Res Ipsa wrote:We really need to be tough on drugs? We’ve been at war with drugs for what, 30 years. As a result, we have something like the second highest rate of incarceration of any country in the world. It’s a bankrupt strategy, and you want to double down on it. It’s not like we don’t have examples of strategies that have worked much better. See, e.g., Portugal for one example.
What is their solution, Res Ipsa?
Lou Midgley 08/20/2020: "...meat wad," and "cockroach" are pithy descriptions of human beings used by gemli? They were not fashioned by Professor Peterson.
LM 11/23/2018: one can explain away the soul of human beings...as...a Meat Unit, to use Professor Peterson's clever derogatory description of gemli's ideology.
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:Fair enough, Analytics. The short version is a change of building ordinances to allow microapartments to be built. I'd have on-site mental health services for tenants, to include drug and alcohol rehab, workforce transition, a medical clinic, and security. I'd have a public-private partnership so builders get a guaranteed long-term ROI on their investment. I'd probably have housing divided up by gender for security, and possibly further divided up for vets so the VA could partner with us.
- Doc
You racist, authoritarian, anti-Libertarian nerfherder!
Seriously, is the current issue that building ordinances disallow microapartments, or is the issue that nobody wants to build them because expensive buildings are more profitable?
It’s relatively easy to agree that only Homo sapiens can speak about things that don’t really exist, and believe six impossible things before breakfast. You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven.
Res Ipsa wrote:We really need to be tough on drugs? We’ve been at war with drugs for what, 30 years. As a result, we have something like the second highest rate of incarceration of any country in the world. It’s a bankrupt strategy, and you want to double down on it. It’s not like we don’t have examples of strategies that have worked much better. See, e.g., Portugal for one example.
What is their solution, Res Ipsa?
When talking about drugs we need to be clear that they aren't all the same. Marijuana is not a gateway drug. LSD isn't the least bit addictive. Your life will get a lot more screwed up if you become addicted to prescription pain medication than if you like cocaine.
Personally, I'm not opposed to "getting tough" on drugs, but the toughness needs to happen in an intelligent way that addresses the actual issues. The most dangerous gateway drugs are prescritpion pain medications. If we are going to get tough, let's focus our tougness there. Make Oxycodone and such illegal instead of something prescribed by respectable doctors.
Free market economics has given us a pharmaceutical industry that is making billions off of drugs that are addictive. They have zero incentive to invent painkillers that aren't addictive. If we are willing to spend big money getting tough, let's start here.
It’s relatively easy to agree that only Homo sapiens can speak about things that don’t really exist, and believe six impossible things before breakfast. You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven.
Res Ipsa wrote:We really need to be tough on drugs? We’ve been at war with drugs for what, 30 years. As a result, we have something like the second highest rate of incarceration of any country in the world. It’s a bankrupt strategy, and you want to double down on it. It’s not like we don’t have examples of strategies that have worked much better. See, e.g., Portugal for one example.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:Fair enough, Analytics. The short version is a change of building ordinances to allow microapartments to be built. I'd have on-site mental health services for tenants, to include drug and alcohol rehab, workforce transition, a medical clinic, and security. I'd have a public-private partnership so builders get a guaranteed long-term ROI on their investment. I'd probably have housing divided up by gender for security, and possibly further divided up for vets so the VA could partner with us.
- Doc
I don’t know if it’s radical or if it’s centrist, but it is pragmatic and aligns with much of the published literature. Is this similar to what Salt Lake has been doing?
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
Markk wrote:\ There is no complete answer, but there will come a time for tough love, something will have to give...maybe a real life "escape for LA."
Drugs by and afar are a real problem that can lessen the problem...we really need to be tough on them in my opinion...this libertarian BS about making them legal...well, how is that working? Lets give them more needles, and make pot legal so the youth can grow up smoking legal pot and then take the next step.
When you build the cabin I will join you, I'll pitch a tent next to it, like SG wrote stock is high for the tent buisness.
You would think we were Portugal with the "how is that working?" line. The United States has an incredibly draconian war on drugs going on and that's been true for decades. It's not a libertarian utopia of legalized drug use. There is little evidence that legalization increases drug use rates as you might expect and some equivocal evidence that it might even paradoxically decrease it as was seen in Portugal. The idea that marijuana acts as a "gateway" drug is largely a myth. Ironically, there is a drug that is known to be a significant gateway drug. We call it alcohol. It disinhibits people and causes them to be more likely to make poor drug use choices. It's also a much more potent contributor to homelessness than marijuana is. The idea that marijuana is a significant contributor at all to homelessness deserves a raised eyebrow and meanwhile alcoholism is one of the main causes of why people are homeless.
But, by far the most important point is this reasoning completely neglects the amount of harm the drug war itself causes both in terms of black market associated crime and in how incarceration affects people and the surrounding community. It also is indirectly responsible for harms such erosion of civil rights in the US and foreign policy blunders. You could triple the homeless rate and that wouldn't touch the harms caused by the drug war itself. If you were to try and solve homelessness by targeting legalized alcohol use, you'd almost certainly cause more serious problems than what alcohol-related homelessness is.
This sounds like you are telling us it is necessary to burn the village to the ground to save it.
The idea that marijuana is a significant contributor at all to homelessness deserves a raised eyebrow and meanwhile alcoholism is one of the main causes of why people are homeless.
So since we can't ban alcohol we can't ban marijuana either? Is that what you're getting at? Just work a little more overtime and pony up the cash for the expensive problems people choose to create for themselves. Sounds fair to me.
And when the confederates saw Jackson standing fearless as a stone wall the army of Northern Virginia took courage and drove the federal army off their land.
Analytics wrote: You racist, authoritarian, anti-Libertarian nerfherder!
Seriously, is the current issue that building ordinances disallow microapartments, or is the issue that nobody wants to build them because expensive buildings are more profitable?
Yes and yes. And money. And public will. It's a mess, and I just don't think it'll get fixed because it's more important to have the #1 military in the world than to build affordable housing for the poor and indigent.
- Doc
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
ajax18 wrote:So since we can't ban alcohol we can't ban marijuana either? Is that what you're getting at? Just work a little more overtime and pony up the cash for the expensive problems people choose to create for themselves. Sounds fair to me.
Banning either creates more expensive problems for you than not doing so is my main point, but in the line you are quoting, my point is that he's talking about the wrong substance if he's trying to address causes of homelessness.
There's two ends to addressing homelessness. There's trying to address the root causes before they cause people to be without a home and then there's trying to get resources to people who currently do not have a home to get them to the point that they are as independently self-sufficient as they are able to be.
When you say something like, "we need more mental health resources" that both means mental health professionals who can work with people who are homeless to provide treatment, but it also means people having access to mental health care so things don't get so out of hand that they become homeless in the first place.
Or take domestic violence directed at women. Yes, having professionals and sheltered environments women can access that specialize in domestic violence issues and the ability to help women reintegrate in the community is very helpful for addressing homelessness. But also, there's lots of things society can do or not do that is going to affect the risk that a woman finds herself with a choice between continued abuse and homelessness in the first place.
In general, trying to stop a problem before it starts is usually the cheaper route. Happily, what's cheaper in that case is also what allows people to live better lives.