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Comment by kilo_bravo_3 | Hacker News Reader

Everyone is cool from afar with sexwork until a meth head is jerking it on their doorstep. "Like, wouldn't you rather have it be regulated and legal?"

Everyone is cool from afar with homeless until they're sleeping in their own doorway. "Like, why are you trying to get rid of all of these poor homeless people?"

"What's the big deal, maaaaan?" they ask, "Why do you have a problem with it?"

But the second the problem comes to their own doorstep they call the cops.

It's one of the most delicious hypocrisies of the internet. People get to bitch about people dealing with all of the negative aspects of any problem while self-righteously pretending to be open and accepting from thousands of miles away.

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I live in the Red Light District and I’m very happy that the problem on my doorstep isn’t prostitution or hard drugs. These things exist in my neighbourhood but they seem to be fairly well managed without huge irreparable harm [1], as opposed to the 25,000 tourists who walk past my front door, put cigarette butts through my letterbox, vomit on my door handle and convert every decent local shop into a Nutella store or shitty boring overpriced bar.

So yeah, I’m cool with legalised prostitution and quasi legal drugs [2].

1. Mainly because I’m on first name terms with some of the girls who work behind the windows or who are part of the cleaning crews and who live locally - and who I see at the supermarket.

2. I had a disastrous furniture delivery that was rescued by two of the street dealers who helped me get stuff through the upstairs window when the delivery guy left when he ran over time. Sweet guys, as far as that profession goes.

They could operate more like marijuana sales do here in California. You have to get a license and the number of licenses in an area is limited, so there isn’t a “district”. Advertising is restricted. Most dispensaries are just bland unmarked buildings in inexpensive office or warehouse areas.

It just seems possible to avoid both black markets and “vice districts”.

That's how Switzerland does it. Prostitution is legal, regulated, and hookers charge value added tax like every other business.

Amsterdam's problem, from the article, seems to be tourism, not sex. The city is being overwhelmed by visitors.

If you look at the red light district in Amsterdam (or for that matter, Antwerp or Brussels) they're tiny. It's one street, maybe 300-400 meters and then more subtle places for 100m around that.

A "district" these places are very much not.

>Everyone is cool from afar with homeless until they're sleeping in their own doorway.

I'm cool with this. I consider it a part and parcel of living in the city center. I want homelessness to be on display rather than hidden away because it's a permanent reminder of how much society has failed its most vulnerable members.

Right - because say, there's obviously no nuance required between "rough sleepers are still people" and "let's add spikes to the building entrance so we don't have to look at rough sleepers in the morning".

It's really just a bunch of hippie hypocrites, slurring their "maaaaan" and pretending everything is alright until they call the cops, and you're certainly not projecting your own view about the world, making spurious connections between sex work and horrible drug abuse to avoid putting forward any real argument besides internet outrage.

> Right - because say, there's obviously no nuance required between "rough sleepers are still people" and "let's add spikes to the building entrance so we don't have to look at rough sleepers in the morning".

Every single person, without exception, you included, would be really pissed off with and do everything to get rid of a rough sleeper sleeping on under their window.

Instead of adding spikes, they will call the police. They would add spikes, but the police are free.

I know this, you know this, I know that you know this, and you know that I know that you know this.

But because it is "others" getting rid of bums, people get to scoff online.

Like I said, it is one of the most deliciously hypocritical things about the internet. It causes my heart to race from excitement whenever I see someone do it.

I don't call the police when someone's sleeping rough by the dumpsters at the entry to my garage.

Everyone needs to sleep, for fuck's sakes. If they aren't being violent, or damaging property, this isn't a police issue.

If there was a social number I could call, that would get that person housed, I'd do that. But there isn't.

I think homeowners and people with families (and probably a bunch of other people) would not want a strange homeless person camping in their yard. That's totally reasonable.

Then maybe they should pay for social services, instead of pushing their problems to someone else's porch.

Also, I'm not sure the set of people that this sub-thread has been railing against (Hipsters who smoke weed, and are hypocrites for tolerating the homeless, while pushing them around) has much intersection with the demographic you described!

> Then maybe they should pay for social services

I think people pay an extraordinary amount of their income in taxes, so yeah this is happening.

> Also, I'm not sure the set of people that this sub-thread has been railing against (Hipsters who smoke weed, and are hypocrites for tolerating the homeless, while pushing them around) has much intersection with the demographic you described!

Maybe, but I certainly wouldn't blame anyone (even a weed smoking hipster) for not wanting a stranger encamped by their front door.

> Then maybe they should pay for social services

You mean like San Francisco does? They spend $241 million per year on the homeless. And yet, their homeless problem is the worst it's ever been.

You can't just throw money at social problems and hope they go away.

Please don't feed flamewars on HN. Perhaps you didn't mean to start one, though your comment upthread was needlessly provocative—but this just takes things further into hell. We're trying to go the other way.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. Consider the quality difference between this comment and one like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21346620.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Everyone is cool from afar with sexwork until a meth head is jerking it on their doorstep. "Like, wouldn't you rather have it be regulated and legal?"

Sex work does not mean idiots should be idiots. Sex work works just fine in many places and does not make the area super shady if done well.

Jerking of in somebody's doorstep is still punishable under disturbing the peace laws, Erregung öffentlichen Ergernisses in German, surely there's a Dutch analog

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