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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   38347 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 is carrying a bias from one on one patient treatment. He doesn't seem to understand the power law aspect at play. It's actually a fairly small number of people causing a whole lot of problems.

The top 100-200 craziest addicts consume vast amounts of resources being on the streets. Institutionallizing them would make the rest of the homeless situation much more manageable and free up a lot of resources.

The top 100-200 craziest addicts

Just wait until ESPN becomes desperate for content. The Tenderloin League PowerRankings are going to be wild.

More seriously - my assumption is that, much like major drug dealers, the top 100-200 most disruptive homeless people are super well known to local law enforcement and social workers. It would seem like that's the perfect place to start with targeted intervention to include assignment to asylum.

The big balancing act is threshold for non-voluntary commitment. I think it's too permissive now, but I get very concerned for it going too far the other way. Then, every Vet having a bad day gets shipped off.

The balancing act strikes me as similar to arguments about the death penalty. OK, I understand the concerns with killing an innocent man because we set the threshold too low, but can we at least execute the guy that literally live streamed himself murdering people in a grocery store because of their race? Likewise, I understand the concern with institutionalizing people that shouldn't be, but can we pick up the raving lunatic from the park that's raving in the park literally every day? Threshold concerns and slippery slopes are valid, but it's pretty clear which side of the line we're on at the moment, so let's think directionally for a bit.

I saw you mention that guy recently elsewhere, and I think no, we shouldn't execute him, we should give him a medal for bringing disparate statistics closer to proportionality.

  • -34

What a profoundly shameful and mindless thing to say.

Don't feed the trolls.

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