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I’ll add another inconvenient truth that I’ve realized. You can copy every law and policy that’s working so well in some other (Scandinavian) place and have it

I’ll add another inconvenient truth that I’ve realized. You can copy every law and policy that’s working so well in some other (Scandinavian) place and have it still fail horribly. That’s because it was never the laws that were working, but the society and culture as a whole. You can’t bring good laws to a place with a disintegrating social fabric and expect the same results.

renegade-otter 3y ago
Absolutely this. A country needs a healthy government and public employees dedicated and honest. A culture of sacrifice for public good. Not "but meeeeee!" culture. It does not work where the "Deep State" is the enemy and grifters run for Congress to become Twitter trolls.
- mlrtime 3y ago
  Which congress trolls? You are blaming Portland's currently fail[ed|ing] policies on federal congress members that have nothing to do with Portland?
- local_crmdgeon 3y ago
  I don' think this one is on the Republicans, a group that effectively doesn't exist in Portland politics. This is a progressive failure
- mminer237 3y ago
  I don't disagree with you, but I don't think that's the problem here necessarily. I admittedly don't know much about the attitudes of Portland's commission members. I think more to the point the issue is that you can't legislate morality. Some people will break the law no matter how harsh the penalty, and some people will take advantage of permissiveness no matter how much you try to help. Some problems the government just can't fix.
onetimeuse92304 3y ago
Yes. Exactly same way that trying to transplant ideas like agile or microservices or testing driven development fails so miserably most of the time. It is not that the ideas are wrong. It is that they are not the correct moves for a team that is not ready for them. I know it sounds like a silly parallel. But changing societies is hard, long, unique and not well understood process. It makes sense to try to learn from examples where it is much easier to gather some information. When I come to meet a team that has trouble (I work as an advisor and help teams that have trouble), I am not coming with a library of good solutions BECAUSE IT IS FUCKING NOT WORKING. Time and time again, I am repairing after previous people who did just that -- they came with a solution thinking they know it all because it worked somewhere. More often than not they have observed something working, they learned elements they could easily understand and they tried to transplant and failed miserably. So whether you are trying to fix a team or fix a homelessness problem, you have to come with an empty mind and willingness to relentlessly problem solve. And look at those other successful examples as examples to learn from but not necessarily duplicate.
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  There's often not even a serious analysis of the environmental, political, and socio-cultural factors behind and around these ideas to determine if they can even theoretically work on paper, even with very generous assumptions. Let alone whether they can work in the real world. In this case I don't think anyone in Portland or Oregon attempted such an analysis.
  - botalert 3y ago
    [dead]
- niceguy1827 3y ago
  Just find it humorous that in a programmer's forum everything can be wheeled back to microservices.
  - onetimeuse92304 3y ago
rayiner 3y ago
Scandinavia isn’t uniformly permissive with drugs. Sweden is quite anti-drug.
- keenmaster 3y ago
  They might have actually been thinking of Portugal
- Mountain_Skies 3y ago
  Not sure they were necessarily referring to drug policy but rather the tendency in other western democracies to try to implement Scandinavian social policies in other countries, often with poor results. In the US, if you go to more than a couple of public meetings, you're bound to hear someone comment "Well, in Norway..." as justification for their support for a particular program or policy.
sonicanatidae 3y ago
+1. This is the core issue.

renegade-otter 3y ago

Absolutely this. A country needs a healthy government and public employees dedicated and honest. A culture of sacrifice for public good. Not "but meeeeee!" culture. It does not work where the "Deep State" is the enemy and grifters run for Congress to become Twitter trolls.

mlrtime 3y ago
Which congress trolls? You are blaming Portland's currently fail[ed|ing] policies on federal congress members that have nothing to do with Portland?
local_crmdgeon 3y ago
I don' think this one is on the Republicans, a group that effectively doesn't exist in Portland politics. This is a progressive failure
mminer237 3y ago
I don't disagree with you, but I don't think that's the problem here necessarily. I admittedly don't know much about the attitudes of Portland's commission members. I think more to the point the issue is that you can't legislate morality. Some people will break the law no matter how harsh the penalty, and some people will take advantage of permissiveness no matter how much you try to help. Some problems the government just can't fix.

onetimeuse92304 3y ago

Yes. Exactly same way that trying to transplant ideas like agile or microservices or testing driven development fails so miserably most of the time. It is not that the ideas are wrong. It is that they are not the correct moves for a team that is not ready for them. I know it sounds like a silly parallel. But changing societies is hard, long, unique and not well understood process. It makes sense to try to learn from examples where it is much easier to gather some information. When I come to meet a team that has trouble (I work as an advisor and help teams that have trouble), I am not coming with a library of good solutions BECAUSE IT IS FUCKING NOT WORKING. Time and time again, I am repairing after previous people who did just that -- they came with a solution thinking they know it all because it worked somewhere. More often than not they have observed something working, they learned elements they could easily understand and they tried to transplant and failed miserably. So whether you are trying to fix a team or fix a homelessness problem, you have to come with an empty mind and willingness to relentlessly problem solve. And look at those other successful examples as examples to learn from but not necessarily duplicate.

MichaelZuo 3y ago
There's often not even a serious analysis of the environmental, political, and socio-cultural factors behind and around these ideas to determine if they can even theoretically work on paper, even with very generous assumptions. Let alone whether they can work in the real world. In this case I don't think anyone in Portland or Oregon attempted such an analysis.
- botalert 3y ago
  [dead]
niceguy1827 3y ago
Just find it humorous that in a programmer's forum everything can be wheeled back to microservices.
- onetimeuse92304 3y ago

rayiner 3y ago

Scandinavia isn’t uniformly permissive with drugs. Sweden is quite anti-drug.

keenmaster 3y ago
They might have actually been thinking of Portugal
Mountain_Skies 3y ago
Not sure they were necessarily referring to drug policy but rather the tendency in other western democracies to try to implement Scandinavian social policies in other countries, often with poor results. In the US, if you go to more than a couple of public meetings, you're bound to hear someone comment "Well, in Norway..." as justification for their support for a particular program or policy.

sonicanatidae 3y ago

+1. This is the core issue.