Live data from Hacker News

Time to bring back asylums?

wsj.com

321–330 of 397 posts

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#321
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ER visits are inordinately costly, but are generally the only way for homeless people to receive care (behavioral, chronic health conditions, etc). I'm having difficulty finding the source, but I've read that individual "frequent fliers" have consumed hundreds of thousands of dollars of emergency services without receiving substantive care that would improve their situation.

Why is an ER fundamentally so much more expensive than another office visit? Just an anecdote, I don’t see any late night “urgent care” places anymore. If they were sufficiently less expensive than ERs, it seems like insurance companies would incentivize them to have longer hours. Otherwise, after 9pm, you have to go to ER.

If they were staffed like an ER, they would cost as much as an ER. On top of us already paying for an ER.

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government SNAP benefits provide poor kids baby formula and other necessities. Mothers do not have to steal it. It’s easy to fence is the reason it is locked up.

Such 'benefits' are yet another lock and key; another hurdle that people in need must jump over. It's baby formula. You are just reiterating their point.

You're missing the point. For the most part, people stealing baby formula aren't doing so because they need it and can't afford it. Most baby formula theft is conducted by organized shoplifting rings. It can be easily sold or bartered on the street, and police don't focus on such crimes so the risk is low.

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#324
post #283
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In a sentence, we need a public infrastructure in place to care for the mentally ill that currently are forced to live on the streets of our major cities. Maybe that's putting the cart before the horse? How about what is needed is changing the conditions in society, workplace, and culture, so that fewer people end up "mentally ill", and those that are environmentally or genetically mentally ill do not get broken an…

Nobody knows what parts of society and culture create more mental illness. Some people will tell you they have the cure for the problems with our culture, but I disagree with most that proclaim to have the answer. You don't even have the answer, you're just listing the effects and stating they are bad and that we should not have them. No shit, the problem is what to change and what the effect will be.

>Nobody knows what parts of society and culture create more mental illness.

I'd say we have a very good idea. It's just denial when people are pretending we don't.

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#325
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advocating for "changing the conditions in society, workplace, and culture" is a bit of a moonshot.

And how is not going for that "moonshot" work out for you?

A hell of a lot better than in most places that have tried a “moonshot”. Russia in 1917 being the major example.

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Nuremberg Code is about medical experimentation, not vaccination programs. The Nuremberg Code is not really relevant to modern medical ethics, or even to the history of medical ethics--its authors plagiarized [1] half of it from the 1931 Guidelines for Human Experimentation [2]. The relevant standard these days is the seventh revision of the Declaration of Helsinki, by the World Medical Association. No, the use o…

I like that the difference between war crime and perfectly acceptable is a rubber stamp. Not like the covid vaccine was in any way rushed.

https://www.umms.org/coronavirus/covid-vaccine/testing

Calling this process a “rubber stamp” is disingenuous.

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#327
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the excess you cite is a result of this (albeit flawed) capitalist system we live with. I believe there will come a time where it is no longer necessary, but this will require levels of cooperation, education, and coordination that we are not nearly prepared to handle as a species. For what it's worth, I worked for a while at a fast food joint that did allow employees to take food home, or to make extra of it and…

I may be fretting over capitalism, but I think I do so with justification. I can’t say which system would be better, but I see the one destroying the planet and creating an arbitrary system of haves and have nots where two of the largest factors in whether you have a comfortable life are who your parents are and where your born - it’s a crapshoot. > All the excess you cite is a result of this (albeit flawed) capitali…

I appreciate your viewpoint. I spent many decades believing similarly, that money isn't real and money has no inherent value or purpose, only muddying the waters of production. Over the years, however, I've developed a more nuanced take on the matter. (And on a personal note, in retrospect it was this belief that kept me in poverty, not the children of the wealthy.)

I completely agree that we have "enough" for everyone at this point in time and many of our ills reduce to a distribution problem. I very much do not agree that just any other system could have brought us to this point.

Intuitively if we could snap our fingers and make all money disappear tomorrow life would go on without a hiccup or any noticible change so long as everyone just keeps doing what they're doing now. But that's the rub, would everyone keep doing what they're doing?

Our economic system is the system attempting to solve this distribution problem. The optimist in me still believes we can create a better system, but I have spent years trying to understand what that system looks like and I have yet to find it. (I am still eager to hear your proposal.)

I am increasingly convinced the solution will ultimately need to leverage our modern and novel digital communications networks as well as other recent and perhaps future innovations, so I don't agree that such a system could have just arisen at any point in the past and carried us here.

As an addendum, I believe any system that effectively solves this problem while delivering the same or higher level of resources for humanity will run into the issue of destroying the planet. This is an orthogonal problem that the optimist in me also believes we will eventually find a solution for, but if we don't the discussion will become somewhat moot.

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is extremely difficult and dangerous. For instance, someone who doesn’t go along with whatever the latest dogma is could be sent away by whom ever is in power. When does it go from mental help to reprogramming? Saying that I agree we need to bring back a new version of asylums. I’d hope there’s a bipartisan project there.

> For instance, someone who doesn’t go along with whatever the latest dogma is could be sent away by whom ever is in power. This can be the case for literally any legal system. It's why checks and balances and an independent judiciary are important.

Should we have something akin to a judge and juries for determining whether individuals are mentally ill?

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#329
post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also right now an epidemic of homeless people harassing, assaulting, and even murdering people and generally making major cities nearly unlivable. So when you create a false dichotomy between "treat mentally ill people who might murder you" or "lock up gay people", YOU are in fact giving tools to the people who want to lock up gay people. However much your average, non-gay person supports rights for gay peop…

> we just might be able to do both things Yes. But there is no easy solution. History shows that anything that involves locking up people because they might commit a crime will result in innocent people being locked up and abused.

Better not do anything then, certainly not try to figure out a better way.

The only safe choice is to oppose every proposal and offer nothing as an alternative.

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hitler.

I get what you're saying but Hitler never went to jail; his forces were eliminated by the armies of multiple world superpowers working together. Imagine if such manpower and might were used to eradicate homelessness and hunger.

he did go to jail and wrote his famous Mein Kampf...
Post reply on HN