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> deliberate policy decisions to under-invest in those communities You're missing or ignoring the fact that government is funded by economic activity. The gove

> deliberate policy decisions to under-invest in those communities You're missing or ignoring the fact that government is funded by economic activity. The government invests in protecting the revenues streams that allows it to continue to operate with surplus and those communities that don't provide much if any revenue benefit disproportionately relative to how much they contribute to funding the government they rely on for help. What you're proposing is to divert dollars from activity that creates the very surplus that affords the government the budget to help those that can't help themselves. Pretty much all countries cannot provide even a fraction of the support the US is able to provide to its disadvantaged communities. This is largely due to the fact that our government makes the smart decision to protect its cash cows. We have so much surplus that we're actually able to provide to many disadvantaged and advantaged communities beyond our own borders. We can of course debate the particulars of how much goes to protect the cash cows and how much goes to the communities less capable of contributing, but what's not up for debate is that the optimal solution we should both be solving for is the one that creates the greatest surplus. Many of these poorer communities are often better prepared than the cities where well off people are. During Katrina, much of the support rendered came from people outside the city that are self-reliant. They even had a name for these people, the Cajun Navy and they did far more to help the poor people in New Orleans than the rich people in New Orleans. So I ask you again, as someone who is a director of engineering at a tech company in one of richest zip codes in the country, what have you done to prepare to help both yourself and others within your community that are more vulnerable such as the poor, elderly and infirm? Or will you be another helpless victim adding to the burden that FEMA responders will have to attend to?

ohazi 6y ago
It's not a zero sum game. When governments invest in their poor communities, they get the following, in order: 1) Stability At a minimum, a community needs to receive enough investment that it doesn't get destroyed at regular intervals. Or if disasters occasionally happen, this level of investment should help bring about a speedy recovery. This is the level at which FEMA is supposed to operate. Terry Pratchett's Boots parable fits into this category nicely. [1] 2) Opportunity Beyond that, you can invest by paying to deliberately bring opportunities to a community that wouldn't normally be available. This can include education, public works projects, financial incentives for companies to operate in poorer areas where they otherwise wouldn't, etc. If you pay to educate people, they'll be able to do higher quality work for an employer (presumably bringing more value to the employer than unskilled labor), and those people will be able to receive better wages for their work in order to save, support their families, and spend at other businesses in their community (supporting those businesses). If you improve public infrastructure, you make it easier for people to get to work, and make it easier for companies to access members of the community in order to sell their services. If you provide incentives for companies to move in, they can provide both education / training and better paying jobs, which allows community members to begin to prosper and can eventually encourage other businesses to move in on their own in order to tap some of the newly created talent, or sell to a community with newly disposable income. 3) Prosperity Go through (2) enough times, and it will eventually become self-sustaining. The community will be able to grow and produce new economic opportunities on its own. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-rich-were-so-rich-vimes-reasoned https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-r... --- Since apparently your dig was at me personally, I'll give you the honest answer that I guess you thought I'd find too shameful to share, but really just highlights the point I was making earlier. I am prepared to take care of myself and my family in the event of the disasters that we expect in California, including earthquakes and the fires that are currently surrounding my city. I have resources that I can provide to my family, and I have family in other areas that can provide resources for me, should the need arise. I don't expect to rely on FEMA personally. But who do you consider to be part of my community? Is it close friends that I work with or went to school with and know well? Or is it the working poor a few blocks closer to the freeway? Because while I'm more than happy to provide similar levels of support to my close friends -- they're all rich techies like me, who also have their own resources. What have I done for the working poor? Other than tipping well back when restaurants were still a thing, I've done jack shit for them, and 99% of the rich techies living here have similarly done squat. The levels of philanthropy that you expect the poor to rely on are completely delusional, and that's why we need FEMA. People will look after themselves, and will help close allies where support is expected to yield long-term benefits, but beyond that, we're all monsters, and will leave our neighbors to drown without a second thought. Governments and larger scale philanthropies with the capacity and resources for meta-thinking and longer-term investment are the only organizations that are capable of responding in a sustainable way.
- malandrew 6y ago
  You have a completely fantasy idea of how successful communities are established, grown and sustained. They are not unlike startups and other businesses. There's first group of settlers who found a settlement. There are others who come later and grow a settlement into a town. Still more join later to grow a town into city, so on and so forth. Every step of the way, people come and join the community chasing social and economic reasons to join the community. The economic and social reasons are provided by those already in the community by way of their contributions to that community in the form of establishing economic activity and contributing to sustainable growth. Like startups and businesses, outside capital and support can help, but alone will not lead to their sustainability and growth. Until we solve some fundamental limiters like limitless free energy, there will always be more demand for support and aid than there will be support and aid available. This means that those providing aid and support, just like venture capital and private equity, need to pick and choose where to provide support to maximize the utility from that support. Some communities just don't have the core nugget of what is necessary to make it worth rendering aid and support beyond the minimum. For those communities, it's best to allow those within the unsustainable community to move to other communities with sustainable opportunities. Every successful community from town to city, is successful because its members inherently provides for its own sustainability. Those communities that are not sustainable are doomed to peter out. Any support beyond helping the members of unsustainable communities to sustainable ones is just throwing good money after bad. Outside support alone will never magically turn any community into a prosperous community. That kind of thinking is what produces businesses like WeWork. > I am prepared to take care of myself and my family in the event of the disasters that we expect in California, including earthquakes and the fires that are currently surrounding my city. I'm curious how? Just evacuating yourself to other areas that can provide resources? What about people near you that may need help being evacuated well before FEMA can render aid such as with wildfires? > I have resources that I can provide to my family Are we only discussing money and a vehicle? Is the tank always full? > But who do you consider to be part of my community? In a major disaster, all communities are local. These are very real people that you're going to personally see that will need urgent assistance to avoid injury or death. If something happens to your "preparations", you could find yourself in the position where you or your family needs urgent assistance to avoid injury or death. > The levels of philanthropy that you expect the poor to rely on are completely delusional, and that's why we need FEMA. They really aren't. You've just never experienced a local community that does more to provide for one another. It's not uncommon for city dwellers to have this attitude. FEMA is a federal organization whose effectiveness is bounded by local response. They are not a wholesale replacement for local response. Every FEMA failure that's happened in my life began as a failure of local response. > we're all monsters, and will leave our neighbors to drown without a second thought. Speak for yourself. This attitude is exactly why local responses fail. > Governments and larger scale philanthropies with the capacity and resources for meta-thinking and longer-term investment are the only organizations that are capable of responding in a sustainable way. The Cajun Navy is exactly the opposite of that and was far more effective during Hurricane Katrina. In many disasters, it's amateur HAM radio operators that provide critical communications infrastructure to aid federal responses. It's local SAR volunteers that provide help such as swiftwater rescue. In a disaster, most urgent first aid is rendered by amateurs until someone can be brought to a medical facility because EMTs and other first responders are overwhelmed.

ohazi 6y ago

It's not a zero sum game. When governments invest in their poor communities, they get the following, in order: 1) Stability At a minimum, a community needs to receive enough investment that it doesn't get destroyed at regular intervals. Or if disasters occasionally happen, this level of investment should help bring about a speedy recovery. This is the level at which FEMA is supposed to operate. Terry Pratchett's Boots parable fits into this category nicely. [1] 2) Opportunity Beyond that, you can invest by paying to deliberately bring opportunities to a community that wouldn't normally be available. This can include education, public works projects, financial incentives for companies to operate in poorer areas where they otherwise wouldn't, etc. If you pay to educate people, they'll be able to do higher quality work for an employer (presumably bringing more value to the employer than unskilled labor), and those people will be able to receive better wages for their work in order to save, support their families, and spend at other businesses in their community (supporting those businesses). If you improve public infrastructure, you make it easier for people to get to work, and make it easier for companies to access members of the community in order to sell their services. If you provide incentives for companies to move in, they can provide both education / training and better paying jobs, which allows community members to begin to prosper and can eventually encourage other businesses to move in on their own in order to tap some of the newly created talent, or sell to a community with newly disposable income. 3) Prosperity Go through (2) enough times, and it will eventually become self-sustaining. The community will be able to grow and produce new economic opportunities on its own. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-rich-were-so-rich-vimes-reasoned https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-r... --- Since apparently your dig was at me personally, I'll give you the honest answer that I guess you thought I'd find too shameful to share, but really just highlights the point I was making earlier. I am prepared to take care of myself and my family in the event of the disasters that we expect in California, including earthquakes and the fires that are currently surrounding my city. I have resources that I can provide to my family, and I have family in other areas that can provide resources for me, should the need arise. I don't expect to rely on FEMA personally. But who do you consider to be part of my community? Is it close friends that I work with or went to school with and know well? Or is it the working poor a few blocks closer to the freeway? Because while I'm more than happy to provide similar levels of support to my close friends -- they're all rich techies like me, who also have their own resources. What have I done for the working poor? Other than tipping well back when restaurants were still a thing, I've done jack shit for them, and 99% of the rich techies living here have similarly done squat. The levels of philanthropy that you expect the poor to rely on are completely delusional, and that's why we need FEMA. People will look after themselves, and will help close allies where support is expected to yield long-term benefits, but beyond that, we're all monsters, and will leave our neighbors to drown without a second thought. Governments and larger scale philanthropies with the capacity and resources for meta-thinking and longer-term investment are the only organizations that are capable of responding in a sustainable way.

malandrew 6y ago
You have a completely fantasy idea of how successful communities are established, grown and sustained. They are not unlike startups and other businesses. There's first group of settlers who found a settlement. There are others who come later and grow a settlement into a town. Still more join later to grow a town into city, so on and so forth. Every step of the way, people come and join the community chasing social and economic reasons to join the community. The economic and social reasons are provided by those already in the community by way of their contributions to that community in the form of establishing economic activity and contributing to sustainable growth. Like startups and businesses, outside capital and support can help, but alone will not lead to their sustainability and growth. Until we solve some fundamental limiters like limitless free energy, there will always be more demand for support and aid than there will be support and aid available. This means that those providing aid and support, just like venture capital and private equity, need to pick and choose where to provide support to maximize the utility from that support. Some communities just don't have the core nugget of what is necessary to make it worth rendering aid and support beyond the minimum. For those communities, it's best to allow those within the unsustainable community to move to other communities with sustainable opportunities. Every successful community from town to city, is successful because its members inherently provides for its own sustainability. Those communities that are not sustainable are doomed to peter out. Any support beyond helping the members of unsustainable communities to sustainable ones is just throwing good money after bad. Outside support alone will never magically turn any community into a prosperous community. That kind of thinking is what produces businesses like WeWork. > I am prepared to take care of myself and my family in the event of the disasters that we expect in California, including earthquakes and the fires that are currently surrounding my city. I'm curious how? Just evacuating yourself to other areas that can provide resources? What about people near you that may need help being evacuated well before FEMA can render aid such as with wildfires? > I have resources that I can provide to my family Are we only discussing money and a vehicle? Is the tank always full? > But who do you consider to be part of my community? In a major disaster, all communities are local. These are very real people that you're going to personally see that will need urgent assistance to avoid injury or death. If something happens to your "preparations", you could find yourself in the position where you or your family needs urgent assistance to avoid injury or death. > The levels of philanthropy that you expect the poor to rely on are completely delusional, and that's why we need FEMA. They really aren't. You've just never experienced a local community that does more to provide for one another. It's not uncommon for city dwellers to have this attitude. FEMA is a federal organization whose effectiveness is bounded by local response. They are not a wholesale replacement for local response. Every FEMA failure that's happened in my life began as a failure of local response. > we're all monsters, and will leave our neighbors to drown without a second thought. Speak for yourself. This attitude is exactly why local responses fail. > Governments and larger scale philanthropies with the capacity and resources for meta-thinking and longer-term investment are the only organizations that are capable of responding in a sustainable way. The Cajun Navy is exactly the opposite of that and was far more effective during Hurricane Katrina. In many disasters, it's amateur HAM radio operators that provide critical communications infrastructure to aid federal responses. It's local SAR volunteers that provide help such as swiftwater rescue. In a disaster, most urgent first aid is rendered by amateurs until someone can be brought to a medical facility because EMTs and other first responders are overwhelmed.