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by ndarray 32 days ago
This framing is ridiculous. Elder abuse and neglect is rampant. Nursing homes are run like prisons and you're empathizing with the guards.
3 comments

We see this in UK prisons too, because the pay is so low, the work is dangerous and conditions are kinda shit there's now an increasing amount of hybristophiliacs (people attracted to criminals) being found within the service, who start up romantic relationships with prisoners and corrupt the service. It's harder to weed these people out when you're desperate for staff.

The solution is to pay these positions well enough to attract people who genuinely believe in the profession. But society optimises away from doing that because there's no obvious ROI outside of making running costs cheaper.

Great, and I do agree, we know who to pay more (and who less), but how do we get there democratically? Should we vote for the party that says "we support LGBT and an infinite influx of cheap labor" or the "we support the military and the free market" party?
I think its one of those ones where we don't fix it because the market conditions of democracy can never justify spending that money in terms of prisons and most families of people who need care see limited value in spending more for an experience they don't receive. Improved spending in prisons only works in nordic societies because of laws that would never pass elsewhere, mostly allowing ex-convicts to not disclose their past (with some exemptions for sensitive jobs). You need that because the ROI in spending more on prisons is rehabilitation into society (which saves you the money on re-offending), but most other societies don't accept that and the maths is long term.

So we'll get the robots instead and the cries in response to the horrors of malfunction, will not be heard because the victims are politically weak. I only hope we never do this in education.

> and you're empathizing with the guards.

I am noting that the current system is dystopian, and pointed out the causes for those dystopian.

I would have hoped that the implication is obvious: the system is at fault.

In the UK at least, I reject that homes are run like prisons, mainly because prisons here have much less staff and a lower standard of cleanliness. We also don't (yet) have private prisons.

"solving" adult social care is a big issue that can't be solved by staffing alone.

So you don’t think any of this is down to not enough staff and poor training?
I'm sure there are many systemic issues but the primary victims are the elders. For starters, they don't have a choice but to be there.
To play the devil's advocate, if the issues are systemic, the elders are the ones that have been cultivating that system their whole lives.