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Comment by baby | Hacker News Reader

In a few centuries students in history classes will look back and try to understand why we let our people die in the streets.

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SF spends 240 million dollars every year to help the homeless. That's more than most city's entire budget. The reason that money doesn't help anyone is because it won't go very far in a city where housing costs 2000$ per square foot. And it really doesn't need to be like this at all. It's an entirely man made disaster of colossal proportions.

There's plenty of blame to go around. You can thank all the NIMBYs and countless housing regulations that prevent cost effective shelter from being created.

It's within our technological power to create housing for a tiny fraction of what it costs today in SF: just look at the tiny house movement. Just imagine how much cheaper it would be if something like that was built but stackable. Housing, A potentially multi-trillion dollar industry, completely unassailable, very few companies or investors are investing in this, all thanks to: Regulation.

Regulations and land use policy hamstring developers, increasing costs endlessly. Instead of working against them, we should be working with them to streamline and reduce their costs and finding ways to create more competition between them, to ensure that people get the very lowest prices. It can be done. Places like Dallas are growing every bit as quickly as SF/bay area and can still create housing for 100$/sq foot. I suspect even lower prices are possible with the removal of regulation: which would finally allow humanity to innovate in this area, rather than creating yet more cat video apps.

This harmful idea that real estate is something that should go up and up forever is wrong: morally and economically. In a world that is progressing, things should be getting cheaper, even real-estate.

Right now, your options in SF are a 200$ tent under a bridge or a 2 million dollar condo. There, really ought to be more options between those two extremes.

> just look at the tiny house movement. Just imagine how much cheaper it would be if something like that was built but stackable.

Say, did you ever read or see "Ready Player One"?

I see your point. but, I'd rather live in a small apartment trailer (which could have heating, water, electricity, etc) than a tent.

I don't think so, reading real statistics on this kind of thing instead of alarmist and politically slanted headlines paints a very different picture of how the world is doing.

https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty

As global average quality of life trends upward, the American lower and middle class are dying quietly in the streets.

https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/o...

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/12/21/5720803...

That's a very niche problem in comparison - we're talking hundreds of millions of people leaving poverty across the globe compared to under hundreds of thousands dying of opioid overdoses. Perhaps it's because I'm not American, but I just don't find it that concerning when put into the larger picture.

Perhaps you not finding it concerning emphasizes the problem. As an American, it greatly concerns me. It’s also why populism and nationalism have taken hold in first world countries.

That some tiny portion of the deaths in your country are from opioid overdoses? People voluntarily injecting themselves with drugs and fucking up? Why exactly does this concern you so much? It's hard to see it as representative of a larger systemic problem beyond the American drug enforcement and medical systems resulting in over-prescription of opioids and fenantly entering common usage. Not much beyond that, is there? I don't see a larger trend to extrapolate from that.

The opioid epidemic is a symptom of underlying socioeconomic and societal issues. That is why it concerns me so greatly. It’s a canary in the coal mine, if you will.

I don't think so - over-prescription of opioids and more common usage of fentanyl seem to the be the key factors in the death increases. Nothing to do with underlying socioeconomic conditions nor societal problems. I don't understand how you're making that leap - care to elaborate?

The Guardian has an excellent piece far better than me rehashing it.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/28/deaths-of-de...

“Is the US facing an epidemic of 'deaths of despair'? These researchers say yes”

So you're thinking that people in the future will wonder why we weren't more parochial in our sphere of concerns? More precisely, they'll be morally shocked at the notion that we were too close to treating all humans as of equal moral worth, instead of prioritizing those that are located closer to us geographically?

Don't get me wrong, I'm very aware that most moral systems have somewhat-principled reasons to prioritize those that are geographically closer to you. This is intended more to illuminate that side of the argument than as a full-fledged suggestion for how to set our priorities. But the claim being discussed here, that the future will wonder why we let people die in the streets, is still bizarre to me in the context that you're framing it in.

You act like we're putting in enormous efforts overseas to improve life, when we really aren't.

No, I'm not. You're projecting your overly simple-minded model of the economy and the world onto me.

toomuchtodo pointed out we're not doing enough about a problem that exists locally.

You argued that thinking globally is more important than thinking parochially, which is fine by itself. But it's totally unrelated to what toomuchtodo is saying unless we were taking global action in lieu of local action.

So I assumed you meant that, because it's critical to your comment being relevant.

If you didn't mean that, then your argument falls apart. toomuchtodo is not arguing for being parochial, they're arguing that we should be making it a priority to fight this problem at all.

The whole lower and middle classes? What do you mean by this? What does "quietly" mean -- there's been a ton of activity on the opioid crisis in Washington lately?

It is fascinating how frequently modest increases in quality of living in third world countries is wheeled out as justification for the predations of capitalism. If we're going to have a serious conversation about how the world is doing that has to include the fact that the global economy is predicated on continuous growth despite finite natural resources. There is also a few environmental issues that might be relevant.

I'd advise reading the article I linked, the increases are far from modest in many cases.

I'll agree with you on the environmental issues, but I think we're well on the way to solving those too and largely via the same mechanisms, Chinese solar is close to pushing coal out of business on price. That's not to say there's no role for regulation in the environmental direction though, I certainly think there probably should be, but how to do so globally and fairly is a bit of a catastrophe.

I would be honestly delighted to know through what mechanism you believe collapsing marine fisheries, coral bleaching, the Pacific trash gyre, global warming accelerated desertification, aquifer depletion, topsoil depletion, and a whole host of other issues I can't name off the top of my head are on the cusp of being "solved".

we just halved poverty in the world in the past 20 years. Time to check your facts again.

halved != eradicated.

Given the incredible amount of energy and resources being wasted by some of the richest countries this level of inequality is far from acceptable.

You're assuming it will get better in the future.

I too am afraid that our future descendants will look at our actions with disdain.

But I am even more afraid that our future descendants will live in the same rampant callousness and cruelty that we've created and perpetuated.

If they live in a better world than ours and look at us like savages, then I think overall things will have gone pretty well.

I disagree

Care to elaborate?

They didn't - so no

Who is dying in the street in substantial numbers?

Go to San Francisco. You'll meet them.

Poor people die earlier. More importantly though their quality of life sucks, especially in a country with tens of millions without health insurance. They may have rotten teeth and loads of stress, but hey, they are not dead yet so what's the problem?

Sorry that it's all The Guardian but they had a series that I happened to remember, and I think that publication has a good enough reputation:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/dec/15/america-extr...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/may/21/seques...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/01/un-extreme-pov...

Of course, if we find the slightest mistake or hyperbole (if there even is any) in an article or comment about the plight of the poor we can discuss THAT instead and dismiss the entire thought. Another form of bike-shedding, instead of using good faith for the discussion use every tiny opening of the "opponent" to sidetrack the discussion and to dismiss the issue.

So, where are the people of the masses of dying in the streets? None? Even in San Francisco they look shabby but very much still alive? Well, case closed I guess.

You're moving the goalposts. The person I replied to implied that people are literally dying in the gutters, so of course future humans will look at us with genuine confusion -- who steps over a dying person in the street? How does that make sense? It trivializes the problem and handwaves away the millions of people who help the poor/homeless, and the millions of dollars we spend on that.

If future historians look at any part of this with confusion, it'll be the part where we ignore mental health and think dumping cash/housing/whatever on a person will solve everything.

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