A plan to save democracy by ending homelessness, reducing the prison population | Hacker News Reader

A plan to save democracy by ending homelessness, reducing the prison population

piratewires.com

20 pointsijhuygft77627 comments

The levels of cluelessness of George Hotz is always amazing to watch.

No children allowed - do you intend to sterilize every women going to Wireheading City? No, free birth control is not going to work.

"export of these drugs is strictly prohibited, and you’ll be aggressively searched on your way through the exit path of the exclusion zone" - dude, if inmates are able to get drugs in prison, how efficient do you think your "aggressive search" is going to work? Have you also ever heard about drones, tech guy? And how exactly is the waste going to disappear from the city?

"Violent crime and property crime will be illegal in Wireheading City, so no weapons will be permitted in through the border" - well, problem solved! Hotz is a very intelligent guy pats head

The guy is completely unmoored to reality. Watch him drift further and further into crazyness in the coming years.

This is the same "I can fix twitter search in an internship" George Hotz, who then gave up and ran away before half of his internship was over?

When would we be ready to admit that being a world-leading expert in one area (jailbreaking devices) may not transfer to others (like urban design) if it doesn't even transfer within the domain of CS? The sooner we can stop worshipping the ground these people with an expertise on one thing but opinions on everything walk on, the better off we will be.

Agreed. There is a utopian naïveté that reminds me of trust fund kids.

> For shelter, a Walmart-grade sleeping bag and tent, issued to you at the border.

Ok, so we're not talking about "ending homelessness", we're talking about shifting it into a segregated area. Note also this mentions nothing about healthcare. It sounds like he's building a place for people to die in the next heat wave, cold snap or serious storm.

But also, fundamentally the Citizen vs Subject thing is sweeping a large and important case under the rug. At multiple points, he emphasize that people will "choose" to be subjects. But he also says that to be a citizen "you must pay more to the government than you take." So what if you don't choose to be a subject but you also don't pay more in taxes than e.g. you get from merely being in a city with paved roads and street lights? Are you _forced_ into this tent city?

The current situation can feel dystopian, but this sounds worse.

Also:

I think he's right to say that democracy is at risk when people realize they can treat the government as a way to enrich themselves -- but the homeless population isn't the risk here. No representative is being elected by the homeless vote to propose bills to give away extravagant benefits.

The _worrying_ people that are "taking" more than they pay in taxes are firms in subsidized industries, government contractors, and companies with elaborate tax avoidance strategies. How about all those companies that got PPP loans that were forgiven, even if they didn't have meaningful covid-related business disruption?

EXACTLY. Elon Musk is the biggest welfare queen on the planet for crying out loud. You have to be absolutely clueless to think the homeless or incarcerated have any democratic power in the US.

His "idea" would be wonderful as a setup for a dystopian sci-fi novel, or a Cyberpunk 2077 DLC, or a movie with Kurt Russell.

Not as a "serious suggestion".

Star Trek's version of Earth's history had dystopian "Sanctuary Districts" being created in US cities in the 2020s that were IIRC based on similar principles. Life imitates art.

Star Trek DS9's "Past Tense" has our heros sent back in time to the sanctuary districts of... 2024.

https://imgur.com/J1WxO6H

All the drugs you can consume?

That's not going to be compatible with a livable pop-up city.

Perhaps if the list of available drugs were carefully selected, it could work, but not if you include alcohol, meth, and opiate/opioid derivatives, and worse. Reducing the list of available drugs would reduce the desirability of such a city for those who'd be better off in it, leading to continued hard-drug-fueled crime in society at large.

Arguably permissible hard drug use has been a disaster. Maybe we need government disassociation houses where you can feed an addiction or desire, but carefully managed. I don’t see how that is possible when hard drugs are so pervasive and unyielding in general.

This essay shows the extent of intellectual rot in this country, to the point where if you make a few bucks in Silicon Valley, suddenly your 8th grade history class level understanding of the world is supposed to be seen as serious discourse. We used to have actual intellectuals in this country who put out think pieces about the future of our society. That’s all gone - the Futurists are all dead, and George Hotz makes an ass of himself.

I love this idea and in the fantasy world where it would actually be implemented I think it would be a great success. Unfortunately I really do think a variety of factors make this idea a pipe dream at best. From puritan ethics to the already vocal cries of "welfare state" I think this would be stomped out before it ever even got to being talked about seriously. Which is a shame because I really do think an idea similar to this would improve many many peoples quality of life, push forward human dignity and generally be far more equitable for people of all walks from those living in high-rises in SF to those living on the streets.

And I on the other hand don't think making the world's largest open air adult foster care system is going to end well.

Yeah like I said the idea in its current form is a pipe dream from fantasyland but some of the components are enticing from UBI to decriminalizing homelessness. Regardless it is a bad idea.

Weird hypothetical, if such a plan were to succeed, would it be ethical?

As described in the article, definitely not. As others pointed out for various reasons it would be an incredibly slippery slope and unethical for a variety of reasons. A similar plan though based on UBI, decriminalizing homelessness broadly, decriminalizing drugs and providing housing and other amenities along with other steps would be very ethical and a very important step for our society.

My apologies; I misinterpreted your original position.

It will be all fun and games until the president's plane is hijacked by radical leftists and crash landed inside the city.

Then a bounty hunter will be swept up in to a spy thriller conspiracy involving AI and the future of Night City

This is deeply stupid on its own merits and reveals a complete inhumanity in Hotz’s core beliefs.

Not worth talking about beyond that

We were warned against this in DS9, Season 3 Episodes 11 and 12[1]. I wonder what George's takeaway from those episodes were?

As an observer, it's like talking to someone who's just seen Star Wars for the first time and says, "I just don't understand why those rebels would fight against order and stability."

1. https://www.avclub.com/star-trek-deep-space-nine-past-tense-...

It's an interesting thought experiment but it fails to consider healthcare. Infinite healthcare for extremely unhealthy drug addicts would be impossible to finance.

Isn't that the point of this, to gather them together and let them die in a drug addled slavery. Wasn't this the big surprise end of spoilers A Scanner Darkly or reminicent of "The Planet of Sin" in one of Heinlein's stories? All they guy needs is some South American mind control drug and he can then change his name to "Jim Jones".

That's not what he says at all. They are on UBI and don't add anything to society. He states it explicitly.

There is great, unknowable evil in this. The delusional misanthropic fuck stain has seen too many movies and should not be trusted.

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