You probably still won't get it, but replace "dog" with "kid" or "friend" and say that sentence again. That might give you a sense of how attached a lot of people are to their dogs.
I'm open to giving someone free housing if they aren't on drugs. I just can't wrap my head around why we should reward people with free housing for being drug addicts.
I have lots of sympathy for the drug-free homeless community. I think the drug addicted should be put in treatment programs or charged for possession of these drugs so that they can be treated in prison. I'm angry that we allow people to smoke fentanyl out in the open in SF. It's bad for everyone including those who are addicted.
> I'm open to giving someone free housing if they aren't on drugs
Sobriety is not a condition of housing. Many housed people drink and do drugs and don't get kicked out of their apartments for it. Why should we apply a harsher standard to our most vulnerable population?
You’re welcome to do whatever you want at your own expense.
If you can’t function to a degree where society needs to clothe you, feed you and house you; it should come with strings attached. Resources are finite and “the vulnerable population” isn’t entitled to everyone’s else labor.
My point is simply that policy should be based on what is effective and humane. Keeping people housed only based on the contingency of their sobriety is neither. Under no circumstances is it better for someone to be unhoused than housed. Housing should be a human right, full stop.
The thing is: How do we encourage or enforce good behavior? At what point do we insist that an individual try not to be a burden, and to try to be a decent participant in society? That could be as little as "don't be a public nuisance and help around the housing complex once or twice a week".
If there is no standard for behavior or "giving back" to earn one's keep, bad actors will bring everyone down.
The assumption is that drugs perpetuate the illness/uselessness of the homeless. If you have a home and can manage to afford it on your own, you get the privilege of drug consumption (within the law). If it is causing you to be unhoused or unhinged and the rest of the community is putting money into you having a place to sleep, it seems reasonable to impose some standards of behavior.
The drugs I'm talking about are illegal. Is it common to be a fentanyl addict that pays rent? Maybe but I doubt it. As a society we should do more to stop the opiod crisis. Why do we tolerate people smoking fentanyl on the bart or on our public sidewalks?
Because they're paying for it? If society is paying for your housing you need to follow societies rules. Giving addicts free housing isn't humane. It's enabling their addiction.
A lot of homeless people, perhaps the majority, use drugs as a consequence of not having a place to live.
Think about it, it's obviously much easier to use escapist drugs when you live on the streets. Not only do you want to escape, you are also surrounded by drugs and other misery.
You are thinking about it the opposite way. In reality, you can't get people to stop using drugs while keeping them on the streets.
I think there needs to be some kind of sobriety requirement. Maybe put them through rehab, and then give them housing after they leave rehab.
I saw this tweet from the Y combinator ceo that says 25% of those in a permanent housing program in SF died. (I assume of overdose). Getting people housed shouldn’t be the priority, the priority is getting them drug free. https://twitter.com/garrytan/status/1659972231328583680?s=20
Just giving the homeless a moldy and bug infested tiny room without any additional help isn't going to help much. It's "housing first", not "housing only".
I don't think you understand addiction and rehab, frankly. Getting people to stop using drugs is quite easy, just keep them away from it for a while. You can send anyone to prison or rehab, and they'll stop using drugs for a while.
The hard part is getting people from restarting to use drugs once you let them free, and you can't even hope to do that successfully unless they are motivated themselves, which they won't be if they live on the street.
Do you know how effective rehab is for people who don’t go voluntarily?
The unfortunate reality of drug addiction is that even for people who want out it’s very hard. For people who don’t, it’s quite a lot harder. If there was a magic pill that cured addiction I think we might make different policy choices, but given that there isn’t I don’t see how your plan can really work.
There aren’t any good solutions to this problem. IMO we should enforce existing laws around the possession of illegal substances. These drugs are a total drain on society. What message are we sending when we allow people to smoke fentanyl on the bart with no consequences?
If they possess illegal drugs, why not prosecute them and put them in the prison system? It’s bad to have people smoking fentanyl on the sidewalks as if it’s a normal part of society.
As opposed to what? A great jawline or a minimum height level? If anything it's probably relatively mature at that age to even consider what your long term life trajectory would look like with someone.
I guess because they're complaining to the professor about it? Nice attempt to turn the table though, with social skills that subtle I bet you'd fit right with the bozos in this class.
Any sizable group of people where there is fun occurring, will inevitably have someone complain because they aren’t included. It’s impossible to please everyone.
It also can happen if there are actual problems too!
But without looking at the situation, good luck figuring it out.
"You don't get me Amanda, I'm stalking you because I just have so much respect for you. I'm one of the nice ones!"
"Well detective, I felt like we got off on the wrong foot because I kept a journal of her movements and social circle in a purely respectful manner, but she thought it was creepy. So then I thought, how much more respect can you show a woman than by carefully planning her murder and meticulously cleaning the scene and disposing of her body?"
Somewhat tangential to the main point of the article, but wasn't there some big news somewhat recently about sodium-ion batteries reaching "close-enough" parity with lithium-ion batteries for EVs? Did I get hopeful based on false pretenses?
I can't tell if you're trolling or not. What's so confusing about rational actors reacting rationally to a change in incentives? Do you think there's only one way for a policy to "fail miserably" or something? Once someone knows that they'll likely have to fire some number of their team whether they want to or not, of course they'll hire sacrificial lambs. It's not like the upper management that has that stupid of a policy is going to give two shits if some middle manager claims they missed their own performance expectations because of instability in their team.
And think about the corollary: how much additional effort would have to go into monitoring managers to make sure they weren't circumventing the "spirit" of the given bullshit metric? A company like that would resemble a dystopian regime.
I'm not trolling at all.
As i replied to the other comment, there are zero systems that can't be worked around.
There are zero good systems where bad action can be avoided without some form of accountability.
"how much additional effort would have to go into monitoring managers to make sure they weren't circumventing the "spirit" of the given bullshit metric?'
Zero - Everyone already knows when it is bullshit.
They all sit in a room, knowing someone else is saying bullshit, but avoid saying anything about it because they want to say bullshit too.
Rational actors do act rationally all the time - the system has to deal with that, and isn't here. That's the point - none of the bad behavior was dealt with.
It's rational to do lots of things. Kill your competitors in the drug game before they kill you, embezzle and rip people off who are vulnerable who can't fight back, etc. Rational is a silly bar, and definitely does not lead to viable systems. It has no moral component. It has no business component. It is only logic.
No system works if it doesn't hold people accountable, even if they are acting rational.
