In the same society, some people personally experience that others are capable of robbery & much worse within days and some learn it within decades, and everything in between. Some may never have to confront this, all within the same city/state/country.

We could represent time-to-reality on a number line.

Throwing something out to look at in the US at least--

Interpersonal trust might be decreasing: https://www.pewresearch.org/2025/05/08/americans-trust-in-on...

But dwarfed by the trust decrease in institutions: https://www.pew.org/en/trend/archive/fall-2024/americans-dee...

But maybe it's overstated, because trust seems sort of stable according to this group: https://www.edelman.com/trust/25years

>We no longer are capable of coordinated, collective action that benefits society.

I think this might be too doomer for people, but I think it raises the concern often called two-tier policing or 'anarchotyranny', where such collective action to reform a society is viewed as a threat by the ruling organization and systematically attacked and dismantled. In contrast, petty crimes or even serious interpersonal crimes pose no threat to the ruling organization and receive disproportionately low effort relative to the collective action movements.

The part I think people have given up on is the contract. There are no rights without obligations and there are no obligations with repercussions.

Side rant… every time I’ve heard "We're all in it together" it’s been from someone who believes the opposite. That phrase just grates now.

Who, specifically, is "we" in this sentence?

What distinction are you making between a community and a tribe or family? What is it about a community that makes it more worthy of individuals organizing around it than their families or tribes?

I’m guessing there’s a bit of breathing room at the lower end of the system - there will be people who become drug addicts or have major mental health breaks and lose everything.

And ideally we have good safety nets that find these people and give them resources and treatment, but some people will refuse everything and end up in bad situations of homelessness due to their drug and/or mental health crises.

And even in a society that forces those people into attempted treatment programs, there will still be a bit of time in between their issues manifesting and them going into treatment/therapy/confinement.

To have “zero homeless” you’d need to preventatively intercept these people before they become homeless and force them into confinement in treatment facilities and mental hospitals essentially. And that’s a dangerous game because you’re essentially taking away someone’s freedom preemptively before they become homeless

I knew someone who worked at some sort of homeless services clinic, and I asked how many people they were able to help get back on their feet in a sustainable way. The answer was 1; I don't know what the denominator was, but the takeaway is that most of the visibly homeless people you see are uncoachable and you really can't protect people from themselves. With a huge caveat that the visibly homeless is a subset of the homeless/impoverished population.

Depends on your definition, but not everyone is necessarily happy (or at least, happiest) living under a particular roof.

Housing is a privilege, not a right, and not a requirement. Except, being a free country, in jail.

> Because we actually can afford it.

Can you, though? And for how long? With the current policymaking and demographic and economic trends?

There is an argument to be made that the European social experiment has largely been indirectly funded by the largesse of the American hard-and-soft power strategy. As we're moving away from that (for various reasons, most idiotic), there is a question as to how it will persist.

(This is not meant as trolling--there's a real existential question here. A starting point is an attack on that argument: what is the "natural" expenditure on defense versus what you can get away with America's force projection? How much social funding is derived from that delta, in the most generous sense? Maybe it's a red-herring.)

Probably "fewer", and probably by providing step-up housing for more people to whom it is out of reach.

Some crimes are bad enough that the perpetrators don’t deserve second chances. I’m ok with punishment for its own sake in some cases even if it would be more “cost effective” or “productive” for society to rehabilitate.

That too. The check of "without due process" did not undo that rebranding or its many modern forms.

I’d guess the downvotes are an aberration of today’s politics, because your account of the history is factually and legally valid. (keyword “restorative”)

To me, the idea that incarceration and police use of force is wrong because it is racist is backwards. It’s racist because it is wrong.

> What's a "good person" exactly?

I was taught that a "good person" tries to actually care about their fellow humans and other lifeforms on this planet enough to try to live a life that contributes toward a positive future that we'll all benefit from, while choosing not to support the hatred, greed, and ignorance of those people who would work toward the opposite of that. Problem with that sorta fantasy is that it doesn't exist except in a really rare handful of "mutant" humans who are generally killed (or "destroyed" in other ways) for their beliefs that we could have a "better world" that isn't built on suffering and greed.

> What can I do to help?

Nothing you can do to help me specifically. I'm a lost cause at this point. I see no way back from where I'm at. I literally see zero hope for the future of humanity or this truly amazing planet we were fortunate enough to populate for a short while. If you truly do see some sort of future that doesn't end in dystopia or apocalypse, then you can help by doing everything in your power to work tirelessly toward contributing to that future. That's all. I'd help if I could, but I'm physically, spiritually, and emotionally entirely too "broken" in every way at this point to see any way that I could do anything that would turn any of this mess around in even the slightest way.

> ... and I'm glad that you're a good person.

I appreciate the sentiment, but I'm not a good person anymore. Not really. I'm the broken wreckage of what used to be a good person. I want to be a good person, but I was born on the wrong planet, or the wrong timeline, or the wrong corner of the multiverse, or whatever. I don't live on a planet where what I want is even in the realm of possibility. Too much hatred, greed, and ignorance here for the life I would prefer to live.