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Actually, it would be more like telling your child with ADHD "You just need to study harder at school and the beatings will continue until morale improves. No,

by Mz 9y ago

Actually, it would be more like telling your child with ADHD "You just need to study harder at school and the beatings will continue until morale improves. No, we won't give you ADHD meds nor hire you a tutor. Buck up and grow a spine, you whiner." See also my other comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14590486 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14590486 Your remarks are incredibly ignorant and are being downvoted because it is the sort of attitude that allows privileged peoples to wash their hands of dealing with very real systemic problems that are an excess burden for the people whose lives come so unraveled that they wind up homeless.

Banthum 9y ago
So you think of every poor person as having a fundamental disability comparable to a medically-diagnosed case of ADHD. This is flatly, verifiably wrong, as well as reprehensibly paternalistic and self-indulgent. And all this after I specifically talked about mental illness in my original post.
- Mz 9y ago
  We were specifically talking about homeless people, not poor people. I am currently homeless and have had a class on Homelessness and Public Policy. I know whereof I speak here. I don't disagree with some of your assertions that we should treat such people as if they have agency and can make choices. But your framing is incredibly hostile and in the vein of "We don't need to do anything for such people because they made these choices and did this to themselves." No one makes choices in a vacuum and, currently, an awful lot of people have no good choices available to them. Blaming them so you can wash your hands of responsibility is rather ugly behavior. You don't personally have to do anything for someone like me, but posting comments on a forum where you are basically publically advocating that no one should do anything for them -- well, I feel pretty well entitled to rebut that. Feel free to do nothing and feel that my problems are all my fault and I am just not trying hard enough. But if you post that to HN, I can rebut it, and likely will if I see it.

by Mz 9y ago

Banthum 9y ago

So you think of every poor person as having a fundamental disability comparable to a medically-diagnosed case of ADHD. This is flatly, verifiably wrong, as well as reprehensibly paternalistic and self-indulgent. And all this after I specifically talked about mental illness in my original post.

Mz 9y ago
We were specifically talking about homeless people, not poor people. I am currently homeless and have had a class on Homelessness and Public Policy. I know whereof I speak here. I don't disagree with some of your assertions that we should treat such people as if they have agency and can make choices. But your framing is incredibly hostile and in the vein of "We don't need to do anything for such people because they made these choices and did this to themselves." No one makes choices in a vacuum and, currently, an awful lot of people have no good choices available to them. Blaming them so you can wash your hands of responsibility is rather ugly behavior. You don't personally have to do anything for someone like me, but posting comments on a forum where you are basically publically advocating that no one should do anything for them -- well, I feel pretty well entitled to rebut that. Feel free to do nothing and feel that my problems are all my fault and I am just not trying hard enough. But if you post that to HN, I can rebut it, and likely will if I see it.