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Not really at all. In a sentence, we need a public infrastructure in place to care for the mentally ill that currently are forced to live on the streets of our

Not really at all. In a sentence, we need a public infrastructure in place to care for the mentally ill that currently are forced to live on the streets of our major cities. We need a way to pay the people that do the work, buy the buildings, keep the lights on. We call this infrastructure asylums, whatever you want to call it we need it desperately. If you want to stop things like what you cited from happening, lobby to have rules and regulations surrounding these institutions that get you what you want. But it doesn't mean we don't need the 90% good they will do for fear of the 10% bad they've done in the past

amadeuspagel 3y ago
Homeless shelters still exist too. It's not about what to call it, it's about whether people are forced to be there.
- coldtea 3y ago
  If homeless shelters are shitholes, neglected, understaffed, with indifferent and uncaring (or abusing) personnel, with no boundaries between the inmates, so that dangerous and unstable people make it hell for the more well adjusted homeless people living there without recourse, then many or most homeless are not going to want to stay there.
  - mlyle 3y ago
    And if you have strong boundaries and rules, there's a subpopulation that won't be allowed to stay there. (Most places have something in-between: policies that exclude a fair number of homeless but still leave enough behavioral issues to produce dangerous and unpleasant places). Of course, resourcing is part of the problem, but it also just can't be one-size fits all.
    - coldtea 3y ago
      It's not just about policies, it's about the layout, affordances, staffing, and so on. If you're set to be stuffed like canned sardines in small rooms, for example, there are fewer boundaries regardless of "policy".
      - mlyle 3y ago
        Yes; I mentioned resourcing.
  - amadeuspagel 3y ago
    There's no reason to expect asylums to be any better, the only difference is that people are forced to be there. If we see that someone in freezing weather prefers sleeping outside to sleeping in a homeless shelter, we're forced to reckon with the fact that homeless shelters must be terrible. If we lock this person up in an equally terrible asylum, we can ignore that.
- iancmceachern 3y ago
  It's not nearly so simple, because people aren't so simple. Yes, in some cases people should be forced to be there. In other cases no way. It's not about a specific thing like this. It's about setting aside the resources as a society to deal with the problem, pay experts, and then do what they say. It will take time, we will have to course correct along the way, but we have to first agree to take the journey together.
- iancmceachern 3y ago
  Asylum does not necessarily mean people are forced to be there. You can go out, advocate or hell, even be a part of running one, defining rhe rules. You can make an asylum that doesn't do that. I'm behind you, when are you starting? We have lots of people that need help, please hurry.
- kaitai 3y ago
  A shelter is generally a place that you go to overnight, where you can't keep your stuff, you have to be out early in the morning and come back at a strict time in the afternoon or evening. Very different than an asylum which provides 24 hour care. Also, there are many homeless families (shelters don't serve them that well), but when it comes to mental illness it's not usually a family thing.
  - amadeuspagel 3y ago
    > A shelter is generally a place that you go to overnight, where you can't keep your stuff, you have to be out early in the morning and come back at a strict time in the afternoon or evening. Of course you could imagine shelters where people are allowed to stay all day. Or housing first programs. The relevant difference is still whether people are forced to be there. > Also, there are many homeless families (shelters don't serve them that well), but when it comes to mental illness it's not usually a family thing. I'm not sure I understand this argument. Shelters don't serve families well because they can't stay there together, but this is not a problem for asylums, since asylums would only take those who are mentally ill — so families can't stay there together either, but that's not a problem in this case?
vba616 3y ago
>In a sentence, we need a public infrastructure in place to care for the mentally ill that currently are forced to live on the streets of our major cities. Your feelings, whatever they are, that lead you to your opinions, political principles, or ethics, are inherently immune to being invalidated by others. However, it makes me nervous to read comments such as yours, because my first reaction is that I can't tell what motivates you. Oftentimes deep feelings come from personal connections. If person A had a loved one who became homeless, and person B spent a week in a mental hospital, then those people might naturally have very different reactions to history or public policy debates. Neither is right or wrong, but either might learn from the other.
- deleted 3y ago
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- iancmceachern 3y ago
  I'm just repeating a commonly held belief, hence the upvotes. It's not as if I came up with this opinion out of thin air. >Your feelings, whatever they are, that lead you to your opinions, political principles, or ethics, are inherently immune to being invalidated by others. You don't know me. You can't possibly know something like this from one comment on the internet. It seems that others have said this to you in the past, and you are just parroting it to me. Best wishes, much love
  - vba616 3y ago
    >I'm just repeating a commonly held belief, hence the upvotes That possibility ("a commonly held belief") indeed is the reason I thought it worth engaging. I don't think I can see your upvotes, and discussing voting is against the guidelines. >It's not as if I came up with this opinion out of thin air. It would be unreasonable to assume you did. Yet that doesn't give me a hint where your opinions do come from, which is why I was - and am - asking. >You don't know me. That was the gist of my whole comment. It's unfortunate if the meaning of the whole thing was somehow inverted. >You can't possibly know something like this from one comment on the internet Something like what? You quoted a sentence that tried to communicate, in short, nobody can judge you. My entire comment was a disclaimer or admission that I know nothing about you nor can I judge you, and a solicitation of information. >It seems that others have said this to you in the past, and you are just parroting it to me Every word I wrote was original to me and expressed my thoughts at least for one particular moment. Do you think repeating beliefs that others hold is bad? I don't think it's good or bad in itself. By the repetition of an idea, you make it your own, and there is always a good reason for doing so...but that reason is unique to you and not made clear unless you choose. Asking about your reasons may seem intrusive, like asking if you want to open yourself to bullying from all and sundry, but I strongly believe in this principle: What convinces you of a thing is the best possible argument for convincing other people Constructive dialogue on anything cannot take place without some willingness to treat discussion as more than a tactical game. Not participating in constructive dialogue is everyone's right. The benefit to you, the carrot and not the stick, is that you might one day rightly convince someone, somewhere, in the world of something you believe in. Who knows, you could be the first person to convince anyone of anything on the internet in the last half century.
coldtea 3y ago
>In a sentence, we need a public infrastructure in place to care for the mentally ill that currently are forced to live on the streets of our major cities. Maybe that's putting the cart before the horse? How about what is needed is changing the conditions in society, workplace, and culture, so that fewer people end up "mentally ill", and those that are environmentally or genetically mentally ill do not get broken and marginalized and have their conditions gravely worsen, as do their "solutions" (from isolation, homelessness and living on the margins, to drug abuse, murders, or even mass shootings)? (Wow, downvotes. Fixing the cause as opposed to a band-aid is controversial. Well, I guess you get the society you deserve).
- yardstick 3y ago
  But there will still be some mentally ill people right? Not everything and everyone can cured. Just like we will always need jails.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    Yes. Far fewer, and with lesser societal impact and harm, for which existing infrastructure would be more than enough. Kind of how other first world countries (even nominally poorer ones) only have a tiny fraction of the problems with mentally-ill homelessness, crime, shootings, and so on.
  - simbolit 3y ago
    "Just like we will always need jails." citation needed
    - yardstick 3y ago
      Hitler.
      - wildrhythms 3y ago
        I get what you're saying but Hitler never went to jail; his forces were eliminated by the armies of multiple world superpowers working together. Imagine if such manpower and might were used to eradicate homelessness and hunger.
phatskat 3y ago
Or make healthcare accessible. Make housing accessible. Make food accessible. We can house feed and care for every person on the planet but we don’t because money. A made up concept that has no actual value outside of what we place on it. It’s arbitrary, as much as markets would want us to believe otherwise. As a species we choose to let them have that power, and with it they will kill us all (seriously)
- yardstick 3y ago
  As long as resources are limited there will be money or an equivalent mechanism for valuing and controlling those resources. Resources can be anything from land, food, knowledge, political power, etc.
  - phatskat 3y ago
    We are not short of housing or food. Artificial and market scarcity don’t make it so.
    - yardstick 3y ago
      Both of those require resources. Or are you going to grow your own trees and build a log cabin yourself? How much time will that take? Can you build it by yourself or will you need someone elses help? These are all resources that are not unlimited, and there are trade offs whatever way you allocate said resources. Edit: also power, water, wastewater, internet for a house are services run using limited resources
      - phatskat 3y ago
        First off there’s lots of housing or housable space - office buildings with tons of vacant rooms, Airbnb style properties that are just profit machines, hotels rarely at capacity, abandoned or unaffordable houses, vacation homes. There’s plenty of housing. Then let’s talk about restaurants and grocery stores and farms and factories where food is routinely thrown away daily. Can’t let employees take food home from the fast food joint because then they’ll just make extra food, so instead you end up tossing tons of perfectly good food. I’d help my dad pick up “old” food from grocery stores for a local shelter and they had to still only take some because the volume of usable food being tossed was too much for one shelter. There’s plenty of food. Power, water, waste, internet - if suddenly everyone who didn’t have these things did have them, do you think the infrastructure would crumble? If, for instance, every vacant property that has working power/water/sewage/internet was filled, would that be too much strain? Would the system that was planned for that capacity buckle under the weight of what it’s made to bear? I don’t buy it.
bill_joy_fanboy 3y ago
Where did you come up with the numbers 90% and 10%? Did you just make them up?
- iancmceachern 3y ago
  Yes. The point being that asylums had some aspects that we should improve, but it's pretty much unanimously agreed that they were better than what we're doing now
  - harimau777 3y ago
    It's not anything close to unanimously agreed upon that they are better than what we're doing now. We have entire advocacy organizations who are opposed to incarcerating the mentally ill.
    - iancmceachern 3y ago
      It's also not out of the blue, or as if I came up with it.
    - kelnos 3y ago
      Yes, and those organizations are dumb, and should be ignored. Any organization that somehow thinks that leaving mentally ill people on the streets to live in squalor and danger is better than institutionalization should not have a place in policy decisions. It is mind-boggling to me that this is at all debatable. Obviously we need to mandate levels of treatment and care, and constantly audit institutions to ensure conditions are maintained at a high level. But this is not even remotely an unsolved problem. We shouldn't let the failures of the past force us into failures today.
      - harimau777 3y ago
        That's a strawman argument. They are not arguing that it's good for people to live on the streets. What they are arguing is that the abuse associated with making it easier to incarcerate mentally ill people is too great of a risk.

amadeuspagel 3y ago

Homeless shelters still exist too. It's not about what to call it, it's about whether people are forced to be there.

coldtea 3y ago
If homeless shelters are shitholes, neglected, understaffed, with indifferent and uncaring (or abusing) personnel, with no boundaries between the inmates, so that dangerous and unstable people make it hell for the more well adjusted homeless people living there without recourse, then many or most homeless are not going to want to stay there.
- mlyle 3y ago
  And if you have strong boundaries and rules, there's a subpopulation that won't be allowed to stay there. (Most places have something in-between: policies that exclude a fair number of homeless but still leave enough behavioral issues to produce dangerous and unpleasant places). Of course, resourcing is part of the problem, but it also just can't be one-size fits all.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    It's not just about policies, it's about the layout, affordances, staffing, and so on. If you're set to be stuffed like canned sardines in small rooms, for example, there are fewer boundaries regardless of "policy".
    - mlyle 3y ago
      Yes; I mentioned resourcing.
- amadeuspagel 3y ago
  There's no reason to expect asylums to be any better, the only difference is that people are forced to be there. If we see that someone in freezing weather prefers sleeping outside to sleeping in a homeless shelter, we're forced to reckon with the fact that homeless shelters must be terrible. If we lock this person up in an equally terrible asylum, we can ignore that.
iancmceachern 3y ago
It's not nearly so simple, because people aren't so simple. Yes, in some cases people should be forced to be there. In other cases no way. It's not about a specific thing like this. It's about setting aside the resources as a society to deal with the problem, pay experts, and then do what they say. It will take time, we will have to course correct along the way, but we have to first agree to take the journey together.
iancmceachern 3y ago
Asylum does not necessarily mean people are forced to be there. You can go out, advocate or hell, even be a part of running one, defining rhe rules. You can make an asylum that doesn't do that. I'm behind you, when are you starting? We have lots of people that need help, please hurry.
kaitai 3y ago
A shelter is generally a place that you go to overnight, where you can't keep your stuff, you have to be out early in the morning and come back at a strict time in the afternoon or evening. Very different than an asylum which provides 24 hour care. Also, there are many homeless families (shelters don't serve them that well), but when it comes to mental illness it's not usually a family thing.
- amadeuspagel 3y ago
  > A shelter is generally a place that you go to overnight, where you can't keep your stuff, you have to be out early in the morning and come back at a strict time in the afternoon or evening. Of course you could imagine shelters where people are allowed to stay all day. Or housing first programs. The relevant difference is still whether people are forced to be there. > Also, there are many homeless families (shelters don't serve them that well), but when it comes to mental illness it's not usually a family thing. I'm not sure I understand this argument. Shelters don't serve families well because they can't stay there together, but this is not a problem for asylums, since asylums would only take those who are mentally ill — so families can't stay there together either, but that's not a problem in this case?

vba616 3y ago

>In a sentence, we need a public infrastructure in place to care for the mentally ill that currently are forced to live on the streets of our major cities. Your feelings, whatever they are, that lead you to your opinions, political principles, or ethics, are inherently immune to being invalidated by others. However, it makes me nervous to read comments such as yours, because my first reaction is that I can't tell what motivates you. Oftentimes deep feelings come from personal connections. If person A had a loved one who became homeless, and person B spent a week in a mental hospital, then those people might naturally have very different reactions to history or public policy debates. Neither is right or wrong, but either might learn from the other.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
iancmceachern 3y ago
I'm just repeating a commonly held belief, hence the upvotes. It's not as if I came up with this opinion out of thin air. >Your feelings, whatever they are, that lead you to your opinions, political principles, or ethics, are inherently immune to being invalidated by others. You don't know me. You can't possibly know something like this from one comment on the internet. It seems that others have said this to you in the past, and you are just parroting it to me. Best wishes, much love
- vba616 3y ago
  >I'm just repeating a commonly held belief, hence the upvotes That possibility ("a commonly held belief") indeed is the reason I thought it worth engaging. I don't think I can see your upvotes, and discussing voting is against the guidelines. >It's not as if I came up with this opinion out of thin air. It would be unreasonable to assume you did. Yet that doesn't give me a hint where your opinions do come from, which is why I was - and am - asking. >You don't know me. That was the gist of my whole comment. It's unfortunate if the meaning of the whole thing was somehow inverted. >You can't possibly know something like this from one comment on the internet Something like what? You quoted a sentence that tried to communicate, in short, nobody can judge you. My entire comment was a disclaimer or admission that I know nothing about you nor can I judge you, and a solicitation of information. >It seems that others have said this to you in the past, and you are just parroting it to me Every word I wrote was original to me and expressed my thoughts at least for one particular moment. Do you think repeating beliefs that others hold is bad? I don't think it's good or bad in itself. By the repetition of an idea, you make it your own, and there is always a good reason for doing so...but that reason is unique to you and not made clear unless you choose. Asking about your reasons may seem intrusive, like asking if you want to open yourself to bullying from all and sundry, but I strongly believe in this principle: What convinces you of a thing is the best possible argument for convincing other people Constructive dialogue on anything cannot take place without some willingness to treat discussion as more than a tactical game. Not participating in constructive dialogue is everyone's right. The benefit to you, the carrot and not the stick, is that you might one day rightly convince someone, somewhere, in the world of something you believe in. Who knows, you could be the first person to convince anyone of anything on the internet in the last half century.

coldtea 3y ago

>In a sentence, we need a public infrastructure in place to care for the mentally ill that currently are forced to live on the streets of our major cities. Maybe that's putting the cart before the horse? How about what is needed is changing the conditions in society, workplace, and culture, so that fewer people end up "mentally ill", and those that are environmentally or genetically mentally ill do not get broken and marginalized and have their conditions gravely worsen, as do their "solutions" (from isolation, homelessness and living on the margins, to drug abuse, murders, or even mass shootings)? (Wow, downvotes. Fixing the cause as opposed to a band-aid is controversial. Well, I guess you get the society you deserve).

yardstick 3y ago
But there will still be some mentally ill people right? Not everything and everyone can cured. Just like we will always need jails.
- coldtea 3y ago
  Yes. Far fewer, and with lesser societal impact and harm, for which existing infrastructure would be more than enough. Kind of how other first world countries (even nominally poorer ones) only have a tiny fraction of the problems with mentally-ill homelessness, crime, shootings, and so on.
- simbolit 3y ago
  "Just like we will always need jails." citation needed
  - yardstick 3y ago
    Hitler.
    - wildrhythms 3y ago
      I get what you're saying but Hitler never went to jail; his forces were eliminated by the armies of multiple world superpowers working together. Imagine if such manpower and might were used to eradicate homelessness and hunger.

phatskat 3y ago

Or make healthcare accessible. Make housing accessible. Make food accessible. We can house feed and care for every person on the planet but we don’t because money. A made up concept that has no actual value outside of what we place on it. It’s arbitrary, as much as markets would want us to believe otherwise. As a species we choose to let them have that power, and with it they will kill us all (seriously)

yardstick 3y ago
As long as resources are limited there will be money or an equivalent mechanism for valuing and controlling those resources. Resources can be anything from land, food, knowledge, political power, etc.
- phatskat 3y ago
  We are not short of housing or food. Artificial and market scarcity don’t make it so.
  - yardstick 3y ago
    Both of those require resources. Or are you going to grow your own trees and build a log cabin yourself? How much time will that take? Can you build it by yourself or will you need someone elses help? These are all resources that are not unlimited, and there are trade offs whatever way you allocate said resources. Edit: also power, water, wastewater, internet for a house are services run using limited resources
    - phatskat 3y ago
      First off there’s lots of housing or housable space - office buildings with tons of vacant rooms, Airbnb style properties that are just profit machines, hotels rarely at capacity, abandoned or unaffordable houses, vacation homes. There’s plenty of housing. Then let’s talk about restaurants and grocery stores and farms and factories where food is routinely thrown away daily. Can’t let employees take food home from the fast food joint because then they’ll just make extra food, so instead you end up tossing tons of perfectly good food. I’d help my dad pick up “old” food from grocery stores for a local shelter and they had to still only take some because the volume of usable food being tossed was too much for one shelter. There’s plenty of food. Power, water, waste, internet - if suddenly everyone who didn’t have these things did have them, do you think the infrastructure would crumble? If, for instance, every vacant property that has working power/water/sewage/internet was filled, would that be too much strain? Would the system that was planned for that capacity buckle under the weight of what it’s made to bear? I don’t buy it.

bill_joy_fanboy 3y ago

Where did you come up with the numbers 90% and 10%? Did you just make them up?

iancmceachern 3y ago
Yes. The point being that asylums had some aspects that we should improve, but it's pretty much unanimously agreed that they were better than what we're doing now
- harimau777 3y ago
  It's not anything close to unanimously agreed upon that they are better than what we're doing now. We have entire advocacy organizations who are opposed to incarcerating the mentally ill.
  - iancmceachern 3y ago
    It's also not out of the blue, or as if I came up with it.
  - kelnos 3y ago
    Yes, and those organizations are dumb, and should be ignored. Any organization that somehow thinks that leaving mentally ill people on the streets to live in squalor and danger is better than institutionalization should not have a place in policy decisions. It is mind-boggling to me that this is at all debatable. Obviously we need to mandate levels of treatment and care, and constantly audit institutions to ensure conditions are maintained at a high level. But this is not even remotely an unsolved problem. We shouldn't let the failures of the past force us into failures today.
    - harimau777 3y ago
      That's a strawman argument. They are not arguing that it's good for people to live on the streets. What they are arguing is that the abuse associated with making it easier to incarcerate mentally ill people is too great of a risk.