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Comment by erulabs | Hacker News Reader

You can say “just sort out who is doing this!” and you can say “what has happened to the world that it’s come to this!” And the answer to both is the same:

Drugs.

You’re stealing copper wiring because you’re an addict. You’re not getting a minimum wage job because you’re an addict. You live in poverty because you’re an addict.

Comments lamenting the state of society are as useful as kicking dirt. Either build better bridges or make better medicine.

Now one of you smart people comment something useful in this thread about tech that can cure dependency issues!

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People live in poverty without being an addict; it's not an either/or, and you're punching down on both poor people and addicts, neither of which is helpful.

Tech will not cure dependency issues, it's biochemists, biologists, and psychologists that are at the forefront of that, and there isn't a universal cure for addiction. Tech also won't solve poverty, which is a political issue.

Cheap access to GLP-1 agonists might help with addiction. I have facilitated someone getting access for alcoholism, and it’s like night and day, with them being fully functional.

Appears to be an incredibly powerful force multiplier, just need to scale up (can be manufactured for less than $5/month/person). My apologies for going off topic, confirming your point to solve addiction to solve these second order effects of mental health challenges and poverty. Secure (basic needs), functional humans with basic needs met don't strip infra and homes for copper.

> Tech will not cure dependency issues, it's biochemists, biologists, and psychologists that are at the forefront of that, and there isn't a universal cure for addiction. Tech also won't solve poverty, which is a political issue.

Preach.

https://recursiveadaptation.com/p/wegovy-and-ozempic-semaglu...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40565144

https://recursiveadaptation.com/p/the-growing-scientific-cas...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-48780-6

> People live in poverty without being an addict

Please let me know where these people are! I have been riding the streets for 18 years in a city with over 1 million (Top 100 by population in the US) and I haven't met an actual impoverished person that was not an addict. Our "poorest" citizens eat better than lower middle-class with EBT. They steal because its 1000% easier than any job on the planet.

All the poor children you've met were addicted to drugs? Seems odd. Are you counting sugar as a drug?

Several issues:

1. Of course you can live in poverty without being an addict, that wasn't an implication of what I said.

2. Biochemistry is technology.

3. Tech will, has, and is 'solving' poverty.

4. My point is that it is not poverty driving people to strip copper from the walls, it is drug addiction.

Poor people aren't stealing copper. Crackheads are.

Drugs are mostly a side-effect of other psychological issues, and it's in a control theory sense a positive feedback loop. You can't eliminate drugs, but you can work on the underlying problems.

Citation?

Anecdotally the people I know that take serious drugs are on average as normal as anyone else. And I know plenty of people with psych issues that don't take drugs. Neither a necessary nor sufficient condition.

Yes, we can work on people's underlying psychological problems, but we are far from having reliable solutions to resolve psychological problems.

Your implied solution is that we can fix drug addicts. That is a long way from reality in my limited experience (and I have acquantances working in drug rehab).

Watch one close friend go down the hellhole of drug addiction, and you can quckly discover for yourself that often (a) it isn't due to mental health and (b) there doesn't seem to be much that anyone can do.

People espousing this theory usually point to rat park.

Unfortunately, rat park is in no sense good or useful science. It's more useful as a litmus test for how sincerely someone tests their beliefs.

A lot of this goes back to 2016 when states signed the Opioid compact that made it much harder to get Oxycontin prescriptions.

There were a lot of addicts that were getting opioids prescribed to them by a doctor and paid for by Medicaid. Abuse was happening but few needed to turn to crime.

Suddenly a lot of them lost their legal opioid prescription, and this is when we saw the explosion of fentanyl and the rise of drug fueled crime.

We’re working on a startup for non-addictive pain treatment. Derived from new genetics (not papaver somniferum).

There are a lot of people who steal stuff who aren't addicted.

It's a quick and easy way to make money, so of course drug addicts will be drawn to it, but people who don't care about the moral issues with stealing, or find it easier than the alternative will do it too.

Get them hooked on social media before they get hooked on drugs.

But seriously, just regulate the recyclers where people are eventually taking this stuff.

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