4 ms·

I maintain now (as I did when Measure 110 passed in Oregon, and in the discussions here in HN) that decriminalizing drugs would lead the state, and especially P

I maintain now (as I did when Measure 110 passed in Oregon, and in the discussions here in HN) that decriminalizing drugs would lead the state, and especially Portland of course, to a terrible and predictable outcome. Many supporters of the measure believed that it was the objectively right choice. Decriminalize, and get people to treatment instead of locking them up. The sad thing is that you can make all the piecewise-correct A/B choices yet still end up having destroyed your city. Yes, giving someone a ticket for using drugs and offering them treatment instead of locking them up might be temporarily more productive / more sensible. Yes, maybe it makes sense to put more resources to mental health. Yet one day, you wake up and your city is unlivable and your block is terrorized by drug addicts. Somehow, people forgot that once in a while there is a legitimate role for hard authority to punish people for doing things you don't want them to do. Lest your society go down some lawless path which step by step looked like the kind and charitable course to follow.

local_issues 3y ago
The people I fear the most are people who are 100% sure they're doing the right thing. This comment section is full of that - "no, this is a good policy and it's just the implementation that's wrong." Sure, maybe? But maybe it's just a bad policy? Maybe we could adjust the implementation? Maybe we can look at other places were things are better? Maybe a bit of shame could be helpful, too. SF and Portland have turned into a national punch line. That's shameful.
- kepler1 3y ago
  Agreed. If a policy requires nearly perfect implementation, and follow through, and good behavior of the people, in order to succeed, and you rarely achieve / sustain the follow through by the community or police, etc. then it is not a good policy. Even though the concept was nice. A policy is everything, start to finish. You can't just say a policy was good except for the implementation. No matter how good it makes you feel that you got the idea right, it just wasn't carried out the way you thought.
NegativeLatency 3y ago
> your city is unlivable and your block is terrorized by drug addicts This is hyperbole, I live in one of the rougher neighborhoods. The city gov especially the mayor and his cronies have done nothing to actually fix problems, they just do expensive sweeps and cleanup without addressing root causes.
- retrac 3y ago
  I'm not sure about in the United States, but here in Canada, we barely even have "good" and "bad" neighbourhoods. My city is quite well-mixed together economically. Somehow, despite that, the recent dysfunction of society -- the sharp increase in the number of homeless and the number of publicly intoxicated people -- seems to fall entirely on the poor as a consequence. They're the ones suffering it day to day. A relative's apartment building is a 10 minute walk away. He is dealing with people passed out in vomit in the stairwells, smashing the first and second floor windows regularly, pulling the fire alarms and setting small fires regularly. All of this is quite new. And it's so absent from my upper-middle-class community half a kilometre away -- we're so insulated -- that a lot of my peers seem to be unaware there's even anything going on. None of that is happening on my street.
  - anon291 3y ago
    Oh goodness... you can't be serious? Have you been to vancouver? As for being insulated in your upper middle class community. I mean... every country has that. my neighborhood which is a mile and a half from downtown Portland had private security during the entirety of the riots of 2020. These are far left people (which I know based on conversations with my neighbors, yard signs, and who they vocally proclaim they're voting for) and they all collectively decided to hire private companies to ensure the rif-raf doesn't get in. It's exactly like that now. In my own neighborhood, there's nothing, but if you cross the street to the 'wrong side of the tracks' so to speak, it's like an apocalypse (getting better thankfully, due to the recent increase in policing)
  - HDMI_Cable 3y ago
    > I'm not sure about in the United States, but here in Canada, we barely even have "good" and "bad" neighbourhoods. My city is quite well-mixed together economically. This is a joke, right? Like, either you live in a small town not large enough to have distinct neighbourhoods, or you are so isolated as to not see the abject poverty that many live here. Take Toronto, for example. Right on Mt. Pleasant Rd. and St. Clair you have Rosedale, one of the wealthiest neighbourhoods in all of Canada. If you walk down a street there, you won't find a person making less than $100K. You'll have perfectly maintained roads, bike lanes, and very good private schools (like Upper Canada College), where every kid there pays $50K a year. Go down Mt. Pleasant until it becomes Jarvis St., and continue going down until you hit Dundas St., where the average person makes minimum wage and can barely afford their apartment. And that's just a 2km difference! Ask anyone whether they would rather live in Forest Hill (again, Toronto) or on Jane and Finch, and you'll get the same answer any time. For Montreal, ask anyone whether they would live in Westmount, or in Sainte-Marie, and again, you'll get the same answer. There absolutely are "good" and "bad" neighbourhoods in Canada, and in some cases, they're just as bad as in the United States (speaking from experience here).

local_issues 3y ago

The people I fear the most are people who are 100% sure they're doing the right thing. This comment section is full of that - "no, this is a good policy and it's just the implementation that's wrong." Sure, maybe? But maybe it's just a bad policy? Maybe we could adjust the implementation? Maybe we can look at other places were things are better? Maybe a bit of shame could be helpful, too. SF and Portland have turned into a national punch line. That's shameful.

kepler1 3y ago
Agreed. If a policy requires nearly perfect implementation, and follow through, and good behavior of the people, in order to succeed, and you rarely achieve / sustain the follow through by the community or police, etc. then it is not a good policy. Even though the concept was nice. A policy is everything, start to finish. You can't just say a policy was good except for the implementation. No matter how good it makes you feel that you got the idea right, it just wasn't carried out the way you thought.

NegativeLatency 3y ago

> your city is unlivable and your block is terrorized by drug addicts This is hyperbole, I live in one of the rougher neighborhoods. The city gov especially the mayor and his cronies have done nothing to actually fix problems, they just do expensive sweeps and cleanup without addressing root causes.

retrac 3y ago
I'm not sure about in the United States, but here in Canada, we barely even have "good" and "bad" neighbourhoods. My city is quite well-mixed together economically. Somehow, despite that, the recent dysfunction of society -- the sharp increase in the number of homeless and the number of publicly intoxicated people -- seems to fall entirely on the poor as a consequence. They're the ones suffering it day to day. A relative's apartment building is a 10 minute walk away. He is dealing with people passed out in vomit in the stairwells, smashing the first and second floor windows regularly, pulling the fire alarms and setting small fires regularly. All of this is quite new. And it's so absent from my upper-middle-class community half a kilometre away -- we're so insulated -- that a lot of my peers seem to be unaware there's even anything going on. None of that is happening on my street.
- anon291 3y ago
  Oh goodness... you can't be serious? Have you been to vancouver? As for being insulated in your upper middle class community. I mean... every country has that. my neighborhood which is a mile and a half from downtown Portland had private security during the entirety of the riots of 2020. These are far left people (which I know based on conversations with my neighbors, yard signs, and who they vocally proclaim they're voting for) and they all collectively decided to hire private companies to ensure the rif-raf doesn't get in. It's exactly like that now. In my own neighborhood, there's nothing, but if you cross the street to the 'wrong side of the tracks' so to speak, it's like an apocalypse (getting better thankfully, due to the recent increase in policing)
- HDMI_Cable 3y ago
  > I'm not sure about in the United States, but here in Canada, we barely even have "good" and "bad" neighbourhoods. My city is quite well-mixed together economically. This is a joke, right? Like, either you live in a small town not large enough to have distinct neighbourhoods, or you are so isolated as to not see the abject poverty that many live here. Take Toronto, for example. Right on Mt. Pleasant Rd. and St. Clair you have Rosedale, one of the wealthiest neighbourhoods in all of Canada. If you walk down a street there, you won't find a person making less than $100K. You'll have perfectly maintained roads, bike lanes, and very good private schools (like Upper Canada College), where every kid there pays $50K a year. Go down Mt. Pleasant until it becomes Jarvis St., and continue going down until you hit Dundas St., where the average person makes minimum wage and can barely afford their apartment. And that's just a 2km difference! Ask anyone whether they would rather live in Forest Hill (again, Toronto) or on Jane and Finch, and you'll get the same answer any time. For Montreal, ask anyone whether they would live in Westmount, or in Sainte-Marie, and again, you'll get the same answer. There absolutely are "good" and "bad" neighbourhoods in Canada, and in some cases, they're just as bad as in the United States (speaking from experience here).