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Is it healthy to dwell so much over it everytime some city degenerate dies and the media decides to make it a “thing”? What would you or anyone else gain from this knowledge?
I don't know, I think it's illuminating to see how many people on TheMotte both loathe mentally ill homeless people so much and are so authoritarian that their desired solution to the mentally ill homeless problem is to kill them all.
At this point SneerClub might as well just shut down. TheMotte beclowns itself enough on a regular basis that outside mocking of this place is superfluous. There are some great contributors who rise above the mess, but a large part of this site is just /pol/ but with unnecessary verbosity.
Yep. That’s what people are saying. They are rooting to kill the mentally ill. Maybe the broader point is that mentally ill homeless people often cause trouble so sooner or later something like this will happen and reordering our society to cater to them is not smart.
That is, in fact, exactly what people are saying:
If they wanted to say "this is a tragic but inevitable consequence of our society's failures with respect to public safety and mental health" they could do that without also adding "Neely was human garbage, I'm glad he's dead, and we should do this more often." The fact that they did add that is evidence that yes, 'kill the undesirables' is within their range of acceptable policy.
What proportion of the Motte's posters does this sentiment encompass? Couldn't say - I expect most motte posters are smart enough to figure out that if you are directly asked "Do you support exterminating the homeless" the correct answer is "no" even if they privately feel different. But it's clearly a sentiment that they are happy to express in adjacent conversations and which garners largely positive internet points on this forum.
As a sort of aside, I saved a passage from the old place onto my notes without saving the author.
Although to me it’s highly exaggerated and extraordinarily blunt, it still really encapsulates the core of how I feel about this. It’s obviously a response so some context is missing but if anyone knows the author or can provide this missing context that would be cool.
From Dec 2020
“But utilitarian with regard to whom? The whole problem with utilitarianism is the presence of so-called "utility monsters", and homelessness presents a real world example. A small minority of the population wants to use drugs and shit in the street while slowly dying of medieval diseases. But every tiny bit of aid just pleases them so so much that utility calculus DEMANDS we all pay an 80% marginal tax rate to pay incompetent government contractors to build $500k hovels for these people.
Utilitarianism falls flat because each person's measure of utility is internal to their mind and not comparable to anyone else's. It's a moral system that privileges incompetent, clueless and greedy people at the expense of unassuming, conscientious people.
If it were up to me, I'd make it publicly known that the cops aren't going to lift a finger to aid anyone who hasn't paid at least $300 into the treasury this year. So the grocery stores and homeowners could just bayonet them (no reason to waste the ¢45 and noise of a bullet) and the disruptive homeless would retreat to rural areas and OD in the woods where we don't have to pay to bury them. The down on their luck homeless would stay in a shelter for a while and get back on their feet, and the town could maybe not be filled with human shit for ten minutes.
But notice how this policy isn't based on retribution. I don't hate the people being discussed here. I feel vaguely sorry for and disgusted by them. I am just aware that helping them ranges from expensive to impossible and I like holding on to my money without losing it all to taxes. Every dollar the county housing boondoggle gets is a dollar my children won't get, so bayonets it is. If the chronically homeless could somehow be profitably remediated, they would be my best friends.”
Quite right, if you pay for something you get more of it.
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