4 ms·

If people need certain necessities to live, the way to help them best is not to provide them a random assortment of free (subsidized) materials without consider

If people need certain necessities to live, the way to help them best is not to provide them a random assortment of free (subsidized) materials without consideration of the negative side effects of the subsidy, but to directly give them money.

DoreenMichele 8y ago
I keep hearing that. It strikes me as a way to decide now to screw people over on this specific detail on the theory that, someday, there will be UBI and everything will work just fine. Someday never seems to come on such promises. I was openly homeless on Hacker News for 5.7 years. Plenty of people here are UBI proponents who argued that I of all people should also be a UBI proponent due to my poverty. Such people were not throwing money at me. I'm old an cynical. If you aren't willing to open your wallet right here, right now and help out poor people you personally know, I am skeptical that "someday" will ever come. A lot of people on HN make quite good money and routinely espouse a lot of high-minded ideals. You would think of all places, this would be one where someone trying in earnest to make their life work via some kind of online income would most find help to readily solve their financial problems and stop being desperately poor. I'm no longer homeless, but I still live on under $20k annually. I get treated like a whiner with no real point for using myself as an example in these discussions. In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they usually aren't. I'm incredibly skeptical of such arguments. People on HN expect good, well-written content on the front page of HN all day, every day. They aggressively use ad blockers, actively find ways around pay walls and routinely tell me that writing doesn't deserve to make money and I should get a real job. Writing is something I am capable of doing, in spite of my handicaps. I have six years of college and I know a lot of stuff and I can be on a computer at home and write. If well-heeled, high-minded people who regularly come together in large numbers on HN can't be arsed to help me stop being poor, then it seems really extremely unlikely to me that the poor will ever get anything like UBI. I'm not for UBI. I don't think it works. But, moreover, I don't think it will really happen. I think talk of UBI is like when so-called friends tell you that if they win the lottery, they will give you half of it. In reality, that's typically a lie. It's an easy thing to say because winning the lottery is so very unlikely. People actually willing to help are willing to do whatever they can in the here and now, no matter how small. But most of what I hear is promises of someday while I continue to flail and most people react to my flailing by making me feel like I am doing something wrong. I'm an embarrassment. I'm doing something socially inappropriate. Perhaps I shall just go away at some point and leave HN to the well-heeled, high-minded types who like to talk a good game and do nothing. Then I won't be actively making them look like the hypocrites they so obviously are in most cases. I'm tired and trying to do some paid work. If I don't return to this discussion, everyone here can just assume that's why.
- jacobolus 8y ago
  Cash transfers to the homeless enough to cover sanitation and other basic needs doesn’t necessarily imply a universal basic income policy. > If you aren't willing to open your wallet right here, right now and help out poor people you personally know, I am skeptical that "someday" will ever come. I sometimes buy lunch for homeless people in my neighborhood, and have given people blankets and cash before, and donated to charities focused on helping the homeless, but it’s pretty hard as an individual to fully help someone who has lots of problems to find all the help they need and get into a stable comfortable situation, without making it a significant long-term project, and taking on huge amounts of personal responsibility. This is frankly a better job for publicly funded social workers, but I have a ton of admiration for any private citizens willing to take it on. Myself, I don’t have the spare attention or resources to drive someone to work every day, talk to them every day to make sure they stay on track, put them up in my house, hire them for a permanent job, etc. I have enough trouble just taking care of myself and my own small children. My meager bits of help (one meal, a blanket, a respectful conversation, lending someone a phone for a few minutes, ...) might be appreciated but are hardly life changing. Some of the homeless people I have talked to had trouble getting a job because they didn’t have a regular place to shower, didn’t have clean unripped clothes, etc., and then had trouble holding down a job once they got one because they had substance abuse problems, didn’t have enough structure in their lives to show up on time every shift, and so on. Of course the biggest and most obvious problem was a lack of housing. Which I really have no fix for. It’s a large-scale social problem which can best be tackled collectively.
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    See, I meant that there are 5 million visitors to HN every month. I run multiple blogs. I do resume work. I do other things. I've been here nearly a decade. Yet, I still can't make ends meet. I don't need someone to drive me to work. I don't need someone to hold my hand. I'm not a drug addict or alcoholic. I am a woman, and sexism is alive and well, so that closes a lot of doors in my face. I'm dirt poor, so a lot of people just assume I'm incompetent and not worth hiring. Again, I'm extremely tired, moreso existentially than physically. I'm exhausted from saying the same things over and over and over on HN and watching them fall on deaf ears. I have six years of college. I have a Certificate in GIS. Stephen Hawking was medically handicapped. He had a real career. Of course, he was male. I'm quite convinced that classism and sexism are major factors in my intractable poverty. And when I try to talk about such things, no, no one wants to get the memo. They just want to assert they are one of the good guys. While not helping me. Because my ongoing problems are not their responsibility and are best handled by a social worker or the government. And it will all get better someday, when we have that mythical beast they call UBI. I'm a social creature more than a technical one. And I just can't help but feel that if people here really were as committed to resolving such problems as comments here tend to suggest, I would have long ago gotten hooked up with some kind of adequate income in excess of $20k annually. The fact that I continue to live with intractable poverty makes me feel like it's absolutely all talk and no one genuinely wants to get with the man in the mirror and ask the hard questions. The status quo works for them. They want it to stay the same. This is really a conversation I don't want to have. It's not a positive experience for me. It's also not likely to actually make a difference. A much more likely outcome is that I will eventually be banned if I openly bitch too much in a way that makes people here uncomfortable, as I was from Metafilter, a toxic classist cesspit of a forum that lots of people on HN gush about the wonderfulness of. Adieu. Edit: This piece was written before the first paragraph -- asserting that free money wasn't necessarily UBI -- was added to the comment I replied to. I'm too tired to edit the damn thing and make it make sense in light of that additional paragraph being added. To be clear, my point is that I don't believe the world will become a better place. If five million mostly well-heeled, high-minded people can't manage to help one pathetic, but well-educated person with a work ethic and yadda to resolve their problems, no, they won't really help people who are less "virtuous" than I am. The world will come up with excuses to blame those in need for their problems. They need to stop drinking. They need to stop using drugs. Etc. ad nauseum. You know, like we currently do.
happymellon 8y ago
Or directly give them the service they need. The example provided was that essentially the city they are in needs public toilets. The plastic bags being a solution is a misdirection as it is a major health hazard for the people dealing with the poop bags in the trash.

DoreenMichele 8y ago

I keep hearing that. It strikes me as a way to decide now to screw people over on this specific detail on the theory that, someday, there will be UBI and everything will work just fine. Someday never seems to come on such promises. I was openly homeless on Hacker News for 5.7 years. Plenty of people here are UBI proponents who argued that I of all people should also be a UBI proponent due to my poverty. Such people were not throwing money at me. I'm old an cynical. If you aren't willing to open your wallet right here, right now and help out poor people you personally know, I am skeptical that "someday" will ever come. A lot of people on HN make quite good money and routinely espouse a lot of high-minded ideals. You would think of all places, this would be one where someone trying in earnest to make their life work via some kind of online income would most find help to readily solve their financial problems and stop being desperately poor. I'm no longer homeless, but I still live on under $20k annually. I get treated like a whiner with no real point for using myself as an example in these discussions. In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they usually aren't. I'm incredibly skeptical of such arguments. People on HN expect good, well-written content on the front page of HN all day, every day. They aggressively use ad blockers, actively find ways around pay walls and routinely tell me that writing doesn't deserve to make money and I should get a real job. Writing is something I am capable of doing, in spite of my handicaps. I have six years of college and I know a lot of stuff and I can be on a computer at home and write. If well-heeled, high-minded people who regularly come together in large numbers on HN can't be arsed to help me stop being poor, then it seems really extremely unlikely to me that the poor will ever get anything like UBI. I'm not for UBI. I don't think it works. But, moreover, I don't think it will really happen. I think talk of UBI is like when so-called friends tell you that if they win the lottery, they will give you half of it. In reality, that's typically a lie. It's an easy thing to say because winning the lottery is so very unlikely. People actually willing to help are willing to do whatever they can in the here and now, no matter how small. But most of what I hear is promises of someday while I continue to flail and most people react to my flailing by making me feel like I am doing something wrong. I'm an embarrassment. I'm doing something socially inappropriate. Perhaps I shall just go away at some point and leave HN to the well-heeled, high-minded types who like to talk a good game and do nothing. Then I won't be actively making them look like the hypocrites they so obviously are in most cases. I'm tired and trying to do some paid work. If I don't return to this discussion, everyone here can just assume that's why.

jacobolus 8y ago
Cash transfers to the homeless enough to cover sanitation and other basic needs doesn’t necessarily imply a universal basic income policy. > If you aren't willing to open your wallet right here, right now and help out poor people you personally know, I am skeptical that "someday" will ever come. I sometimes buy lunch for homeless people in my neighborhood, and have given people blankets and cash before, and donated to charities focused on helping the homeless, but it’s pretty hard as an individual to fully help someone who has lots of problems to find all the help they need and get into a stable comfortable situation, without making it a significant long-term project, and taking on huge amounts of personal responsibility. This is frankly a better job for publicly funded social workers, but I have a ton of admiration for any private citizens willing to take it on. Myself, I don’t have the spare attention or resources to drive someone to work every day, talk to them every day to make sure they stay on track, put them up in my house, hire them for a permanent job, etc. I have enough trouble just taking care of myself and my own small children. My meager bits of help (one meal, a blanket, a respectful conversation, lending someone a phone for a few minutes, ...) might be appreciated but are hardly life changing. Some of the homeless people I have talked to had trouble getting a job because they didn’t have a regular place to shower, didn’t have clean unripped clothes, etc., and then had trouble holding down a job once they got one because they had substance abuse problems, didn’t have enough structure in their lives to show up on time every shift, and so on. Of course the biggest and most obvious problem was a lack of housing. Which I really have no fix for. It’s a large-scale social problem which can best be tackled collectively.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  See, I meant that there are 5 million visitors to HN every month. I run multiple blogs. I do resume work. I do other things. I've been here nearly a decade. Yet, I still can't make ends meet. I don't need someone to drive me to work. I don't need someone to hold my hand. I'm not a drug addict or alcoholic. I am a woman, and sexism is alive and well, so that closes a lot of doors in my face. I'm dirt poor, so a lot of people just assume I'm incompetent and not worth hiring. Again, I'm extremely tired, moreso existentially than physically. I'm exhausted from saying the same things over and over and over on HN and watching them fall on deaf ears. I have six years of college. I have a Certificate in GIS. Stephen Hawking was medically handicapped. He had a real career. Of course, he was male. I'm quite convinced that classism and sexism are major factors in my intractable poverty. And when I try to talk about such things, no, no one wants to get the memo. They just want to assert they are one of the good guys. While not helping me. Because my ongoing problems are not their responsibility and are best handled by a social worker or the government. And it will all get better someday, when we have that mythical beast they call UBI. I'm a social creature more than a technical one. And I just can't help but feel that if people here really were as committed to resolving such problems as comments here tend to suggest, I would have long ago gotten hooked up with some kind of adequate income in excess of $20k annually. The fact that I continue to live with intractable poverty makes me feel like it's absolutely all talk and no one genuinely wants to get with the man in the mirror and ask the hard questions. The status quo works for them. They want it to stay the same. This is really a conversation I don't want to have. It's not a positive experience for me. It's also not likely to actually make a difference. A much more likely outcome is that I will eventually be banned if I openly bitch too much in a way that makes people here uncomfortable, as I was from Metafilter, a toxic classist cesspit of a forum that lots of people on HN gush about the wonderfulness of. Adieu. Edit: This piece was written before the first paragraph -- asserting that free money wasn't necessarily UBI -- was added to the comment I replied to. I'm too tired to edit the damn thing and make it make sense in light of that additional paragraph being added. To be clear, my point is that I don't believe the world will become a better place. If five million mostly well-heeled, high-minded people can't manage to help one pathetic, but well-educated person with a work ethic and yadda to resolve their problems, no, they won't really help people who are less "virtuous" than I am. The world will come up with excuses to blame those in need for their problems. They need to stop drinking. They need to stop using drugs. Etc. ad nauseum. You know, like we currently do.

happymellon 8y ago

Or directly give them the service they need. The example provided was that essentially the city they are in needs public toilets. The plastic bags being a solution is a misdirection as it is a major health hazard for the people dealing with the poop bags in the trash.