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Will this effort make it harder to build public infrastructure in the future? I'm sympathetic to the argument you're making, and I've even used it a couple of

Will this effort make it harder to build public infrastructure in the future? I'm sympathetic to the argument you're making, and I've even used it a couple of times when talking about stuff like browser standards, Facebook Basic Internet, etc... It's not a dumb argument. But at the same time, homeless people don't care about your theoretical utopia. They need help right now, and there's a very real cost to saying, "nobody should help this person suffering until we can do it right." There's a balancing act here. Unless private care is going to make it harder to solve homelessness in the future, we should embrace it as a band-aide solution while we work on public infrastructure. Because let's be honest, public solutions like guaranteed housing are likely pretty far in the future -- I don't see a lot of evidence that there is enough political momentum right now to make that happen. The evidence I see suggests Medicaid has a decent chance of even getting worse in the immediate future. We need band-aide solutions right now.

_jal 7y ago
To be clear, I mostly agree with you. But: > Will this effort make it harder to build public infrastructure in the future? It might. Things like this are frequently invoked in policy arguments to claim public efforts are unnecessary or ideologically suspect. Again, that's not to say this is a wrong-headed effort, but not being clear-eyed about the role of patchwork private efforts in public policy arguments is unhelpfully naive.
49531 7y ago
> Will this effort make it harder to build public infrastructure in the future? Yes, most likely. > But at the same time, homeless people don't care about your theoretical utopia. They need help right now, and there's a very real cost to saying, "nobody should help this person suffering until we can do it right." I don't know who you are arguing against here. I never said any of these things. I'm not advocating we prevent corporations from doing things that help people, I am only pointing out that they are fickle friends, and we shouldn't count on them to be reliable providers of aid.

_jal 7y ago

To be clear, I mostly agree with you. But: > Will this effort make it harder to build public infrastructure in the future? It might. Things like this are frequently invoked in policy arguments to claim public efforts are unnecessary or ideologically suspect. Again, that's not to say this is a wrong-headed effort, but not being clear-eyed about the role of patchwork private efforts in public policy arguments is unhelpfully naive.

49531 7y ago

> Will this effort make it harder to build public infrastructure in the future? Yes, most likely. > But at the same time, homeless people don't care about your theoretical utopia. They need help right now, and there's a very real cost to saying, "nobody should help this person suffering until we can do it right." I don't know who you are arguing against here. I never said any of these things. I'm not advocating we prevent corporations from doing things that help people, I am only pointing out that they are fickle friends, and we shouldn't count on them to be reliable providers of aid.