[ExI] A Small Request [was Re: Impressive book: Farewell toAlms]

[Olga Bourlin]

From: "spike" <spike66 at att.net>
To: "'ExI chat list'" <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2008 9:59 PM

> I find it odd that whenever people refer to the closing of mental
> institutions in the 60s and 70s, it is almost always considered a bad 
> thing.
> They didn't make the patients leave.  They merely realized they hadn't the
> legal authority to make them stay.

I don't know if you live in a sizeable metropolitan area, Spike ... but if 
you've seen (e.g., in San Francisco, in Seattle, etc.) the number of poor 
souls wandering around, homeless, sick, cold and hungry (not to mention, 
completely out of their minds), well ... it just does not seem like a good 
thing.

I am old enough to remember when there were no homeless people - at least, 
none that I can remember seeing offhand (where I grew up, in San 
Francisco) - although there probably were some, somewhere.

The homeless population in the United States grew just as the residents of 
some of those institutions were being let out.  There's some cause and 
effect there, for sure.

Olga