Seattle Is Dying | Hacker News Reader

Seattle Is Dying

komonews.com

22 pointsjoemag6 comments

Went on a job-hunting trip there a couple of years ago. Certainly many nice things about it. But after considering its problems, and the local toxic politics that appear to stand in the way of progress towards solutions, we nope'd out.

Been living and working on the east side (Redmond/Bellevue/Kirkland) for the past 10 years. I haven't noticed the Seattle issues spilling over. Although I'm sure that some people reading this will be able to come up with random anecdotes of their own.

I read that close to 50,000 Americans die EACH year due to opioid overdose. I'm pretty sure this is more than the death total of the Vietnam, Korean, and Iraqi wars combined.

I can remember being a kid in the 70's and how the start of the news each night was about which local kids died in the Vietnam war during the past week.

Perhaps it's time to declare this a war to save the (potential) addicts and act accordingly.

As a society we habituate to a horrific human toll as long as we don’t viscerally experience a short-term shock. The US has ~10 9/11s worth of traffic fatalities per year, but we aren’t flipping out and dedicating ourselves to rebuilding transportation infrastructure, because we just don’t care that much.

I hope that we don’t get too complacent about opiate deaths and start thinking of this as normal. We do need a nationwide coordinated mobilization I think. I hope it happens. I think it will require pragmatic political leadership that treats this as a public health crisis rather than a job solely for law enforcement.

>Perhaps it's time to declare this a war to save the (potential) addicts and act accordingly.

The Wars on Terror, Drugs and Poverty have all been abject failures. War is a terrible metaphor for this problem. War implies at least some semblance of a defined enemy. The issues here are interconnected and require nuanced discussion and debate. Simply calling it a war will not get the people of Seattle that.

I’m happy that my city is at least dispositionally in favor of treating homeless people with dignity. On that level I’m proud of Seattle.

On the other hand, I feel a little like we (the people of Seattle) are a little short on action to address the magnitude of the homeless and opium issues. It’s starting to feel a little like the “hopes and prayers” that the right uses to respond to gun violence.

On the other hand, as one of of the aforementioned hand-wringing do-nothings (or do-too-littles) of Seattle, I struggle with what I can do or where I can best help. City leadership hasn’t done a great job at mobilizing the well-intentioned masses, and I don’t know if that’s because they aren’t doing a good job, or if we’re just belligerently apathetic.

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