7 ms·

One third of Canadians fine with prescribing assisted suicide for homelessness

24 points by rayrey 3y ago

throwawaysleep 3y ago
If someone wants to end their life over poverty, you preventing them is about making you feel better as "we don't want to be that kind of country" rather than them. It is not about their desires at all.
- NoPicklez 3y ago
  I disagree. If I see someone in poverty or homeless, I want them to live the same life I have been lucky to have. So my thoughts are how can I help lift them out of their situation, not put an end to them. Homelessness is terrible, but allowing people to kill themselves when falling on rough times is a terrible idea. It sweeps the problem under the carpet and tries to allow it to solve itself, in the worst way possible.
  - bramblerose 3y ago
    Yes, there are negative social impacts to assisted suicide in cases such as this. But the moral question here is: why do the societal impacts trump the personal pain and suffering? I don't want people to take their life because society made their future prospects bleak. But I certainly don't want to force them to keep living because it might improve society in the long term.
  - ramblerman 3y ago
    You are kind of making OPs point though. The little moral grandstand you describe when passing a homeless person does nothing for them. You abhorr the idea of someone in abject poverty wanting a way out so you hold up a utopic idea as to how things should be - but no solution to get there.
    - thanatos519 3y ago
      Plenty of solutions have been offered, but they all involve comprehensive systemic change, to which there is significant resistance from those taking advantage of the current arrangements.
      - gettodachoppa 3y ago
        None of the solutions ever presented (communism, UBI) are realistic, they're college student "let X pay for it" fantasy, where X cannot actually pay for it for more than a year or two before we're worse off than before. UBI? Immediate huge drop in economic input from working people who won't have to work anymore. And within a couple of years, not enough productive people left for UBI. Don't bother linking those studies on UBI boosting the economy, I've read them, and I think they're typical soft-science nonsense. I have a lifetime of observed experiences that tell me what happens when people don't have to make any effort to get by: from children, to friends, to animals, to entire populations like Kuwait (where anyone with a job is gifted $3000/month by the government on top of their salary. This resulted in the laziest, least competent people I have met, who just hire foreigners to do their jobs for them. It reminded me of Wall-E.) Communism? It has never and never will work. As soon as you remove private wealth, whoever is in charge becomes a perpetual dictator within months, since any objectors depend on him for their survival. Nearly instant dystopia. I'm really curious, is there ANY scenario where someone like yourself will demand that a homeless person become a productive citizen? Let's say you offer them magical housing and a magical job. They trash the house, don't go to work, and stay at home taking drugs. What then? Do you continue supporting them? Endless counseling? Let's say it doesn't work, no matter how patient you are, they refuse to work. Is there any breaking point where you are able to tell them "if you don't clean up and get to work, I'm not paying for your house and meals anymore"? Or are productive people expected to foot the bill for them forever, even in a fantasy scenario?
        orwin 3y ago
        You can remove physical capital inheritance, and distribute it across the entire population, it's not communism, it's not UBI, it remove the 'landlord' mentality from otherwise good/capable people. Also it allows removal of a lot of regulations (hence even right-wing ancap, Aren't-style, can support the idea), notably rent, by naturally pushing limited equity housing co-op (since your kids won't inherit your house directly), and freeing a lot of buildings that currently are under inheritance conflicts (I've heard 1/3 to 1/2 of Paris currently vacant houses). The redistribution should be enough to handle a lot of issues. Also it does nothing to social, cultural and symbolic inheritance, so rich heir will probably still be rich at the end of the day, but at least they would have to work for it.
  - throwawaysleep 3y ago
    But they do not live our comfortable lives and have few prospects for doing so. You are asking them to stick around suffering while either: 1. Waiting for a lottery ticket essentially to somehow get them rebooted. 2. Waiting for society to figure out a broader plan to deal with them. Sure, many solutions come out of think tanks or are proposed, but if they are not implemented, what use are they to these people? We can have all the great wishes we want for the homeless, but at present, we have nothing concrete to offer many of them. > It sweeps the problem under the carpet and tries to allow it to solve itself, in the worst way possible. It is currently at the point of on the carpet and largely ignored.
- h05sz487b 3y ago
  Taking choices away from poor people is a favorite pastime of some so called humanists.
  - gettodachoppa 3y ago
    This isn't a class thing. I would also be against encouraging a miserable billionaire to kill himself.
- xupybd 3y ago
  But look at it the other way. This normalizes suicide. It will increase the number of people that are temporarily in a bad way ending their lives. That is not a good outcome.
  - Llamamoe 3y ago
    I dislike the implicit assumption that being alive is a good thing.
    - xupybd 3y ago
      Wow, that's a radically different view than mine. Can you expand on your world view and your views on the value of life? It would be interesting to understand where you're coming from.
      - Llamamoe 3y ago
        I don't believe there is any value in being alive. What would it even be? As long as you exist, you need to keep sustaining yourself, taking care of yourself, and that requires incredible reserves of the ability to function. Ability that you can end up losing for any number of resson, potentially irreversibly. And once you can't take care of yourself, you just sink like a stone, except this ocean has no bottom. If you're lucky enough to be all of born into a wealthy country, healthy, into a functional family, to meet the right people, if all the stars align you might be able to live a decent life until you're old, but... what if they don't? As long as you exist, you're not safe from that eventuality. Above all, you lose nothing by being dead, as you're not there to experience it. But you gain the safety from suffering.
    - gettodachoppa 3y ago
      It is, and the only people who don't believe so were driven there by society and culture. Dial back the enlightened rationalism, put down the philosophy books, and try to live like every other animal does.
- theironhammer 3y ago
  It's more than that. They are suggesting to people that are homeless to take their own life who hadn't even considered it before. I know someone who this happened to. It's creepy.
codetrotter 3y ago
> Another 28 per cent pegged “homelessness” as an appropriate bar to qualify for MAID. > And 20 per cent of respondents were fine with MAID being handed out to anybody for any reason. In other words, one fifth of respondents agreed with the sentiment “medical assistance in dying should always be allowed, regardless of who requests it.” The headline is focusing on homelessness as reason for assisted suicide, but as we can see a lot of people think it should be available to everyone, for any reason. Which makes sense. If someone does not want to stay alive, why should they have to remain living?
- pocketarc 3y ago
  > If someone does not want to stay alive, why should they have to remain living? Indeed. It's quite surprising that someone can be 50 years old, perfectly capable of making their own decisions, and they're free to do whatever they want with their own life (eat until you're medically obese, smoke until your lungs turn black, get into an alcoholic coma and end up in the hospital, it's all legal), but we draw the line at ending it.
  - xupybd 3y ago
    Yes but the Canadian government has programs to address all of these things. https://obesitycanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/OC-2020-2025-Strategic-Plan_Final.pdf https://obesitycanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/OC-2020-... https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/publications/healthy-living/canada-tobacco-strategy.html https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/publications... https://www.ccsa.ca/reducing-alcohol-related-harm-canada-toward-culture-moderation https://www.ccsa.ca/reducing-alcohol-related-harm-canada-tow...
  - stareatgoats 3y ago
    Most people can end their own life whenever they chose. This is about the government providing an officially sanctioned process that involves medical professionals so that the process is painless and irrevocable. > It's quite surprising It is not surprising that this is controversial, since otherwise normal people can, and will, be coaxed into believing that they should let themselves be killed, just because they pose some inconvenience to their close ones or to society. Supporting such is obviously abhorrent to all who believe they do the right thing when they willingly lend support such "inconvenient people".
FreshStart 3y ago
There is a whole subspecies aka neuro divergent behavior out there adapted to heinous muder in bad times and bribed into good behavior with economic surplus. Once the situational loop goes over the top, all sorts of wild things crawl out of the woodwork. Including large parts of the population on the schizoid spectre under stress, ready to saw the bread factory into nuts and bolts, to satisfy some loop deformed instincts. The ideal human of the enlightenment era is dead for a while now, but that spectre of a interest rational being refuses to follow. Let's find out if our "new" social implants hold up under pressure.
- Paul-Craft 3y ago
  Can you restate your point more clearly? I think I understand what you're saying, but the way you've stated it is hard to parse, and I do want to make sure I'm receiving the intended message.
senectus1 3y ago
wtf. this is horrendous. Homelessness is very often FORCED on people out of shit political policies and outright naked greediness. I'm astounded that this number is being presented... I hope its not accurate.
UtopiaPunk 3y ago
Horrifying. Absolutely barbaric that we cannot house people, and that some more fortunate people would rather that the poor die. I'm not exactly sure where I stand on limiting an individual's choice to end their life. But we should care about why they feel life is not worth living. If there is a problem that could be solved, we should try to solve the problem. Bleak as hell.
- theironhammer 3y ago
  And the govt is bringing in over a million people a year. What does that do for access to housing? There's some really sick logic going on in Canadian corridors of power. I frankly find it creepy.
Simulacra 3y ago
This is bleak. Makes me think that one day we will have government sponsored "sleep houses" where people just go to die because they feel like it.
rambojohnson 3y ago
very bleak, even bleaker still are the sociopaths in these threads dismissing poverty or environmental conditions and just shrugging an okay on assisted suicide. truly disheartening and disgusting the fact that people like this exist. I question their possibly traumatic upbringing...

24 points by rayrey 3y ago

If someone wants to end their life over poverty, you preventing them is about making you feel better as "we don't want to be that kind of country" rather than them. It is not about their desires at all.

NoPicklez 3y ago
I disagree. If I see someone in poverty or homeless, I want them to live the same life I have been lucky to have. So my thoughts are how can I help lift them out of their situation, not put an end to them. Homelessness is terrible, but allowing people to kill themselves when falling on rough times is a terrible idea. It sweeps the problem under the carpet and tries to allow it to solve itself, in the worst way possible.
- bramblerose 3y ago
  Yes, there are negative social impacts to assisted suicide in cases such as this. But the moral question here is: why do the societal impacts trump the personal pain and suffering? I don't want people to take their life because society made their future prospects bleak. But I certainly don't want to force them to keep living because it might improve society in the long term.
- ramblerman 3y ago
  You are kind of making OPs point though. The little moral grandstand you describe when passing a homeless person does nothing for them. You abhorr the idea of someone in abject poverty wanting a way out so you hold up a utopic idea as to how things should be - but no solution to get there.
  - thanatos519 3y ago
    Plenty of solutions have been offered, but they all involve comprehensive systemic change, to which there is significant resistance from those taking advantage of the current arrangements.
    - gettodachoppa 3y ago
      None of the solutions ever presented (communism, UBI) are realistic, they're college student "let X pay for it" fantasy, where X cannot actually pay for it for more than a year or two before we're worse off than before. UBI? Immediate huge drop in economic input from working people who won't have to work anymore. And within a couple of years, not enough productive people left for UBI. Don't bother linking those studies on UBI boosting the economy, I've read them, and I think they're typical soft-science nonsense. I have a lifetime of observed experiences that tell me what happens when people don't have to make any effort to get by: from children, to friends, to animals, to entire populations like Kuwait (where anyone with a job is gifted $3000/month by the government on top of their salary. This resulted in the laziest, least competent people I have met, who just hire foreigners to do their jobs for them. It reminded me of Wall-E.) Communism? It has never and never will work. As soon as you remove private wealth, whoever is in charge becomes a perpetual dictator within months, since any objectors depend on him for their survival. Nearly instant dystopia. I'm really curious, is there ANY scenario where someone like yourself will demand that a homeless person become a productive citizen? Let's say you offer them magical housing and a magical job. They trash the house, don't go to work, and stay at home taking drugs. What then? Do you continue supporting them? Endless counseling? Let's say it doesn't work, no matter how patient you are, they refuse to work. Is there any breaking point where you are able to tell them "if you don't clean up and get to work, I'm not paying for your house and meals anymore"? Or are productive people expected to foot the bill for them forever, even in a fantasy scenario?
      - orwin 3y ago
        You can remove physical capital inheritance, and distribute it across the entire population, it's not communism, it's not UBI, it remove the 'landlord' mentality from otherwise good/capable people. Also it allows removal of a lot of regulations (hence even right-wing ancap, Aren't-style, can support the idea), notably rent, by naturally pushing limited equity housing co-op (since your kids won't inherit your house directly), and freeing a lot of buildings that currently are under inheritance conflicts (I've heard 1/3 to 1/2 of Paris currently vacant houses). The redistribution should be enough to handle a lot of issues. Also it does nothing to social, cultural and symbolic inheritance, so rich heir will probably still be rich at the end of the day, but at least they would have to work for it.
- throwawaysleep 3y ago
  But they do not live our comfortable lives and have few prospects for doing so. You are asking them to stick around suffering while either: 1. Waiting for a lottery ticket essentially to somehow get them rebooted. 2. Waiting for society to figure out a broader plan to deal with them. Sure, many solutions come out of think tanks or are proposed, but if they are not implemented, what use are they to these people? We can have all the great wishes we want for the homeless, but at present, we have nothing concrete to offer many of them. > It sweeps the problem under the carpet and tries to allow it to solve itself, in the worst way possible. It is currently at the point of on the carpet and largely ignored.
h05sz487b 3y ago
Taking choices away from poor people is a favorite pastime of some so called humanists.
- gettodachoppa 3y ago
  This isn't a class thing. I would also be against encouraging a miserable billionaire to kill himself.
xupybd 3y ago
But look at it the other way. This normalizes suicide. It will increase the number of people that are temporarily in a bad way ending their lives. That is not a good outcome.
- Llamamoe 3y ago
  I dislike the implicit assumption that being alive is a good thing.
  - xupybd 3y ago
    Wow, that's a radically different view than mine. Can you expand on your world view and your views on the value of life? It would be interesting to understand where you're coming from.
    - Llamamoe 3y ago
      I don't believe there is any value in being alive. What would it even be? As long as you exist, you need to keep sustaining yourself, taking care of yourself, and that requires incredible reserves of the ability to function. Ability that you can end up losing for any number of resson, potentially irreversibly. And once you can't take care of yourself, you just sink like a stone, except this ocean has no bottom. If you're lucky enough to be all of born into a wealthy country, healthy, into a functional family, to meet the right people, if all the stars align you might be able to live a decent life until you're old, but... what if they don't? As long as you exist, you're not safe from that eventuality. Above all, you lose nothing by being dead, as you're not there to experience it. But you gain the safety from suffering.
  - gettodachoppa 3y ago
    It is, and the only people who don't believe so were driven there by society and culture. Dial back the enlightened rationalism, put down the philosophy books, and try to live like every other animal does.
theironhammer 3y ago
It's more than that. They are suggesting to people that are homeless to take their own life who hadn't even considered it before. I know someone who this happened to. It's creepy.

codetrotter 3y ago

> Another 28 per cent pegged “homelessness” as an appropriate bar to qualify for MAID. > And 20 per cent of respondents were fine with MAID being handed out to anybody for any reason. In other words, one fifth of respondents agreed with the sentiment “medical assistance in dying should always be allowed, regardless of who requests it.” The headline is focusing on homelessness as reason for assisted suicide, but as we can see a lot of people think it should be available to everyone, for any reason. Which makes sense. If someone does not want to stay alive, why should they have to remain living?

pocketarc 3y ago
> If someone does not want to stay alive, why should they have to remain living? Indeed. It's quite surprising that someone can be 50 years old, perfectly capable of making their own decisions, and they're free to do whatever they want with their own life (eat until you're medically obese, smoke until your lungs turn black, get into an alcoholic coma and end up in the hospital, it's all legal), but we draw the line at ending it.
- xupybd 3y ago
  Yes but the Canadian government has programs to address all of these things. https://obesitycanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/OC-2020-2025-Strategic-Plan_Final.pdf https://obesitycanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/OC-2020-... https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/publications/healthy-living/canada-tobacco-strategy.html https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/publications... https://www.ccsa.ca/reducing-alcohol-related-harm-canada-toward-culture-moderation https://www.ccsa.ca/reducing-alcohol-related-harm-canada-tow...
- stareatgoats 3y ago
  Most people can end their own life whenever they chose. This is about the government providing an officially sanctioned process that involves medical professionals so that the process is painless and irrevocable. > It's quite surprising It is not surprising that this is controversial, since otherwise normal people can, and will, be coaxed into believing that they should let themselves be killed, just because they pose some inconvenience to their close ones or to society. Supporting such is obviously abhorrent to all who believe they do the right thing when they willingly lend support such "inconvenient people".

FreshStart 3y ago

There is a whole subspecies aka neuro divergent behavior out there adapted to heinous muder in bad times and bribed into good behavior with economic surplus. Once the situational loop goes over the top, all sorts of wild things crawl out of the woodwork. Including large parts of the population on the schizoid spectre under stress, ready to saw the bread factory into nuts and bolts, to satisfy some loop deformed instincts. The ideal human of the enlightenment era is dead for a while now, but that spectre of a interest rational being refuses to follow. Let's find out if our "new" social implants hold up under pressure.

Paul-Craft 3y ago
Can you restate your point more clearly? I think I understand what you're saying, but the way you've stated it is hard to parse, and I do want to make sure I'm receiving the intended message.

senectus1 3y ago

wtf. this is horrendous. Homelessness is very often FORCED on people out of shit political policies and outright naked greediness. I'm astounded that this number is being presented... I hope its not accurate.

UtopiaPunk 3y ago

Horrifying. Absolutely barbaric that we cannot house people, and that some more fortunate people would rather that the poor die. I'm not exactly sure where I stand on limiting an individual's choice to end their life. But we should care about why they feel life is not worth living. If there is a problem that could be solved, we should try to solve the problem. Bleak as hell.

theironhammer 3y ago
And the govt is bringing in over a million people a year. What does that do for access to housing? There's some really sick logic going on in Canadian corridors of power. I frankly find it creepy.

Simulacra 3y ago

This is bleak. Makes me think that one day we will have government sponsored "sleep houses" where people just go to die because they feel like it.

rambojohnson 3y ago

very bleak, even bleaker still are the sociopaths in these threads dismissing poverty or environmental conditions and just shrugging an okay on assisted suicide. truly disheartening and disgusting the fact that people like this exist. I question their possibly traumatic upbringing...