5 ms·

I believe we need free housing and food for people who are in difficult emotional situations so they aren't desperate enough to commit crimes.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
BenjiWiebe 9y ago
Sounds great, but who feels like paying for it?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- grondilu 9y ago
  Everyone else, of course. Thanks to the State, this "great fiction through which everyone endeavours to live at the expense of everyone else".
- devrandomguy 9y ago
  Take a budget cut from the prison system?
- mrrsm 9y ago
  Do you enjoy paying for people in prison? I feel like we can take what we currently spend on prisons and more effectively apply it to both fronts which would hopefully help more people.
  - grondilu 9y ago
    I'm no lawyer, but I doubt poverty has ever been an excuse for crime. Some wealthy people commit crimes, and crime exists in communist countries (where everyone gets "free housing and food"). You guys make it sound like criminals are victims, like we should feel sorry for them or something. Sometimes what I read on HN scares me and makes me sick.
    - pavel_lishin 9y ago
      > I doubt poverty has ever been an excuse for crime. https://www.aol.com/article/news/2016/09/08/man-allegedly-robs-bank-in-hopes-of-going-to-jail-getting-away/21468168/ https://www.aol.com/article/news/2016/09/08/man-allegedly-ro... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/28/man-commits-crime-to-get-surgery_n_2783181.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/28/man-commits-crime-t... http://www.wsfa.com/story/17695143/2012/04/24/homeless-man-intentionally-commits-crime-to-go-back-to-prison http://www.wsfa.com/story/17695143/2012/04/24/homeless-man-i...
      - grondilu 9y ago
        I did not make myself clear. OP was saying we should give people free housing and food so that they don't commit crime. IMHO that's basically yielding to extortion. By the same logic we should not put criminals in jail, instead we should give them lots of money so that they don't commit crime anymore.
        sanswork 9y ago
        I don't think you understand what OP was saying. They aren't suggesting we try to bribe criminals to stop them from committing crimes. He is suggesting we stop people from getting into a situation where crime is seen as the only way out. It's cheaper to pay for housing, food and medicine than housing, food, medicine and guards. And the former has the possibility of those people finding employment meaning we don't have to pay for them at all and actually benefit from their labor.
        d4mi3n 9y ago
        I read it as OP stating that money spent on prisons would have less of an impact on crime than money spent on housing. That said, crime isn't a silver-bullet-solution kind of problem. It's a systemic problem with a lot of causes, so any sort of broad stroke claim about what will and will not reduce crime is unlikely to be accurate.
        skewart 9y ago
        I completely agree that the idea that giving people housing and food would magically stop crime is utterly absurd. However, reducing the number of children growing up in highly stressful poverty situations may well lead to a reduction in crime over years and decades. It's absurd on the scale of bribing individual criminals, but it's not absurd on a societal scale to reduce the conditions where crime is likely to grow. Also, obviously, not all crime is the same. Plenty of crime could never be prevented by any kind of policy. But there also is a lot of minor crime that probably could.
  - killin_dan 9y ago
    You know that there's tons of for-profit prisons right? I've always been a proponent of hard labor camps, short sentences, and judicial forgiveness. Put them in for a few months, work the living hell out of them, get 'em out and back in a regular job in a regular place as far away from criminal influences, and see if crime doesn't plummet. Current prisons reinforce risk taking behaviors and can worsen behavioral disorders that can lead to crime in the outside, and violence in the inside.
    - minikites 9y ago
      >for-profit prisons >see if crime doesn't plummet It doesn't take a PhD in economics to realize that attaching a profit motive to incarceration just might increase "crime" since a for-profit prison naturally wants to increase profits.
      - killin_dan 9y ago
        But it takes a bit of common sense to realize prisons aren't lawless hellscapes and are very strictly regulated and closely monitored. Particularly private sector ones. You also are shoehorning what I actually said into "hurr sure for-profit prisons are great" when I actually offered a critique and possible remedy to the problem at hand. The prisons could easily be structured in such a way that penalties could be used when excons don't reintegrate well, and bonuses when they do. Bam, easy. Prisons aren't a business, even if money is involved. They are supposed to rehabilitate people, and I think there's plenty of work to be done in coming years to restructure how prisons operate, the rules that they need to play by, and strategies for correcting risk taking behavior in excons.
        minikites 9y ago
        >strictly regulated and closely monitored Yikes. You should really examine this topic in more detail: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/cca-private-prisons-corrections-corporation-inmates-investigation-bauer http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/cca-private-pris... >We could try to break up a fight if we wanted, he says, but since we won't have pepper spray or a nightstick, he wouldn't recommend it. "We are not going to pay you that much," he says emphatically. "The next raise you get is not going to be much more than the one you got last time. The only thing that's important to us is that we go home at the end of the day. Period. So if them fools want to cut each other, well, happy cutting." >I ask one of the regular white-shirted COs what an average day in seg looks like. "To be honest with you, normally we just sit here at this table all day long," he tells me. They are supposed to walk up and down the eight tiers every 30 minutes to check on the inmates, but he says they never do that. https://www.aclu.org/banking-bondage-private-prisons-and-mass-incarceration https://www.aclu.org/banking-bondage-private-prisons-and-mas... >Private facilities have also been linked to atrocious conditions. In a juvenile facility in Texas, for example, auditors reported, "[c]ells were filthy, smelled of feces and urine."
- kasey_junk 9y ago
  Me? Compared to prisons I'd bet it would be a bargain. The real issue isn't paying for it, it's administering it. We make it so difficult to to navigate the social safety net that it becomes a skill and the people who need help are frequently without that skill.
  - grondilu 9y ago
    > Me? Thanks for your sacrifice. What if I am not willing to pay? Will I be sent in prison? That'd be pretty ironic.
    - HarryHirsch 9y ago
      Americans manage crime by moving away from it into the next county. Don't worry, you'll get to pay anyhow through a longer commute and a HOA-mandated minimum enclosed floor space.
      - sova 9y ago
        If only we analysed actual costs and not just numerical metrics!
    - minikites 9y ago
      I'm "not willing" to pay for a lot of things our government does but that's how society works, you don't get to pick and choose individual line items.
      - grondilu 9y ago
        I was pointing out the paradox that even in the fantasy where there is no crime because everyone gets "free housing and food", there will always be people who refuse to pay for housing and feeding other people.
        kasey_junk 9y ago
        Reductive arguments rarely hold up in the real world. It is not true that if we had a great universal safety net there would be no crime. But it's also not true that advocating for a rebalance of the resources going into this space towards prevention and away from punishment is arguing for mass wealth theft. There is no paradox in that.
- kennywinker 9y ago
  I don't know about you, but I'd be down to spend some of that MOAB money on social services.
  - mathperson 9y ago
    MOABS are cheap. instead think of f35s and aircraft carriers and wrenches
- rubyn00bie 9y ago
  I'd bet it's relatively cheap, especially compared to the prison system. While this is probably a false equivalency and anecdotal, I'd like to point out that there are 2.3 million people in prison and it costs the US about $80bn/year. We have roughly 46 million people on food stamps and it costs us roughly $80 billion a year. With the money wasted on prisons, mostly going into the pockets of private industry, I'd wager a large bet there's likely the amount needed to feed, cloth, and house them all within our currently wasted expenditures. So the answer should be: all of us; because, we'd VERY likely be saving money and have a more functional society.
  - r00fus 9y ago
    Not to mention almost all that money would then be spent and taxed (and again and again up to 5 more times) as opposed to being disbursed to a for-profit concern that likely does it's best to avoid taxes. Unemployment and welfare can actually return up to 1.7x the amount disbursed in tax revenues. Obviously this factor reduces as the amount disbursed goes up as a proportion of overall GDP, but pales in comparison to e.g. tax cuts for corporations/wealthy which net much closer to zero - corporations simply move that money overseas or tax shelter it using things like "double irish with a dutch sandwich" schemes.
- djsumdog 9y ago
  You should read "Debt: The First 5,000 Years." I hate it when people make this "who feels like paying for it," bullshit. Your money isn't what you think it is. Our current monetary systems (from coinage to fiat) all depend on creating debt and guilt (same word in German and Old English)and impose a moral obligation that keeps us serving a ruling class. You're already paying for that person to be in prison, for the CIA to distribute weapons to people to start wars and for a massive war industry that then fights those people we give weapons to. Don't pretend you can vote with your money or that you can vote with your votes. The world is much more complicated than that.
bobsgame 9y ago
I should have specified: using technology like 3D printed housing and automated vertical farming in order to make it cost effective or negligible, or subsidized like roads. It seems to me we have the tech to provide good solutions, it just needs to be applied.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

BenjiWiebe 9y ago

Sounds great, but who feels like paying for it?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
grondilu 9y ago
Everyone else, of course. Thanks to the State, this "great fiction through which everyone endeavours to live at the expense of everyone else".
devrandomguy 9y ago
Take a budget cut from the prison system?
mrrsm 9y ago
Do you enjoy paying for people in prison? I feel like we can take what we currently spend on prisons and more effectively apply it to both fronts which would hopefully help more people.
- grondilu 9y ago
  I'm no lawyer, but I doubt poverty has ever been an excuse for crime. Some wealthy people commit crimes, and crime exists in communist countries (where everyone gets "free housing and food"). You guys make it sound like criminals are victims, like we should feel sorry for them or something. Sometimes what I read on HN scares me and makes me sick.
  - pavel_lishin 9y ago
    > I doubt poverty has ever been an excuse for crime. https://www.aol.com/article/news/2016/09/08/man-allegedly-robs-bank-in-hopes-of-going-to-jail-getting-away/21468168/ https://www.aol.com/article/news/2016/09/08/man-allegedly-ro... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/28/man-commits-crime-to-get-surgery_n_2783181.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/28/man-commits-crime-t... http://www.wsfa.com/story/17695143/2012/04/24/homeless-man-intentionally-commits-crime-to-go-back-to-prison http://www.wsfa.com/story/17695143/2012/04/24/homeless-man-i...
    - grondilu 9y ago
      I did not make myself clear. OP was saying we should give people free housing and food so that they don't commit crime. IMHO that's basically yielding to extortion. By the same logic we should not put criminals in jail, instead we should give them lots of money so that they don't commit crime anymore.
      - sanswork 9y ago
        I don't think you understand what OP was saying. They aren't suggesting we try to bribe criminals to stop them from committing crimes. He is suggesting we stop people from getting into a situation where crime is seen as the only way out. It's cheaper to pay for housing, food and medicine than housing, food, medicine and guards. And the former has the possibility of those people finding employment meaning we don't have to pay for them at all and actually benefit from their labor.
      - d4mi3n 9y ago
        I read it as OP stating that money spent on prisons would have less of an impact on crime than money spent on housing. That said, crime isn't a silver-bullet-solution kind of problem. It's a systemic problem with a lot of causes, so any sort of broad stroke claim about what will and will not reduce crime is unlikely to be accurate.
      - skewart 9y ago
        I completely agree that the idea that giving people housing and food would magically stop crime is utterly absurd. However, reducing the number of children growing up in highly stressful poverty situations may well lead to a reduction in crime over years and decades. It's absurd on the scale of bribing individual criminals, but it's not absurd on a societal scale to reduce the conditions where crime is likely to grow. Also, obviously, not all crime is the same. Plenty of crime could never be prevented by any kind of policy. But there also is a lot of minor crime that probably could.
- killin_dan 9y ago
  You know that there's tons of for-profit prisons right? I've always been a proponent of hard labor camps, short sentences, and judicial forgiveness. Put them in for a few months, work the living hell out of them, get 'em out and back in a regular job in a regular place as far away from criminal influences, and see if crime doesn't plummet. Current prisons reinforce risk taking behaviors and can worsen behavioral disorders that can lead to crime in the outside, and violence in the inside.
  - minikites 9y ago
    >for-profit prisons >see if crime doesn't plummet It doesn't take a PhD in economics to realize that attaching a profit motive to incarceration just might increase "crime" since a for-profit prison naturally wants to increase profits.
    - killin_dan 9y ago
      But it takes a bit of common sense to realize prisons aren't lawless hellscapes and are very strictly regulated and closely monitored. Particularly private sector ones. You also are shoehorning what I actually said into "hurr sure for-profit prisons are great" when I actually offered a critique and possible remedy to the problem at hand. The prisons could easily be structured in such a way that penalties could be used when excons don't reintegrate well, and bonuses when they do. Bam, easy. Prisons aren't a business, even if money is involved. They are supposed to rehabilitate people, and I think there's plenty of work to be done in coming years to restructure how prisons operate, the rules that they need to play by, and strategies for correcting risk taking behavior in excons.
      - minikites 9y ago
        >strictly regulated and closely monitored Yikes. You should really examine this topic in more detail: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/cca-private-prisons-corrections-corporation-inmates-investigation-bauer http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/cca-private-pris... >We could try to break up a fight if we wanted, he says, but since we won't have pepper spray or a nightstick, he wouldn't recommend it. "We are not going to pay you that much," he says emphatically. "The next raise you get is not going to be much more than the one you got last time. The only thing that's important to us is that we go home at the end of the day. Period. So if them fools want to cut each other, well, happy cutting." >I ask one of the regular white-shirted COs what an average day in seg looks like. "To be honest with you, normally we just sit here at this table all day long," he tells me. They are supposed to walk up and down the eight tiers every 30 minutes to check on the inmates, but he says they never do that. https://www.aclu.org/banking-bondage-private-prisons-and-mass-incarceration https://www.aclu.org/banking-bondage-private-prisons-and-mas... >Private facilities have also been linked to atrocious conditions. In a juvenile facility in Texas, for example, auditors reported, "[c]ells were filthy, smelled of feces and urine."
kasey_junk 9y ago
Me? Compared to prisons I'd bet it would be a bargain. The real issue isn't paying for it, it's administering it. We make it so difficult to to navigate the social safety net that it becomes a skill and the people who need help are frequently without that skill.
- grondilu 9y ago
  > Me? Thanks for your sacrifice. What if I am not willing to pay? Will I be sent in prison? That'd be pretty ironic.
  - HarryHirsch 9y ago
    Americans manage crime by moving away from it into the next county. Don't worry, you'll get to pay anyhow through a longer commute and a HOA-mandated minimum enclosed floor space.
    - sova 9y ago
      If only we analysed actual costs and not just numerical metrics!
  - minikites 9y ago
    I'm "not willing" to pay for a lot of things our government does but that's how society works, you don't get to pick and choose individual line items.
    - grondilu 9y ago
      I was pointing out the paradox that even in the fantasy where there is no crime because everyone gets "free housing and food", there will always be people who refuse to pay for housing and feeding other people.
      - kasey_junk 9y ago
        Reductive arguments rarely hold up in the real world. It is not true that if we had a great universal safety net there would be no crime. But it's also not true that advocating for a rebalance of the resources going into this space towards prevention and away from punishment is arguing for mass wealth theft. There is no paradox in that.
kennywinker 9y ago
I don't know about you, but I'd be down to spend some of that MOAB money on social services.
- mathperson 9y ago
  MOABS are cheap. instead think of f35s and aircraft carriers and wrenches
rubyn00bie 9y ago
I'd bet it's relatively cheap, especially compared to the prison system. While this is probably a false equivalency and anecdotal, I'd like to point out that there are 2.3 million people in prison and it costs the US about $80bn/year. We have roughly 46 million people on food stamps and it costs us roughly $80 billion a year. With the money wasted on prisons, mostly going into the pockets of private industry, I'd wager a large bet there's likely the amount needed to feed, cloth, and house them all within our currently wasted expenditures. So the answer should be: all of us; because, we'd VERY likely be saving money and have a more functional society.
- r00fus 9y ago
  Not to mention almost all that money would then be spent and taxed (and again and again up to 5 more times) as opposed to being disbursed to a for-profit concern that likely does it's best to avoid taxes. Unemployment and welfare can actually return up to 1.7x the amount disbursed in tax revenues. Obviously this factor reduces as the amount disbursed goes up as a proportion of overall GDP, but pales in comparison to e.g. tax cuts for corporations/wealthy which net much closer to zero - corporations simply move that money overseas or tax shelter it using things like "double irish with a dutch sandwich" schemes.
djsumdog 9y ago
You should read "Debt: The First 5,000 Years." I hate it when people make this "who feels like paying for it," bullshit. Your money isn't what you think it is. Our current monetary systems (from coinage to fiat) all depend on creating debt and guilt (same word in German and Old English)and impose a moral obligation that keeps us serving a ruling class. You're already paying for that person to be in prison, for the CIA to distribute weapons to people to start wars and for a massive war industry that then fights those people we give weapons to. Don't pretend you can vote with your money or that you can vote with your votes. The world is much more complicated than that.

bobsgame 9y ago

I should have specified: using technology like 3D printed housing and automated vertical farming in order to make it cost effective or negligible, or subsidized like roads. It seems to me we have the tech to provide good solutions, it just needs to be applied.