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Comment by bpodgursky | Hacker News Reader

I don't consider it humane to let someone live on the streets begging until they happen to die of a drug overdose.

I don't care about their wishes, guided by drug addiction and mental health issues. To allow and enable this much squandering of human potential is a moral crime.

Get people clean of drugs, healthy, stable, and educated. By force, if needed. If from that baseline he decides to go back into a life of drugs and onto the streets, then so be it. But don't allow people to commit themselves to a slow death until they've been forced to step onto a better path and see what their life _could_ be.

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Get people healthy by force? What does it even mean? Fitness camps for the obese?

This is, in all honesty, a terrifying point of view.

Forcing people to take part in a society that has already rejected them and conform to someone else’s view of normal, healthy, stable, etc., that, to me, would be literal torture. I don’t consider it humane to torture people.

How do you feel about all the busywork jobs that enable so so much more squandering of human potential? Should all those folks be forced to live your version of their best life?

We have different views about what is humane. I struggle to understand yours, but that's OK.

Well, certainly we can agree to disagree.

Yours involves forcing your world view on a vulnerable person against their will for your benefit. Theirs does not. Guess which is the moral one.

So righteousness falls upon the vulnerable?

I guess I'll tell my drug addicted cousin he's all good because he's vulnerable.

You can be moral by being against the will of someone who's lost their way.

> You can be moral by being against the will of someone who's lost their way.

Who are you to decide what their ‘way’ is supposed to be to know they’re off it?

Some parents think their gay children have lost their way and force them into ‘treatment’.

I guess you think they’re wrong and shouldn’t be allowed to do that but you’re right and should be able to do what you want?

I don’t think there’s much different between the two and both are wrong.

That's the crux of the issue isn't it. Society has to set some ground rules, no?

I'm all for live and let be, but letting vagrancy fester and destroy cities where other people want to live is where I draw the line.

I hope you never are homeless, drug addicted, or mentally ill. I have been all of these things. I can tell you first-hand forcing people to comply makes things worse.

That you don't care about someone's wishes is deeply indicative of your own moral character -- or lack thereof. That we can't even agree to disagree turns my stomach a bit. I'm deeply disappointed, and you've made it very clear to me that I need to walk away from this "community".

So, my final thought will simply be this:

Silicon Valley and their enablers, through their arrogance, short sightedness, and dare I say.. general lack of humanity are creating a dystopian nightmare. In many places, that nightmare already exists in full force. That you don't or can't see it doesn't matter. It's well underway and it won't leave any of us untouched.

The dystopian nightmare is the thousands of people living in filth on the streets of SF, living and dying short and brutal lives.

If I'm ever drug addicted and homeless, I want you to institutionalize me until I am clean and able to resume a normal life. I'm very confused by anyone who would want anything else for themselves.

> I want...

That’s what you want again. Maybe consider what others want instead?

> I'm very confused by anyone who would want anything else

If you admit you're confused about what they want and why... leave them alone.

I think we should do everything we can to give/push them into treatment, but at the very least they don't get to make streets unsafe and unclean for others, they have to go elsewhere

Your logic can be extended indefinitely. Are we torturing pedophiles by forcing them not to abuse children? What about murderers?

Society coalesced for a reason.

You’re comparing homeless people to pedophiles and murderers.

Well, I didn't, but can you tell me your why your way of thinking doesn't apply across the board?

If someone’s harming someone else, stop them. If they aren’t, offer help but if they tell you they don’t want your help leave them be.

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