Why San Francisco’s city government is so dysfunctional

(This got long, I'm not directing this at you or trying to needle you. I hope this will help you or someone else understand what some of the homeless are facing)

I think we see someone peeing on a car as less of an anti-social behavior than puritanical approaches to solving anti-social behavior that are more about punishment than rehabilitation. We are more upset that society wants to pay 70-100k a year to imprison people who likely have neurochemistry or behavioral problems, than to spend a fraction of that on solving the root problems instead of treating symptoms.

I've been in psych wards and rehabs. I would say close to three quarters of people in both institutions were capable of living a somewhat normal life, if they could get meaningful and stable assistance in dealing with their issues. The rest at least deserved a comfortable, safe place to live the best they could under full supervision. If you do any reading about state mental institutions in the US, you will understand they receive the exact opposite.

After my last psychotic episode I was pretty sure I would never be able to work again, but I still wanted to be independent if possible, even if that meant living in public housing and scraping by. I had already maxed out my SS benefits because I was productive up until that point, despite having undiagnosed mental illness and addiction problems. Of course I didn't have any savings and was relying on family.

At this point I had over 100k in hospital bills, thankfully almost completely paid by health insurance before I lost my job. That included multiple hospital visits, trips to psych wards, and visits to rehab. My family had saved paperwork for all of it, and I had two different psychiatrists who agreed I may never be able to work again.

I was told point blank by every single person I talked to, from the non-profits (who were totally worthless), to the disability lawyers I called, to the disability processing agents that it would be at least two years before I had a chance at receiving a dime. So I stayed with family for many months, they paid for my mental health care, and eventually I got on the right meds and I can now work again. My economic privilege is probably the only reason I am not on the streets or dead.

As a society, our expectation is that someone with a mental illness is going to take on that bureaucracy while they are in the most difficult period of their illness in order to get better. And if they display anti-social behavior, what do we do? We imprison them. Some of my behavior during my psychotic episode was violent. I am lucky I was not beat or shot, by a stranger or by the police.

The whole point of my rambling is that I hope we can consider the history of the person that is displaying anti-social behaviors. Some of the smartest, kindest, and most ingenious hackers of every stripe I have ever met were in rehab and in psych wards, but only after they had been stabilized by meds or sobriety. Before they returned, they were different, sometimes scary people.

There is so much potential being wasted, and so much low hanging fruit to help them rehabilitate and give back to society. Even from a purely economical perspective, I think it makes sense to overhaul our safety net so it catches people as early as it can. It serves individual rights, makes efficient use of our collective wealth, and I think it's the right thing to do.

So righteousness falls upon the vulnerable?

I guess I'll tell my drug addicted cousin he's all good because he's vulnerable.

You can be moral by being against the will of someone who's lost their way.

In what way would doing there job put them at risk that they didn’t sign up for with the job itself?

You’re not going to convince me to pay you more if you do a shit job. Same issue as with the SF school district.

Well, I think there are some good reasons for that. It's traditionally been an antisemetic trope, and often smoothly blends into antisemitism (Rothschilds, etc). It's also one of those things where the evidence is by necessity weak, and you really can't write weakly-evidenced critical articles about rich people without getting sued.

Personally, I'm very glad that this isn't a mainstream way of understanding problems. Rich people are kind of fungible, in that they usually don't want to pay taxes, but other than that usually have about the same range of politics as everybody else. Focusing on individual malfeasance tends to protect dysfunctional systems.

> he was able to score enough cash from tourists to support his drugs habit, the police left him alone because he didn’t look out of place, he was clean, groomed etc.

> How does society help someone with that view?

What do you mean by "help"? What's the problem?