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Comment by celtain | Hacker News Reader

To be clear though, that was a somewhat unusual race, e.g. the incumbent progressive Democrat probably would have won if he hadn't been knocked out in the primary.

The ex-Democrat, Obama/Clinton/Biden-voting Republican who won benefited greatly from the fact that her opponent had some pretty radical views, too radical even for Seattle.

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I'm not up to date on city politics, but I had a friend that used to live in Seattle for a while. She kind of hightailed it outta there once she found a remote job because of the homelessness/drug problem. Told me people protested the museum downtown for installing architecture that made setting up homeless tents hostile, and that the city's solution to the drug problem (induced by already decriminalizing hard drugs) is to decriminalize and make drugs more available.

You say that like the war on drugs is the solution? Do you think that any of these people don't use drugs because it's a crime? It's just making their life worse.

As I've gotten older I've realized that there's something to be said for the discouraging effect that laws have on certain behaviors. Yes, people are still going to do drugs if they're illegal; but some proportion of the population is less likely to take the risk. Is it enough to justify the drug war? Maybe not. But I don't think it's quite as cut an dry as "legalize all drugs to end drug abuse" or "ban all drugs to end drug use".

Perhaps it was only an implementation problem, and the answer lies in saner but still restrictive drug laws. There's no excuse for example for the scheduling of marijuana and mushrooms which precludes research.

I recently learned that drugs have become more dangerous and more damaging not due to customer demand, but because of the war on drugs. You need to transport a lot less fentanyl than cocaine for the same effect strength. Meth also had changed to work without ingredients we have banned. This has made meth much more damaging. I wonder what things would look like if we just took the Portugal route.

https://www.econtalk.org/sam-quinones-on-meth-fentanyl-and-t...

Coincidently, I just listened to this. (Perhaps we saw the same recommendation on HN.) 100% recommend, and the whole podcast approach at econtalk.org is very interesting. Economics plus life-of-the-mind.

Hah, I posted this a about a week ago as well. I'm most delighted about anyone listening to this. It very much changed how I view the problem of homelessness in the US. Also the angle of this being caused by essentially messing with the market is fascinating to me.

Great. In the meantime I have also heard the following which addresses US homelessness in a somewhat internationally-informed way: Joe Rogan episode #1719 with M. Shellenberger. He does not use the term, but Shellenberger suggests that merely supplying housing, without adjusting other incentives and requirements, could almost be called a consumerist approach: pay the money for a private room for someone and it will magically work.

Also 100% on the Quinones on Econtalk. Another interesting one for an alternative view to the war-on-drugs/decriminalization dichotomy is CSPI: What's Wrong with the West Coast? with Michael Shellenberger

Michael Shellenberger is an activist and author. He joins the podcast to talk about his book San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities. He discusses debates around homelessness in San Francisco, the ideology driving the homelessness advocacy community, how the West coast differs from the rest of the world in its treatment of mental illness and addiction, and whether there is hope of political change.

https://audioboom.com/posts/7962954-what-s-wrong-with-the-we...

Thanks for the recommendation! Already learned interesting new things like that building of shelters is being blocked "because we need to build real housing".

Glad to share the discovery. There probably needs to be a “HN Podcasts” similar to the Book site.

https://hackernewsbooks.com/

https://transformdrugs.org/blog/drug-decriminalisation-in-po...

>You say that like the war on drugs is the solution?

I'm not saying that at all, that's you putting words in my mouth.

>Do you think that any of these people don't use drugs because it's a crime? It's just making their life worse.

Ultimately became an irrelevant point of view for my friend, who, fearing for her safety, moved away from Seattle.

Seattle has always been a socially liberal, bend-over-backwards for business town. It's how it can legalize marijuana and magic mushrooms, while having 11,000 people living in tents and homeless shelters.

Unsurprisingly, since nobody likes seeing tents in city parks, and by the I-5 on-ramps, the city voted for a slate of politicians that will... Maintain the status quo. There's no plan for getting ~5,500 people housed.

Four years from now, we'll be exactly where we are today.

I don't want status quo, but I also don't want them housed. I want the ones that steal, rape, squat in parks, do drugs, sell drugs, defecate in public, and litter to all be thrown in jail.

So you want the government to house them at taxpayer cost!

Three squares, a roof, and jobs for all the police, judges, guards, and lawyers involved. Oh, and a criminal record to ensure that future employment will be even harder upon their eventual release. And another jail with at least 5,000 beds. Taxes gotta go somewhere, I guess...

Housed and punished for that vs housed and rewarded for that? I know which I’d pick.

Are you signing up to pay for that personally?

The thirst for punishment over improvement ultimately keeps the problem going. Any chance you'd prefer to break the cycle rather than continue it?

Are you suggesting that jail (aka expensive housing funded by the public) is the most effective solution to these crimes/behaviors? For example, do you think the population of people who defecate in public are going to be deterred due to the threat of imprisonment?

Either deterred or jailed, either way you end up with less shit on the street.

Is jail appropriate for litterers? Seems extreme, but I might be able to get behind it. Let's start with the folks who throw fast food wrappers out on the interstate though, not the homeless we wish to criminalize.

Throwing them in jail seems like the worst of both worlds... it burns my tax dollars and does nothing to rehabilitate anyone.

That's up to the police to decide. If they don't like a law, they don't enforce it.

The police don't sentence people to jail.

No, but they do pick who they want to pull over, and for what reason.

That's their job?

They de facto do. A police officer can arrest you for basically any reason and send you to jail. How long that jail stint lasts depends on what happens after you are arraigned, but you can easily spend a few days in a county jail before the judge shows up after the 3 day weekend to decide if what you were arrested for was legit.

Selective enforcement is not a good outcome. Any police officer who doesn't enforce a law because they don't like it should be fired.

Not saying it's a good outcome, but in my lifetime, that's what I've learned to expect. If the chief doesn't like the law either, who is going to fire the officer?

You should watch last weekend's episode of Last Week Tonight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liptMbjF3EE

No thank you. He is the tucker carlson of the left. I try to stay away from talking heads that remove all nuance from the debate.

> He is the tucker carlson of the left

That is quite an interesting claim. Do you mean because they are leading voices on their supposed political side, or they are equivalent in factual accuracy, or something else?

My favorite factoid about Tucker Carson, the leading voice of news analysis in the USA:

> Now comes the claim that you can't expect to literally believe the words that come out of Carlson's mouth. And that assertion is not coming from Carlson's critics. It's being made by a federal judge in the Southern District of New York and by Fox News's own lawyers in defending Carlson against accusations of slander. It worked, by the way. [0]

I am up to this point unaware of anything clearly nonfactual presented by Oliver. If anything from Oliver exists along the lines of Carlson's extraordinary list of lies [1] I would genuinely be interested to learn about it.

I wrote a lot there, but my main question is, how exactly do you see Carlson and Oliver as equivalent?

[0] https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29/917747123/you-literally-cant-...

[1] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/list/?speaker=tucker-c...

I’d be interested in you responding to my sibling comment. How are you possibly equating Tucker Carlson and Oliver.

I mean, alright, you do you, but the common misconception you're echoing here he very specifically refuted with data and cited sources. One point in particular, it costs a city around $30k/yr per homeless person in emergency medical care and jail facilities, but only ~$10k/yr to give them the proper support and a place to live.

And what happens when they refuse that support? Or turn it into a drug den? I've lived in SF, and in Seattle for a combined 22 years. I've seen what the ravaging horde of homeless due to the cities there. They turn away housing, and they won't go to shelters. Not because the shelters are degrading, but because they won't let them do drugs there.

These people are mentally insane, and unfit for society.

Would giving them housing stop them from raping? or defecating inside cars they broke into?

It's time to stop pandering to the 0.1% and focus on the 99.9% of us that do participate in society.

That would probably cost taxpayers more (both in the short and long term) than just housing them and getting them mental health services.

Progressives lost a "safe" city council seat (and nearly another) and the mayor. It wasn't a normal election.

The mayor, Jenny Durkan was not progressive, either in platform, or in what she did (which was mostly sit around on the sidelines) over the past four years.

So, not much changed with the mayor's office.

The primary system is so corrosive. If American constitutional government is to survive the primary system needs to end. You need to be rich or a wingnut to win a primary.

Seattle city primaries look nothing like federal congressional/presidential primaries.

They are best described as two-round run-off elections, which, while not perfect, are generally preferable to first-past-the-post.

Biden is not particularly rich. Yet he ran against two billionaires and defeated them. Nor is he far left. Bernie Sanders, Elizbeth Warren and Mike Gravel were all substantially more left leaning.

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