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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025

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Yesterday, I was out for a late morning run, coming up my city's main commercial and restaurant street towards the capitol square. As I approached a stoplight and took a little break in the sweltering heat, a man across the street was blaring music on Bluetooth speakers; mildly annoying, but common enough in the public square. What startled me was another man on the other side of the road who began rapping (for lack of a better description, since it was basically just yelling with a slight match to the cadence) a stream of invective - he was going to kick people's asses, motherfucker this, n-bomb that, people better not fuck with him, and so on.

Reflecting a bit, this made me think of the recent discourse on asylums and what to do, and it occurs to me that I think many people are still missing the actual point. The man I described above didn't show outward signs of any particular mental illness, I have no idea if he uses drugs, and while he did look like a vagrant, I don't know whether he sleeps rough or not. Do any of those things actually matter to me? In some sense, it would matter if there was a serious and treatable mental illness (e.g. schizophrenia), but I don't actually care whether he has diagnosable narcissistic personality disorder or is merely what we would colloquially describe as an asshole. What's to be done if there is no such diagnosis and no drug-induced psychosis, but merely an asshole yelling at people about how he's going to kick their ass? My answer is basically that I want police officers to exercise their discretion to inform him that his options are that he can knock it off, do it elsewhere, or they'll arrest him for disorderly conduct. We don't need to escalate to immediate criminalization, starting with "move along sir" is fine, but no, you don't get to keep yelling at people all day.

So much of the discourse about bums persons experiencing houselessness seems like we're just talking past each other. At the end of the day, I genuinely don't care what the state does with these people, I just want them removed from my neighborhood. This attitude is derided as not solving the problem, but that claim merely highlights that we don't agree on what the problem is. For the people that insist on handling root causes, that part will be up to them, I'm perfectly satisfied with literally any solution that removes the people that throw chicken bones and vodka bottles on the ground in the park. I'm not actually very interested in whether they're addicts, mentally ill, or simply terrible people. The answer from the BeKind crowd seems to be that everyone has the right to behave the way they want to and that I'm a very bad person for wanting these guys removed; this seems like an unsolvable impasse in preferences for how to live.

I'm a very bad person for wanting these guys removed

This doesn't make you a bad person, but

I genuinely don't care what the state does with these people

certainly doesn't make you a good one.

I also live in an area rife with these problems and I sympathize, and think that the state needs to do better at dealing with it. At the same time I wouldn't be fine with "literally any solution", there's got to be red lines about their treatment somewhere. I'm curious where exactly you'd draw the line, and how much you'd want the state to spend on it.

I'm not OP but I think I understand his take. It's a question of priority; it's not that I really don't care what happens to these people, but I think what happens to these people is less important than them being removed from public spaces.

Remove them first, then we'll discuss what compassionate solution we can find to make their lives better. As opposed to the standard western liberal answer that if we improve their lives first the problem will itself disappear from the public square, which has time and time again failed to bear out as the affected people actively resist and sabotage efforts to improve their lives.

If you want to think less of me because I prioritize my comfort and peace in public spaces over these strangers' wellbeing, then go right ahead, but I do also believe that there's complex feedback loops where tolerance of public disfunction leads to more disfunction, so I do still want what's best for my fellow human beings.

I worded it like that because the OP worded his comment like it was surprising people think these opinions are seen as "bad person" opinions. I think if you say "this group of people is annoying, I want them removed by the state and and don't care what happens to them" you've eliminated any possibility of having yourself seen as good, at best you're amoral. You need to at least give some thought to the well-being of these people, who in some cases are in their situation through only minor fault of their own.

When you say "Remove them first" I think you need to specify more precisely what that involves. There are absolutely moral lines you can cross. If you just get them to "move along" they just switch locations and annoy a different group of people. If you want to throw them all in prison you should keep in mind the cost (both moral and financial) of doing so.

That's not to say I think the desire is wrong at all! I also want these people removed, and I also don't think the standard western liberal approach is working. I think you need to provide some level of reasonable alternative before forcing people out of public spaces. I think that alternative does not exist in many places, due to housing and healthcare costs, and we are therefore forced to endure the ruin of our public spaces.

I think the correct approach is some combination of:

  1. provide housing as cheaply as possible (that standards for what is acceptable to provide should be much lower than they are today, but still provide a stable, permanent space) and the force these minorly disruptive people into them
  2. increase policing of minor offences like yelling at people, force them to move along (if they have their own space, then they have an actual private place to go to not annoy the public rather than just shifting the issue around)
  3. institutionalize the most severe ones - this is expensive and difficult, so you want to minimize it's necessity as much as possible

When you say "Remove them first" I think you need to specify more precisely what that involves.

Of course I have preferences as to what I think it involves, but what I mean by it and what I assume OP meant is that all solutions that removes these people from the street are superior to those that let them there, including some that cross moral lines (for instance, some mild forms of supervised forced labor), and excepting only, for me at least, the most extreme ones (such as killing them).

I do broadly agree with your plan but I'm afraid that without a lot of "drawing the rest of the owl" it wouldn't necessarily resolve the issue, as some countries have actually managed to provide cheap housing to push its undesirables into, and the result is unpoliceable ghettos (see: French suburbs) that erupt into large-scale violence regularly. And as disfunctional as French immigration can be at times, the people that end up in the banlieues are still likely an order of magnitude more functional than raving park yellers.

If you're going to make this argument I you can't elide those details and still argue in good faith.

Actually spelling out at least the broad outlines like you did is good, it gives some sane limits and allows us to discuss actual tradeoffs.

all solutions that removes these people from the street are superior to those that let them there, including some that cross moral lines

This is exactly how I read what OP wrote, and it's obviously abhorrent if you allow solutions like "shoot on sight", or "Vagrant? Straight to the mines, no appeal".

I worded it like that because the OP worded his comment like it was surprising people think these opinions are seen as "bad person" opinions.

No, I'm not surprised by it, I am accustomed to it and acknowledging that I am simply at an impasse with people that differ on this. We have irreconcilable moral intuitions and I'm articulating where I think that comes to a head.

I think if you say "this group of people is annoying, I want them removed by the state and and don't care what happens to them" you've eliminated any possibility of having yourself seen as good, at best you're amoral.

Yeah, obviously I just disagree with this. I consider myself a good person, most people I know consider me a good person, and many other people that both think I'm a good person and see themselves that way agree with my perspective on this matter. I actually don't see my opponents on the issue as intrinsically bad, I understand them to be softhearted people that are unwilling to accept mean solutions to problems. The exception to that would be people that seem to revel in things sucking, that suggest that there's something wrong with people that don't want bums camping in parks, but I actually think this is a pretty small minority view even if it's overrepresented on social media.

Much of what I'm pointing at here is what I see as an actual, real difference in preferences though. You're back to the root cause end of things here with the implication being that the individual I'm referring to is either mentally ill or homeless. As mentioned, that wasn't clear to me at all, and I have certainly encountered individuals that are just aggressive assholes that enjoy bullying other people in public spaces; they would stop if they were forced to stop, this isn't some uncontrollable tic or a product of them not having a nice enough abode in which to blow off steam. I'm fairly confident that there are already statutes that could be enforced against this, there is just a cultural norm of not doing so in blue cities, so everyone gets to enjoy the serenade of belligerence.

Sorry I wasn't clear, I'm actually not trying to focus on the root cause, I agree that focusing on the causes doesn't help in the short term.

I'm agreeing that you should be mean and force people out, but that you're not a good person if you don't have a limit on how mean to be.

I don't doubt people think you're a good person, but until you're going to say what your limit is, there's no way to judge. If you limit was all the way to "shoot on sight" that's bad - if it's "we can't move them until we have median-quality housing for them free of charge" that's unrealistically generous.

My line is somewhere around "they should have free housing options somewhat better than the hell-on-earth shelters that currently exist", then you can force them out.

hell-on-earth shelters

Are yours actually that bad, and not simply because the homeless people themselves are shitty? I ask because I’ve heard plenty of complaints about the ones in my area, but when I’ve asked what the specific problems are, they tend to boil down to

  1. They have strictly-enforced rules against bringing in drugs and alcohol.
  2. If residents behave erratically, they’re given drug tests and are expelled if they test positive.
  3. The residents are kicked out during the day (the place needs daily cleaning and the residents are supposed to be out working or looking for work).
  4. There aren’t enough beds.

And of course

  1. The shelters are all run by Christian organizations, and they strongly encourage (but don’t mandate) church attendance.

For most critics, this last-named is the greatest offense of them all. Of course, suggesting that the complainers considering funding a secular alternative just makes them irate.

The western liberal answer is that if these people and the nuisance they represent are removed, any motivation to solve their problems will immediately disappear. IMO this is probably correct.

Yes, and that's fine. Their problems are theirs to solve.

Maybe, that's possible.