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A modest proposal, then?
At the risk of taking the bait, and against my better judgment... This is a hideously lazy solution for a society that has moved beyond sustenance farming. You're making a cynical presumption of intentional apathy to justify unreasonable measures, when in reality, there but for the grace of God do you go. In a society where your friends and family reflect your attitude, you're one TBI away from being labeled an inconvenience and put to death. Without a hint of introspection or irony, you condemn the homeless because your tiny slice of the collective burden of housing them is too costly and inconvenient for you? Have we considered, perhaps, making the burden less burdensome? Maybe eliminating legislative barriers to affordable housing erected by the economically privileged would be a better place to start than getting out your guns and going postal on a tent city? As it stands, you want society to grant you a license to kill those who inconvenience you - and this is exactly the sort of small-minded, impulsive criminality that society is constructed to curtail.
While we're unseriously venting our spleens, here's a modest counter-proposal: you can have your license to kill the homeless, but you only get to kill as many people as for whom you voluntarily provide housing, and if you ever stop providing that housing for any reason, and anyone you housed is killed by this policy, you too are put to death. This is at least marginally less lazy than your proposal, because it forces you to exercise discriminating judgment as to who is worth helping and who is a lost cause, and it guarantees that you can't take someone in for a day just to execute them the following day. You get to slake your bloodthirst and prove that you aren't just a lazy sociopath who wants society to give you a free pass for murder; I get you to rehabilitate or hospice someone who doesn't deserve to die, because your skin is in the game; some people get a better life than they currently have; and we get to eliminate the truly hopeless cases. And if no one agrees to house someone for their license to kill, we're no worse-off than we started.
I'd personally prefer if we don't openly advocate for killing groups of people over inconveniences and unproductivity, but if we must, let's at least try to address the obvious, foreseeable objections to our modest proposals with our own well-reasoned conclusions, and not just show our whole ass to the world?
You're making a common, fundamental mistake: the problem isn't that they don't have housing. "Homeless" is a misnomer. The problem isn't where they sleep, the problem is how they act. They aren't homeless because rents are too high, they're homeless because they have failed to hold down a job, or pay their rent, or maintain relationships with friends and family, or stay out of jail, or prioritize their own well being.
https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2023/05/hes-just-been-a-wrecking-ball-accused-arsonist-in-sw-portland-apartment-fire-hit-with-stalking-order-day-before-blaze.html This is what happens when you give them free housing (though an admittedly extreme example). This is not a problem of allocating sufficient money, this is a problem of "what do you do with people who destroy everything around them when given freedom."
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Uttermost nitpick: "subsistence farming", as in you can farm just enough to subsist on.
Though arguably with stuff like bioethanol we've also moved beyond sustenance farming...
Oops, thanks.
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It's not laziness: it's restoring man to the state of nature where if he does not think of his morrows, of his shelter and sustenance, he will die. There is no ambushers lying in wait on the outside of corporate layoffs. Police forces around the world have a list of 'individuals known to authority', who commit the pareto majority of homeless nuisance. Let us kill them all: swallow your liberal indignation about the rights and dignity of man and other such nonsense, and I'll let you embark on whatever reformist scheme in the aftermath that you please.
That's my counterproposal!
Would that be the same state of nature in which there was a 40-50% infant mortality rate?
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BaileyNot-Castle: let's make homelessness punishable by death!MotteCastle: let's kill everyone on the "individuals known to authority" list, as they commit the Pareto majority of homeless nuisances.I won't poke too much more fun at this, since I did literally ask for it, and clearly connecting punishment to crimes instead of statuses is a promising step forward.
Padme: You confused the motte with the bailey... right?
...right...?
Maybe! I like to forget which is which. It makes for some funny threads.
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I am not one of those advocating for executing homeless people, but I think there's an important point to be made here: if no solution is implemented, then this is what people will resort to. You cannot expect them to sit around for years waiting for enlightened technocrats to come up with the most humane remedies for societies' ills while they are harassed and threatened on a daily basis on the subway, going to a grocery store, or walking home. Any solution that goes into effect today is worth more to the folks on the ground than the perfect plan at some unspecified time in the future.
I can at least respect this position. Taxpayers and charities have handed lots of money and time to various entities to fix the problem, and they have a nasty habit of either making the problem worse, or running up a huge bill to sit around and pontificate on the problem. The police are neutered, incompetent, apathetic, or incapable of dealing with the problem, often by the demands and threats of a tiny slice of the activist class. And the homelessness problem has visibly gotten terrible! I live somewhere where I've seen firsthand how bad things have gotten. I can understand why people are eventually going to reach for vigilantism or mob rule when every function in society designed to protect against these problems has failed or turned traitor to wage class warfare.
And if we reach the point where our leaders, police, activists, and technocrats really can't fix the homelessness problem, and the only solution really feels like mass murder... indiscriminately taking out our collective anger on the mentally ill, addicted, and financially unlucky, is missing the forest for the trees, no?
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Yes, you can. And if they don't, you can have them imprisoned. And that will teach the other regular people that the homeless crazies are not to be interfered with; unlike the homeless crazies, most people respond quite well to incentives.
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Not if you prohibit them from doing so, and consistently enforce this prohibition with serious punishments.
Why not? What are they going to do about it? Particularly after anyone who decides not to just sit around gets prosecuted and sent to prison for decades pour encourager les autres.
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Your response is just unbounded sympathy without a real solution. Indeed, the failure mode of every unsuccessful homeless "solution" appears to be the assumption that we are failing them, rather than that they are failing us.
I met a call for indiscriminate mass murder with a self-regulating incentive system that simultaneously brings out the best in people, offers a second chance to those truly down on their luck, and condones the death of the undeserving - I'd hardly call that "unbounded sympathy".
On a serious note, I totally agree that there has to be a limit to society's generosity for recalcitrant insanity and unrepentant antisocial behaviors. I also think that, as far as solutions, "kill them and everyone that roughly matches that description" is a lazy edgelord hot take; the ridiculous cost of food and shelter lately is probably responsible for a considerable fraction of the "roughly matches that description" class; and there's an important distinction between criminal and personal nuisances.
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