Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging • Hacker News Board

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#851

Post by ffhhttt » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 8:36 AM UTC

makeitdouble wrote: post #769

nonethewiser wrote: post #737

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's difficult for me to overstate how much I disagree with you. > I don't need more people being shamed for being gay Well he never said anything about being gay. Perhaps you’re reading some other concerns into his comment. Imagine two worlds where there is no murder. The first has no murder because no one feels inclined to murder. The second has no murder because there are very strong rules which stop people who…

The 2nd has more people diversity than the 1st. You'd think no one wanting to murder you is the best state, but practically people will have strong feelings about a lot of things in life, and it's hard to imagine a healthy society where "that would look bad on me" is enough to restrain you from your deepest anger moments. Having no immediate way to murder you + an active police to protect you should be the barrier to…

> Police patrol will catch you walking down an empty street at 3 AM with a kitchen knife in hand.

That’s really not the (main or significant) reason why Japan has a low murder rate.

Many European countries where there is little societal pressure, direct control and enforcement, drug use is fairly widespread and low level crime is rampant in large urban centers (compared to Japan of course) have comparable murder rates.

In this regard US is a huge outlier compared to pretty much all other “first world” countries.

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#852

Post by goodpoint » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 8:36 AM UTC

forgingahead wrote: post #764

nonethewiser wrote: post #737

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's difficult for me to overstate how much I disagree with you. > I don't need more people being shamed for being gay Well he never said anything about being gay. Perhaps you’re reading some other concerns into his comment. Imagine two worlds where there is no murder. The first has no murder because no one feels inclined to murder. The second has no murder because there are very strong rules which stop people who…

Japan is highly homogenous - their immigration policy would be decried by many liberals in the West as "racist". It is a massive factor in how their society is run, and why they are so high-trust that they don't need strong enforcement mechanisms (in some cases. Don't be a Western car exec there for example). There is a show on Netflix called "Old Enough!". It's worth watching to see how some of the high-trust works…

It's indeed racist and not not "racist".

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#853

Post by taxyz » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 8:38 AM UTC

godelski wrote: post #817

nonethewiser wrote: post #737

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's difficult for me to overstate how much I disagree with you. > I don't need more people being shamed for being gay Well he never said anything about being gay. Perhaps you’re reading some other concerns into his comment. Imagine two worlds where there is no murder. The first has no murder because no one feels inclined to murder. The second has no murder because there are very strong rules which stop people who…

This is a terrible example. Most people do not want to murder, even when very angry. You don't need laws to make people not murder. The laws are for what to do when people do. No matter how universal an attribute is it'll never be 100%. Besides, you'll notice the murder rate is highly localized and associated with economic opportunities. You know why talking about gay people _is_ a good example? Because you probably…

You’re either too young to remember or creating a non-existent history of what life was like before same-sex marriage was legalized. This is not a comment on anything to do with gay rights but more just a matter of fact: pre-Obergefell life was VERY similar to life today. Gay people still lived together, still went on dates, and held hands. They weren’t run out of town for being gay. There wasn’t rampant homophobia everywhere you turned and anti-gay gangs roaming about enforcing the social order. They just couldn’t enjoy the legal benefits of marriage.

If anything, things are probably worse from a sentiment perspective for gay people now because a bunch of heterosexual liberal white women use pride parades to act completely shamelessly under the guise of being warriors for a movement they aren’t otherwise a part of.

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#854

Post by dirtyid » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 8:41 AM UTC

tlogan wrote: post #121

I used to strongly support making drugs legal. I thought: this is a free country, you should be able to do what you want. But what I've seen in San Francisco has made me think differently. Most people who use drugs eventually end up not being able to live like normal adults. And no one willingly goes to get help or treatment. The problem will stick around because politicians care more about how things look. They'll s…

Decriminalize in a few non productive regions far from everything. Boot down everywhere else except soft stuff. Push all the users to Hamsterdam / Escape from LA.

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#855

Post by nroms » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 8:42 AM UTC

gloosx wrote: post #786

K0balt wrote: post #520

The USA and a few other cultures have unfortunately devalued shame to the point where it holds nearly no cultural power. Shame is an important aspect of behaviour moderation, a negative emotion usefully experienced when doing something that breaks the social contract. Devaluing shame instad of targeting the parts of the contract that needed to be changed has cost us a critical tool for self moderation and has created…

Addiction is a perpetual Ouroboros of shame. It is essential to understand this truth before ever wanting to integrate more shame into this problem. If one chooses addiction - well, it is an authority that moderates his behavior – the substance. Any shame will only make its rule stronger. The infantilization of society is a myth, society never really grew up to the point of understanding the universal truth - that ki…

I think there's something in between the polarity you've got there, something like "tough love". I think too much policy is based on emotional ideas, instead of seeing 'kindness, support, and re-integration' as ends of those ideal policies. People cannot just heroically decide to be kind in the face of an overwhelming issue.

I also think there's a point where things have slid so far that we need some measures that appear inhumane on the surface, but solve the problem more meaningfully. I think of the protesters in Toronto hoping to permanently protect the tent villages established in Trinity-Bellwoods inner city park, even blocking the police from clearing people out of their "homes". If we go on with policies like "give out free tents" that are the epitome of band-aid emotionally driven ideas It's hard to see how we aren't simply incentivizing the problem to grow.

It's as though some people genuinely think the permanent slums as in india or brazil are a solution and not a problem.

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#856

Post by kajaktum » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 8:42 AM UTC

throwaway77384 wrote: post #832

vjk800 wrote: post #826

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Shame is an important aspect of behaviour moderation, a negative emotion usefully experienced when doing something that breaks the social contract. In places with diverse people from different backgrounds and cultures (i.e. all modern cities) there is no social contract. Apart from murdering people, there are very few things that people agree are universally good or bad, and thus the behaviour moderating effect doe…

> In my town no-one did drugs, because that would have been shameful. Reads: People hid their drug use successfully. How much history do we need to experience before we accept that shame only leads to everyone pretending that something isn't a problem instead of addressing it head on.

I mean if everyone did drugs but everyone never noticed it then, did they actually use drugs? If there's nothing observable from someone that is supposedly drunk, then who cares?

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#857

Post by ffhhttt » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 8:46 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #748

HWR_14 wrote: post #713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's difficult for me to overstate how much I disagree with you. I don't need more people being shamed for being gay, for wearing the wrong outfit or for not fitting in. Shame just doesn't work well at a practical level. To say nothing of the superpower that gives the shameless. Meanwhile, I find your alternative of "well if we don't have shame, we'll just have to make explicit laws about it" to be not a bad thing at…

What do you mean shame doesn’t work? America is a country that literally can’t reproduce itself without importing people from countries where mothers shame children for not having children in a timely manner. America had 100,000 people die of drug overdoses last year, whereas societies that shame people for drug use have far lower rates of overdoses. Middle eastern and south Asian countries that shame people for pre-…

> let’s not forget that we live in a country that became a world power under a social structure that was much more rigid and repressive than the one we have today.

Was it significantly more rigid and repressive than in other countries at the time? I don’t think so.

Also your AIDS and sex related crime statistics seem to be imaginary?

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#858

Post by yafbum » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 8:49 AM UTC

pierat wrote: post #556

jmspring wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ex of someone I know is both a user and a dealer. He opted to be homeless over getting clean. Sadly here in the states there is little you can do if an adult chooses a self destructive path - calls to sheriff/police did nothing - “nothing we can do until he commits a crime”. Where “crime” is something other than the drug use/possession. This individual has always been self absorbed and useless. His daughter asked…

What's the saying... "My body, My choice" ? Well, some people will choose, willingly, to waste their life away living on the streets from one high to the next. The difference between most types of poverty and this, is that they *chose* this path. Bodily autonomy has powerful upsides, as well as downsides. Here's one of the downsides. If they wanted to 'get out', I'd be there to help them if I knew them. But they have…

I think you leave out a couple things here.

Externalities: the costs of caring for the addicted are high, and the quality of life in neighborhoods where addicts congregate is horrendous, between violence, insecurity and insalubriousness. I don't think a lot of people feel comfortable raising kids in places where there's public defecation on the daily. So yes I feel somewhat entitled to force that much of a "viewpoint" on my fellow citizens.

That addicts "chose" the path that they're in, I think reasonable people could disagree about it. To some folks, all behavior is the responsibility of the individual, and claiming otherwise is paternalistic overreach. Personally, I think it's fairly well established that some substances cause powerful long-term addiction in some people, well above the person's willpower. I don't care for locking up users, but I do think dealers and traffickers deserve the worst punishments for knowingly causing long-term harm to users.

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#859

Post by SturgeonsLaw » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 8:51 AM UTC

yafbum wrote: post #849

I feel like when I traveled to Asia, I didn't see any of that. I don't think it's because of better individual self-control (plenty of other addictions, like gambling, alcohol or smoking). But isn't there like death penalty for drug traffickers there? Is that the only effective deterrent? Harsh perhaps, but if we look at outcomes, the current situation kills a lot of people and wastes a lot of lives. I can see how so…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rat...

Only if we also bring in the death penalty for people who sell fried food, burn stuff, have infectious diseases and drive cars

Re: Oregon decriminalized hard drugs – early results aren’t encouraging

#860

Post by mptest » Wed, Aug 02, 2023, 8:54 AM UTC

taxyz wrote: post #853

godelski wrote: post #817

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a terrible example. Most people do not want to murder, even when very angry. You don't need laws to make people not murder. The laws are for what to do when people do. No matter how universal an attribute is it'll never be 100%. Besides, you'll notice the murder rate is highly localized and associated with economic opportunities. You know why talking about gay people _is_ a good example? Because you probably…

You’re either too young to remember or creating a non-existent history of what life was like before same-sex marriage was legalized. This is not a comment on anything to do with gay rights but more just a matter of fact: pre-Obergefell life was VERY similar to life today. Gay people still lived together, still went on dates, and held hands. They weren’t run out of town for being gay. There wasn’t rampant homophobia e…

Wow! They could still hold hands in public. Who cares if they weren't afforded the same legal and financial rights, they could go on dates! Pretty crazy comment man or maybe I'm naive as a straight dude.