3 ms·

> The solution is quite simple, cheap, boring, and unobjectionable to anyone who might hear it. What is it? Genuinely curious, because I’ve done the same thoug

> The solution is quite simple, cheap, boring, and unobjectionable to anyone who might hear it. What is it? Genuinely curious, because I’ve done the same thought experiment as you about how little control individual cities have.

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
The adoption of a particular policy that costs practically nothing. A census of homeless in the city that first adopts it. The only thing this needs to accomplish is to fairly define which homeless that city has a moral responsibility for and to make it clear why it doesn't have a moral responsibility to others. Nearby cities would, over time, adopt similar policies defensively. Eventually, almost all of the homeless are divvied up (more or less) in proportion to the size and resources of the municipalities throughout the mainland. With no city government having to figure out how to solve homelessness for the entire nation, I'm not sure what they'll come up with. The problem will be financially tractable and with 10,000 or more out there, at least a few will start to solve it for real. All that's needed is a framework so that they aren't forced to choose between never being able to solve it for fear that solving it increases their population of homeless by x50 or just ignoring it. It's not rocket science. The truth is though, none of you deserve it. All the horrible things that happen, humanity deserves. And more. You can't figure these things out because you're fundamentally flawed, and may not even be an intelligent species in any meaningful sense of the term. Vote me down some more, I love it.
- hamandcheese 3y ago
  To summarize, your solution is: - count the homeless - ask them real nicely to stay put - ??? - homelessness is solved
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    Why would they need to stay put? Freedom of movement is a fundamental human right. But if they want help, then there is a place (or maybe several) that they have deep enough connections to that its government is the one that is obligated to help. Everyone agrees that this government is the one with the obligations. Do you always have such bad takes?
    - hamandcheese 3y ago
      Because if freedom of movement exists then there will always be the first-mover problem for cities wanting to solve homelessness. How does a census help address that? Spoiler: cities already do count their homeless. That hasn't solved anything.
      - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
        Freedom of movement doesn't change anything. If someone wants to hitchhike to San Francisco and live in a gutter, they have the right to do it. It doesn't mean that San Francisco has the obligation to provide any sort of welfare to such a person. Spoiler spoiler: They do fake censuses, because misreporting numbers is politically valuable. And a census isn't just a plain counting of the number, just as the US Census isn't. Details are taken down. These are needed here. It solves the only problem that must be solved first.
- xref 3y ago
  > moral responsibility America doesn’t run on morals. I don’t think any country runs on morals. Largely because nobody has the same set of morals. What are the laws you’d enact. If a city claims “moral responsibility” for 100 homeless and 100 more move in, do they get a one way bus ticket out of town? Locked up?
  - mensetmanusman 3y ago
    Crush the weak was the moral norm in the past and is rising in parts of the world. Humans are born unequal and will remain so is also a baseline normal belief. Laws are embodied local moral norms.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    > If a city claims “moral responsibility” for 100 homeless and 100 more move in, do they get a one way bus ticket out of town? Locked up? Yeh, if the city claims moral responsibility for those 100, and if the other 100 move in and don't meet the criteria, then yes... they get to say "tough luck, you're not our problem". The city might still choose to offer the bus ticket, if they found out that another city is obligated. Or they might not. That's up to them. They might not even do anything about the 100 that they do agree are theirs. There are thousands of municipal governments, and some are quite callous. As far as locked up, I do not know. There are laws on the books about vagrancy still, though those have been challenged multiple times by various courts, so I think that'd be rare or non-existent. The policy I propose is bureaucratic, and boring. It doesn't criminalize anything. It's just a checklist of how a homeless person would (or wouldn't) qualify for any sorts of benefits the city government might decide to provide in the future. That's all that's needed. If this policy apportions the homeless in such a way that a town of 3600 residents has a number that their resources can handle, and a large city of millions can handle, and every size in between such that some large percentage (above 98%) are apportioned to at least one municipality, that's all that's needed. The logjam is broken, and more common legislative processes will eventually arrive at solutions that see them sleeping in beds instead of gutters and dumpsters. There are caveats. This doesn't work so well in isolated places. Hawaii and Alaska... no clue with them. Their problems probably stay where they are now. Mainland North American, maybe continental Europe would see a large reduction in the problem. But then there's that 1 or 2% who don't get apportioned anywhere... personally I'd hope that with the problem having been reduced 50fold already, the federal government would step in and take care of the remainder. That's probably foolish of me.

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago

The adoption of a particular policy that costs practically nothing. A census of homeless in the city that first adopts it. The only thing this needs to accomplish is to fairly define which homeless that city has a moral responsibility for and to make it clear why it doesn't have a moral responsibility to others. Nearby cities would, over time, adopt similar policies defensively. Eventually, almost all of the homeless are divvied up (more or less) in proportion to the size and resources of the municipalities throughout the mainland. With no city government having to figure out how to solve homelessness for the entire nation, I'm not sure what they'll come up with. The problem will be financially tractable and with 10,000 or more out there, at least a few will start to solve it for real. All that's needed is a framework so that they aren't forced to choose between never being able to solve it for fear that solving it increases their population of homeless by x50 or just ignoring it. It's not rocket science. The truth is though, none of you deserve it. All the horrible things that happen, humanity deserves. And more. You can't figure these things out because you're fundamentally flawed, and may not even be an intelligent species in any meaningful sense of the term. Vote me down some more, I love it.

hamandcheese 3y ago
To summarize, your solution is: - count the homeless - ask them real nicely to stay put - ??? - homelessness is solved
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  Why would they need to stay put? Freedom of movement is a fundamental human right. But if they want help, then there is a place (or maybe several) that they have deep enough connections to that its government is the one that is obligated to help. Everyone agrees that this government is the one with the obligations. Do you always have such bad takes?
  - hamandcheese 3y ago
    Because if freedom of movement exists then there will always be the first-mover problem for cities wanting to solve homelessness. How does a census help address that? Spoiler: cities already do count their homeless. That hasn't solved anything.
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
      Freedom of movement doesn't change anything. If someone wants to hitchhike to San Francisco and live in a gutter, they have the right to do it. It doesn't mean that San Francisco has the obligation to provide any sort of welfare to such a person. Spoiler spoiler: They do fake censuses, because misreporting numbers is politically valuable. And a census isn't just a plain counting of the number, just as the US Census isn't. Details are taken down. These are needed here. It solves the only problem that must be solved first.
xref 3y ago
> moral responsibility America doesn’t run on morals. I don’t think any country runs on morals. Largely because nobody has the same set of morals. What are the laws you’d enact. If a city claims “moral responsibility” for 100 homeless and 100 more move in, do they get a one way bus ticket out of town? Locked up?
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  Crush the weak was the moral norm in the past and is rising in parts of the world. Humans are born unequal and will remain so is also a baseline normal belief. Laws are embodied local moral norms.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  > If a city claims “moral responsibility” for 100 homeless and 100 more move in, do they get a one way bus ticket out of town? Locked up? Yeh, if the city claims moral responsibility for those 100, and if the other 100 move in and don't meet the criteria, then yes... they get to say "tough luck, you're not our problem". The city might still choose to offer the bus ticket, if they found out that another city is obligated. Or they might not. That's up to them. They might not even do anything about the 100 that they do agree are theirs. There are thousands of municipal governments, and some are quite callous. As far as locked up, I do not know. There are laws on the books about vagrancy still, though those have been challenged multiple times by various courts, so I think that'd be rare or non-existent. The policy I propose is bureaucratic, and boring. It doesn't criminalize anything. It's just a checklist of how a homeless person would (or wouldn't) qualify for any sorts of benefits the city government might decide to provide in the future. That's all that's needed. If this policy apportions the homeless in such a way that a town of 3600 residents has a number that their resources can handle, and a large city of millions can handle, and every size in between such that some large percentage (above 98%) are apportioned to at least one municipality, that's all that's needed. The logjam is broken, and more common legislative processes will eventually arrive at solutions that see them sleeping in beds instead of gutters and dumpsters. There are caveats. This doesn't work so well in isolated places. Hawaii and Alaska... no clue with them. Their problems probably stay where they are now. Mainland North American, maybe continental Europe would see a large reduction in the problem. But then there's that 1 or 2% who don't get apportioned anywhere... personally I'd hope that with the problem having been reduced 50fold already, the federal government would step in and take care of the remainder. That's probably foolish of me.