Hacker News Reader

Good luck, this kind of logic doesn't seem to work too much with people who don't think too far ahead about the economics or don't want to think too much about it. Throwing more money at things usually doesn't solve it and taking it from others for reasons(?) doesn't either.

Had someone like this tell me Venezuelans should be supporting Democratic candidates...like what. A country whose people are so poor a lot of them wonder what they're going to eat next should be focusing on another country's politicians?

You asked me to compare my life to any human in 1973. I chose someone like me. Same identity, same geographic location, different time. Less than 5 years after the assassination of MLK and the Stonewall riots, that person would have been significantly more at risk than me of depression, destitution, or death from deficits in access to basic rights and resources - including, for all practical purposes, indoor plumbing (absent from my ancestral homestead in North Carolina), refrigeration (same), and a functional health department (same, particularly for gay men) - because of their race and sexuality. Nothing coming out of San Francisco office towers other than Harvey Milk was involved in changing those circumstances between then and now. I know this because I actually received an education in the humanities (which, informally, included working with Chinese and Indian legal professionals on a day-to-day basis). Did you?

As for the gadgets which you alluded to as contemporary society's savior just a few replies ago, I tend to attribute their existence to the basic research and, yes, cheap microcontrollers that made them possible, rather than the glorified middlemen who repackaged them as high-margin luxuries and sold them with spyware.

> So, like a child faced with this problem, you surmise we should take things from the wealthy and give them to the poor.

Also, like a concerned and informed adult, but yes.

>Exactly how much more should they be spending,

However much it would cost to house them permanently (and reduce housing insecurity in general), bounded by tax revenues, of course.

>and why would that change anything?

Well, generally-speaking, when a homeless person has housing, they cease to be homeless.

>Let's make this simpler for you.

I'd like you to stop projecting your own insecurities on me.

they should stop spending it on bullshit bandaid solutions and just give people permanent housing. there are a lot of countervailing forces that make that difficult, but conceptually the solution is pretty simple.

Ok, everyone gets permanent housing. You've now just fired 2 million people, just in the immediate vicinity of the real estate and mortgage markets. The US homeless population is only a quarter of that, but, let's not actually think about numbers or anything.

Next will be the inevitable fallout of destroying ~45 trillion in wealth. The consequences of which, bluntly, I can't even really fathom at the moment.

I'm assuming you'll be planning to tax more to give the effected some sort of UBI? Please confirm and I'll explain how that will also blow up in your face.

> conceptually the solution is pretty simple

It is if you don't actually think about it. At all.

"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."

unhoused people were never prospective clients of the real estate industry, but of course this is irrelevant when you can just twist and contort someone else's argument to make it easier to dismiss.

your arrogance is surpassed only by your foolishness.

Their point is that those landlords now have something they invested in where they aren't getting the returns they expected...but of course this is irrelevant when you can just twist and contort someone else's argument to make it easier to dismiss.

> unhoused people were never prospective clients of the real estate industry

See, this is what I mean. This sort of 'solution' is advocated by people that have never bothered to contemplate the second order effects.

Try to imagine what would happen if we implemented this. Anyone that is homeless gets permanent, free housing. You pat yourself on the back.

Except, now I sell my house. And I come to you and tell you that I'm homeless. Are you going to give me permanent, free housing too?

Because if you do, you have now created the economic catastrophe that I described.

And if you don't, because I don't deserve it on the basis of XYZ, you've just recreated section 8.

> Except, now I sell my house. And I come to you and tell you that I'm homeless. Are you going to give me permanent, free housing too?

yes. it probably won't be as nice as something you, a wealthy person, could afford to buy, and it probably won't be exactly where you want to live, but everyone could be guaranteed safe and stable housing without complicated means testing.

> you've just recreated Section 8.

Section 8 disqualifies people for all kinds of "character" issues associated with drug use, mental illness, etc. That's a big reason there are so many homeless on the street. I am against means testing, but even that system could be a lot better than it is now.

You could say the same about the US healthcare industry as it currently exists. Or the illegal drug trade. Or slavery, as it used to. Perhaps the costs of allowing a deleterious institution to continue existing dwarf the costs of reforming them, on occasion. Family formation is down, bankruptcy is up, and somehow I imagine that you have not figured in the trillions in lost value from these and the like realities that are extant because the 3rd most basic human need is unaffordable in this country.

Perhaps you can explain why taxation is so anathema to you. Are you one of the nutcases who consider it theft?

> You could say the same about the US healthcare industry as it currently exists.

No, because despite the mixed-bag that a single payer system would bring, it is not actually destroying healthcare. Unless you intend to force them to provide their services for no pay.

> Perhaps the costs of allowing a deleterious institution to continue existing dwarf the costs of reforming them, on occasion.

Absolutely. Private property is not one of those institutions.

> Family formation is down, bankruptcy is up, and somehow I imagine that you have not figured in the trillions in lost value from these and the like realities that are extant because the 3rd most basic human need is unaffordable in this country.

It is substantially less than destroying the entire real market, unquestionably. That doesn't mean that it's not a problem that should be addressed. But free, permanent housing to everyone is not, in any way, a practical solution.

> Perhaps you can explain why taxation is so anathema to you. Are you one of the nutcases who consider it theft?

I'm not. I've got no problem at all paying my taxes. I have no interest in those taxes being wasted.

> I have no interest in those taxes being wasted.

Welfare spending is the least of your concerns, then.

>it is not actually destroying healthcare.

I didn't say it would. "Healthcare" is not the same as "the healthcare industry as it currently exists".

>Absolutely. Private property is not one of those institutions.

Ironically: despite the mixed bag that crashing the value of real estate by implementing a housing guarantee (or even simply increasing construction velocity) would bring, it would not actually destroy the concept of "private property", legally or otherwise.

>But free, permanent housing to everyone is not, in any way, a practical solution.

Again, that's not what I said. You seem to have a problem with this. It would be interesting to see you actually argue against something other than a strawman. Are you capable of that?

EDIT: Going out on a limb here, but are you perchance a real estate agent? Because that would be the most hilarious of conflicts of interest.

> Again, that's not what I said. You seem to have a problem with this. It would be interesting to see you actually argue against something other than a strawman. Are you capable of that?

Yep. In fact, I specifically asked you for your proposal, and you chose to rant about identity politics instead of policy. Which is on brand, I guess.

> Going out on a limb here, but are you perchance a real estate agent? Because that would be the most hilarious of conflicts of interest.

Nope. The current system for performing real estate transactions is wildly inefficient, rent-seeking, insecure, and I'd love to see it destroyed.