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Comment by tokyodude | Hacker News Reader

a few random uninformed thoughts

1. drinking culture

AFAICT drinking culture is fairly different in Japan than in at least the USA. In the USA drinking leads to fights and violence. In Japan that seems far less so. Drinking and getting drunk in Japan doesn't have the stigma it has in the USA because it doesn't lead to the same issues? Include drunk driving in that since few people drive

2. attitudes toward drugs

SF is falling apart. I know you can argue the two are not related, SF falling apart and SF being one of the most drug friendly cities but I'm sure the Japanese don't find it quite so easy to separate those 2 things. I'm not 100% sure I can. Like many of the things that seems at least mildly related. The lower violent crime. The lower theft rates. The more respect for the commons (less trashing public things). For whatever wrong headed reason I find drug culture and trashing things related.

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Your second point is pretty interesting. I wonder why it’s easier for people to blame drugs, rather than overarching social failures, such as the incredible lack of housing. Maybe those issues are more complex.

Consider that Paris is comparatively very trashy but also way more conservative than San Francisco.

Because the drug policy is one of San Francisco’s overarching social failures?

The city hands hundreds of millions of dollars to outreach organizations that operate with little oversight and offer no results. We hand out 400,000 needles a month to IV drug users, and the dirty needles end up in the streets and sidewalks, putting everyone at risk. There is human feces everywhere. We allow open use in broad daylight. In some neighborhoods, we allow open dealing in parks and street corners. Police don’t bother to make arrests because the DA wouldn’t prosecute anyway. More and more homeless drug addicts move here to take advantage of the de-facto deregularization. The city reacts by throwing more money at the problem, without oversight or results, and the cycle continues.

The large number of homeless who are mentally ill or addicted to opiates are unaffected by the housing costs, because they couldn’t afford a house at any price.

I think the message you are trying to impart is a bit lost in the vindictiveness you're implying. Imperfect rehabilitative justice might make society spiteful of inefficiency, but punitive justice doesn't have the best record there either.

Its relative. Punitive justice isnt perfect, but the track record for for more punitive cities seems to be much better than the cities who arent punitive.

I didn’t mention vindictiveness. I mentioned that dealers are allowed to break the law in the open without consequence. Vindictiveness is how you’ve chosen to interpret that.

I don't want to argue over the word choice, I said you implied it. Regardless, what I was trying to imply in response was that it would be unfortunate if despairing over deregulation's current state led to the belief that "tough on crime" approaches are a better alternative.

“Vindictive” means an strong or unreasonable desire for revenge. I didn’t imply that I want that.

You’re creating a false dichotomy between not enforcing laws on one hand, and being vindictive on the other. If those are the only alternatives you can see, that’s on you.

Why are you trying to argue over the word? Are you purposely trying to distract from your point and start an argument? If you don't accept how I tried to refine your point, then okay, but don't obfuscate it further.

     "Police don’t bother to make arrests because the DA wouldn’t prosecute anyway. More and more homeless drug addicts move here to take advantage of the de-facto deregularization."

This reads like bemoaning they aren't locking people up, and is the rhetoric of tough on crime libertarians in my area.

     "The city reacts by throwing more money at the problem, without oversight or results, and the cycle continues."

This reads like a justification for criminalization. If you don't think the criminal system is vindictive, I don't know what to tell you.

There are of course multiple options. That was what my initial post was trying to emphasize, not that you are some vengeful onlooker.

Edit: maybe I should emphasize this part of your sentence, "without oversight or results, and the cycle continues." because refining that rather than our dumb argument makes more sense.

Vindictive is your word. I didn't read vindictiveness in anything that the GP wrote here.

I mean, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, and most American cities have huge drug problems, and they're also incredibly trashy once you're out of the secure yuppie districts. And is the biggest city in France, a liberal country, really that conservative compared to SF?

Can it all be attributed to housing issues? Maybe. But Hong Kong has housing issues. I've never worried about my safety, saw needles on the street, or saw piles of shit everywhere (though I have in all the other cities mentioned).

I don't think it's any one issue. Drug abuse is only one aspect of the problem, but not the root cause. Although I think if cargo ships were loaded up with coke and heroin, Hong Kong's problems would end up quite a bit worse than they are.

>And is the biggest city in France, a liberal country, really that conservative compared to SF?

The GP brought up attitudes towards drugs, specifically. I'm not arguing other liberal points. Consider that Amsterdam has similar lax attitudes to drugs and isn't nearly as bad. Hong Kong, proper, is expensive, but Hong Kong also has a very rich public transportation system. My impression of Hong Kong is that you don't need to live in Hong Kong to work there.

Personally I think most US cities, and a lot of western cities in general suffer more profoundly from income inequality. I'd imagine it's very easy to feel trapped on the streets in SF if you can't afford housing or a car (Which are problems that can come to roost after several years of poverty, if you are poor, you can't build credit, so you can't get a car/home loan). If you have no life choices, its easy fall into drug use (see the rural america opioid crisis).

>Consider that Paris is comparatively very trashy but also way more conservative than San Francisco.

What are you talking about? Paris has the same sort of drug addiction issues. Lots of the people trashing the commons are nasty violent crack addicts

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thelocal.fr/20180117/junkie...

https://rmc.bfmtv.com/emission/ravages-de-la-drogue-dans-le-...

>"For example, last year, there were no fewer than 850 traffic interruptions and power cuts because drug addicts crossed the tracks, carried out their business on the tracks, or pulled the alarm to stop the trains to either sell or buy drugs," Chaplan, who is also a representative of the trade union SUD-RATP, said.

Junkies are a blight on civilization

> Junkies are a blight on civilization

Let me fix that for you: Junkies are human beings with serious medical conditions related to substance abuse and often mental illness.

As a "civilization" we are ultimately measured by how we treat our most vulnerable, because that tells you the value we place on human life.

Society needs to spend more time and effort helping people with drug addiction problems, and less time vilifying and dehumanizing them.

Ever consider how that might change if treated?

It was the introduction of the war on drugs that introduced the need to push drugs, to pay for the habit. When clean heroin and needles were available, along with treatment for those who wanted to quit, there was barely a problem at all.

Many nations had successful history of tolerance without problems of junkies. The the US was determined to export their war on drugs globally. The hysteria of Harry Anslinger who gave the world the Reefer Madness mentality, and faked acres of evidence, was the US representative for the newly formed UN committee on drugs. It was his swan song resulting from Nixon's public enemy number 1 initiative.

India, The Netherlands, Britain and others had almost no drug addicts prior to this. There were of course some - but they were still productive members of society - yet orders of magnitude fewer than in the USA under prohibition. No police connected drugs with crime or anti-social behaviours.

Now everywhere is in a similar boat to the US, drugs outlawed with enough organised crime that going back to the old ways is probably impossible.

The presence of junkies doesn't mean that city is open to drugs as San Francisco is. Cannabis is illegal in France, yet still suffers from the same problems. However, Cannabis is legal in the Netherlands and Amsterdam is far more hospitable.

What the GP was bringing up was the attitude towards drugs, not people using drugs in general. SF was a far more lax attitude to drugs than France, yet its afflicted by similar problems. Blaming drugs is just a convenient scapegoat so that harder problems aren't addressed.

> "Junkies are a blight on civilization"

Junkies are human beings with a problem. So are cancer patients. So are veterans with PTSD.

It's our job to remember they're people and need help, not cast them out further. We're rich enough as a species that we can save those in trouble; we shouldn't forget that.

Whether you blame drugs or see it as an effect, it still makes the situation worse and keeps whomever is trapped more trapped.

Hey blame tech for that not drugs.

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