No you’re not.
Not with those ignorant comments you made yesterday.
“Is intended to…” sounds awfully familiar. We hear about the intentions of a lot of policies these days. When will the intended outcomes materialize? A hundred years? What makes you believe that government policies can produce more equal outcomes across society when two children being raised in the same home by the same parents don’t get equal outcomes in life?
If you listen to the advocates, a “low barrier” homeless shelter is intended to make the fentanyl addicts who live in and run the horrific encampments more receptive to entering a shelter to receive help. The same people tell us that decriminalizing hard drug use is intended to help society by imposing fewer consequences on destructive behavior.
My town actually has a non-profit called “The Church of Safe Injection” that has the support of our city council. They intend to reduce the harm fentanyl use produces by distributing all of the needles that litter our public spaces. The founder of this “church” died from practicing his religion. So did another “leader” of the “church”. The “church” is a dump on Main St with empty business spaces all around it.
Meanwhile, drug use, property crime and violent crime in my city is at an all-time high, while advocates insist that we need to make the city an even more attractive place for people to congregate and pursue a life of drug use. I don’t particularly care what their intentions are at this point, their destructive policies need to end.
“Defund the police” was intended to substitute armed police with unarmed social workers, which we were told would generate better outcomes from emergency calls. The jurisdictions who embraced the rhetoric have seen more crime, less active police and recruiting shortfalls. My city of nearly 40,000 people cannot produce candidates who are interested in the job, when in the past it was a more competitive selection process filled by people from the community instead of cops from other states.
Keeping it local again, my city just voted for a 10 percent property tax increase, while also adding a six-figure DEI position in local government. What function does this position serve? What problem is being addressed? Nobody can really say, but they will say that you’re racist if you don’t think we need a DEI position in city government. The same pattern is seen with other policies as well, as if people believe that good intentions should excuse bad outcomes.
When it comes to affirmative action, I like to use clear terms to describe it.
“Hear me out guys. High standards are important for whites but low standards are important for blacks.”
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It’s literally the same dialogue, and it’s not even mine. We are beyond slavery, Jim Crow, Affirmative Action and squarely in to Robin Hood territory where you’re maintaining victim status for handouts while collectively blaming a group that doesn’t actually exist in any applicable sense of homogeneity.
And we actually agree, it is bullshit. 
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YT liberals. Ick
Aight bro, let’s walk through it because I have huge respect for you.
If the intentions are valid, should we punt because our politicians are cunts and can’t get anything done?
Nothing makes me believe this is possible because the right has left the left and there is no middle anymore.
I volunteer in a “No Barrier” homeless shelter and some of the facts might surprise you. Most homeless work but can’t afford housing ( i think it was 78%), most are homeless where they live, most want to work.
The most visible homeless are the mentally ill miscreants that we all want to vilify.
Harm reduction is a typical strategy. I don’t defend it. But, I will ask the rhetorical question, how many lives does harm reduction save? It’s not just the homeless because 78% are working, most likely at your local McDonalds.
Maybe you don’t eat there, but someone you know does and because that worker gets a free needle means that coworker doesn’t get Hep C.
Yes, I know. Is this homeless drug addicts or the girl that robbed Target of $120K over three years through the self check?
Or is it a function of housing becoming unaffordable under Biden with inflation now over 9% when it was 1.4% when he took office. Perhaps a pandemic aftermath when the Democrats shut down the economy and fucked small businesses?
I am not sure where this fits. Most likely because I am dumb as fuck, but it seems like a rant.
I am not a huge Jordan Peterson fan, but he makes some good points. We need more Black women laying bricks, installing pipes. You want equity, get in the fucking trenches and earn your money.
United got roasted on this - we’re going to hire more diversity, not the best pilots.
I don’t know about you, but when I get open heart, I don’t want a DEI hire cutting me open.
In cases where the policy is a failure, yes. It is time to fold the hand on affirmative action and DEI more broadly. It has been tried and not shown to produce the intended outcomes, except for the most important outcome of assuaging the feelings of people who support the policy. It also has the outcome of enriching politically-connected non-profits.
The statistics don’t surprise me. Nothing about drug use and the outcomes from it surprises me. I wasn’t surprised when a local woman who was a well-known reckless panhandler was struck and killed downtown two weeks ago. I wasn’t surprised to learn that four other people have died on our local streets in the last month, either. Nor was I surprised when local non-profits suggested that giving them funding would somehow result in fewer people choosing to use the drugs that the same people have ensured are abundantly available and able to be used with as few immediate consequences as possible.
Are you unsure where to get some fentanyl? Tell a Maine cop that you’re experiencing homelessness. As directed by Homeless Crisis Protocol LD 1478, they will have to connect you with the harm reduction folks. You’ll have a clean needle and a source for the drug in no time. The park is right over that way, you can shoot there and then go hang out at the library. Nobody from the government will hassle you.
These outcomes, along with a blighted downtown that businesses are fleeing weekly even as our taxes are increased, are entirely unsurprising for a society that has decided that intentions matter more than outcomes.
Even the left-leaning Economist has recently come down against the various drug decriminalization policies, correctly concluding that they have resulted in more drug use and more bad outcomes. Who could have guessed that removing the legal consequences for destructive behavior results in more destructive behavior?
That brings us back to the core of my rant, which is when a policy “is intended to…” produce an outcome that never seems to materialize, yet people remain unable to connect the bad outcomes to their good intentions.
I agree it is a typical strategy, which is why my area is getting the typical results.
Every study I’ve seen, along with every observation I can make locally, points to an increase in harm across the board when policies labeled as “harm reduction” are implemented. There are more people now than there ever who are in despair, which is unsurprising when you have a tapestry of policies that eliminate the incentives to participate in society. Our local large businesses can’t staff. Our local schools are among the worst in the nation.
Should I look past these outcomes and feel good about the intentions of the people who insisted on these changes?
The left-wing war on cops is another example of stated intentions completely failing to materialize. It has helped nobody except politically connected non-profits who have raked in cash due to their rhetoric. It has harmed the people who it purported to help. This is easily observed in crime statistics, police behavior and the obvious blight that follows the implementation of policies ostensibly oriented around good intentions.
I don’t want a DEI hire working with me any more than I want a nepotism hire, a sexy outfit hire or anyone who was hired for a reason other than their ability to perform the job and conduct themselves well while they do it.
Do leftoid policies actually work well anywhere ??
Any top down policy won’t work. Putting the responsibility for fixing communities on colleges and employers is, obviously, not working. DEI has become a bureaucratic abomination that exists to maintain its existence. The goal of DEI should be to eliminate the supposed need for it. Ask most college students what the DEI office does and they have no idea other than send out emails reminding people that there is a DEI office.
That assumes they want them to work.
If DEI works somewhere it has to “work” everywhere… like the NBA and NFL. Oh wait…
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Well my laptop just ate my response so there is that.
I think there have been some wins over the last century. Consumer advocacy causes have resulted in things like nutritional labeling being enforced by law on our food, which is good in my opinion. Child labor laws were another good development we can attribute to leftist thinking.
The problem with leftist political machines is that they require new victims to sustain themselves. Lefties care about poor people so much that they want to create as many of them as possible.
Good points… having witnessed first-hand how impotent, misguided and loony many of their policies are I can never not eye roll
I believe the movement against child labor was initiated by religious people. It was, politically, part of Progressivism (before the term was hijacked by Marxists). Many democrats were against child labor reforms, just as they were against civil rights.
Mostly true, but humbly disagree. I’m arguably a lefty but I want to give a hand up, not a hand out.
I might be an exception,
Politically, the lefties, (Democrats) want to increase immigration so more people are on the government tit so the lefty democrats can get re-elected.
Not that different from the righties who pander to Blackrock and Vanguard who own everything - including your mother.
I don’t think you are. You seem quite similar to my area leftie political leadership, who are all nice people who seem to believe that the power of their good intentions will somehow win the day (with enough tax funding, of course).
I point this out because I just read a self-congratulatory social media post from a local non-profit bemoaning a cleared homeless encampment. They are extraordinarily nice people and I don’t have any problem with their personal efforts at private charity.
The problem is that their good intentions don’t stop at that. In order for the good outcomes to materialize, tax money is required. This is because they cannot convince enough people to donate the resources (money, time, space, etc) to realize their vision for the community. They are also unwilling to open up their personal homes or places of business to drug addicts who refuse the shelter already available.
The addicts refuse this help because they believe rules should not apply to them and choose to live in horrific encampments where 100 percent of the women will likely become sexual assault victims. The good-intentioned local lefty theory is that allowing things like lawless encampments oriented around fentanyl abuse while simultaneously funding a “low barrier” homeless shelter with very few rules for personal conduct will eventually result in better personal conduct.
Bringing this back to DEI and your question of “should we punt?”, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has indeed just punted that ball after many decades of failing to run it to the end zone. This has surely upset the feelings of many people who intended for many good things to happen that never did.
I punted on modern progressivism about 10 years ago.
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I should be clear.
While I am a left leaning social progressive, I am also a borderline fascist - always have been.
I come by my leftward bent honestly. I taught inner city for several years, have overcome addiction, and am factually homeless.
I do not have a home. I have a roof, so I am housed, but it is at the pleasure of my mother that owns the cabin where I am squatting. My permanent address is a PO Box in Portland and I am under community control here in California due to my drug and alcohol use.
I have been in recovery coming up on two years, but prior to that, hoo boy. I overdosed on Heroin in 2019, woke up to EMT’s thinking I was dead after eight units of Narcan - no way this old fucker is coming back.
I was fifty five, two kids, High School English teacher, 6’1", 180 pounds and fit, looked a little strung out.
So, just some ethos. I am embarrassed by it.
I do believe we can win the day but the tax money is misspent. You have politicians trying to help addicts and the mentally ill and they have no idea how to do it. Throwing money at it doesn’t help unless you target that money.
Gavin Newsom can’t account for $20B California gave the homeless. That is with a B as in Billion - they have no idea where it went.
I believe addicts account for less than forty percent of the homeless in my community.
Yours might be different, but the addicts are the most visible.
Welp, the eggheads fucked up by being arrogant - we have seen this before, right. Gates with education - not an educator. Devoss, same drill. We saw it on a smaller level in NY with other appointed officials with no education experience.
Education was my milieu, so that is why I use them as examples.
MIT I suspect is not well versed in the mental health issues the homeless face. Nor are most politicians - we just saw that with the Governor of NY claiming Black kids from the Bronx don’t know the word computer.
We elect ciphers and expect them to govern.
I disagree. They refuse help because they are mentally ill - more often than not it is some type of trauma. Forcing them into drug treatment without addressing the underlying trauma is akin to putting a band aid on a broken foot.
This is certainly misguided.
Agreed. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Personally, with Newsom’s $20 Billion, I could make some shit happen.
But, I am a recovering alcoholic and drug addict so I am unelectable.
I think Joseph Heller and Yossarian are laughing right now.
The fact that it’s happened in many societies. Not by raising anyone up, but by dropping all but the rulers.
That’s not just not racist; that’s anti-racist. I think.
You’re misunderstanding my conclusion if you think that’s what I’m doing. I’m not arguing in favor of DEI programs, I’m arguing that it’s unreasonable to expect their beneficiaries to oppose them. Refer to my quoted comment on post #54 for my thoughts on the programs in the first place.
That’ll be a nice change of pace :]
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