4 ms·
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”
by AlexandrB 4y ago
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”
- vorpalhex 4y agoIt's a great quote. It's meaningless when your wife gets assaulted by some drugged out homeless person in a place that she should be safe in. Or when you literally get harassed just walking downtown.
- ahelwer 4y ago
- chrsig 4y agoseattle tried that... https://www.seattlemet.com/news-and-city-life/2019/03/licton-springs-village-is-closing-but-it-was-a-tiny-house-success-story https://www.seattlemet.com/news-and-city-life/2019/03/licton...
- collegeburner 4y agoi'm not gonna pay a bum to quit living on my street. that's a glorified protection racket.
- ahelwer 4y ago
- collegeburner 4y ago
- ahelwer 4y agoYeah, if you want a system with private property then it needs men with guns who can kick peoples' doors down. And if you want that system to not be utterly horrible there's gonna be taxes that are enforced by men with guns kicking your doors down. I didn't introduce the men with guns here, that came with the private property. You can't have one without the other. > some article obfuscating everything with relative instead of absolute numbers give me a break.
- collegeburner 4y ago
- ahelwer 4y ago
- dang 4y agoYou posted flamewar comments repeatedly to this thread. We ban accounts that do that. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here.
- User23 4y ago> Say we need to ship them off to a concentration camp in the desert. That’s an ugly way to describe safe clean socialized housing.
- dang 4y agoPlease see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32302338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32302338 and please stop posting flamewar comments to HN.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- DiggyJohnson 4y agoWhat is your relationship with the problem?
- ahelwer 4y agoLived in Seattle for seven years and will return in another three. Encountered many homeless people in that time. Volunteered for the Tax Amazon project to raise funds for socialized housing. Donated a chunk of my salary to Plymouth Housing, a regional housing-first charity. Developed a deep disdain for other privileged techies who were utterly unwilling to engage with the externalities caused by them moving to the city.
- mbrodersen 4y ago
- ahelwer 4y agoProbably not, because housing developments cost hundreds of millions of dollars and individual voluntary charitable donations are not a good vehicle for tackling this problem. Fortunately with taxation and collective action this problem is tractable, but you don't believe in that approach either. You're just here to snipe. In another comment you ask someone how many homeless people they've invited into their yard. You're just being mad online. What a pathetic waste of time.
- mbrodersen 4y agoNot at all. I am just pointing out that there is a lot of virtue signalling going on and very little problem solving. Don’t you agree that inviting a single homeless person into your home or backyard will actually solve a real problem? Imagine if 30k people decided to do that? It would take 30k homeless people off the street! Just like that. So why don’t you go ahead and do that? Show leadership and inspire others? Be a hero!
- 4y ago
- mbrodersen 4y agoIf my family gets harassed or threatened by a person then it is a problem whether the person is homeless or not. It has nothing to do with hating homeless people.
- mbg721 4y agoThe law, in its majestic equality, also forbids rich and poor alike to aggressively demand cash, discard needles at random, and threaten violence at everyone who passes by.
- Aunche 4y agoThere's a difference between sleeping under a bridge, and driving your 6 ton vehicle to the most valuable land in the world, depriving everyone else from using that space, and dumping your garbage all over it.
- stefan_ 4y agoThe land is so valuable, the city is giving it away to everyone with a hunk of metal that happens to have four rubber wheels. And I'm not even joking, cities of course do that all in the name of public parking no matter the opportunity cost. I guess unless the undesirables park on it, then concrete blocks will also do (everything but housing will do, presumably!).
- ceeplusplus 4y ago> cities of course do that all in the name of public parking no matter the opportunity cost Cities do not give away public parking. Either you have to pay for it (metered parking), it's provided "free" to customers only (i.e. paid for by the profit margin on goods and services), or it's only available to people who live in an area (i.e. those people paid property tax, either as owners or renters). > everything but housing will do, presumably Housing doesn't solve rampant drug addiction, theft, mental illness, and laziness. The article in the OP literally cites trash accumulating, rats running rampant, and vehicle fires spontaneously occurring. That is not the environment that a rational person occupies.
- stefan_ 4y agoIf you think any of these things can pay for the equivalent square feet housing cost, I have a bridge to sell you. Parking is a fantastically inefficient use of space and obviously only remains when propped up artificially. I guess you just lack imagination and or empathy. That's one way to look at it but it so far has a zero success track record at solving these problems.
- thepasswordis 4y ago
- dang 4y agoPlease don't post internet tropes to HN. It led to a wretched flamewar in this case. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32300502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32300502.