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Notes -
As a sort of aside, I saved a passage from the old place onto my notes without saving the author.
Although to me it’s highly exaggerated and extraordinarily blunt, it still really encapsulates the core of how I feel about this. It’s obviously a response so some context is missing but if anyone knows the author or can provide this missing context that would be cool.
From Dec 2020
“But utilitarian with regard to whom? The whole problem with utilitarianism is the presence of so-called "utility monsters", and homelessness presents a real world example. A small minority of the population wants to use drugs and shit in the street while slowly dying of medieval diseases. But every tiny bit of aid just pleases them so so much that utility calculus DEMANDS we all pay an 80% marginal tax rate to pay incompetent government contractors to build $500k hovels for these people.
Utilitarianism falls flat because each person's measure of utility is internal to their mind and not comparable to anyone else's. It's a moral system that privileges incompetent, clueless and greedy people at the expense of unassuming, conscientious people.
If it were up to me, I'd make it publicly known that the cops aren't going to lift a finger to aid anyone who hasn't paid at least $300 into the treasury this year. So the grocery stores and homeowners could just bayonet them (no reason to waste the ¢45 and noise of a bullet) and the disruptive homeless would retreat to rural areas and OD in the woods where we don't have to pay to bury them. The down on their luck homeless would stay in a shelter for a while and get back on their feet, and the town could maybe not be filled with human shit for ten minutes.
But notice how this policy isn't based on retribution. I don't hate the people being discussed here. I feel vaguely sorry for and disgusted by them. I am just aware that helping them ranges from expensive to impossible and I like holding on to my money without losing it all to taxes. Every dollar the county housing boondoggle gets is a dollar my children won't get, so bayonets it is. If the chronically homeless could somehow be profitably remediated, they would be my best friends.”
Quite right, if you pay for something you get more of it.
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