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0 pointscolechristensen3y ago0 comments

You can have my car over my dead body.

I live in a very walkable neighborhood near lots of public transit.

Yesterday someone was shot in the head two floors up. A month ago I watched a racially charged conflict that only didn't end with a stabbing because a dude couldn't find anything appropriate in the unoccupied security desk. A week ago I witnessed a charged situation with a couple of dozen people at a bus stop. Someone was murdered on a bus at 11pm two blocks away over who got a cigarette on the floor. A friend was visiting me and someone got stabbed at the bus stop she used 45 minutes after she passed through.

There are exactly 0 units available in my building appropriate for a family of 4 unless you really aspire to live packed in like sardines, the units you could do so which still don't have much space in them go for significantly more than a 6 bedroom house on a half acre within a few miles.

What will happen if left-wing idealists try to force city density and public transit on people is a hard right wing turn when the consequences of one party trying to take freedoms away for idealistic reasons becomes a bigger burden than the consequences of the freedoms the other party wants to take away.

I really don't care about my own safety, but when it comes time for a family I would never subject any of them to the safety nightmare which is high density public-transit heavy living.

When the same people fighting to abolish the car are fighting to abolish the police, I don't think there's going to be much hope for either happening.

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pasabagi3y ago

I guess one social worker costs about the same as maintaining five cars? What you're describing is not normal, and has little to do with the presence or absence of police. The US has about middle-of-the-pack police-per-capita, for instance, but because it lacks all the supporting infrastructure (social workers, psychiatric clinics, etc), it has really bad violent crime stats.

Shutting yourself off from society is a fragile and imperfect solution - if you look at South Africa, where elites have essentially tried to use razor wire and walled communities to insulate themselves, people's lives are still dominated by the threat and reality of the society they've tried to shut out.

colechristensenOP3y ago

It is the new normal if you look at crime statistics.

The insinuation that social workers can fix this problem or the problem is rooted in mental health issues is a problem.

These are, for the most part, grown men deciding to use violence for income (theft in various forms) or to settle disputes. I don't know what you think a social worker is going to do to diffuse a fight (not that they'd be notified and arrive before it was long over) or if anyone with that background would willingly put themselves in the middle of a potentially violent encounter and think they could make everybody play nice and use their words.

There is some magical thinking and somewhat offensive blaming of mental illness on crime.

And excluding yourself from certain populations is absolutely effective, and not "society" that you're shutting yourself off from. Unfortunately you do leave a lot of people behind trying to escape from crime, but there are plenty of effective ways of doing it, if you have the means.

Cities in the US are nothing like SA and the problems are nothing similar.

pasabagi3y ago

Eh, the US has kind of outlier stats when it comes to stuff like violent crime basically because it has a weird social system. Most rich countries have settled on a vaguely social-democratic normal where you pay taxes for social services that intervene at various points along the chain to make sure people don't eat each other.

If you subject people to economic darwinism, don't be surprised they bring regular darwinsim to your front door.

If you want things to change, just copy the countries that don't have your problems.

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pasabagi3y ago

colechristensenOP3y ago

It is the new normal if you look at crime statistics.

The insinuation that social workers can fix this problem or the problem is rooted in mental health issues is a problem.

There is some magical thinking and somewhat offensive blaming of mental illness on crime.

Cities in the US are nothing like SA and the problems are nothing similar.

pasabagi3y ago

If you subject people to economic darwinism, don't be surprised they bring regular darwinsim to your front door.

If you want things to change, just copy the countries that don't have your problems.

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