Comment by padobson | Hacker News Reader

Comment by padobson | Hacker News Reader

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And they are the rule not the exception.

Meth is dirt cheap, widely available in Los Angeles, and it induces psychosis. Isn't it obvious that's the issue?

As a long time volunteer and giver to drug rehab programs, I'm very sympathetic to this argument, but I still agree with OP.

People don't really like drugs. That kind of addiction is usually closely connected to something else in their life going wrong. If the only happiness you can find in your life is in a pill or a pipe, then that's where you will go until it destroys you.

This is where OP's "on the margins" argument comes back. If housing is more affordable, you'll have fewer miserable people and fewer people on drugs. If you transform public schools from prisons/daycares into institutions that actually feed and empower the curiosity of children, they'll have less a reason to buy drugs from each other. If you make it easier for people to start businesses and follow their dreams, they'll have a purpose that feeds them instead of a chemical.

You can't eliminate the drug problem this way, but it can be improved on the margins simply by giving more people an easier path to happiness.

Along this line of awareness is something I've been noticing more.. with housing costs what they are, many people are stuck in toxic (sometimes extremely abusive) living arrangements.

Which may lead one or more people in those living situations to reach for an escape via drugs/alcohol - which may lead the others living with that to suffer more..

Yet neither of the two (maybe more) can afford to escape the living situation, as most people can not afford to move to a new place alone - it seems many are stuck with having (often multiple ) roommates - which keeps the living in pain cycle going, with no way out.

breaking a lease or eviction or leaving and having someone else fail via owing money / damages / eviction can make it even harder to get a better living situation - even if the damages were not in control of the person, sometimes the first person doesn't even know what happened until they've spent time and money to apply to a new place and get rejected.

There are indeed many more social / cultural costs beyond what most people consider I agree.

With people needing to work 75 hours per week to pay for an average place - any with kids will have much of our future generations being raised by cats and tvs, no parents around to guide anything - so we're also creating a repeating social hell cycle in other ways too.

But how does this solve the immediate problem of psychotic people roaming my neighborhood?

That's not an immediate problem. That's a long term problem.

What are you going to do? Incarcerate them for life? If you let them leave before they die they are bound to roam a neighborhood.

If this isn’t a problem in need of an immediate solution, then what is? Those people need help today, not if/when LA figures out how to fix fifty years of housing stock mismanagement. I would be surprised if the old woman in the sand is alive in five years.

And what about the vagrant trying to break into my apartment complex last week? The other one with a sharp object who got arrested in my neighbor’s backyard a couple of weeks ago? The young guy in my old neighborhood who was stabbed to death in his backyard by a different vagrant? The man passed out snoring right outside my girlfriend’s front doorstep?

I always wonder about one of the greatest contradictions in economic liberalism.

Employers complain about lazy workers. Citizens complain about drug addicts. Poor people can't manage their finances.

The contradiction lies in the belief that all people act rationally but as soon as someone behaves in a way you do not agree with they are automatically assumed to act irrationally.

Lazy workers are irrational but nobody stops and wonders if there is a rational reason for them to be lazy.

Drug addicts are irrational but nobody stops and wonders if there is a rational reason for them to take drugs.

Poor people are irrational but nobody stops and wonders if there is a rational reason why they can't manage their finances.

Really, what has happened is that rationality has been redefined to be subjective success and irrationality the failure to achieve subjective success. In other words, we did a simple language trick to praise the winners for winning and blame the losers for losing.

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