Excluding the fact that drug addicts are still humans deserving love, care and the opportunity to recuperate - fostering a clean & safe transit environment is practically a solved problem internationally.

Maybe the moral depravity of SF breeds truly irredeemable addicts, but as someone whos met a lot of troubled people and ridden a lot of public transit your statement seems alarmingly and unhelpfully critical

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cyberrock 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>fostering a clean & safe transit environment is practically a solved problem internationally.

In your opinion, what is that solution? If we take a survey of the highest ranked transit systems, it seems like most solutions involve not allowing drug users to use transit systems, whether it's the unthinkable in Asian countries or peppering the system with officers and cameras in Berlin and London. Is that really treating them with love?

Considering how much often I smell alcohol and weed in Waymos, maybe it's actually the most tolerant solution.

	▲	graemep 6 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		London's public transport was safe before the cameras became common. Its something everyone used, and everyone let their kids use, decades ago. Affluent people commuted from the Surrey "stockbroker belt" to London at least as far back as the 70s. Kids used trains and busses to go to school- some of my friends did at least as young as eight.
	▲	trollbridge 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		No. It means not allowing drug addicts (and everyone else) to mis-use transit systems. They are not hotels, homes, rehab clinics, or personal drug use pods. Cigarette smokers manage to ride trains and buses without lighting up. We should expect the same of everyone.
	▲	Throwaway123129 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		There’s barely any officers in the Berlin transit system. I get checked like 3 times per year

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bko 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There's nothing compassionate, loving or caring letting people kill themselves consuming hard drugs.

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Y-bar 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Loving or caring for someone is not giving their addiction a Carte Blanche, it can often be to allow them access to treatment and a path out of their situation.

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bko 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

They can access treatment. There are a lot of options. The question is should we force treatment at some point.

Use the veil of ignorance to answer that.

Suppose your loved one was one of these afflicted individuals literally killing themselves on the street. Would you want to force them to get clean or would you want to make their lives "easier" by giving them some "harm-reduction" that will allow them to persist in their zombie state?

Or what if you were in the grips of this lifestyle. Would you want someone to force you to get help or facilitate you killing yourself?

I know my answer

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wallst07 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Walking through the tenderloin on a bad night seems like Carte Blanche to me, and it seems cruel and unusual (except maybe Philadelphia).

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Y-bar 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I don't know what the "tenderloin" refers to, but I guess it is a part of a US city.

That's generally the point I am trying to make. By letting these people suffer from addiction and homelessness, not offering good medical and social care, you are not caring or loving them, which is a kind of cruelty.

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joenot443 4 hours ago | parent [-]

FWIW if you search "tenderloin city" the answer appears immediately.

It's a big internet, sometimes people will mention neighborhoods or customs you're unfamiliar with. In my experience, the polite thing is usually to take 3s to make the Google.

	▲	pirates 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		In my experience the polite thing is to just say “San Francisco” instead of talking down to people.
	▲	Y-bar 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		This is the problem with context and language and assumptions and algorithms. Even with that I get two restaurants and one Wikipedia article on meat before I get anything resembling a city district in my search results.

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Geezus_42 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

So what, put them in prison?

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Geezus_42 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Can we really blame individuals when we have recorded, legally admissable evidence of corporations knowingly pushing the over-perscription of extremely addictive drugs while claiming they are safe and non-addictive?

	▲	bko 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yes. I don't think the typical homeless drug user is relying on pharma provided research on the substances they're ingesting when deciding to pick up the habit in the first place.

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jimbob45 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

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madeofpalk 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The situation is weird. No one thinks like this, or it isn't a problem, in cities that actually have good public transport. A drug addict has never entered my mind when riding public transport in London, Paris, Sydney, Tokyo, etc.

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bluGill 6 hours ago | parent [-]

When a transit system is bad only those in the worst situations use it because they have no other options. Thus all you see are societies worst.

When transit is good everybody uses it and normal people are the vast majority so you rarely see or notice the bad people.

The percentage of bad people is about the same in both cities overall

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notnaut 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Even when a transit system is bad, you often find people use it anyway in situations where large events make driving a fool’s errand. There’s a hard incentive and comfort hurdle we’re decades from alleviating via impossible fuel prices for your average Joe

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bluGill 5 hours ago | parent [-]

That is more mediocre versus bad. Most of the bad transit systems I'm aware of don't have service to large events at all and so it's not an option.

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notnaut 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Fair point. I likely never encountered truly bad public transit since it was never pointed to as viable.

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bluGill 3 hours ago | parent [-]

There are a lot of unviable transit in the US. Most transit systems have large unviable parts even if there is a viable core (generally in the city center). People often blame the unviable on lack of density, but there are examples of viable transit systems elsewhere in the world that have US suburb density.

	▲	vel0city an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Can you share some examples of viable transit systems in areas with similar density to US suburbs? I'd like to know more.

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numpad0 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

IMO the root cause of problems you guys are having is internalized classism and strong affections with the idea of natural selection. You can have a homogeneous society with good welfare and not worry too much about spoiling ourselves, a near or even actual communism with extremely subsidized educations can still have bloodbath levels of internal competitions. You can do that and then you can make it weird for tons of over/under class people with absolutely no way out to be just there in plain sight.

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archagon 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I live in the heart of the Mission and I endorse that quote from the parent comment 100%.

Once every few days I even share public transit with a homeless person! Oh, the horror!!

The people I see out on the street are suffering terribly, sick, unable to escape the gravity of their situations, and the vast majority are not malicious. Anyone who does not see this has chipped away key bits of their own soul.

	▲	wallst07 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Or hasn't been smacked in the face yet , or had someone unhinged on the nyc subway state they are going to kill everyone on the train in a manic episode. These are not un-rare events at all, it's just in a city with millions of people, most may never have it happen but we've all seen it. Nobody wants it to be them that day.
	▲	trollbridge 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Yes, but the minority who are malicious can render public spaces completely unusable.