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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   37814 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 8, 2024

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The unaddressed elephant in the room still is that right-wingers mostly believe that the representative homeless is in it voluntarily because homelessness has become a comfy and appealing lifestyle of antisocial sloth, while left-wingers mostly believe that the representative homeless would gladly move into and maintain housing if only they could.

I don't understand why, instead of trying to persuade each other, these discussions are always based in seeming denial that the other premise exists (an endless loop of "You're wrong, providing the homeless with housing is not actually that hard!" - "You're wrong, punishing the homeless is not actually that hard!", apparently heard by the respective other side as "You're wrong, there is no realistic way to punish the homeless" and "you're wrong, we can't just magic up housing for them all").

The problem is that both are correct. A good majority of the people who are homeless during their lives are homeless for a reasonably short period of time before they get their shit together. Just giving those people more resources would plausibly help them reduce their time as homeless, reduce how much they suffer during that time by a lot, and be a reasonable use of resources.

However a majority of the homeless at any given time are the problem sort who won't accept the help you give them, will destroy any housing you provide them, and are responsible for basically all of the negative externalities.

As with most things, the ability to identify the groups is hard, and a mechanism to provide services to the first group and harsh discipline to the second is harder and probably illegal. So instead both sides pretend the whole homeless population is one that deserves their preferred solution and I think about All Debates Are Bravery Debates.

As with most things, the ability to identify the groups is hard

No, it isn't. It may be difficult to do at scale in a way that is legally/bureaucratically acceptable, but you can tell the difference between a "I'm in a bad situation and need a little help to get back on my feet" and a "meth just feels better with a machete in your hand" in about two minutes of conversation.

I think it might be a little more difficult than you think for some edge cases, but I broadly agree. I was also pretty obviously talking about policy though, which means doing it "at scale in a way that is legally/bureaucratically acceptable".

I will happily concede that the punisher walking around talking to homeless people and smoking the problematic ones would have a very high rate of success though if that's what you'd like to talk about instead.

Actually, thinking about it, I think there's a pretty easy way to differentiate on a policy level: criminal record. People down on their luck, the "have nots", won't have meaningful criminal records. The anti-social, criminal drug addicts, the "will nots" or "can nots", will. Where I live, pretty much everybody who ever gets arrested for criddler shit already has a significant record of violent crimes. You'll see a news story about "man arrested for charging after somebody with a machete", and when you google them they've got years of arrests for similar crimes. A massive amount of the west coast's homeless problems could be solved by simply keeping those people in jail, and it would be easy to deny those people access to resources like free housing if they have any arrests in the last five years (I'd be open to excluding victimless crimes like simple drug possession).

The unaddressed elephant in the room still is that right-wingers mostly believe that the representative homeless is in it voluntarily because homelessness has become a comfy and appealing lifestyle of antisocial sloth

Or the sloths cause outsized damage. In that case it wouldn't matter much if the representative homeless person was reasonable. The left-wing position wouldn't even be wrong, just a non-sequitur.

"You're wrong, providing the homeless with housing is not actually that hard!"

I don't know why you think right-wingers don't hear this response. I hear it and respond that they will absolutely destroy these homes. You can disagree, but it's not unaddressed.

"You're wrong, punishing the homeless is not actually that hard!"

I'm pretty sure they do hear this and respond, with something like, "how is punishing them supposed to help them?". I find the loop stupid and annoying, but they certainly do have a response and it's that they don't want to punish bums.

The unaddressed elephant in the room still is that right-wingers mostly believe that the representative homeless is in it voluntarily because homelessness has become a comfy and appealing lifestyle of antisocial sloth,

No, those are a different group. Not actually unhoused, mooching off friends, relatives, and collecting unemployment / welfare.

while left-wingers mostly believe that the representative homeless would gladly move into and maintain housing if only they could.

And this is why there's no point in trying to persuade them.

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