Good cities can't exist without public order
noahpinion.blog
noahpinion.blog
The author identified the symptoms, but fell short of finding the cause.
Drug dealers typically live in well-connected areas as they have people come to them, not the other way around. And they can afford to, since it's a risky, but lucrative profession.
All those "disorderly types" are not drugged up (at least not enough) - they're on their way to get their fix. If they had enough they would be at home, being all drugged up without a care in the world.
It's a difficult problem because those who survived long enough in this line of work learned how to not draw attention to themselves from both the law and their competitors.
This is not just public transit either. I live in a rural area about 20mins drive north of an exurb, and the peace we make out here is very desirable. We try to resist the paving of roads because it just brings more traffic from people who don't live here or contribute to the local economy or culture. The conversations I have with people coming out to the "middle of nowhere," to drag race, trade drugs, loiter, vandalize, dump litter, and have public sex in front of my farmhouse often end with reminding them the reason they like it out here is because nobody here does the stuff they're doing here. If you like it, treat it better.
What makes these places desirable (anywhere) is the people who live here, and by observing norms, you can be welcome in them. If you go anywhere with a load of garbage in your head about why people should want to be around you and put up with your indulgent nonsense, don't be surprised when they are unenthusiastic, or make a point of walking out and telling you so.
It's like someone bringing a 50W subwoofer on a backcountry canoe trip. It's purpose is to despoil its environment. Terms like NIMBY are thought terminating cliches and epithets that people in cities with no responsibility for their communities use to spoil the environments they envy for others. Instead of advocating for the destruction of peaceful neighbourhoods and environments, why not try making yourself welcome in them instead.
Perhaps the real issue are all the lifeless, boring suburbs creating oppressed people that need an outlet.
the public order angle is that you have to take responsibility for your own neighbourhoods because if you don't they're just going to go to shit.
I bet if the catch and release criminals were sent to live in the gated communities and high security condo buildings, the judges would be less inclined to let people out to reoffend.
I don't think that the US lacks harsh punishment at all - compared to peer countries, prison conditions are terrible, the incarcerated population is massive, etc.
What I do agree with is that enforcement feels ineffective. Every time a criminal commits an offence, they are spinning a roulette wheel and hoping it doesn't land on "go to prison". Making sentences longer and conditions worse doesn't change the odds that a particular criminal will end up punished, it just means the downside is worse (and increases prison populations). Even when a criminal is caught, they're often bailed and able to abscond. The question should be how to increase the effectiveness of enforcement whilst preserving rights and protections against wrongful punishment.
The other side of the equation is looking at the carrot, not just the stick. If life sucks and people turn to criminality because they feel like they don't live in a society that gives a damn, you have to improve society so people have something to live for.
I think a lot of this weirdly needs to be "vibes based policy" as it were. People need to believe that justice will be done in order to feel secure, and to feel that if they were to commit a crime that they wouldn't get away with it. Objective reality doesn't control behaviour, peoples' beliefs do.
Additionally, what you're proposing is incredibly optimistic from the perspective of how much economic utility prisoners actually have.
The median state's average cost of housing a prisoner is about $65,000 a year, with wealthy coastal states like CA, WA, NYC costing over $100,000 per prisoner per year. [1]
It's a sad economic reality, but many of the people in these prisons aren't even economically capable of producing output that has a market value even meeting the costs it takes it house them, let alone exceeding it, with the exceptions being largely concentrated in the minimum security prisons where white collar criminals and executives are housed (think Martin Shkreli, Bernie Madoff, etc), though you obviously can't ask people like that to perform the same kind of economically productive work that enticed them to get themselves sent to prison in the first place, if that were even possible (would you invest any of your money in a hedge fund that had a CEO working from prison for fraud?).
[1] https://usafacts.org/articles/how-much-do-states-spend-on-pr...
Gosh, it's almost like the state is spending tax money to help its citizens! The horror!
I mean can you give any non-absurd answer how you think this works? Someone knocks over a liquor store with a box cutter: is there some magic number of years in prison that they can be released where they won't reoffend?
Every piece of evidence I've seen indicates that the opposite happens: people in prison are traumatized further exacerbating mental illness, connected with other criminals, and then released with a criminal record that makes it even harder for them to obtain legal employment, making crime even more attractive. This effect is generational: children separated from their parents by prison time are more likely to end up in prison themselves. Your "solution" doesn't solve crime, it causes crime.
Not only does your "solution" not work, it's ethically repulsive. The vast majority of crimes are crimes of desperation, and you are so self-absorbed that you're only concerned with solving your own problem--crime--and totally unconcerned with the suffering which causes people to commit crime in the first place. Your only solution is to cause even more suffering by locking people up and throwing away the key.
The causes of crime are economic, and crime will continue until that problem is addressed. It's not hard to see that if you have any care at all for your fellow humans.
Unfortunately, thanks to the paywall, we have no idea what the proposed solution actually is.
Not only "good cities", but even HN's beloved "free markets" are completely dependent on a government enforcing rule of law.
So, as usual, both the wingnut libertarians, and the wokenut anarchists are out in the weeds. With neither expressing rational policy, and both being completely devoid of acknowledging physical reality.
A society based on rule of law is essential for any form of civilization. The fairness of that society will be wholly dependent on how uniformly and fairly that rule is applied and enforced.
At present we have very poor uniform enforcement in the US, and that's leading to a LOT of social maladies, but that is not a rational reason for eliminating rule of law, it's a reason to reform it.
The real issue is poverty, and in turn cost of living. People can't afford housing, become desperate, crime increases. But trying to fix this with "safety nets" is basically "let them eat cake" unless you have a way to fund it, and trying to fund it while the prices are still so high means the government can't afford it either, whereas if you were to adopt policies that lowered housing prices then that would be the solution in itself.
But now you need to make that happen in San Francisco.
How much money does SF spend on making sure people can get medical care without going into debt? When I went to the SF General emergency room after after a bike accident, I walked out with a just under $2500 bill, which would have been financially crippling for someone of less financial means.
SF spends a massive amount of money on social safety nets that don't fundamentally address problems, because they don't have the political will to implement cheaper solutions that actually solve the fundamental problems.
Put another way, SF spends a lot of money on feel-good programs, and very little on actual social safety nets.
It would not cripple anyone. They would simply not pay, and nothing would happen. That's just what happens to 95% of medical bills not paid by insurance.
Imagine thinking "just don't pay!" was a solution to the healthcare crisis.
I don't know what your intention was for what you said, but if your intention wasn't to insinuate that this solves the problem, you failed in your intention.
> But we cannot solve problems unless everyone is aligned on basic facts about the system we have now.
Disagree. Bringing up random irrelevant stuff overcomplicates already complex discussion. You're downplaying the problem, even if you don't intend to. This a tactic to paralyze the conversation, not further it. Whether this is your tactic or whether you're just repeating what others have said, I don't know, but if it's the latter, you should be more cognizant of the effects of what you repeat.
The fact that you can get away with simply not paying some medical debt is not a useful addition to this conversation. A society with a functioning safety net does not saddle people with medical debt, regardless of whether there is any way for that debt to be collected.
Notably, you're just passing off the problem to healthcare providers who now don't get paid in the "solution" you're talking about.
Wealth inequality, frankly, has little to do with it.
Individuals making a conscious and deliberate choice to commit violence or property crime is the cause of social disorder. Nobody's a robot without free will.