[ExI] Basic Income - Basic Housing?

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 8 April 2014 15:45, Kelly Anderson <kellycoinguy at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Apr 3, 2014 at 10:35 AM, William Flynn Wallace <
> foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I don't know either but I do know this:  alcoholics and drug addicts and
>> the mentally retarded and psychotic should not be homeless unless they
>> simply will not stay put in some kind of housing.  I have worked in mental
>> institutions from the lowest level aide to professional psychologist
>> (including Bryce Hospital in Tuscaloosa that filed the law suit that
>> changed a lot of things in 1973) and think that after minorities such as
>> blacks, women, animals, and children have all had many advocates and
>> organization devoted to them, maybe we can have a civil rights movement for
>> the above fathers, mothers, children, brothers and sisters of our citizens.
>>
>> I think we should be judged in part by how we treat the lowest and most
>> helpless of us.
>>
>
> Bill,
>
>   When the courts prevent people from being incarcerated against their
> will when seriously mentally ill, it is a great victory for the personal
> freedom of the individual who is mentally ill. But with freedom comes
> responsibility. If the person is dangerous to others, and demonstrates that
> through aggressive behavior, they can be put away in a place where they
> won't hurt others. Also, they can then freeze to death, starve if they
> don't seek help, or get into all sorts of other trouble they might have
> avoided while in the care of the state or a private organization that cares
> for these sorts of people.
>
>   So my liberty loving side says, let them go free unless they hurt
> someone. My compassionate side, however, (and I do have one) feels sorry
> for them because I believe that they might get better treatment in a
> facility that would help them manage medications, get them clean, help them
> have clean clothes and healthy food.
>
>   So it's a serious conflict between caring for people (which I support,
> ESPECIALLY when it is a private organization caring for the people rather
> than the government) and letting people have the maximum freedom they can
> possibly enjoy.
>
>   In the end, I agree with you. We should be judged by how we treat these
> people. But providing care to those who want it and forcing care on someone
> who just wants to be left alone are two very different things. It does get
> complicated when the person suffers from a paranoia. If I were homeless,
> for example, I might not want ANY kind of government help. It would be too
> easy for me to slip into that kind of paranoia. I'd probably walk to some
> place warm and just do my best on my own. I'm not terribly mentally ill. ;-)
>

If you developed a mental illness which would cause you to suffer
frightening delusions and hallucinations which would lead you to become
destitute and homeless, and there was a treatment for this which would
return you to your normal self but which, in your psychotic state, you
would refuse, would you want to be treated against your will?


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou
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