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Comment by be_erik | Hacker News Reader

Decriminalization is step the first step. The obvious result is going to be that a problem _sometimes_ hidden becomes more prevalent. What failed in the Portland experiment was a lack of stable housing coupled with a public space system that was never designed for use by those afflicted by addiction.

The deterioration of our public spaces is not caused by our drug epidemic, it's the logical outcome when the state fails to provide services to the most vulnerable. People literally have nowhere else to go.

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Decriminalizing possession is one thing, but if the selling market is still illegal you really haven't done much other than keeping the jails a bit less full

Imagine that you're a politician trying to keep your job ahead of an election, and your opponent points to your policy making the lives of your constituents miserable. You understand that the argument you're making here would be political suicide, you'd be replaced, and the policy would be reversed.

How would you sell this in a way that could get you re-elected?

Imagine you're a politician trying to keep your job and during your term you magically solved a crisis (somehow, just pretend one of their 'plans' actually worked).

How would you persuade voters to NOT vote for that other guy, now that the problem is solved? How would you "secure more funding" for x,y, or z now that z doesn't exist? If you eradicate suffering, you can't blame the other side for it anymore. It's political suicide.

I don't think that's really a factor, because realistically the world is FAR from having any form of suffering eradicated. At best, most of what we can do is a good faith attempt to minimize suffering, and even that's incredibly difficult to do at scale.

Maybe you could say: Look, I fixed X! Reelect me and give me money and I'll fix Y and Z, too!

Not likely you'll run out of problems to fix.

A good reason why every leadership position should have term limits. If you have no chance for re-election, might as well go ahead and put in policies which may hurt in the short term but are overall great in the long term.

Do you expect such development in the case of the current president?

Yeah I'm certainly in favor of term limits for almost every position, even if in some cases they'd be very generous limits. That sort of thing isn't a one-shot fix though, there's always the NEXT job to think about. "I'm a mayor for 4 years, limited by law, but I'll be governor next, and then a house member, then senator, etc." Or it might be about work in the private sector that comes after political life... incentives have a way of adapting themselves to this sort of remedy.

It's still a good idea, but term limits only really work as part of a much broader program of oversight and control over the incentives of politicians.

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