Many solutions ARE complex though.
Our problem as a society is literally voting for idiots who promise simple solutions to complex issues.
There are solutions to our problems...
Submitted 3 days ago by sanitation@lemmy.today to workreform@lemmy.world
https://lemmy.today/pictrs/image/0c633fa6-adbf-46c6-9136-3bfa05df7434.jpeg
Comments
jdf038@mander.xyz 2 days ago
chiliedogg@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Yeah. I work in municipal development and people think we’re just a bunch of officious pricks making people do unnecessary paperwork.
Things you don’t think about can kill people. Yeah - you don’t see a lot of people dying from building collapses and fires, but that’s because we make people address the complicated issues. Want to build a guesthouse? Great. We don’t care. What we do care about is that you put in a safe building and don’t grade in the floodway blocking the path of water causing the house to get carried away or diverting the natural watercourse into your neighbor’s house or the street.
Yes - you have to hire an engineer, and no, you can’t just do whatever you want because it’s your property. What you do impacts neighbor’s, the city, its infrastructure, your guests, and the next person who owns the property. It’s complicated and expensive no matter how much you contractor insists he does good work and you don’t have to worry. Contractors are liars who don’t know what the hell they’re doing half the time because they operate based on their gut and whatever is cheapest.
Bassman1805@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Yeah, let’s not fool ourselves. Civilization is difficult. There are no simple answers to getting millions of people to coexist. The answers that sound simple are usually just sweeping the difficult parts under the rug.
That said: humans are historically really good at solving complex problems. We have the capacity to address these things despite their difficulty. The problem is, like the OP says, a lot of people with tons of money and power would prefer that our aggregate problem-solving capability is directed towards complex problems that give THEM more wealth and power, rather than lifting up those with little.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Many solutions ARE complex though.
I think there’s two edges to this sword. Engineering the solutions to problems can be complex and difficult, from the perspective of the bureaucrats assigned the work. Building out a rail network or setting up a central bank or establishing a universal protocol for data transmission has all sorts of challenges and nuances to it. And, as a result, people who demand large-scale, rapid reforms will often stumble over the finer details to inflict a great deal of unnecessary pain as a result.
But the broader policy questions are often more straightforward, once the propaganda has been pierced and the outcomes of given policies are made plain and apparent. You can see this most recently in the fight over AI Datacenter construction, which very nakedly benefits a handful of socio-economic insiders at the expense of virtually everyone else alive.
The twist is that outcomes of policies don’t accrue to everyone immediately on their implementation. So you can mystify the relationship between policy and outcome with effective propaganda. Trump can start a war with Iran, constricting international trade of fossil fuels, while displacing the blame for higher energy prices onto environmentalists who have been advocating de-growth and caps on consumption for decades. National media can blame the rise of domestic fascist politicians on insidious foreign actors, while the media infrastructure is gobbled up by domestic oligarchs and the national police are turned on hapless immigrant communities. Generational divides can be created and exploited among the working class, such that “The Boomers” or “The Millennials” or “The Alphas” are to blame for housing prices or wage stagnation or some culture-war bullshit distraction. And then you’ve got The Epstein Class pitting Youngs and Olds, Rurals and Urbans, Whites and Coloreds against one another when it comes time to pillage another tranche of social wealth or enclose another chunk of the commons.
Complexity can be manufactured in order to obtain consent for panaceas. And complexity can be introduced to foul up the public’s ability to see what is in their straightforward social interests.
If you ever look into how the Apartheid Government of South Africa functioned, one of their most powerful tools was to create increasingly thin micro-ethnicities and stack-ranking them in the legal hierarchy. The complexity of the apartheid system became its strength, as everyone was given a social cohort to stand atop (except the weakest and most vulnerable native peoples). Once the ANC peeled away those layers of complexity, the appeal of the Apartheid system collapsed.
QueenHawlSera@piefed.social 2 days ago
If one more transphobe tries to tell me their bigotry is supported by science, I’m going to lose it. Because they literally don’t listen to science any other time…. They don’t even listen to what science actually says about transpeople.
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 2 days ago
MAGA thinks they smell blood in the water on the trans issue, so that’s their chosen wedge issue for the foreseeable future. I’m the past it was abortion, flag burning, kneeling, gay adoption, gay marriage, gay gayness, etc.
The proper answer to any trans nonsense is: “I am not a doctor, and I won’t presume to interfere with the medical decisions between any patient and their doctor, on any subject. I have absolutely no opinions on this subject, and do not consider it an appropriate subject for a political discussion. It is an appalling and indefensible political strategy to use any medical issue as a political talking point, so I’m not interested in your opinion either.”
That works for ANY medical issue, including abortion.
yermaw@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Thats been sort of my stance. “Its probably fine, they’re doctors. They’re not likely to risk their expensive, lifetime-achievement level career on bullshit”
arotrios@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Jake_Farm@sopuli.xyz 3 days ago
Yeah cause the reign of terror was paradise on earth.
Djehngo@lemmy.world 3 days ago
A difficult time, but so worth it because after the reign of terror they had a… millitary coup which installed and emperor/first-consul who… invaded dozens of European and middle eastern countries. Oh
PixeIOrange@lemmy.world 2 days ago
For example: In Germany, there are 531.601 homeless people while there are nearly 2 million vacant homes.
Same with food, we have way more than we need to feed everyone.
The system just relies on inhumanity.
Capybara_mdp@reddthat.com 3 days ago
Question- who is going on X ? While the above is funny, someone gave that site a view 🙄
minorkeys@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
The self interest of the powerful is preventing progress for the powerless. The further the divide in wealth, the else overlaps there EIS in those interests, almost assuring the wealthy will leave nothing for anyone else and trigger demographic collapse and economic genocide.
queermunist@lemmy.ml 3 days ago
The religious fanatics really don’t actually matter. It’s just the affluent people.
If affluent people want something and religious people don’t, affluent people still get what they want.
The values of a society are the values of its ruling class etc etc
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 days ago
Things are complicated but religious fanatics and low education people would rather think they’re simple. Specifically that good and evil are absolute and binary, that they are good and people who creep them out (blacks, LGBT+, Muslims, furries, etc.) are evil.
The ultra-wealthy like to think things are simple too. Specifically that they are brilliant and hard working, and that’s why they’re rich (contrast generational wealth, family connections and a great run of luck and opportunities).
They also believe working class folk are NPCs.
And once they’re rich enough, they surround themselves with sycophants who won’t tell them otherwise.
And the simple-minded rich guys hire the political class to manipulate the simple-minded working class (above) to vote for rich people interests rather than their own.
And thus, democracy is unmade.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Just had a discussion about this. It’s not just religious “fanatics” it’s the general idea of the “right” family structure, especially in Christian homes, that specifies a Daddy who’s in charge, a second-in-command Mommy, and the kids who must obey them. The mom does some discipline but “wait til your father gets home” is the ultimate threat. Pleasing the father figure is the path to success, i.e. earning praise and avoiding painful punishments. Bad behavior is the path to failure and ruin. That’s a big reason why Christians find it easy to assume poverty is poor people’s own fault. Doing the right things assures success, therefore they must have behaved badly or they would have succeeded in life. Kind of like assuming if a black guy is carrying something down the street he must have stolen it.
mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca 3 days ago
also because people are selfish and dumb and want to stay that way
a ton of shit is because of billionaires and the like
but also a ton of shit is because your neighbour doesn’t want the perceived inconvenience of a crosswalk and reduced intersection size at the end of the street
rumba@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
When I was young, I thought there was good and bad, lazy and productive, smart and stupid. I thought that stupidity was a lack of teaching and that anyone could do anything if they were taught.
Now, I think everybody has a million fucking reasons to be all of the above. Every single one of those is an analog line and none of them are mutually exclusive.
Most people are only out for themselves, governments and communities trigger many negative behaviors sometimes through negligence, sometimes in prioritization, and often on purpose.
whereitsat@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
john berger opened my eyes to this.
in ways of seeing he lays out a convincing argument that the entire history of european oil painting was just annoying and lame rich people commissioning artists to paint their possessions and property. the ‘masters’ were exceptions to this rule and often painted these great works later in life.
when you see it that way and draw parallels between modern instagram, you both realize how fucking annoying and stupid and pathetic wealthy people are but that nothing has changed other than the setting.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 days ago
instead of one-of-a-kind oil paintings they foist NTFs on us.
You had me up till this last bit. NFTs aren’t modern day oil paintings. They are the worst bits of the Beanie Baby fad. Which is to say, they are a marketing stunt by a trading desk at JP Morgan that found an opportunity to rebrand the Ethereum cryptocurrency as a collectible.
Whatever may be said of historical motivation for oil paintings, they offered some material benefit in an era prior to color photography. And they provided a certain kind of cultural touchstone of the era. Even if it’s for initially vain and stupid reasons, bourgeois proliferation of the arts has a lasting social benefit that socialists can capitalize on.
NFTs don’t have that.
vrek@programming.dev 3 days ago
There are problems that seem simple but underlying beneath is a bunch of other problems. Let’s make something simple, a wooden box. First we need wood. To keep it simple we will buy planks of wood, otherwise we need to find trees to cut down, figure out a way to cut them down, cut them into sheets etc so we will just buy pre-made planks. Who do we buy them from? Do we go for cheapest? Do we go for quality wood? Do we go for quality of planks cut? Can we negotiate a better price? This is now more complex. Ok, we got wood. How do we cut it into pieces we need? Do we buy a jig saw? Router? Table saw? Shoot, more complexity. Ok before we start cutting we should probably determine what pieces we need to cut. Also how do we handle the joints? Are we gluing or nailing or screwing? We need to buy that stuff too. We also need all the tools to do that stuff. Ok, now we made all those choices, we should write them down. Now that requires a drafter or cad. More complication. I’m going to stop there and ignore other parts like hiring people to do that stuff, hr, it etc.
It may seem easy to buy a wooden box but there is a lot of stuff going unseen in the making of that box.
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Yes and no. Source: engineers.
explodicle@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
I’m an engineer and OP is on point
cRazi_man@europe.pub 3 days ago
Yes, you’ve identified the complication.
1984@lemmy.today 2 days ago
This realm is intended to be run by evil. All our top systems are rewarding evil behavior. It’s been like that since the start i assume. Leadership like kings in the past were almost always evil as well.
Of course there are simple solutions to the so called problems, but they are intentionally created, and every day new problems are created as well. It’s intended to be chaos and problems here. And if will never change as long as humans are asleep and not recognizing the truth about it.
plyth@feddit.org 2 days ago
There would be no trash flying around if people would carry it to the next bin. Let’s start with that. No people in power will work against it. Can we do it?
Aeder@lemmy.world 2 days ago
The quote about how all evil needs to win is for good people to do nothing also explains perfectly well why the 1% keeps winning despite being an extremely small minority that is just as vulnerable to violence as anybody else.
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.
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 2 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.
CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 3 days ago
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.
Little_mouse@lemmy.ca 3 days ago
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.
f314@lemmy.world 3 days ago
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.
Malyca@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
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.
usualsuspect191@lemmy.ca 3 days ago
Super simple: the Earth is our home, everyone on Earth therefore has a home, boom, no homeless!
insurance
Obviously kidding, but the internet has poisoned my trust that it’s obvious, so this is just in case it’s not obvious
Gullible@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
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.
faythofdragons@slrpnk.net 3 days ago
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.
Malyca@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
Property is theft
Polisheocket@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
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