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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 2023

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It's also clear that there is value in excluding certain people from public spaces. In the extreme, if violent felons are allowed free reign, society as we know it couldn't function.

All the US has to do is send the problem people to prison or otherwise relocate them. It really isn't that hard. There's no rule of the universe that demands open-air drug markets and massive colonies of rowdy homeless shitting up the richest cities in the world. In the Philadelphia video there are all these people saying 'it was never like this under Communism' or 'even in El Salvedor people had their dignity'... This is an American problem that America can choose to solve.

Is it really a huge strain on a $26 trillion economy to build some more prisons, especially considering the gain in rehabilitating urban centres? Combating two great powers on the other side of the world is easy - but laying down some cement and cubicles is hard? Or if prisons are too hard, they could try caning. Singapore knows a lot about running safe cities and combating drugs, the US should try copying their notes.

If everyone is expected to walk and take public transit, there still must be practical ways for average-status people to exclude low-status people

I've used public transport for over a decade in Australia, there are plenty of people wearing suits on the bus. We simply don't have a systemic problem with our public transport system being a playground for illicit drug users because we choose to suppress it.

All the US has to do is send the problem people to prison

Is it really a huge strain on a $26 trillion economy to build some more prisons

America already has more prisons than the countries which don't have these problems - the problem is that you guys need more and better cops to make sure that the right people are in those prisons for the right reasons. (Right reasons is particularly important, because it generates an impact by deterrence as well as incapacitation).

caning

I honestly think that beating/flogging petty criminals and then releasing them would be better than the jail/prison revolving door that petty criminals wind up in. People that fuck up once or twice learn not to do that and can go back to work reasonably fast; even the hardened criminals at least don't spend a bunch of time in Criminal School.

Is it really a huge strain on a $26 trillion economy to build some more prisons, especially considering the gain in rehabilitating urban centres? Combating two great powers on the other side of the world is easy - but laying down some cement and cubicles is hard? Or if prisons are too hard, they could try caning. Singapore knows a lot about running safe cities and combating drugs, the US should try copying their notes.

Those things are extremely hard, harder than going to the Moon, not because of resource constraints, but because of political opposition.