The problem when you start throwing around empathy alongside such concepts as 'helping' abusers 'mend their ways' is that one rather feels that anyone whose views do not rather closely match your own political angle, especially with respect an issue you are deeply invested in, will be singled out for this 'help.' Being offended has become a weapon in popular debate - and I find myself remarkably disinclined to further structure things to its advantage.
Roles can help to keep conversations civil when the participants are benign as well as malign by removing communication friction. For malign actors they make it easier to pick out specific behaviours to review in one on ones and - if they persist - dismiss them for.
> Would it make it worse (easier to get drugs) or better (less stigma about treatment).
That may not be as binary as it seems on idle reflection.
There certainly are drugs that used in extremes, and (occasionally) in moderation, put people in a position where day to day functioning is impossible, but equally there are drugs that cause very little harm for reasonable consumption patterns. All else being equal, who would you rather have living next door? A drunk or someone who smokes a fair bit of weed on the weekend?
There's this thing that people do - certainly that governments seem to do with respect to the issues surrounding decriminalisation and/or legalisation - where the ideal, the thing they measure success by, is getting people to stop doing something that they wouldn't choose for themselves. That metric doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense.
Yes, because some people's utility functions are strongly inimical to other's likely happiness. It will be feudalism all over again, with vastly higher stakes.
If you have a bunch of the super-rich, and everyone else just at some happy medium, then you'll eventually output a mad god-king - in charge of some ridiculous multiple of the power that the majority of the planet can bring to bear - whose favourite sports are gassing countries where people's skin is the wrong colour and fucking the peasants to death on a Thursday.
> Would you stay at a company in whose purpose you don't believe, if you liked your manager?
There are a couple of people on my current project whose company I enjoy and who have personal attributes that I'd like to foster in myself. I'm staying with it solely for that reason, the business model it uses was dead in the water two years ago and it's in the die-off period - the project itself is just making efficiency savings on something that's never going to be profitable again.
I'd choose to do so again, it's never made life bad for me to choose to share closer company with the people I respect - and when the time to move jobs has come up, a few months ahead of the crash, there have always been plenty of friends in other companies that would put in a good word.
What has been a bad call for me has been to stay in bad company, for the chance to work on something 'important' while management has been incompetent or peers have been markedly hostile. That's contributed to some of the lowest times of my life.
One danger is that driver B will respond by driving without taking out insurance if it becomes too expensive. Which would leave people in a bad situation when he finally runs someone over.
