Comment on There are solutions to our problems...
rozodru@piefed.world 3 days ago
primary example. ending homelessness. the solution is simple and proven. but the affluent have convinced everyone else that “it’s a complicated issue”
If you honestly, truly, believe it’s a complicated issue then you’ve fallen for it hook, line, and sinker. There are drug addicts that have homes, there are mentally ill people with homes, there are unemployed people with homes. But IF you are ANY of the three previously mentioned groups and you sleep on a sidewalk then suddenly it becomes complicated.
It’s the same for hunger. NO one needs to go hungry, we have enough food for everyone. hell we toss most it away daily. but again the powers that be have convinced everyone that food MUST be paid for and stealing it is wrong.
It is complicated ending homelessness.
Treatment for mental health and addiction is probably half of the problem though. Homelessness exploded when governments closed sanatoriums. Is living people away in a Victorian sanatorium the best way to deal with mental illness? Probably not in most cases. But it was an attempt.
Nope, time and again it is shown that the most effective way to house people without homes is to give them homes. By providing no-strings housing first, you make all the other issues easier to deal with.
We’ve also shown time and again that the strongest predictor for unhoused populations is the cost of property. And at the same time the number of empty homes in a lot of the western world greatly outnumber the number of unhoused.
But giving homes to the unhoused or doing anything to lower property values or prevent the rich from hoarding property would make the wealthy elite upset.
By providing no-strings housing first, you make all the other issues easier to deal with.
First, absolutely, but not in isolation.
If that person doesn’t also get some help dealing with the issues that led to their homelessness, they’re likely to end up back on the street in the future.
In the current system, which is rigged heavily in the favor of those with money, it is hard to end homelessness, not complicated.
The issues you mention that are connected to homelessness today; mental health and addiction, are complicated. But those people should not need to also be homeless while we try to solve them.
Any kind of hospital setting with medication would be a vast improvement over skid row. We know laughably little about mental health even now, but compared to Victorian, times when they fumigated vaginas, we know a lot more now. I think well funded institutions are step in the right direction, with independent oversight to avoid abuse as much as possible.
Super simple: the Earth is our home, everyone on Earth therefore has a home, boom, no homeless!
Obviously kidding, but the internet has poisoned my trust that it’s obvious, so this is just in case it’s not obvious
Technically, there is complication to the food one. People tend to waste what is given freely. However, I’m hard pressed to think of how one would waste a house.
People tend to waste what is given freely
Do they though? I grew up below the poverty line, and nobody wasted the free food from the food bank.
I posit that people waste what they don’t need, monetary value has little to do with it.
Unequivocally, yes. Programs that freely give things beyond base needs tend to have anywhere from 100-200% increases in material usage. See: Iran’s free gasoline for a societal example, or help in most soup kitchens or volunteer at a food bank. It’s still the right choice, but requires slightly more nuance than immediately apparent.
Iran’s free gasoline
I am entirely unfamiliar.
help in most soup kitchens or volunteer at a food bank
I have, there was very little waste?
Did they waste the gas/food or did they use what they needed instead of what they could afford before it was free?
I believe there will always be individuals who put themselves first in any scenario.
Yes, but that’s about perverse incentives to hurt those around you. Currently, there is an economic incentive to let food go to waste to keep prices high, rather than distributing it freely.
How would freely distributing food result in more waste, due to tragedy of the commons?
Property is theft
Well to expand, solving homeless is simple I agree but also unattainable because of the sheer cost of it and space. Please don’t come back with there is so many unused homes. Not a fan of stealing others property
faythofdragons@slrpnk.net 3 days ago
People want perfect solutions, and that’s what makes it complicated. Ending homelessness is easy, but people also want to end hunger, and sickness, and poverty, and… so proven solutions for homelessness get branded (by the affluent, as you mentioned) as “half measures” and nobody supports it.
And I’ve seen this play out IRL in casual intoxicated philosophical conversations with friends too, so I don’t think it’s a good faith/bad faith thing. I feel like they get bogged down with it as an optimization problem, where I don’t see a problem with knocking together good enough and improving later.
Flower@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
That’s fun way to refuse you giving them a few bucks in case they forgot their wallet. “I feel that lending $5 does not sufficiently resolves the financial quagmires you find yourself in seeing your current career and housing choices so at this time it does not seem prudent for me to give you any funds.”
GeirGrusom@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Poverty, homelessness and hunger are products of our economic system. It doesn’t have to exist, but in any other system you can’t own yacths with a helicopter pad or child sexual abuse islands.
kent_eh@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
The thing that complicates solutions is that those issues often overlap and one can be the cause of some of the others.
If (as one example)someone’s addiction has led to mental health issues and then homelessness, then dealing with one of those issues in isolation isn’t going to be a long term solution for that person.
Mirshe@lemmy.world 1 day ago
While this is true, in large part, where this has been tried, usually fulfilling ONE piece of the puzzle (i.e. making sure that addicted person has food and a place to call their own where they’re not likely to get stabbed for their belongings) really helps a lot of people get to a place where they’re in a mental state to address the other problems.
It’s a bit like fixing a damaged boat - nailing a plank over the hole where the water’s coming in isn’t gonna fix the snapped mast or the torn sails, but it gets you into a place where you CAN start to fix those.
kent_eh@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
True, but unfortunately too often that first step doesn’t get followed up on.
faythofdragons@slrpnk.net 2 days ago
Why can’t we have a short term fix while we work on the long term solution? Why do we have to let people suffer because there are others who it may not work for?