primary example. ending homelessness. the solution is simple and proven. but the affluent have convinced everyone else that “it’s a complicated issue”
If you honestly, truly, believe it’s a complicated issue then you’ve fallen for it hook, line, and sinker. There are drug addicts that have homes, there are mentally ill people with homes, there are unemployed people with homes. But IF you are ANY of the three previously mentioned groups and you sleep on a sidewalk then suddenly it becomes complicated.
It’s the same for hunger. NO one needs to go hungry, we have enough food for everyone. hell we toss most it away daily. but again the powers that be have convinced everyone that food MUST be paid for and stealing it is wrong.
To expand, not arguing against anything you mentioned:
People want perfect solutions, and that’s what makes it complicated. Ending homelessness is easy, but people also want to end hunger, and sickness, and poverty, and… so proven solutions for homelessness get branded (by the affluent, as you mentioned) as “half measures” and nobody supports it.
And I’ve seen this play out IRL in casual intoxicated philosophical conversations with friends too, so I don’t think it’s a good faith/bad faith thing. I feel like they get bogged down with it as an optimization problem, where I don’t see a problem with knocking together good enough and improving later.
That’s fun way to refuse you giving them a few bucks in case they forgot their wallet. “I feel that lending $5 does not sufficiently resolves the financial quagmires you find yourself in seeing your current career and housing choices so at this time it does not seem prudent for me to give you any funds.”
Poverty, homelessness and hunger are products of our economic system. It doesn’t have to exist, but in any other system you can’t own yacths with a helicopter pad or child sexual abuse islands.
Ending homelessness is easy, but people also want to end hunger, and sickness, and poverty, and…
The thing that complicates solutions is that those issues often overlap and one can be the cause of some of the others.
If (as one example)someone’s addiction has led to mental health issues and then homelessness, then dealing with one of those issues in isolation isn’t going to be a long term solution for that person.
While this is true, in large part, where this has been tried, usually fulfilling ONE piece of the puzzle (i.e. making sure that addicted person has food and a place to call their own where they’re not likely to get stabbed for their belongings) really helps a lot of people get to a place where they’re in a mental state to address the other problems.
It’s a bit like fixing a damaged boat - nailing a plank over the hole where the water’s coming in isn’t gonna fix the snapped mast or the torn sails, but it gets you into a place where you CAN start to fix those.
Why can’t we have a short term fix while we work on the long term solution? Why do we have to let people suffer because there are others who it may not work for?
Well to expand, solving homeless is simple I agree but also unattainable because of the sheer cost of it and space. Please don’t come back with there is so many unused homes. Not a fan of stealing others property
Treatment for mental health and addiction is probably half of the problem though. Homelessness exploded when governments closed sanatoriums. Is living people away in a Victorian sanatorium the best way to deal with mental illness? Probably not in most cases. But it was an attempt.
Nope, time and again it is shown that the most effective way to house people without homes is to give them homes. By providing no-strings housing first, you make all the other issues easier to deal with.
We’ve also shown time and again that the strongest predictor for unhoused populations is the cost of property. And at the same time the number of empty homes in a lot of the western world greatly outnumber the number of unhoused.
But giving homes to the unhoused or doing anything to lower property values or prevent the rich from hoarding property would make the wealthy elite upset.
By providing no-strings housing first, you make all the other issues easier to deal with.
First, absolutely, but not in isolation.
If that person doesn’t also get some help dealing with the issues that led to their homelessness, they’re likely to end up back on the street in the future.
In the current system, which is rigged heavily in the favor of those with money, it is hard to end homelessness, not complicated.
The issues you mention that are connected to homelessness today; mental health and addiction, are complicated. But those people should not need to also be homeless while we try to solve them.
Any kind of hospital setting with medication would be a vast improvement over skid row. We know laughably little about mental health even now, but compared to Victorian, times when they fumigated vaginas, we know a lot more now. I think well funded institutions are step in the right direction, with independent oversight to avoid abuse as much as possible.
Technically, there is complication to the food one. People tend to waste what is given freely, significantly increasing food needs. However, I’m hard pressed to think of how one would waste a house. Really no non-oligarch answer for that one
Unequivocally, yes. Programs that freely give things beyond base needs tend to have anywhere from 100-200% increases in material usage. See: Iran’s free gasoline for a societal example, or help in most soup kitchens or volunteer at a food bank. It’s still the right choice, but requires slightly more nuance than immediately apparent.
As far as food bank and soup kitchens, have you really never noticed the abundance of discarded bags and bowls? Heard the endless nimby complaints from people in the neighborhood? Encountered, in marketplace style systems, the random hoarding that needs to be stifled?
Fuck NIMBYs, I don’t listen them. We recently had a youth crisis center go up in town, and despite the dire warnings, there was zero increase in crime.
As for the discards, I’ve found that depends almost entirely on policy. In areas where they just give you a tray with little consideration for dietary needs, or on days where the food is straight scop, yeah, there’s a lot more discarded food.
But that’s not happening because it’s free.
The hoarding is similarly not happening because it’s free, it happens because it’s free this time, and there are no guarantees that it will be there when you need more. Even if they swear up and down it’ll be there when you need it, you’ve been let down so many times you can’t trust it.
How would a youth crisis center increase crime? What an absolute nonsense thought by nonsense people. “If we make sure teens are ok, then they’ll start stealing and smoking reefers” feels like the thought process. Dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.
I will say, it feels like you’ve inadvertently stumbled upon the nuance. That offering food requires more than throwing food at the problem, if you’re on any sort of budget.
However, I do recognize food scarcity leading to hoarding being fully mitigated by consistency, and you’re entirely correct to suggest that it’s worth re-evaluating broad interactions based on safety concerns being met
Because “youth crisis center” is a polite term for juvie rehab. They work with kids that committed nonviolent crimes. The NIMBYs and business owners swore up and down that it’d lead to prowling youth gangs and shit, but it hasn’t.
Oh, people just drove everywhere, always, anytime, and without concern. Ran generators rather than purchasing electricity from the grid, didn’t care about their car’s fuel economy because it didn’t financially impact them. Iirc, they alone were contemporaneously above the US in petroleum use per capita, and by nearly 2x. And the US is disgustingly over-reliant on petroleum to this day.
If you read the article, you’d see that Iran ended up a net importer of gasoline as a result. Iran. That’s like Canada becoming a Net importer of maple syrup because they had a custom of pouring syrup over their nipples and inviting people to lick it off at the turn of every hour. People in Canada would unequivocally be happy about it, but it doesn’t seem like the best use of resources.
As for food, I’m going to consider my opinions a bit more before offering anything.
Yes, but that’s about perverse incentives to hurt those around you. Currently, there is an economic incentive to let food go to waste to keep prices high, rather than distributing it freely.
How would freely distributing food result in more waste, due to tragedy of the commons?
primary example. ending homelessness. the solution is simple and proven. but the affluent have convinced everyone else that “it’s a complicated issue”
If you honestly, truly, believe it’s a complicated issue then you’ve fallen for it hook, line, and sinker. There are drug addicts that have homes, there are mentally ill people with homes, there are unemployed people with homes. But IF you are ANY of the three previously mentioned groups and you sleep on a sidewalk then suddenly it becomes complicated.
It’s the same for hunger. NO one needs to go hungry, we have enough food for everyone. hell we toss most it away daily. but again the powers that be have convinced everyone that food MUST be paid for and stealing it is wrong.
To expand, not arguing against anything you mentioned:
People want perfect solutions, and that’s what makes it complicated. Ending homelessness is easy, but people also want to end hunger, and sickness, and poverty, and… so proven solutions for homelessness get branded (by the affluent, as you mentioned) as “half measures” and nobody supports it.
And I’ve seen this play out IRL in casual intoxicated philosophical conversations with friends too, so I don’t think it’s a good faith/bad faith thing. I feel like they get bogged down with it as an optimization problem, where I don’t see a problem with knocking together good enough and improving later.
That’s fun way to refuse you giving them a few bucks in case they forgot their wallet. “I feel that lending $5 does not sufficiently resolves the financial quagmires you find yourself in seeing your current career and housing choices so at this time it does not seem prudent for me to give you any funds.”
Poverty, homelessness and hunger are products of our economic system. It doesn’t have to exist, but in any other system you can’t own yacths with a helicopter pad or child sexual abuse islands.
The thing that complicates solutions is that those issues often overlap and one can be the cause of some of the others.
If (as one example)someone’s addiction has led to mental health issues and then homelessness, then dealing with one of those issues in isolation isn’t going to be a long term solution for that person.
While this is true, in large part, where this has been tried, usually fulfilling ONE piece of the puzzle (i.e. making sure that addicted person has food and a place to call their own where they’re not likely to get stabbed for their belongings) really helps a lot of people get to a place where they’re in a mental state to address the other problems.
It’s a bit like fixing a damaged boat - nailing a plank over the hole where the water’s coming in isn’t gonna fix the snapped mast or the torn sails, but it gets you into a place where you CAN start to fix those.
True, but unfortunately too often that first step doesn’t get followed up on.
Why can’t we have a short term fix while we work on the long term solution? Why do we have to let people suffer because there are others who it may not work for?
Super simple: the Earth is our home, everyone on Earth therefore has a home, boom, no homeless!
insurance
Obviously kidding, but the internet has poisoned my trust that it’s obvious, so this is just in case it’s not obvious
Well to expand, solving homeless is simple I agree but also unattainable because of the sheer cost of it and space. Please don’t come back with there is so many unused homes. Not a fan of stealing others property
It is complicated ending homelessness.
Treatment for mental health and addiction is probably half of the problem though. Homelessness exploded when governments closed sanatoriums. Is living people away in a Victorian sanatorium the best way to deal with mental illness? Probably not in most cases. But it was an attempt.
Nope, time and again it is shown that the most effective way to house people without homes is to give them homes. By providing no-strings housing first, you make all the other issues easier to deal with.
We’ve also shown time and again that the strongest predictor for unhoused populations is the cost of property. And at the same time the number of empty homes in a lot of the western world greatly outnumber the number of unhoused.
But giving homes to the unhoused or doing anything to lower property values or prevent the rich from hoarding property would make the wealthy elite upset.
First, absolutely, but not in isolation.
If that person doesn’t also get some help dealing with the issues that led to their homelessness, they’re likely to end up back on the street in the future.
In the current system, which is rigged heavily in the favor of those with money, it is hard to end homelessness, not complicated.
The issues you mention that are connected to homelessness today; mental health and addiction, are complicated. But those people should not need to also be homeless while we try to solve them.
Any kind of hospital setting with medication would be a vast improvement over skid row. We know laughably little about mental health even now, but compared to Victorian, times when they fumigated vaginas, we know a lot more now. I think well funded institutions are step in the right direction, with independent oversight to avoid abuse as much as possible.
Property is theft
Technically, there is complication to the food one. People tend to waste what is given freely, significantly increasing food needs. However, I’m hard pressed to think of how one would waste a house. Really no non-oligarch answer for that one
Do they though? I grew up below the poverty line, and nobody wasted the free food from the food bank.
I posit that people waste what they don’t need, monetary value has little to do with it.
Unequivocally, yes. Programs that freely give things beyond base needs tend to have anywhere from 100-200% increases in material usage. See: Iran’s free gasoline for a societal example, or help in most soup kitchens or volunteer at a food bank. It’s still the right choice, but requires slightly more nuance than immediately apparent.
I am entirely unfamiliar.
I have, there was very little waste?
https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/454663/Iran-s-gasoline-rationing-scheme-from-policy-to-practice
Reasonable enough overview of the issue.
As far as food bank and soup kitchens, have you really never noticed the abundance of discarded bags and bowls? Heard the endless nimby complaints from people in the neighborhood? Encountered, in marketplace style systems, the random hoarding that needs to be stifled?
Fuck NIMBYs, I don’t listen them. We recently had a youth crisis center go up in town, and despite the dire warnings, there was zero increase in crime.
As for the discards, I’ve found that depends almost entirely on policy. In areas where they just give you a tray with little consideration for dietary needs, or on days where the food is straight scop, yeah, there’s a lot more discarded food.
But that’s not happening because it’s free.
The hoarding is similarly not happening because it’s free, it happens because it’s free this time, and there are no guarantees that it will be there when you need more. Even if they swear up and down it’ll be there when you need it, you’ve been let down so many times you can’t trust it.
How would a youth crisis center increase crime? What an absolute nonsense thought by nonsense people. “If we make sure teens are ok, then they’ll start stealing and smoking reefers” feels like the thought process. Dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.
I will say, it feels like you’ve inadvertently stumbled upon the nuance. That offering food requires more than throwing food at the problem, if you’re on any sort of budget.
However, I do recognize food scarcity leading to hoarding being fully mitigated by consistency, and you’re entirely correct to suggest that it’s worth re-evaluating broad interactions based on safety concerns being met
Because “youth crisis center” is a polite term for juvie rehab. They work with kids that committed nonviolent crimes. The NIMBYs and business owners swore up and down that it’d lead to prowling youth gangs and shit, but it hasn’t.
Did they waste the gas/food or did they use what they needed instead of what they could afford before it was free?
Oh, people just drove everywhere, always, anytime, and without concern. Ran generators rather than purchasing electricity from the grid, didn’t care about their car’s fuel economy because it didn’t financially impact them. Iirc, they alone were contemporaneously above the US in petroleum use per capita, and by nearly 2x. And the US is disgustingly over-reliant on petroleum to this day.
https://www.worldometers.info/oil/oil-consumption-by-country/
(Today’s numbers for perspective)
If you read the article, you’d see that Iran ended up a net importer of gasoline as a result. Iran. That’s like Canada becoming a Net importer of maple syrup because they had a custom of pouring syrup over their nipples and inviting people to lick it off at the turn of every hour. People in Canada would unequivocally be happy about it, but it doesn’t seem like the best use of resources.
As for food, I’m going to consider my opinions a bit more before offering anything.
I believe there will always be individuals who put themselves first in any scenario.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
Yes, but that’s about perverse incentives to hurt those around you. Currently, there is an economic incentive to let food go to waste to keep prices high, rather than distributing it freely.
How would freely distributing food result in more waste, due to tragedy of the commons?