Safe from traffic is one thing. Presumably there aren't homeless encampments and junkies walking around. My daughters high school teenagers are mostly driven to keep them safe. Last week a student was mugged on the way home had her stuff stolen.
It's actually cheaper for society to treat the disease of drug addiction in a humane way, than to fight the crime that results when drug addiction is criminalized.
We don't do rational and good things, because 95% of Americans have no effect on what our nation actually does. Our system is a simulation of democratic rule, where we make a great show of occasionally choosing between Coke and Pepsi. Meanwhile all laws are written by lobbyists. They also appoint all bureaucrats, which explains why we performed more poorly against covid than every other nation, except Peru, Brazil, and a few eastern European nations... while spending twice as much on health care as every other nation. Gosh I wonder where Pfizer is spending their windfall profits?
You'll know that things are about to change when the billionaires begin dying violently. So, not soon.
War is different from the other things here, because it's not something a nationstate can unilaterally solve. But I don't think anyone disagrees that well-developed societies should strive to implement mechanisms that avoid war.
But hunger, universal healthcare, reduction of homelessness to a minimum and adequate social safety nets are all universally agreed-on goals for developed societies. And if you look outside the US you will find 50+ countries that are actually achieving these things. You may take the Wikipedia list of countries with universal healthcare as a starting point.
(“Human trash” as a counterpoint to your “junkie” slur; also note I’m not really interested in _your_ response, I already know what you are; the point of this comment is to show dang’s skewed moderation criteria. Might not work this time, so I’ll continue doing it for a while, of course without annotating it.)
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.