Sam Harris

high ethical integrity response, but it's clearly not compassion.

I mean, it's some idiot form of compassion to think that simply not intruding on someone's freedom to have their life unravel in front of a Banana Republic or a Starbucks.

And there also seems to be on the left

no acknowledgement that everyone else has taken a major quality of life hit in the meantime.

When you have to cross the street with your kids to avoid some chaos on the sidewalk, be as compassionate as you want for the people suffering that chaos directly.

Obviously, mental illness and drug addiction are problems that we should feel real compassion for, but there's this primary ethic of simply don't intrude.

Any demand that these people

be put in shelter or receive treatment is, as you move leftward in our politics, is framed as some kind of Orwellian, authoritarian form of coercion.

But everyone is paying an enormous price, both economically and psychologically, for the unraveling of social fabric in this way.

What are the barriers to creating shelter and creating an obligate system of receiving treatment of whatever kind is necessary?

Do you support mandatory psychiatric holds for people who are displaying mental illness?

What's your position on distributing needles and parks to intravenous drug users?

healthier lifestyle i mean i understand it sounds a little paternalistic so i am i'm a little torn on this but i just i don't want to create a culture of enablement that ultimately has these massive spillover effects that we're already suffering from out in public is that part of the dynamic in blue cities and especially in california where you're because there's a permissiveness and a i mean the the services are there in place kind of without judgment that it's attracting more of the problem to the areas that are most

I mean, in Los Angeles, it seems that communities like Santa Monica have an outsized problem with homelessness and kind of unregulated mental illness in public and drug abuse because I would presume they're far more, the community is far more tolerant of it and providing services in a way that a community like Beverly Hills or, you know, elsewhere isn't.

And so the question is always, how do you- I would imagine there are some communities where they literally just give someone a bus ticket to another community.

Exactly, exactly.

How much is nimbyism a blocker for building affordable housing and treatment centers and psychiatric institutions, et cetera?

It's a big challenge.

It's a big challenge.

Are there perverse incentives with charities and NGOs around this phenomenon?