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Comment by komali2 | Hacker News Reader

Well, yea, this is why implementing social welfare and safety nets is far better done at the government level, where you have accountability and a justice system.

An attractive person holding a clever, written-in-English sign, at a football game that cost them 100$ (or whatever) to attend, garners 3000$ for beer. The ugly, dirty, illiterate homeless person that stands outside of a train station gets 5$ for food.

Unfairness can exist at the bureaucratic level (shit like judges being tired and being less lenient towards the evening, or just plain and simple sexism and racism in the justice system), but it's far better than "marketplace of begging for welfare."

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Falls in line with using GoFundMe for medical bills, the better the story/narrative the more viral the funding:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/01/the-perverse-l...

Similarly why a robust welfare state is preferable to charity. Charitable giving is free to discriminate and there's no mechanism to try and move it towards those who most need it.

Do you think welfare state actually distributes funds to whoever needs them? They are giving funds away to everyone who can check x boxes on a form, no one in the government ever verifies if the person actually needs the money, like a charity would do.

Like some charities would do.

If you give charity to someone on gofundme, what charity ever verifies if the person actually needs the money?

You verify it when you select where to give your money. Otherwise they are forcefully taken from you and distributed, and the most you can say about it is filling a ballot every two years.

I find it hard to see how a charity would be able to see into people's lives enough to make that decision, compared to the state which can and does prosecute if you lie on the form.

> can and does prosecute if you lie on the form

The government has no incentive to reduce or even investigate this type of fraud. Enforcement is selective at best.

I implied there are mechanisms in a welfare state that can be used to try to move resources to where they are needed most.

There are no mechanisms whatsoever to force Bob the billionaire to do a god damn thing with his own money, other than to give the billionaire more tax breaks.

I also used to work in certification for government benefits, and I can assure you there are, in many cases, safeguards and verification.

These issues aren't solved with "social welfare and safety nets", that's just throwing good money after bad. I'm totally fine with a kick-ass safety net for people who are actually in poverty, aka have trouble funding their basic needs despite very serious, sometimes strenuous efforts. But someone who is advertising their Venmo ID online is almost certainly not poor in this legitimate sense. Spending more money than you earn, and then on vapid things like social media, etc. has nothing to do with poverty.

Exactly, that's the point. The government is much better positioned to distinguish between genuine need vs. boredom and a clever pitch that the Venmo-using public at large.

The idea that people asking for donations online are deservedly poor because they spend too much money on social media is probably the oddest thing I've heard all year.

Social media costs $0. Venmo costs $0. Internet access costs under $50/month, and is one of the most valuable purchases anyone can make in modern society.

The social media account costs $0. If you actually want to play at being a social media "influencer" online and reaching strangers to a non-trivial extent, you'll definitely be looking at some real costs.

How do you figure?

I'm not sure about other states but in California, there is the LifeLine program[1] to provide free cell phones to those in need.

[1] https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/lifeline/

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