alt Hacker NewsI also like clean safe unobstructed sidewalks and parks but along with benches, we've made a decision. We've decided that putting the mentally ill in a facility and arresting people for public drug use is not something we're comfortable with at the expense of those other things. I don't personally ageee with this decision but it is apparently the consensus.
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Yes, I don't think that arresting people for the crime of not having money is a good idea.
We also cannot seem to fund any actual drug programs, because US citizens hate the idea of anyone getting something for free.
Them staying in the sidewalk is free. Or the cost is so indirect that nobody is responsible for it.
Facilities like asylums and jails are super costly though. And extra expensive to operate if you don't want to treat the inmates as cattle.
This.
Even an extremely small population of homeless/junkies is enough to "taint" benches.
The same with parks.
but it is apparently the consensus.
Not everywhere, fortunately.
This postulates that policy is set by consensus.
Now I haven't done any scientific polling, but my informal anecdotal experience is so overwhelmingly to the contrary that I'm comfortable believing that consensus isn't determining policy here.
> We've decided that putting the mentally ill in a facility and arresting people for public drug use is not something we're comfortable with at the expense of those other things.
We've decided this about every kind of health care. Instead of providing treatment for people who can't afford its bizarre, artificial prices, we prefer to leave them on the street or warehouse them in prisons. After leaving them in prison for an arbitrary amount of time, we then release them into the streets again, with nothing, more screwed up than when they went in, to murder you.
I have no idea what the "tough love" advocates are advocating for. Locking them up in prison is like hiding rotting meat in a freezer; it only works if you're willing to do it forever. The only answer that seems compatible with the spoiled upper-middle class worldview is to shoot the homeless (which often happened* in a lot of South American countries through semi-official paramilitaries), or to drive them into the wilderness outside of town to hopefully die on their own.
As the layoffs of programmers continue, I predict there will be a lot of changes of heart that won't matter at all, because they will be coming from homeless people. Middle-class culture is all about only being interested in issues that harm you directly, even if that issue is somebody dying too loudly nearby.
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[*] Happens? My info is out of date.
This sounds like it's from someone who say a video on the two square blocks in SF or Philly and has let the propaganda make them believe this is common everywhere in every American city.
What's wrong with both? Why can't we have public benches, and also not arrest drug users if they are sitting on the benches and smoking?
> it is apparently the consensus
And what a strange consensus it is. The prevailing belief seems to be that preventing people from slowly/quickly killing themselves on the street (or, more accurately, dying from addiction) is somehow not "progressive" and the moral thing to do is to pretend like these people have made the choice of their own volition and that we cannot judge them for this choice.
In reality, the people who are just rotting away on our streets would be better served if they were brought somewhere against their will and kept there until they were better. Society would also be better served if we did this. The government choosing to involuntarily constrain people isn't something that should be done lightly, but sometimes it is the lesser evil. We've completely abandoned these people and somehow done so in the name of compassion. It's really depressing.