This happens all the time and is in practical use one of the best justifications for regulation.
There must be a more specific term for it I’m forgetting, but it is essentially the tragedy of the commons.
There are many things that are good for society where if one business did them, that business would lose market share or cease to exist, but it is in the public interest that the specific thing be done. Regulation is the proven answer there.
In this case the primary difference is we are talking about regulating cities instead of companies.
I think this is closer to my point, which was that some ideas can only work at scale. That doesn't mean they will work at scale. But having them fail small doesn't prove or disprove anything.
So you come up with a federated database model for your company with 30 employees, and find yourself in dev hell and wasting resources on an expansion that could have been solved with a slightly larger monolith. That means you chose the wrong tool for the local job. It doesn't mean the other tool couldn't be effective for a larger job.
Are the results that bad? Or are the results exactly the same but more visible (i.e. homeless addicts are not just being hidden below the concrete of highway interexchange instead of being able to live in the city center)?
I grew up in Los Angeles in the 80s, a time and place when homelessness was rampant, but your typical homeless person was a slow-to-move 50 year old wino, not a psychotic 20 year old on fentanyl and meth. Leaving aside the difference in the drugs, I think it's worse because: We do have, and have had a lot of people living in underpasses in Portland for the last 30 years. Most of those people are unfortunate locals who fell through the cracks, not the new crop who just showed up from Florida. Underpasses are full, and have been full, for decades. Many of us have tried to help. The increased visibility is a sign of two things: (1) overflow, and (2) much more dangerous chemicals.
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I could only read the title but from what I can come up these people would have overdosed, the only difference with public drug use is they die in front of everyone. What I am concerned is it should actually trigger a response towards helping addicts get access to safer drugs, and finding a way for them to stay functionnal and harmless in our society. Instead people want to try to hide the problem under the carpet but it will not work either.
I'm immediately skeptical of any idea where bad results become evidence that the idea should be deployed more widely.