FranLab is getting evicted

[Kasper]

[...] I'm frequently moving heavy stuff around, equipment, materials, even groceries that are impractical to carry, a car is mandatory. Can't get on a bus with a model airplane to go to a flying field, can't take firearms on the bus, can't take a stack of 2x4's.

Last time I rode a bus was about 7 years ago, good riddance.  I walked to the auto-parts store to buy a new truck battery.  Then I carried it to the nearest bus stop and waited about 25min for a bus.  He told me I couldn't bring my battery on the bus.  Then I had stuff my battery in my backpack and wait 30 more min for the next bus.

[james_s]

Last time I rode a bus was about 7 years ago, good riddance.  I walked to the auto-parts store to buy a new truck battery.  Then I carried it to the nearest bus stop and waited about 25min for a bus.  He told me I couldn't bring my battery on the bus.  Then I had stuff my battery in my backpack and wait 30 more min for the next bus.

Pre-pandemic at least the bus worked pretty well for one specific use case, commuting from the suburbs into the city, and halfway decent for commuting from one area of the city to another although usually I found walking or Uber to be a lot more versatile for the latter case.

If you want to get from one suburban city to another good luck, here that means take a bus into downtown Seattle and take another bus out to the suburban city. Getting from one major city to another is not much better. It can take hours for a trip that would be 30 minutes by car. Many trips require transferring from one bus to another which adds additional delay and if your bus is delayed and misses the last run of the connecting bus or the connecting run is canceled you are screwed.

Since the pandemic the bus system has suffered. They are short staffed and ridership is down so routes have been reduced and specific runs are often cancelled on short notice. More than once I've gotten stuck downtown and had to find a way to kill an hour before the next bus run but I had to be careful not to miss that one since it was the last run for the day. They have an app for finding routes and tracking buses but it is absolutely terrible, it's difficult to navigate and there are frequently phantom buses that show they are on time on the app but then they simply never arrive.

The people planning the system seem to be idiots too. Many of them are so anti-car that they push to eliminate free parking at the park & ride lots or even eliminate the lots entirely. Sorry but if I don't happen to live near a convenient bus route and there's nowhere I can leave my car that is safe and doesn't cost a bunch of money to use then I'll just drive my car the whole way instead. If you want people to use transit instead of cars, start by offering reliable transit that meets people's needs, don't just be hostile to cars and try to make driving as inconvenient as possible. That just makes me avoid those areas entirely. Seattle is very car-hostile, nearby Bellevue on the other hand is very car friendly, the streets are wider and have turn lanes, the businesses all have ample free parking, it's cleaner with less crime, I take my business there whenever possible because it's more convenient.

[james_s]

It requires spending money, but if you actually can fix these people and they go back into the workforce, that's a huge benefit to society as they pay taxes now.

Where do you get the money? Wages have been stagnant for years, cost of living is way, way up. We can't even afford to repair crumbling bridges and other infrastructure. People talk about taxing the rich but every plan anyone ever tries to implement mostly ends up taxing the middle class, what's left of it anyway. I know I'm cynical but I am very skeptical that a large majority of vagrants and junkies will ever amount to anything. These are people that have suffered for years with mental illness and addiction and lived a life of crime and begging to support themselves. It is an absolutely massive undertaking to get one of them to join the system and become a productive member of society. It's actually shocking how many turn down offers for shelter, they would rather live on the street roasted out of their mind and steal from you to support their habit than live in a shelter where they're not allowed to get high.

[sokoloff]

It is an absolutely massive undertaking to get one of them to join the system and become a productive member of society. It's actually shocking how many turn down offers for shelter, they would rather live on the street roasted out of their mind and steal from you to support their habit than live in a shelter where they're not allowed to get high.

If that's the primary barrier, the harm minimizing move is probably to allow them to get high at the shelter.

[james_s]

It is an absolutely massive undertaking to get one of them to join the system and become a productive member of society. It's actually shocking how many turn down offers for shelter, they would rather live on the street roasted out of their mind and steal from you to support their habit than live in a shelter where they're not allowed to get high.

If that's the primary barrier, the harm minimizing move is probably to allow them to get high at the shelter.

What does that solve? They're still going to steal your stuff to pay for their drugs. The best harm minimizing move is to round them up and force them into addiction treatment, unfortunately hard to do. I say give them a choice, go to treatment or go to jail. Yes jail is expensive, but it could be made cheaper, and the purpose is to protect the rest of society form people who can't or won't live within the rules.

[sokoloff]

It is an absolutely massive undertaking to get one of them to join the system and become a productive member of society. It's actually shocking how many turn down offers for shelter, they would rather live on the street roasted out of their mind and steal from you to support their habit than live in a shelter where they're not allowed to get high.

If that's the primary barrier, the harm minimizing move is probably to allow them to get high at the shelter.

What does that solve? They're still going to steal your stuff to pay for their drugs. The best harm minimizing move is to round them up and force them into addiction treatment, unfortunately hard to do. I say give them a choice, go to treatment or go to jail. Yes jail is expensive, but it could be made cheaper, and the purpose is to protect the rest of society form people who can't or won't live within the rules.

I don't want a society to be able to say "don't be addicted to drugs at penalty of going to jail".
I'm perfectly fine with society saying "Steal stuff? Off to jail with you."

If addiction is keeping people on the streets and out of shelters, I think we should consider how we could loosen the shelter rules. If you're OK with alcohol, tobacco and coffee, but "against drugs", I'm not quite sure what to say to convince you that those are all drugs.

[james_s]

If addiction is keeping people on the streets and out of shelters, I think we should consider how we could loosen the shelter rules. If you're OK with alcohol, tobacco and coffee, but "against drugs", I'm not quite sure what to say to convince you that those are all drugs.

Of course they're all drugs, but surely you can't seriously be saying they're all equivalent? I know lots of people that use caffeine, alcohol, tobacco or pot that are functional adults who can hold a job and take care of themselves. I know exactly zero people that smoke crack, meth, do heroin or other hard drugs that are functional. There is a reason that hard drugs are illegal, and if something is illegal there should be penalties for doing it. If somebody is unable to function in society because they are addicted to drugs, regardless of what drugs it is, they should be forced into treatment. If they can't function in society they are resorting to crime to support themselves. For what it's worth, I'm fine with not allowing tobacco or alcohol in shelters either, the people in shelters are being supported by the rest of us, and if I'm going to pay to support somebody I don't want to pay for their expensive indulgences. When they can earn a living and buy their own cigarettes they are more than welcome to smoke themselves to death, that's not my problem. When I'm paying for them it becomes my problem.

[sokoloff]

I suspect you know people who fairly regularly and illegally do cocaine, meth (or very close chemical cousins to meth), and psychedelics and hold a job just fine. (You know the people; you just don't know that they do the drugs.)

Gatekeeping what someone else puts into their body isn't something that interests me. It's totally fair to say that society shouldn't hand people enough money that they can buy all the drugs they want and to decide that $X/Y time is the right amount of support we're willing to extend to people who are in a bad situation. I don't agree with dictating what they can and cannot buy with that $X to any greater extent that we dictate and practically enforce it for everyone else.

[Quarlo Klobrigney]

Duh...you just print it silly.
Inflation? What's that?


Quote from: james_s on Today at 19:52:09

Where do you get the money? Wages have been stagnant for years, cost of living is way, way up. We can't even afford to repair crumbling bridges and other infrastructure.

[james_s]

I suspect you know people who fairly regularly and illegally do cocaine, meth (or very close chemical cousins to meth), and psychedelics and hold a job just fine. (You know the people; you just don't know that they do the drugs.)

Gatekeeping what someone else puts into their body isn't something that interests me. It's totally fair to say that society shouldn't hand people enough money that they can buy all the drugs they want and to decide that $X/Y time is the right amount of support we're willing to extend to people who are in a bad situation. I don't agree with dictating what they can and cannot buy with that $X to any greater extent that we dictate and practically enforce it for everyone else.

I don't care what they put in their body if they pay for it, but if it's illegal and they are found in possession of it they should go to jail. I care what they spend my money on. If you're getting a handout, it should come with strings attached as to what it can be spent on. If I say the money I pay to support somebody can't be spent on apple juice then they better not be spending it on apple juice.

[sokoloff]

That's a self-consistent and reasonable point of view to hold.

I hold a different one: that people are better judges of what to spend money on and restrictions are generally economically inefficient.

(It's the same reason that you'd rather have $100 in cash than a $100 gift card to some store.)

[EEVblog]

I suspect you know people who fairly regularly and illegally do cocaine, meth (or very close chemical cousins to meth), and psychedelics and hold a job just fine. (You know the people; you just don't know that they do the drugs.)

I was surprised to hear on a Louis Rossmann live stream recently that he used to do drugs. I think it was cocaine?
I believe he's off them now.

[james_s]

I was surprised to hear on a Louis Rossmann live stream recently that he used to do drugs. I think it was cocaine?
I believe he's off them now.

Cocaine is probably one of the few possible exceptions to the hard drugs that some people use occasionally and remain functional, or use for a while when they're young and then stop. I've never tried it but I don't think it is anywhere near as addictive as opiates, nor as destructive to the body as methamphetamine.

Whatever the case, by the time someone is so deep into the downward spiral that they're homeless and smoking crack or shooting heroin on the street they are WELL past the point of casual use, and guaranteed they are resorting to crime to finance their habit. When people are stealing catalytic converters that cost $2500 to replace or yanking copper wiring out of street lights to get a few dollars in scrap to buy drugs the cumulative cost to society is enormous.

[Stray Electron]

]If that's the primary barrier, the harm minimizing move is probably to allow them to get high at the shelter.

  That's about the same as the move to give them free syringes and needles. How did that turn out?  It looks to me like we now have more junkies than ever!

[Stray Electron]

  If you're OK with alcohol, tobacco and coffee, but "against drugs", I'm not quite sure what to say to convince you that those are all drugs.

   Well if you can't see the difference between coffee users and cocaine users than there's something seriously wrong with you!

   Regarding the other two, I'm against their use as well and I fully agree that their use is destructive to huge numbers of people. But that said, neither of them are as addictive, or cause the amount of physical or mental damage to individuals, or cause as much murders, deaths or other crimes as cocaine, fentanyl and a huge number of illegal drugs.

   You can't lump alcohol or tobacco in with fentanyl and the likes and you certainly can't compare coffee to any of them!  By your reasoning I could call table salt "a drug" and use that as justification for unrestricted use of any drug in the world.

[Buriedcode]

  You can't lump alcohol or tobacco in with fentanyl and the likes and you certainly can't compare coffee to any of them!

Indeed, in the US at least Alcohol and tobacco account for far more deaths than fentanyl or any/all opaites.  Coffee - I'm not even sure one can get statistics on coffee-related harms (caffeine has caused deaths but very few and always related to "supplement" intake).

And whilst tobacco harms directly, alcohol has many indirect harms as well - domestic abuse, drink-driving deaths, violence.  I think the point sokoloff was trying to make was - if we're talking specifically about the harms of certain drugs, as well as the cost to society (in both lives and money), then Alcohol and tobacco are at the top - by a long way in almost every measure.  Yet often people gloss over that and readily demonise drugs that, for an individual can do more harm, but on large scales are far less damaging.

By your reasoning I could call table salt "a drug" and use that as justification for unrestricted use of any drug in the world.

I don't understand what this means.  Caffeine in coffee is a drug, and has clear physiological and psychological effects, salt doesn't really affect psychology, and is a basic requirement for mammals.

[AVGresponding]

It's likely a more useful approach would be to consider the reasons people turn to mind altering products in the first place, and do something about that, but it won't happen, because it would be less profitable.

[tom66]

  That's about the same as the move to give them free syringes and needles. How did that turn out?  It looks to me like we now have more junkies than ever!

That was more to prevent the spread of HIV, which has huge health impacts, and doesn't just stay in the junkie population.

I do wonder if there will be less of it in the future as better treatments for HIV become available.  There seems to be a belief that there will be a properly effective vaccine or post viral treatment within 10 years.

[NiHaoMike]

And whilst tobacco harms directly, alcohol has many indirect harms as well - domestic abuse, drink-driving deaths, violence.  I think the point sokoloff was trying to make was - if we're talking specifically about the harms of certain drugs, as well as the cost to society (in both lives and money), then Alcohol and tobacco are at the top - by a long way in almost every measure.  Yet often people gloss over that and readily demonise drugs that, for an individual can do more harm, but on large scales are far less damaging.

The health insurance I get through work charges a huge extra fee for smokers. By doing so, the nonsmokers got at least 2 years (so far) of no premium increases. The extra fee for smokers has increased substantially going into the second year since the implementation, I don't see that being a sustainable source of revenue so maybe they'll target excessive alcohol consumption or obesity next.

[sokoloff]

As someone who is overweight (not nearly “people of Walmart” level, but definitely 30 pounds heavier than I should be), I think I should pay more for health insurance than someone at a healthy weight.

[Stray Electron]

   LOL!  For once we agree!    I was overweight too but I dumped about 40 pounds. Technically I'm probably still overweight I'm happy where I am.

[NiHaoMike]

I also agree with extra charges for obesity even though I'm overweight, it would make for a big push towards more healthy living options. The problem is how to determine if someone is overweight or not, since BMI is a flawed metric. There should also be a way for those losing weight/getting more fit to avoid the charge.

[Stray Electron]

  So true.  I never gained excess weight until I went into engineering and ended up sitting at a desk for 10+ hours a day and working 5 and 6 days per week and never having time to exercise or even take care of lawn care, car repairs and other activities that would have given me some level of physical activity.  Engineering is very unhealthy life style IMO and I'm sure that there are a lot of others here that would agree.  After I retired, I took up my outside activities again and started eating less quick-meal junk food and lost about 40 pounds. Unfortunately I saw a lot of people in the engineering company that I used to work for that never got that chance. A lot of them died from problems related to being over weight, and of stress, before they could retire. Very, very few of the people that I used to work with are still alive and now I feel like I'm some kind of survivor!

[Bud]

I also agree with extra charges for obesity even though I'm overweight, it would make for a big push towards more healthy living options.

We are still living in politicall correctness era, so forget about it   

[NiHaoMike]

  So true.  I never gained excess weight until I went into engineering and ended up sitting at a desk for 10+ hours a day and working 5 and 6 days per week and never having time to exercise or even take care of lawn care, car repairs and other activities that would have given me some level of physical activity.  Engineering is very unhealthy life style IMO and I'm sure that there are a lot of others here that would agree.  After I retired, I took up my outside activities again and started eating less quick-meal junk food and lost about 40 pounds. Unfortunately I saw a lot of people in the engineering company that I used to work for that never got that chance. A lot of them died from problems related to being over weight, and of stress, before they could retire. Very, very few of the people that I used to work with are still alive and now I feel like I'm some kind of survivor!

It's a lot better nowadays. Sit/stand desks are becoming quite popular and quite a few companies are encouraging use of the stairs instead of the elevator. Sites that have their own dining are providing more healthy options.