One third of Canadians fine with prescribing assisted suicide for homelessness
nationalpost.com
nationalpost.com
I'm not exactly sure where I stand on limiting an individual's choice to end their life. But we should care about why they feel life is not worth living. If there is a problem that could be solved, we should try to solve the problem.
Bleak as hell.
There's some really sick logic going on in Canadian corridors of power. I frankly find it creepy.
> And 20 per cent of respondents were fine with MAID being handed out to anybody for any reason. In other words, one fifth of respondents agreed with the sentiment “medical assistance in dying should always be allowed, regardless of who requests it.”
The headline is focusing on homelessness as reason for assisted suicide, but as we can see a lot of people think it should be available to everyone, for any reason. Which makes sense. If someone does not want to stay alive, why should they have to remain living?
Indeed. It's quite surprising that someone can be 50 years old, perfectly capable of making their own decisions, and they're free to do whatever they want with their own life (eat until you're medically obese, smoke until your lungs turn black, get into an alcoholic coma and end up in the hospital, it's all legal), but we draw the line at ending it.
https://obesitycanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/OC-2020-...
https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/publications...
https://www.ccsa.ca/reducing-alcohol-related-harm-canada-tow...
> It's quite surprising
It is not surprising that this is controversial, since otherwise normal people can, and will, be coaxed into believing that they should let themselves be killed, just because they pose some inconvenience to their close ones or to society. Supporting such is obviously abhorrent to all who believe they do the right thing when they willingly lend support such "inconvenient people".
As a person who'd have taken the option were it given to me in the past - because it's a cop-out for already negligent healthcare and welfare systems that don't make more than a token effort to genuinely help anyone struggling.
There's already overwhelming pressure on chronically ill people to just shut up, "stop pretending" that something's wrong with them, and just take their psych pills.
I'm sure nobody would say the same things out loud about assisted suicide but you'd just know the expectation that you'll do whatever it takes to not be a burden anymore is there. It's ALREADY one of the top reasons for suicide. Now imagine if society straight up sanctioned it.
Saying that it's ok to allow people commit suicide due to the above issues is incredibly low empathy. It's a social darwinism basically and while adopting such mentality is a valid option, I think that we as a species can do better.
> Saying that it's ok to allow people commit suicide due to the above issues is incredibly low empathy.
No, it’s the other way around. Insisting that someone has to stay alive against their own will, when they are suffering for a long time is the opinion that is lacking empathy.
> No, it’s the other way around. Insisting that someone has to stay alive against their own will, when they are suffering for a long time is the opinion that is lacking empathy.
All else aside, that's an easy cop-out for society to avoid dealing with the fixable issues that can cause someone to feel that way.
It like if someone was trapped in a deep hole and can't get out. Instead doing the right thing, which is going though the trouble of trying to get a rope and throwing it down to them (which is a lot of trouble), you walk a way and leave them in hopeless situation, then delude yourself about how moral and empathetic you are by supporting the trapped person's choice to kill themselves instead of starving to death in the hole (which is easier for you). The underlying lack of of empathy is laundered through a twisted, myopic, absolutist appeal to individual rights and autonomy.
> The underlying lack of of empathy is laundered through a twisted, myopic, absolutist appeal to individual rights and autonomy.
Nope.
The exact opposite argument makes as much sense as claiming that.
I.e. there are a lot of helpless people out there. But “even though we don’t help them, we are ok because at least they can stay suffering on their own and we will not help them in any way at all.”
That is, in fact, even worse than providing assistance for ending the lives of people who do not wish to live in suffering.
And in both cases the fact is that the kind of argument and analogy you are presenting, and of which I provide the flip side, is nothing but a straw man.
Here is the fact: People are suffering. We should do what we can to help end suffering. This includes helping people to end their lives if they wish to.
It’s not a “cop out”. It’s widening the set of tools to help people who are suffering.
> It’s not a “cop out”. It’s widening the set of tools to help people who are suffering.
Come on, dude. It's not "helping" someone to kill them, except perhaps if there's literally no other option possible.
Killing people is cheap an easy, so if it's an option, it's easily the economically rational "solution" that will drive out other solutions. Why spend $1 million to make some group's lives livable, when few $1 cyanide capsules will "end their suffering"? Save the money for yourself and promote the capsules instead. Some "help."
If I see someone in poverty or homeless, I want them to live the same life I have been lucky to have. So my thoughts are how can I help lift them out of their situation, not put an end to them.
Homelessness is terrible, but allowing people to kill themselves when falling on rough times is a terrible idea. It sweeps the problem under the carpet and tries to allow it to solve itself, in the worst way possible.
I don't want people to take their life because society made their future prospects bleak. But I certainly don't want to force them to keep living because it might improve society in the long term.
The little moral grandstand you describe when passing a homeless person does nothing for them.
You abhorr the idea of someone in abject poverty wanting a way out so you hold up a utopic idea as to how things should be - but no solution to get there.
UBI? Immediate huge drop in economic input from working people who won't have to work anymore. And within a couple of years, not enough productive people left for UBI. Don't bother linking those studies on UBI boosting the economy, I've read them, and I think they're typical soft-science nonsense. I have a lifetime of observed experiences that tell me what happens when people don't have to make any effort to get by: from children, to friends, to animals, to entire populations like Kuwait (where anyone with a job is gifted $3000/month by the government on top of their salary. This resulted in the laziest, least competent people I have met, who just hire foreigners to do their jobs for them. It reminded me of Wall-E.)
Communism? It has never and never will work. As soon as you remove private wealth, whoever is in charge becomes a perpetual dictator within months, since any objectors depend on him for their survival. Nearly instant dystopia.
I'm really curious, is there ANY scenario where someone like yourself will demand that a homeless person become a productive citizen? Let's say you offer them magical housing and a magical job. They trash the house, don't go to work, and stay at home taking drugs. What then? Do you continue supporting them? Endless counseling? Let's say it doesn't work, no matter how patient you are, they refuse to work. Is there any breaking point where you are able to tell them "if you don't clean up and get to work, I'm not paying for your house and meals anymore"? Or are productive people expected to foot the bill for them forever, even in a fantasy scenario?
Also it does nothing to social, cultural and symbolic inheritance, so rich heir will probably still be rich at the end of the day, but at least they would have to work for it.
Now you're saying I can't leave my kids anything, not even our family home? Because it has to be shared asset with the other 100 million people (or 7 billion, if you're one of those open border types)? That's completely unacceptable to me. It also removes my incentive to work hard. Are my children to become equal to everyone else (which given overpopulation drives them down to a bad comfort and safety level) if I get hit by a car?
You don't seem to think anyone would mind, "Oh, you'll be dead, why would you care" , right? What you're missing is that I care more about my children and their future than about myself. Every good parent thinks like this. A suggestion like yours likely comes from the moralism of detached, childless, too-online rationalists. To put it as a trolley problem, if I have to choose between my kid and 5 other kids, the other 5 kids are getting a train in their face without a moment's hesitation. I'm saving my kid even if 50k other kids are on the other end.
Seriously, talk about this to your parents (as I'm certain you have no children of your own), see what they think.
The life expectancy of men is 79.4 yo, and while he's a woodworker, he actually is healthy for someone in his 50 (and he's doing a lot more painting and tapestry now, which is easier on the body), so i hope he won't die until his late 80s, but let's say he only last until 80.
At 60 year old, i would expect to retire two years later (might be 4, but let's wait and see). Anything that he leaves me, i wouldn't really need. I would rent his house (maybe, i think i would just lend it to a non-market housing coop), but hopefully i would have one at that age. My child at 30 would hopefully have found his path, since i have enough resources for him to fail a dozen time.
Even if i die at 60, i really hope my child doesn't need my money, because that would mean i had failed him a dozen time over, don't you agree?
But let's say we just put a small limit, let's say 20k in 1970s dollars (to adjust for inflation), that would still remove the need for income and housing taxes in my country. tax collection would be more efficient, that would pay for the most basic social nets + free education (and police, and military), and the only taxes you would pay on income wouldn't be taxes but cotisations (health, unemployment).
Also, not only education basically free, i have family that is nice and helpful, and even if i die tomorrow i don't care if all my money had to go to the state.
And for those who do not have this family, i would hope that if inheritance tax is the only tax, each orphan would get the same treatment as nations'pupils (orphan from military or police, i worked with them 3 summers a lifetime ago) and taken care of better than they are right now.
[edit] And because i don't want to be too obtuse (i honestly didn't understand you until now): of course if you live in a low-trust society, it's a bad idea. If i were Indian or from an emmerging country, i wouldn't think this. To me, capitalism and the pursuit of individual wealth is the best vessel to reach a high-trust society (basically what marx said), and once we're there, we can shed id, we do not need it anymore. That also mean that, unlike Marx's Internationale, i do not believe each society can get there at the same time, and high-trust societies have to enforce immigration quotas from low-trust ones (to respond to your "no border" comment).
There are many solutions to getting out of it, but being homeless is starting with the least bit of opportunity possible.
The moral grandstand we all have, is enough drive for some people to build homeless shelters, provide food and shelter as well as provide programs to help the homeless get jobs.
I am allowed to be abhor a particular idea, without offering a solution to it.
1. Waiting for a lottery ticket essentially to somehow get them rebooted.
2. Waiting for society to figure out a broader plan to deal with them.
Sure, many solutions come out of think tanks or are proposed, but if they are not implemented, what use are they to these people?
We can have all the great wishes we want for the homeless, but at present, we have nothing concrete to offer many of them.
> It sweeps the problem under the carpet and tries to allow it to solve itself, in the worst way possible.
It is currently at the point of on the carpet and largely ignored.
As long as you exist, you need to keep sustaining yourself, taking care of yourself, and that requires incredible reserves of the ability to function. Ability that you can end up losing for any number of resson, potentially irreversibly. And once you can't take care of yourself, you just sink like a stone, except this ocean has no bottom.
If you're lucky enough to be all of born into a wealthy country, healthy, into a functional family, to meet the right people, if all the stars align you might be able to live a decent life until you're old, but... what if they don't? As long as you exist, you're not safe from that eventuality.
Above all, you lose nothing by being dead, as you're not there to experience it. But you gain the safety from suffering.
Homelessness is very often FORCED on people out of shit political policies and outright naked greediness.
I'm astounded that this number is being presented... I hope its not accurate.
The ideal human of the enlightenment era is dead for a while now, but that spectre of a interest rational being refuses to follow. Let's find out if our "new" social implants hold up under pressure.