Once again, I'm not endorsing or condoning this, just trying to show you how they conceptualize their form of justice.
I often hear “Had a wife in kids in Baltimore, Jack. I went out for a ride and I never went back” from “Hungry Heart” by Bruce Springsteen in my head when I think about mid-life discontent. That and “Office Space”; it seems to be the rule that we experience it rather than the exception.
- Have a government who owns almost all the land, and provide subsidized housing to over 75% of the citizens.
- Provides universal healthcare, again subsidized through the government
- And forces quotas for all ethnicities to ensure everyone is equally represented everywhere.
So I guess we could try it Singapore's way, but Republicans keep saying it's a bad idea.
- Have extreme penalties for drug offenses.
- Have highly effective surveillance and law enforcement.
I guess we can all find what we want in Singapore: an effective police state winning the war on drugs, or an effective welfare state.
Maybe stop cherry picking the parts that you like and pretending like they're the parts that worked?
https://www.unodc.org/pdf/report_2000-09-21_1.pdf
https://www.unodc.org/pdf/trends2003_www_E.pdf
https://www.unodc.org/documents/wdr/WDR_2008/WDR_2008_eng_we...
Yes, this is not a hypothetical. Are you under the impression that people don't want to move there?
Do you feel that the Canadian government should be tortured and put to death for legalizing marijuana?
Do you feel the same for Singapore where smoking tobacco is legal?
To be clear, I'm 100% behind Singapore's drug laws. Not having to deal with psychotic methheads is my #1 thing about this place (compared with Australia).
But I do wonder if their laws would work elsewhere (i.e. some place that's not a tiny island with a culturally conservative population).
There is more to life than paying taxes, and people contribute to society in many ways that aren’t financial. I think “productive members” has the same phrasing problems. We need to make life better for members of society that contribute and benefit from it, for people that want to be a part of society, regardless of their ability to contribute back.
However, I believe a part of that contribution has to be in an objective, quantifiable way - which translates to taxes. The rights we consume from society are tangible and expensive. A city populated only by of poets would collapse of starvation after 12 hours…
That said, if a Society feels they need to foster a specific part of it (culture,social work, etc) they can enact tax breaks to reduce the financial load of those making that contribution.
But taxation comes first (as an obligation).
Raising children is the greatest, riskiest, and costliest contribution to the world most of us can make. It should be respected.
I didn't ask my ancestors to screw, thanks. I mean, good for them, I guess? But I wish people would stop insinuating that having children is the pinnacle of human achievement, when, in fact, it's actually the bare minimum. I wish they would realize that not everyone needs to have children (the math alone simply doesn't work out on a finite planet...), and I wish they wouldn't cast aspersions on those of us who choose to live the way we do. How about we go after the people who had kids but shouldn't have, instead?
This is a real question, not a rhetorical one, and its answer is subjective to your values and experience. If your answer is something akin to "I am indifferent to whether I exist or not" then your entire argument is logically sound. On the flip side if you attach value to what you have and are, then it logically follows that if you have the chance to "ask your ancestors to screw" - you would.
As for "casting aspersions" and "going after" - that's not what I am doing here. You do you. The more interesting question is - which should society value and which should someone emulate based on their own values. That again goes back to the question I asked. If a view is contingent on someone feeling "meh" about their own existence, it's not a very appealing perspective.
Why does that follow?
spoiler: if not your children, then someone else’s - the robots may not be sufficiently dexterous by that point.
it is fine to not want children. or to want them. to pretend either side is morally superior is rather foolish. practically speaking, you’re gonna need your diaper changed.
My wife volunteers pro-bono in a foundation that employs solely people with disabilities. They do work (according to their capacities), they get paid a wage, and they pay (little) taxes off it. And they are super proud that they can “pull their weight” and be equals in a society that tends to look down on them either as limited (usually from the right) or as “must-be-kept-cotton-balled” (usually from the left).
They want to be seen as people, which is what they are.
This keeps people with severe disabilities out of the workforce more than anything else.
I'd rather that than have someone lose healthcare because they saved $15k (1970 2k in today's money). Or worse, because Grandma left them an inheritance not knowing the impact that has on their heath coverage.
Severe disability does not go away after your bank account hits 2k.
Why the flamebait?
“Zing! dang! Thank you madam! Your money is on the dresser. See you in four years when is reflection time”
And not paying taxed can be because they have no job and make no money, or are so rich as to be able to write off all their income because they think they don’t owe anyone anything.
Stay at home parents would fall into this category. I think the unit is "family" if it's a family, and not "person".
Exactly. You don't pay taxes to pay taxes, you pay taxes for the collective benefits you get out of it. Paying taxes and not getting the benefits of safe cities, clean roads, parks, and all the other things that government does, then you are living life only to pay taxes.
You have to pay taxes. In fact, you have to pay taxes even if you're living in another country for multiple years.
These claims are ridiculous and border delusional.
You can leave the country and stop paying taxes, you just can’t come back.
You can be a nomad in the woods and not earn income, and you’ve essentially avoided most taxes unless you own the woods. You’d pay taxes on your woodland because the government protects it from forest fires, criminals entering, war, etc. As a nomad in the woods you’re still eligible for food stamps, you’re still eligible for Medicare and if you go to the hospital and can’t pay, the government protects you from being turned away.
Again, you’re part of a society and you can’t opt out, even if you don’t want to pay.
No, you can't. You have to renounce your US Citizenship to stop paying taxes in the US, no matter where you live. Renouncing requires acquiring citizenship in a new country, which isn't that easy: just ask anyone who's tried to naturalize in the US.
>Again, you’re part of a society and you can’t opt out, even if you don’t want to pay.
You're not really a part of the society if you don't live there, but if you're a US Citizen, you're still required to pay both federal and state taxes, even if you've never lived in the US in the first place.
In any case, I've never renounced a citizenship, but I can imagine countries making it hard. Is the process itself difficult, are there requirements other than the international law one of not being stateless?
You can vote not to though.
The argument of getting something for the taxes you pay is made because people can vote away taxes.
But yes, it's a troubling argument, because once people start thinking that way they feel like they're owed something. Large swaths of the elderly and the infirm may not be paying taxes but are absolutely owed things that often cost money just because they're a fellow citizen and a member of our society.
What are they, and can I do them instead of paying taxes? Because paying taxes soaks up double digit percentages of my productive time and I reckon I could add a lot more value to society if I had alternatives.
The ones who are doing better have to actively make the decision every day to be "a productive member of society" and it's extremely difficult for them. Even though they may have been prone to addiction before their medications, this is still something that happened to them.
A lot of people like this exist though. Toronto has a huge problem where the homeless refuse to go to shelters because they don't want to be told they can't use drugs. So they make the conscious decision to opt out of society and stay on the street.
There is no way to get through to people like this. Even if they had their own place they'd probably OD before the end of the week with all their extra comfort and freedom they have. Some people can't be helped and that needs to be something people are more willing to accept.
As for your friends, popping opioids like candy is a poor decision even if your doctor is prescribing it to you. Intelligent, educated, and capable adults should be held accountable for their own decisions when they turn out to be poor decisions. The opioid crisis is not society's fault.
Rarely I'll state something so strongly - this is true at face value but in the context you meant it is so fundamentally wrong it borders insanity.
The entire reason we have regulation and reputation-based systems in place (like diplomas from accredited universities, or the bar, etc.) is to allow the individual to delegate decisions to specialists. That is why practicing medicine without appropriate training is a crime (in most/all countries I know of).
Do you also want me to get out of my car and do some quick analysis of the structural integrity of every bridge I'm going to cross? Or are you goin to blame me if the bridge collapses and kills me?
Again, back to the case at hand - the whole purpose of having medical professionals is to follow their advice.
If they are prescribing you poison the solution is obviously to prosecute them through the judicial system, not undoying every trust-based system that makes complex professions in society even remotely possible/functional
This thread is about the extreme opposite of this, though. Taking from net contributors and using that money to create a place that's to their extreme detriment, because incredibly it's a votewinner, is the current situation.
Maybe pathological addicts are also productive in some ways that we don’t appreciate? In any case: saying that addicts are “non-productive” does not imply that stay at home moms, poor artists, or retirees are unproductive (etc. etc.).
Noble savages?
Loosely, addiction can be useful-- the thrill seekers among us are our pioneers. Everest wasn't Hillary's first climb, it was his tallest.
Think about the implications of that though. Pioneers die...a lot. As a group the addict class are probably meant to be sacrificial.
Pathological addiction subverts that. It's a problem in that they risk their lives for no real benefit to anyone.
This seems like a strange conception of addiction, unless we aren't seriously comparing mountain climbing with heroin. If we are then I wonder what utility the classification of addiction is actually supposed to provide to us.
It seems possible to both agree with the idea that it's bad if a city's downtown is full of homeless drug addicts while disagreeing with the idea of trying to sort city residents into worthy and not worthy.
Why normalize this? The more permissive you get the less pressure there is on fixing it. I’m not saying jail like a thief or murderer would get, but why not make the decision for someone unable to do it themselves and enforce recovery?
- cities are economic engines
- economic engines generate both wealth and tax revenue
- if you don't care for the economic engine, you lose your tax revenue
Everything the government does is built upon tax revenue.
It's an honest question. Social programs cost money, and the money comes from taxes.
I am generally in favor of drugs being legalized and drug addiction being treated as a healthcare policy concern instead of a criminal concern. But the experiment seems to fail more often than not.
It may not make life for the addicts better, but it won't make life for them much worse either
Think about why homeless people go to downtown centers of big cities: community, institutional support nearby, income, tradition, and (relative) safety from police. How would you turn that back? What do you do if someone walks from your camp back to downtown?
I totally understand your frustration, but our failure so far should lead us to examine the obvious structural issues at fault here, and not abandon our fellow man and give in to the more basic instincts to push them away
My guess is you don't. Maybe it's easier for the people with money to go elsewhere than it is for the homeless. So, you get WFH, area small businesses shutting down, less of the casual visitors.
Tbh Portland didn’t really try to solve homelessness/poverty. Because it knows it can’t, at the city/county level. I mean, what would that even look like? The city taxes alone paying for a huge swath of free housing, at a time when middle class workers can barely afford to live here?
We need to come together as a country and civilization to solve this problem.
based on absolutely nothing other than platitudes
It's absolutely easy. There is no faster way to kill a city. Drive away the people with money and businesses die, tax revenue plummets and it turns into an irrelevant backwater.
All this stuff costs money. It's always like this, "somebody" gotta go out there and solve these difficult problems. Nobody actually wants to be that somebody though. No one wants to step up and pay for it. If you try to make them pay, they leave.
The poor in the US might be less likely to starve now than they were in 1933, but I really think the narrative that the US has been “solving” anything about poverty to be incredibly inaccurate. Some indicators (obviously an impossible point to prove either way):
Poverty is the 4th greatest cause of U.S. deaths - https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2023/04/17/poverty-4th-greates...
Deaths of Despair are up - https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/republicans/2019...
For most U.S. workers, real wages have barely budged in decades - https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/08/07/for-most-...
58% of Americans have no savings - https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/11/58percent-of-americans-are-l...
And last but not least: this article ;)
Edit: WAY more importantly I thought about this claim more and maybe I’m giving it too much credit. Are you saying that the people in the Great Depression just didn’t have a good enough work ethic, but now we’ve scared people into having a good work ethic? Cause I don’t think that lines up with my experience in our society or knowledge of our history at all. IMO
The issue isn't fundamentally structural. It's personal. There's no structure that I'm aware of that gets people to take more and more debilitating drugs, other than a lack of structure on stopping the drugs entering the country.
I know it’s tempting to assume everyone else is just morally bankrupt and hedonistic because they’re flawed, but I implore you to be more empathetic to their situation. I PROMISE you, homelessness is not fun, it does not feel good in any way, and no one in their right mind would ever “choose” to “take more and more drugs” knowing that was the endpoint.
This is not a structure. It's a situation.
> I know it’s tempting to assume everyone else is just morally bankrupt and hedonistic because they’re flawed
No - the only assumption is yours you're making here. No one is saying that.
> no one in their right mind would ever “choose” to “take more and more drugs” knowing that was the endpoint
No one said they would.
This is not a structure. It's a situation.
Otherwise sorry I misinterpreted you —- guess I’ll spend more time reading next time!
I suspect in a few decades forced rehab will become the norm, once you start smoking crack or shooting up in the street. It's pretty obvious for anyone with eyes that at a certain point, homelessness, mental health issues and most importantly drug addiction cannot be covered by "individual freedom" anymore if you want to have a working society.
Of course, having police beat up and arrest or otherwise forcefully move addicts from one place to another or into the prison industrial complex is not likely to work.
Rather hard examples of this that I've seen have been locking someone up in the psychiatric ward to get them detoxing. Or I have a friend who is a Vietnam vet, who got addicted to heroin whilst there. He ended up getting injured and was in a full body cast for a bit. The doctor in charge of him decided it was a good time to get him sober, so he spent a couple agonising weeks in a full body cast suffering through heroin withdrawal, and he's been clean since.
When they get out they don't have a family or job or support system to go back to. They won't seek drugs to ease those pains again?
I was clarifying the meaning of the previous comments.
FWIW, I did actually get locked up in a psych ward once, for reasons involving drug abuse, and while it was unpleasant, it probably did do me some good, although I did have a family and support system to go back to.
Furthermore, I'd like to point out that forcing someone to sober up does not mean that you don't help them in other ways, like providing them with a home and assigning someone to help them.
I think it's possible that just giving someone a home and a case worker if they're in the middle of an opiate addiction will not help them find a happy place in the world, and as such, supplementing such aid by using a bit of coercive force to help them kick some bad habits may, in the long run, leave them happier than otherwise.
finally, I apologise if I'm being too sensitive here, but perhaps you could make a slight effort to be a little nicer when conversating, honestly I did find your comment a bit hurtful.
So, make them somebody else's problem? Great plan. :|
People were getting ratfucked online for saying "I don't like watching people shit all over the sidewalk" - so you know what? They moved! Maybe out of Portland, maybe politically, but pretending that smoking fentanyl on the MAX is good and normal is just totally insane.