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Comment by grawprog | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, I don't like it and I don't like that experience (and others) guiding my judgement when it comes to helping people like that, because not everyone who gets stuck on the streets is like that, but people like that take resources and help from people that do really need it and make it harder for people to care. Which altogether just kinda sucks and there really isn't an easy solution to these problems.

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The fallacy is that a direct personal experience of one person's dishonest behaviour trumps a financial and economic system which relies on similar actions on an industrial scale.

One dude pretending to be crippled is much less socially destructive than an asset-stripping hedge fund which loads up multiple viable businesses with debt and then kills them.

The difference is the former is still relatively powerless, while the latter can be responsible for multiple instances of homelessness.

So it's not a question of "help" - it's about making sure that homelessness is an absolutely exceptional situation, not the systemic default for anyone who finds themselves on the wrong end of the value creation process. As well as the mentally ill.

“Asset stripping hedge fund”?

purchasing a corporation with the intention to liquidate it's assets for profit, often found seated next to "leveraged buy out" & "pharmaceuticals price hike" in the American Lexicon Association.

Hedge funds don't typically do leveraged buy outs.

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