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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   38349 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 8, 2024

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I think that Scott's latest article on how to defeat homelessness, was an okay steelman argument for the liberal policies with regards to the issue. At least, it's completely in line with the arguments I hear regarding my city's issues. There are a couple of things missing, though.

  1. People don't become psychotic out of nowhere. Years of unrestricted drug use does that to a person. And no, I don't want the continuation of the war on drugs, but I'm convinced that without somehow removing the drugs from the equation it's infinitely harder to approach a solution.
  2. Why do other countries don't have this problem? It's multifaceted, for sure - Finland and Japan use the "housing first" system Scott suggests and achieve great results, but I'll highlight one factor that I don't see anyone talking about in the first world: shame. In some societies like China or Turkey it's shameful to have a relative who is homeless. It's largely a cultural thing, but ultimately having relatives care about the homeless is a cheaper solution than building endless fields of Soviet blocks and intentionally creating ghettos that require policing. Is it possible to change a culture? How exactly is the western culture different? This is much harder to answer, but if we are talking about an ideal world with ideal outcomes, I'd prefer the community that experiences the issue to directly handle the issue.

Scott comes off as cowardly and needlessly pretentious. Doesn’t everyone know that bureaucracy and bad laws are part of the issue?

If your plan is to change the case law around involuntary commitment - to expand the definition of “dangerous to themselves or others” - it probably won’t matter, because most of these decisions are based on vibes that only loosely connect to the written law

Change the laws and departmental policy to make them overrule vibes, which is how most laws work. Do vibes overrule IRS laws?

doctors commit many more people, it still won’t matter, because those people will stay in the hospital for a few days

You can trivially solve this by increasing the time of commitment according to infractions over time.

If your plan is to “lock them up long-term”, keep in mind that (for now) there are almost no institutions equipped to do this

You build them. What kind of point even is this? You build buildings. They can be built. They are frequently built. Who does Scott think he is writing to that the reader would no longer support a cause because it requires a city to build buildings?

Do you expect San Francisco to be good at this?

Vote for any of the millions of Americans who can, and do, competently build buildings.

How long are you keeping people there

A reasonable amount of time. What is a reasonable amount of time? Low enough that a person whose condition is manageable can get out soon, and high enough that a person whose condition is consistently unmanageable stays in longer. So an intuitive and “normal person able to think” solution is to increase it by infraction, and for the institution to gradually allow the patient freedom so as to check his capacity.

and (if the drugs work) appear significantly saner within 2-4 weeks. Best-case scenario, they’re completely sane. Now what?

Most normal people thinking about this issue would be able to solve it. My personal take is that you go from full institutionalization to check-ups, and if you fail checkups you go back to the institution.

Etc. Nothing Scott wrote can justify his assertion that “it might be time to hit the books, learn about hexamethyldecawhatever, and make sure that what you’re demanding is possible, coherent, and doesn’t have so many tradeoffs that experts inevitably recoill”.

Most (?) homeless people are only homeless for a few weeks […] If someone was going to be homeless for a week, and instead you imprison them for a year, you’re not doing them or society any favors

This is a category error. Public displays of psychosis are not found in the median ”transitionally” homeless person staying at a friend’s or relative’s.

I feel like you've just proved the point of the blog. The argument is that mentally-homelessness is a very complicated, multi-faceted problem that can't be solved just by doing one or two things, you have to accomplish a number of difficult things. For example

Change the laws and departmental policy to make them overrule vibes

Come up with a new set of laws which can avoid human bias in a subjective setting

increasing the time of commitment according to infractions over time

Come up with a law to do this. Also you'll need a solution for all the extra capacity this will require

You build buildings...Vote for any of the millions of Americans who can, and do, competently build buildings.

Elect pro-construction politicians and solve nimbyism

A reasonable amount of time

Come up with a regulation determining time of stay that is "common sense", such that even a mediocre administrator is able to consistently apply it to all of the many patients that come through their halls.

Most normal people thinking about this issue would be able to solve it.

Use your "common sense" approach again to solve an intractable issue that is bedevilling the vast apparatus of the state.

Your proposed solutions are difficult, time-consuming, and there are a ton of details to solve. This seems exactly the situation in which you would need to hit the books and consider trade-offs.

If all of the steps are easy for a political party to solve then there is nothing difficult about it. In fact, the steps are trivial just for a normal human being to determine. The problem is not implementation but the incredibly inept and disinterested political class in the cities. The voter has a right to demand things without “educating himself” when the steps are easy.

Come up with a new set of laws which can avoid human bias in a subjective setting

It’s obvious when a person who is suffering from severe psychosis, so the target population can be solved (psychotic). The existence of rare failure modes has never prevented a law being written. When you go to a dentist or a doctor they are going to perform things on you and you trust that they aren’t going to amputate the wrong leg or take out all your teeth. You do not need to do anything outlandish to prevent too many errors here.

Come up with a law to do this

That’s what your politicians are suppose to do… etc.

How is that different from Scott’s proposal?

Not sure I understand your question?

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