5 ms·

Public transit fares are generally malformed. I personally never pay the LA Metro fare. Why? Because I pay the Metrolink fare, which by their own admission cove

Public transit fares are generally malformed. I personally never pay the LA Metro fare. Why? Because I pay the Metrolink fare, which by their own admission covers same-day Metro transit. But police will actively seek me out as a person who looks like they have money and give me a hard time for not “tapping”, all while folks who very clearly have no money waltz on into the metro, stopping only to smoke crack on the elevator up. There’s a general problem in this country of what to do with law breakers who do not have money. It seems like the answer is to make them work and garnish their wages, but for whatever reason we are against that.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
There are no jobs that want jobless people. There's few that even want 18 year olds
- dumbo-octopus 2y ago
  Plenty of work for prison laborers.
  - Retric 2y ago
    Sure at 20-50 cents an hour, but that’s not really relevant here.
    - dumbo-octopus 2y ago
      “Keep society functioning”? I’m not asking for them to man the electric grid, but there’s still a ton of work that is too inconsequential for any minimum wage job to be worth it, yet would still be a net benefit to society for somebody to do it. Things like picking trash up off the side of the highway.
      - dumbo-octopus 2y ago
        Ah, a ninja-edit. Cool. But tell me: why isn’t that relevant here?
        Retric 2y ago
        > work that is too inconsequential for any minimum wage job to be worth it If it’s not worth minimum wage it’s been judged as not worth doing like that. You can automate picking up trash which is exactly the kinds of thing you avoid doing if labor is cheap enough. As such the wage floor is very much a benefit to society by opening a wedge for automation rather than having people do such tasks.
        dumbo-octopus 2y ago
        No, it’s been judged as not worth doing like that by people who have freedom. If you’ve chosen to rescind your freedom, you by extension rescind your right to choose not to do work for less than minimum wage.
        dumbo-octopus 2y ago
        If the automation existed that’d be one thing. But as it stands we have trashed streets and jobless bums. Clearly the system isn’t working.
        Retric 2y ago
        You can set minimum wage to zero and you still get trashed streets because trashed streets aren’t considered worth fixing every week. Instead there’s an equilibrium where X money is used to maintain reasonably clean streets and people will just spend less if they already look ok.
        dumbo-octopus 2y ago
        Minimum wage isn’t the issue here. You said 30-50 cents an hour isn’t “relevant” yourself, but haven’t backed that up with anything. They could be paid 0 for all I care, the situation would be the same: folks who have stolen something from society (be it direct financial losses or more abstract things like health and safety and peaceful movement) being made to give retributions back to society for their crimes. There are easy wins here (trash), and more involved projects.
  - saghm 2y ago
    "Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?" I never thought I'd see someone unironically epouse the ideas of Ebeneezer Scrooge, but here we are.
    - dumbo-octopus 2y ago
      What’s your solution?
    - roenxi 2y ago
      The rebuttal to Scrooge involved a heavy reliance on divine intervention, ghosts and threats of eternal damnation in hell wrapped in heavy chains. While rhetorically powerful, I'm disputing that Dickens' opinions are the most thoughtful approach to direct social policy. As a starting point to benefiting from society there is a reasonable expectation that people put a couple of hours a day into making life better for others. Prisoners can achieve that lofty goal. So can people travelling on the NY Metro without paying. There is a lot of room to haggle over the details, but argument from chubby ghost of Christmas present is not really the path to a good compromise.
    - heavyset_go 2y ago
      Is this your first time visiting this site?
  - scotty79 2y ago
    Slaves is such a nasty word. Prisoners with jobs.
    - dumbo-octopus 2y ago
      The concern with slavery is the innocence of victim. When that’s removed, it’s no longer controversial. At least it shouldn’t be.
      - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        The concern with prison labor is that it's profitable to pay below market wages and then whoever is getting the profits has the incentive to lobby for more prisoners.
        dumbo-octopus 2y ago
        If the public at large is getting the profits (community service), and there are a high number of dangerous criminals who are not being prosecuted (there are), then… cool. We agree.
        AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        Community service has a particular problem in the context you're trying to use it in though, doesn't it? Where community service works if for e.g. misbehaving kids with non-absentee parents. Because then the parents make sure the kid actually does the community service, and the kid is thereby deterred from doing it again. If you do the same thing for someone who is going to blow off the community service, then you'd need the police to make them do the community service, and police get six figures in salary and benefits, so that's a very expensive babysitter and you've eliminated any kind of net benefit.
        dumbo-octopus 2y ago
        No, because the people are already a net drain on society. They already require dedicated police force, they already require dedicated sanitation force, food stamps, etcetcetc. And that’s not to mention the health and psychological cost on society of not being able to walk freely without fear cracked out guy will assault you. I’m not proposing moving from these people providing $0.00 to taking whatever a person to monitor their work and provide institutional food costs, I’m proposing we move from these people costing a society a shitload, both financially and health/safety wise, to perhaps similar financially, but removing the health and safety burden and finally putting them on a path to success.
  - archagon 2y ago
    So… your solution is slavery?
    - dumbo-octopus 2y ago
      You think slaves were all criminals who were simply paying back society commensurate to their transgressions? Got anything to back that up? My impression was they were free men captured and forced into a lifetime of work.
  - EasyMark 2y ago
    Are you proposing throwing people in prison for not paying a bus/train ticket?
    - dumbo-octopus 2y ago
      If they didn’t pay, they should be made to pay. If they can’t pay and have no ability to pay in the near future, they should be helped into situation where they will be trained to develop capacity to work with guaranteed employment opportunities. Call it prison if you wish, but the cell isn’t the point, the job is.
mc32 2y ago
It didn't used to be a problem, but over the course of the last 12 years or so, people have abdicated any agency they had. It started out in areas like the SF panhandle where well meaning folks got the cops to not arrest delinquents for trespassing, mistreating animals, loitering, begging, etc. Some got tired after a while and they passed redundant sit-lie laws... that stuck for a tiny bit, till riots were used as excuse to engage in all kinds of unlawful behavior and that in combination with Covid and a national defund-the-police movement led to a substantial increase in quality of life crime and petty crime that has now pervaded and has entrenched itself like an invasive species but the people responsible for this are loath to admit a mistake and now pretend it's not really an issue. Maybe people will tire of this and hold officials accountable --but it will take a change of perspective from bleeding hearts and lots of time as well. It can be done. The wild west was tamed. This can be tamed as well but it takes will and commitment.
- dumbo-octopus 2y ago
  Yes. Even on this very form, a suggestion that folks who break the law are held accountable for their actions and are made to pay back society for their transgressions results in an immediate downvote brigade.
- mikem170 2y ago
  > substantial increase in quality of life crime and petty crime Do you have any sources for that? I was only able to find numbers on violent crime, which have gone down recently, and weren't as bad as thirty years ago. The 70s through 90s were pretty rough. I've heard other people say that these minor crimes go unreported and undercounted, but then it's difficult to get past anecdotes without some kind of meaurement, for example perceptions may have shofted due to more news coverage, or as we've gotten older. I notice more beggars in general. I take that as mental health, drug and poverty than crime. I also notice less traffic law enforcement and more reckless driving. A lot of other things seem to depend on the neighborhood. I agree that mistakes have been made in some localities. Some of problems are too big to sweep under the rug.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago

There are no jobs that want jobless people. There's few that even want 18 year olds

dumbo-octopus 2y ago
Plenty of work for prison laborers.
- Retric 2y ago
  Sure at 20-50 cents an hour, but that’s not really relevant here.
  - dumbo-octopus 2y ago
    “Keep society functioning”? I’m not asking for them to man the electric grid, but there’s still a ton of work that is too inconsequential for any minimum wage job to be worth it, yet would still be a net benefit to society for somebody to do it. Things like picking trash up off the side of the highway.
    - dumbo-octopus 2y ago
      Ah, a ninja-edit. Cool. But tell me: why isn’t that relevant here?
      - Retric 2y ago
        > work that is too inconsequential for any minimum wage job to be worth it If it’s not worth minimum wage it’s been judged as not worth doing like that. You can automate picking up trash which is exactly the kinds of thing you avoid doing if labor is cheap enough. As such the wage floor is very much a benefit to society by opening a wedge for automation rather than having people do such tasks.
        dumbo-octopus 2y ago
        No, it’s been judged as not worth doing like that by people who have freedom. If you’ve chosen to rescind your freedom, you by extension rescind your right to choose not to do work for less than minimum wage.
        dumbo-octopus 2y ago
        If the automation existed that’d be one thing. But as it stands we have trashed streets and jobless bums. Clearly the system isn’t working.
        Retric 2y ago
        You can set minimum wage to zero and you still get trashed streets because trashed streets aren’t considered worth fixing every week. Instead there’s an equilibrium where X money is used to maintain reasonably clean streets and people will just spend less if they already look ok.
        dumbo-octopus 2y ago
        Minimum wage isn’t the issue here. You said 30-50 cents an hour isn’t “relevant” yourself, but haven’t backed that up with anything. They could be paid 0 for all I care, the situation would be the same: folks who have stolen something from society (be it direct financial losses or more abstract things like health and safety and peaceful movement) being made to give retributions back to society for their crimes. There are easy wins here (trash), and more involved projects.
- saghm 2y ago
  "Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?" I never thought I'd see someone unironically epouse the ideas of Ebeneezer Scrooge, but here we are.
  - dumbo-octopus 2y ago
    What’s your solution?
  - roenxi 2y ago
    The rebuttal to Scrooge involved a heavy reliance on divine intervention, ghosts and threats of eternal damnation in hell wrapped in heavy chains. While rhetorically powerful, I'm disputing that Dickens' opinions are the most thoughtful approach to direct social policy. As a starting point to benefiting from society there is a reasonable expectation that people put a couple of hours a day into making life better for others. Prisoners can achieve that lofty goal. So can people travelling on the NY Metro without paying. There is a lot of room to haggle over the details, but argument from chubby ghost of Christmas present is not really the path to a good compromise.
  - heavyset_go 2y ago
    Is this your first time visiting this site?
- scotty79 2y ago
  Slaves is such a nasty word. Prisoners with jobs.
  - dumbo-octopus 2y ago
    The concern with slavery is the innocence of victim. When that’s removed, it’s no longer controversial. At least it shouldn’t be.
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      The concern with prison labor is that it's profitable to pay below market wages and then whoever is getting the profits has the incentive to lobby for more prisoners.
      - dumbo-octopus 2y ago
        If the public at large is getting the profits (community service), and there are a high number of dangerous criminals who are not being prosecuted (there are), then… cool. We agree.
        AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        Community service has a particular problem in the context you're trying to use it in though, doesn't it? Where community service works if for e.g. misbehaving kids with non-absentee parents. Because then the parents make sure the kid actually does the community service, and the kid is thereby deterred from doing it again. If you do the same thing for someone who is going to blow off the community service, then you'd need the police to make them do the community service, and police get six figures in salary and benefits, so that's a very expensive babysitter and you've eliminated any kind of net benefit.
        dumbo-octopus 2y ago
        No, because the people are already a net drain on society. They already require dedicated police force, they already require dedicated sanitation force, food stamps, etcetcetc. And that’s not to mention the health and psychological cost on society of not being able to walk freely without fear cracked out guy will assault you. I’m not proposing moving from these people providing $0.00 to taking whatever a person to monitor their work and provide institutional food costs, I’m proposing we move from these people costing a society a shitload, both financially and health/safety wise, to perhaps similar financially, but removing the health and safety burden and finally putting them on a path to success.
- archagon 2y ago
  So… your solution is slavery?
  - dumbo-octopus 2y ago
    You think slaves were all criminals who were simply paying back society commensurate to their transgressions? Got anything to back that up? My impression was they were free men captured and forced into a lifetime of work.
- EasyMark 2y ago
  Are you proposing throwing people in prison for not paying a bus/train ticket?
  - dumbo-octopus 2y ago
    If they didn’t pay, they should be made to pay. If they can’t pay and have no ability to pay in the near future, they should be helped into situation where they will be trained to develop capacity to work with guaranteed employment opportunities. Call it prison if you wish, but the cell isn’t the point, the job is.

mc32 2y ago

It didn't used to be a problem, but over the course of the last 12 years or so, people have abdicated any agency they had. It started out in areas like the SF panhandle where well meaning folks got the cops to not arrest delinquents for trespassing, mistreating animals, loitering, begging, etc. Some got tired after a while and they passed redundant sit-lie laws... that stuck for a tiny bit, till riots were used as excuse to engage in all kinds of unlawful behavior and that in combination with Covid and a national defund-the-police movement led to a substantial increase in quality of life crime and petty crime that has now pervaded and has entrenched itself like an invasive species but the people responsible for this are loath to admit a mistake and now pretend it's not really an issue. Maybe people will tire of this and hold officials accountable --but it will take a change of perspective from bleeding hearts and lots of time as well. It can be done. The wild west was tamed. This can be tamed as well but it takes will and commitment.

dumbo-octopus 2y ago
Yes. Even on this very form, a suggestion that folks who break the law are held accountable for their actions and are made to pay back society for their transgressions results in an immediate downvote brigade.
mikem170 2y ago
> substantial increase in quality of life crime and petty crime Do you have any sources for that? I was only able to find numbers on violent crime, which have gone down recently, and weren't as bad as thirty years ago. The 70s through 90s were pretty rough. I've heard other people say that these minor crimes go unreported and undercounted, but then it's difficult to get past anecdotes without some kind of meaurement, for example perceptions may have shofted due to more news coverage, or as we've gotten older. I notice more beggars in general. I take that as mental health, drug and poverty than crime. I also notice less traffic law enforcement and more reckless driving. A lot of other things seem to depend on the neighborhood. I agree that mistakes have been made in some localities. Some of problems are too big to sweep under the rug.