day I sat in a subway car while some crazy homeless person screamed and lashed out at imagined phantoms and demons around them. Every single time, New Yorkers would avert their gaze, stare at their phones, desperately attempting to ignore the danger.

It was like every single New Yorker had learned a kind of default tortoise survival mode, withdrawing into their shells, desperately hoping that by avoiding the attention of Insane Mentally Ill Vagrant #18343292 they might avoid being stabbed or assaulted.

Photo I took at 50th Street station one night after the knife incident

People just grow accustomed to it. I talked to a New Yorker about my experience almost being stabbed and they were completely nonplussed. "Yeah, it's the subway," I was told, like it was completely commonplace to be terrorised by mentally ill vagrants stalking about with kitchen knives.

But it shouldn't have to be like this in the greatest city of the Western world. This should be our Rome, our Athens!

My Australian Mum visited my brother in New York last year. A naked homeless person jumped out at her near the New York Stock Exchange and began furiously masturbating.

Dozens of people walked by. Not a single person tried to help. Everybody just averted their gaze, tortoise shell survival mode.

This should be the capital of the Western world, but free Roman citizens are left to be terrorized by psychotic anti-social freaks!

Crime Destroys American Cities

I follow urbanist discourse on Twitter. Leftist urbanists love to complain that America has no walkable cities.

HMMM. I WONDER WHY THIS MIGHT BE THE CASE?

COULD IT BE THE CRAZY HOMELESS GUYS WITH KITCHEN KNIVES?

PERHAPS THE NAKED CRAZY HOMELESS PEOPLE SEXUALLY ASSAULTING RANDOM WOMEN IN DENSE TOURIST AREAS?

Obviously it is too early to draw conclusions on this matter.

America used to have beautiful, dense cities. Amazing walkable downtowns across the entire nation. Look at old photos of Cincinnati - it looked like a European city before they razed these beautiful inner city buildings for parking lots.

Cincinnati before and after the destruction of its urban core

We all lament the destruction of American urbanism over the past century. I share the leftist lament for these great lost cities.

But leftists blame car manufacturers, red lining, blah blah blah.

Sorry but this is insane cope.

No car company was responsible for plopping down this mentally ill vagrant in front of me on the subway platform so that he could lunge about in the darkness with a kitchen knife.

Maybe this is why people prefer driving. People retreat to private spaces when you cannot guarantee basic safety and order in the commons.

Leftists cope by arguing overall crime rates are down.

But here's the thing: my mother never reported the homeless guy jacking off next to her. She felt like police would do nothing.

These experiences don't get fed into crime statistics.

Take my case with the knife guy.

Technically no crime was committed. I wasn't stabbed. Nobody was physically accosted.

So crime statistics didn't pick it up.

But still - here we were, two tourists made to feel extremely physically unsafe by the presence of a clearly insane person with a kitchen knife lurching about in the darkness.

After that episode, we started getting Ubers at night. We tried to avoid Times Square station. We completely changed our behavior.

Multiply that experience by millions of people every year.

Avoidance of crime increases infrastructure costs, introduces huge opportunity costs, massive hits to creativity and productivity.

We are supposed to just accept a certain background level of insecurity as part and parcel of living in a big city.

But it doesn't have to be this way.

The High-Trust Alternative

Lee Kuan Yew once recounted how he was shocked by the high trust of British society - traveling to London post-WWII he saw working people deposit coins in an honesty box in exchange for newspapers.

There was no seller present, yet nobody stole. No armed guard had to stand over the box.

The British people could simply govern themselves.

Lee Kuan Yew remained an Anglophile throughout his life. He sought to model Singapore on the high trust society he encountered in Britain post World War II.

What happens when people cannot govern themselves?

The only recourse is what Lee Kuan Yew did in Singapore - enforce a high trust society with knuckledusters.

The weakness of the left when it comes to enforcing basic order and safety in public space is primarily borne by the working and middle classes who cannot afford to retreat behind the walls of luxury compounds.

The rich use a significant share of their wealth to avoid crime and disorder and create high trust environments for themselves.

I want to create high trust environments for the overwhelming majority, too.

This is where Dark Abundance comes in: combining enthusiastic pro-urbanist, pro-transit policies with Lee Kuan Yew style knuckleduster punishments for anti-social violent thugs.

Where Abundance Fails

For the last few years, a movement has grown among the center-left: The Abundance Agenda.

Led by figures like Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, it argues the West's stagnation is a supply-side problem. We don't build enough houses, nuclear plants, high-speed rail.

I originally liked it.

Like them, I want more state capacity, better infrastructure, magnificent cities and public spaces.

I hate the old anti-social Thatcherite saying: "There is no such thing as society." The old right failed spectacularly by turning their back on the commons, forsaking national greatness, leaving the working and middle classes to suffer alongside rampant decay, violence and insecurity.

But the Abundance liberals make a glaring, fatal error in championing the public commons without championing public order and safety. They treat material capacity as sufficient for social flourishing. They believe if you build the beautiful glass-and-steel subway, a great society will naturally follow.

They are fundamentally wrong.

Chris Arnade wrote: ''Everyone who advocates for "walkable dense cities" with mixed zoning must understand they work when, and only when, people trust each other and don't mind living close together and sharing stuff, like subways and buses and that only happens if you punish, lock up, and remove the bad actors.''

When you face the imminent risk of being stabbed in the lungs by a crazy homeless man lunging about like a zombie, it becomes very hard to see the point of advocating walkable urbanism and liberal abundance.