A rant on bus stops | Hacker News Reader

A rant on bus stops

walkingtheworld.substack.com

108 pointsChris_arnade178 comments

As someone who currently spends time on two continents it's always jarring to return to the USA. The first thing that hits you is the wealth. The second is the wealth disparity. The third is the dysfunction.

It's truly a remarkable place but often feels like a rocket ship pulling itself apart at the seams—a lot of exceptional velocity and a ton of social problems that just no one can seem to get a grip on.

In America you’re expected to be your own king. Any problem with public spaces, public transit, etc. is deemed a personal failing because you aren’t able to afford your own limousine to shuttle you from your castle to your friend’s.

Something I’ve always noticed across the US political landscape: people really don’t like spending money to directly help people (mental health care, institutions, public housing, addiction recovery programs) but are fine with wasting money in weird ways like having this non profit travel the world to learn how to put up a sun shade.

It’s like the thing Americans dislike isn’t spending the money but the idea of helping the wrong sorts of people.

I’m sure that non profit was full of mostly white college graduates. Tossing money their way is fine even if it doesn’t accomplish much or anything. Let the addicts die on the street.

The US political landscape does a great job of creating problems that then need an incredible amount of expenditure to address(not even to solve, just to plug holes). This can be seen in exponential rise of diabetes, the opioid crisis, and homelessness, just to name a few. No one wants to pay to prevent a problem from happening, but the system will gladly throw billions to “try to solve one”.

> directly help people

Indirect, I think you mean, and probably because people generally don’t trust their money to be spent well by institutions, and it’s not hard to figure out why.

Americans lead the world in charitable giving and much of that is more direct - anonymously giving money to help a church member or giving money to local charities both are avenues with more visible impact.

It's not hard to figure out why, this is the Southern Strategy in action. After decades of dissolving institutions in the US and handing over the power to corporations we're finally getting our comeuppance.

> decades of dissolving institutions

Yet, mysteriously, after these many decades of dissolution the quantity of federal employees and spending in general has gotten higher and higher.

Idk if anyone is fine with those examples you mentioned. Unelected bureaucrats get to pick where this money goes. Also, not sure why you had to throw out race.

Even for the pettiest shit.

https://daily.jstor.org/when-cities-closed-pools-to-avoid-in...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_v._Thompson

Somehow, we Americans always prefer our government pay some entity to indirectly work towards a goal, than to simply use that money to directly achieve the goal. Direct action is so much more efficient, but we insist on doing it the worse way. Paying some non-profit, with executives, and PR people, and lobbyists, and administrators, and administrators-to-administrators, all soaking up the money that could have been applied directly if we weren't so stupid. Even for things that are not philanthropy. We're always insisting that government hire contractors to do this and that. Contractors whose executives and shareholders soak up much of the funding, who then turn around and hand the work to subcontractors with their own executives and shareholders and administrative staff, and sub-sub-contractors...it's grift and inefficiency all the way down. By the time a dollar gets from the government's hands through all the layers of money-sponges, only a cent or two go to the people who need it.

I think that may be a legacy of the Reagan era when the horrible inefficiency of government was roundly panned and there was a huge push to outsource everything to contractors and non-profits for the sake of “efficiency.”

The US switched to direct cash block grants for low income folks. The program is called TANF. How you get that money however is left up to the states. Some use it to fund things like religious summer camps. If you read the following article you will see why.

Red states also introduced a lot of red tape under the guise of preventing fraud. It instead prevents qualified folks from getting the help they need!

https://www.cbpp.org/research/family-income-support/temporar...

As the country gets more heterogeneous, people will want less to help others, as they know they won't be helping their own.

I think we've become increasingly anti-human. Everything must be monetized and transactional including basic interactions. We argue that everything has a cost instead of growing the pie.

To be human is to be connected in our shared humanity. Instead we build walls or worse, fail by default design to build 'connections' between us and prefer to insulate and isolate ourselves in socio-economic psychological safety.

My belief is a lot of this can be traced back to bonkers and completely discredited theories like social Darwinism, behaviorism, post Keynesian Economics. Mix those in with greed, cold war nihilism, and various ethno-supremacist ideologies and here we are.

Moloch demands profit.

You wrote the blog post I've been thinking about writing for years. It's clear and simple and to the point. What you describe occurs constantly in every American city.

Thank you.

I’m sure some aspect of this is the North American culture of high credentialism. Everything must be done by “properly trained” “experts” and whatnot. During the pandemic people on Han were talking about how N95 masks need you to be trained by professionals in a fit test. It’s a 15 min video on the 3M site…

Here’s the facts: I can do almost any job well without needing extensive training. But credentialism gets in the way of my helping myself and others.

Agreed. I recently had a conversation with an immigrant nurse from Bosnia, but in the US, her credentials only allow her to be a CNA. She literally had the same nursing job in Bosnia but now gets 1/4th of the pay to clean up poop. There's a nursing shortage too. The higher education system in the US is insanely corrupt and has massive reach with licensure.

Perhaps you can, but how can someone who doesn't know you trust that you can?

Ah but here's the thing: for things that affect me alone, perhaps just let me do it. An alternative, that I believe could be effective, is a bond that is paid into and managed in a similar way as 401k plans are.

E.g. say I want to try heroin. I furnish the $250k into the fund, get to try it, and 4 y later I get my money back if I pass a heroin drug test.

My write-up on the recent LA bus stop fiasco

Thanks for writing this, I like the trust/regulation mental model. I can also use it to explain my experiences as a European immigrant in the US. One of the biggest differences I feel is how belligerent and litigious American society is. Would you say this is one of the causes of this outcome? (i.e. when people are worried about being sued, they'd do the smallest and safest thing possible).

Anyway it'd be great to read more posts on this topic, and see examples of cultures you consider low trust/low regulation.

Not exactly fiasco. Some smart ppl spent $300k to jetset across the world for "research". They definitely do not consider that a fiasco!

The obvious solution (go to low regulation low trust) is likely impossible because of how rich we are.

In some sense U.S. regulation is the best in the world in that we’ve led on many health and safety issues such as suppressing tobacco smoking, nutritional labeling, airbags in cars, airplanes, etc.

This statement contain chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm.

wonderfully written, thank you!

As Argentinian, and particularly, from Buenos Aires, one thing that I hate from US is the lack of public transportation network, bus stops and people that don't know the concept of line-up.

To be fair Buenos Aires queueing is on another level, neatest I’ve ever seen.

It's infuriating to learn that LA spends taxpayer money to send bus stop designers on overseas junkets.

Sure is. I wonder how many people in MTA have actually spent some part of their life riding buses every day.

I'm a little on the fence here. Bus shelters are a mixed bag. They can be nice if they work against the wind, but on a cold afternoon they tend to feel even worse than sitting in the sunlight. Plus they're giant targets for vandalism and graffiti.

I agree 1000000% that every bus stop should be well-lit, however! And I think there should be a decent amount of room, too. Having a sign on a narrow sidewalk feels so dang dangerous when you're waiting for a bus.

One thing the article doesn't mention is the high amount of vandalism. I think the penalties for vandalizing public property are much lower than they should be. unlike, say, shoplifting some food from a store, there really isn't a good explanation for breaking a bus stop bench or a glass windshield on a bus shelter. But people are assholes and do it anyway! Then they vandalize the buses and trains too. Those things are expensive! And anti-grafitti/anti-vandalism materials make them a lot less comfortable to use.

Like, silly silly example, but if you ever take one of the retro streetcars in SF they have padded leather seats that are quite nice. Then you go hop on a newer muni train and they have hard plastic benches lol. With holes in the middle so that if someone spills something (or urinates lol) the liquid doesn't pool up on the seat. Hahaha I saw this on an AC transit bus once when I was a kid.. lol. It's actually the only time I've ever seen something like that.

I disagree. The US could be importing a lot more ideas than it does.

When living in other countries than the US, it has always been notable to me how often conversations about almost anything involved considering how other countries did things.

But after drawing on the world for better ideas, you would expect better results.

America could benefit from looking at what other countries are doing and implement the best ideas to improve quality of life in the US.

La Sombrita, however, is a uniquely American invention, designed by Americans, to solve American problems within the constraints imposed by America. LA spent $300k on a bus stop that neither provides the homeless population with any benefits, nor provides the ridership with shade nor adequate lighting.

Maybe if they had a little more to show for it I could be more understanding. Money has a lot of good uses; I feel certain the $300k spent on this POS design could have a far greater impact elsewhere.

Travel is great, but in a pinch you can find most of the world’s great ideas are written down in books or on the internet. The difference in cost is quite substantial.

I agree completely, the results are quite inadequate.

There are clearly decision makers somewhere in the situation who just shouldn’t be involved.

But travel is cheap education and research when compared to a city wide problem.

Traveling isn’t just about exposing yourself to ideas. It’s about exposing yourself to how they actually work in practice, pros, cons, unexpected dependencies, etc. while carrying your own situations needs around with you.

You can’t get all that coupled perspective second hand. That’s a false economy.

It would be negligent and unprofessional to not travel, for a problem on this scale.

You can import ideas from other countries without paying for airfare, hotel, and meals for people to jaunt off to essentially vacation in those countries.

On the other hand, I would gladly have paid extra money if the Chicago CTA would take a trip to Paris to see their architecture. It is shocking just how good the signage is there. Even with my pidgin French, I could easily make sense of which trains were going where, and how to utilize the map. In contrast, the Chicago system is poorly labeled and trips up native English speakers regularly.

I found that to be the least infuriating thing in the article.

great write up, love the observational acuity - credit to author for both the travelling and the awareness to notice the differences. The Taipei bus stop reminds me a great deal of the stuff you see in rural Hong Kong - local residents basically hauling out an old couch for people to use if gov didn't provide the seating.

> a high-regulation/low-trust society like the US

It used to be, we were the other way around.

I think memories of a low-regulation/high-trust society are hard to reconcile with America's long struggle with racial integration.

Yes, that has always been the glaring exception. Our original sin

Oh yes, the old,

"Everyone gotta have ID because what if there is voter fraud"...even if it eliminates the right to vote for some people.

"Everyone gotta get preauthorization from insurance because what if there is insurance fraud"....even if the delay kills someone on the hospital bed.

"Everyone gotta carry REAL ID because what if some people are illegal"...even if the delay in getting REAL ID causes legal people to lose their jobs.

The only place this "Everyone gotta do XYZ" trope doesn't apply is in gun licensing and arms background checks.

I have said this in the past, but I will say this again: "America is a country based on denial of rights".

And that one statement explains all the history of America - slavery, red-lining, captive insurance, broken legal immigration, broken college admissions, school-districting etc.

"Everyone gotta have ID because what if there is voter fraud"...even if it eliminates the right to vote for some people.

how does having an ID eliminate the right to vote?

"Everyone gotta carry REAL ID because what if some people are illegal"...even if the delay in getting REAL ID causes legal people to lose their jobs.

how about fixing the delay then?

these seem non-problems to me. at least they are non-problems here. an ID or a passport is required from the age of 16, and you can apply for it early enough. passports are issued even from birth. there should never be a situation where you don't have an ID unless you forget to renew it. and even then, if there is real urgency and you can't wait a few weeks, you can get a temporary ID. so noone is going to loose their job over this, and noone is prevented from voting.

You are absolutely not required to get an ID or passport at the age of 16.

You can walk on the streets without carrying ID, unlike many European countries.

Because of the driving culture in the USA not driving / having a DL means you need to take other steps to get an ID.

But the law does not require you to have an ID.

In general I do like the idea of having to prove ID when voting / for work, however I am weary of the government collecting so much data. The less they know about me the better.

Same goes with DLs. I give my address, DMV sells it and I get car warranty spam. Should be illegal.

i was talking about the country where i am from, and here you absolutely are required to have a government issued ID.

i got my first personal ID i think at 16, but since i was traveling a lot i also had a passport and decided that i didn't need to bother with having a personal ID too. the personal ID displays my home address, while the passport doesn't. a tiny win for my privacy whenever i need to show an ID.

even without an ID here everyone needs to have their address registered for tax purposes (because you pay taxes where you live) so the government already has that information. the ID doesn't give them any data they don't already have.

Of course, fix the delay. Do it. Show me the will to address these problems.

that's the real issue.

Line 5 and 6 seem to contradict each other. From 5 it looks like you want to more "gun licensing" and in line 6 you want not to "deny rights". Whereas gun licensing (any licensing, technically speaking) is the denial of right. And any argument (of which there are many valid ones) for gun licensing is precisely what you're arguing against: "Everyone gotta have The Gun License because think of the children" ... even if it deprives someone from the right to protect their life.

I think you missed the part where I say: "The only place this "Everyone gotta do XYZ" trope doesn't apply"

This means that the only place where the denial of rights is not applied systematically is in gun rights.

Another way to read it is: Every other right is treated worse than gun rights. And that is unfair to any unbiased observer.

Gun ownership rights are constantly being attacked, I'm not sure what you're talking about. Freedom of speech is also constantly under attack, as is press. Religion is constantly under attack too. Freedom of assembly is almost non-existent. Any government redress is fine as long as it can be ignored. That's just the first two amendments.

They are attacked because people can see that guns are given more rights than humans.

>They are attacked because people can see that guns are given more rights than humans.

What nonsense. The right to own guns by citizens is what is being attacked.

law abiding citizens. for criminals it's usually other way around ("progressive" DA drops the gun charge and the rest becomes misdemeanor, etc).

but you don't have soldiers in your home! at least 3A is fine.

Well, unless you consider the NSA eavesdropping on you via internet logging and credit card purchases in your home. I guess the NSA isn't technically a soldier.

that's 4A and its state sucks ass. NSA is not military so they are of course welcome to stay!

No, gun rights are violated much more and more deeply than for example 1A rights. Convicted felon who paid their debts to society can absolutely post on Quora and be a recognized popular author there and become a radio or TV host, etc. And felony absolutely doesn't mean violence. Driving 50mph above speed limit in Florida could be a felony. Buy a Ferrari, lose your gun rights!

Rights for me and not for thee.

>"America is a country based on denial of rights"

"America masquerades as a country based on Freedom, where a democracy gets to vote on politicians whose sole purpose is personal wealth-growth and/through the denial of others' rights ; to protect the former"

Some points in the article are hit and miss, but mostly correct.

For example, Istanbul is flourishing because it's the Turkish capital, so it necessarily is the most dense and rich city in the country. The high trust is a positive factor, but plenty of more rural cities and towns in Turkey look quite dumpy (perhaps not as bad a Philly, though)

The pictures don't really support that either. They depict a fairly average state of urban infrastructure, nothing particularly inviting or welcoming. The people look friendly though, as the culture actively discourages drug use and vice.

> Istanbul is flourishing because it's the Turkish capital

The capital of Turkey is Ankara, not Istanbul.

And Turkey is definitely not a high trust country.

https://ourworldindata.org/trust

Those one-question surveys are often too simplistic, don't reflect people's real attitudes or behavior wrt trust.

Fair enough. I could not put a number on them, but I can confirm Middle Eastern countries are low trust. I do not think this is a controversial point.

Yes, the surveys are far from useless either. But for example, I think China's high trust number is too reductive. From what I have heard (never been there)—violence/property crime are rare in China, you can maybe leave your door unlocked, people are polite, etc. But people worry about the doctor overcharging you, students cheating on exams, corruption in the government, etc.

Istanbul is a big city, but is not the capital. It was the capital of the Ottoman Empire, and before that the East Roman Empire, though.

Too close to the border?

constantinople was occupied by the allies after WWI, causing the turkish resistance to set up headquarters in angora which was later renamed to ankara. after the war of independence they decided to make ankara the capital of the new republic

The name Ankara was in use by the Seljuks and then the Ottomans since the 16th century, according to Wikipedia:

https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankara_(isim)

We used to have rent subsidies, mental hospitals, all night movie theaters. All gone.

I live in an apartment with neighbors who are subsidized, there’s a psychiatric hospital in every major city, and all night movie theaters would exist if there was a market for them. If you think there’s a market and money to be made - start your own

I'm sorry, but you don't appear to know the history of or what you're talking about.

The collapse of mental healthcare in the US was due to JFK admin's hasty transition from institutional to community-based treatment without a functioning parallel system. And, it remained unfinished without a proper replacement because subsequent administrations neglected it.

Reagan finished it off by ruining California's mental healthcare system and then the country's. The Regan's M.O. was to defund or ignore anything they couldn't relate to. How many Americans died needlessly from inaction on HIV/AIDS and manufactured crack epidemic as part of Iran-Contra is up for debate.

As such, in the modern day, many persons who need treatment do not receive it. And those who cannot function are often left to remain homeless and on the fringes.

Interestingly, the Cook County Sheriff's Office (Chicago) admins one of the more effective community mental healthcare systems because it's cheaper than locking people up and throwing away the key or bringing them to the ER every other night. Mental healthcare saves money, saves lives, and saves misery.

I'm sorry you make assumptions on whether or not I know what I'm talking about. Have you ever worked in psychiatric hospital? I have.

What you are referencing is a different type of long term psychiatric facility. The supreme court case is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Connor_v._Donaldson

Blame Reagan all you want - I couldn't care less.

> If you think there’s a market and money to be made - start your own

I'm genuinely unsure if this is a parody of the American Way here. "There's no problem here, but if there was, the free market will solve it!"

> I'm genuinely unsure if this is a parody of the American Way here

They said 2 of the 3 things we "used to" have we still actually have, and the 3rd thing is a waste of money because nobody wants it. It seems inauthentic to you to say that there's not enough demand to support all night movie theaters?

We used to have vagrancy laws too, and jailed hobos for being a nuisance.

Vagrancy laws in the United States were dramatically expanded after the Civil War, to restrict and control the recently freed slaves. In some cases, the penalty for vagrancy was to be forced to work for someone for free.

(Imagine if you were a recently freed slave, trying to escape the place where you were enslaved, traveling around looking for separated family members, and then that happened to you.)

The unique appeal of a vagrancy law is that it doesn't require a crime to be committed, so it becomes possible to outlaw certain kinds of persons.

Now in the 21st century there's a whole new set of reasons why people become homeless. And I'm not saying that it's easy to deal with encampments in public.

But many of the solutions to these problems are already ruled out in the USA. And that's precisely because the US has attempted to carry on slavery by other means. If you look carefully, you can see that the American obsession with punishing the poor or the sick almost always derives from fear of a racialized underclass. Thus it's impossible to make a public space welcoming, because you-know-who will benefit. It's impossible to make public health good, because you-know-who will benefit.

Not everyone who believes in these ideas today consciously knows that these ideas are racist in origin, but that's definitely how they started.

P.S. of course now the US is such a dysfunctional kleptobureaucracy they can't even deliver bus shelters, literally the simplest possible permanent structure, even when they say they're trying to undo racism

> But many of the solutions to these problems are already ruled out in the USA. And that's precisely because the US has attempted to carry on slavery by other means. If you look carefully, you can see that the American obsession with punishing the poor or the sick almost always derives from fear of a racialized underclass.

I looked extremely carefully, and observed no such thing. I think you are quite obsessed about race, which is why you are trying to make everything about it. Regular people hate being threatened by aggressive, erratic hobos, no matter what their race is. Last time a crazy vagrant threatened to "fuck me up" for daring to wait for a bus at a bus stop, he happened to be white, and this did not make me feel any more safe or tolerant.

> Thus it's impossible to make a public space welcoming, because you-know-who will benefit. It's impossible to make public health good, because you-know-who will benefit.

Europe makes public space welcoming by aggressively removing and prosecuting vagrants for panhandling, public intoxication, simple drug possession (very much enforced throughout huge swaths of Europe), and disorderly conduct. Europe is much less tolerant about hobos in general, and is on hair-trigger when they're violent. This is also one of the reasons why more regular people use public transit there, because people behaving erratically are promptly physically removed. Ordnung muss sein.

I mean half the US denies systemic racism exists even when the actual laws that codified it are easily researched.

> all night movie theaters

We've lost a sense of community. Look, years ago, before the Internet, we would all go out to the movies together.

It used to be you give the creep-show at the window a couple of bucks, you could spend all day in there popping off. And the joy of it was there were people popping off at the same time. I mean, not that you looked at each other. It was dark. You weren't looking for the gay thing. But it gave you a sense of something bigger than yourself.

Now, they... you know, got rid of all these movie theatres. They're taking all the sex out of the movies. And what am I supposed to do? Go home, turn the lights off, and pop off in front of Charlie?

No, thanks.

I'm not sure what understand what they were. The were regular theaters that showed regular movies all night. You paid your $2 (or whatever a ticket cost) and could sleep sitting in your seat. It was relatively warmer, dryer, and safer than outdoors.

"Hotel 22" is the closest in the Bay Area, as it runs from one end of Santa Clara County to the other. https://www.pbs.org/pov/films/hotel22/

It used to be there was a few 24-hour coffee shops, like Happy Donuts, where anyone could hang-out inside. It's no longer 24-hours.

Some people would stay in empty coin-op laundromats where the owners didn't kick everyone out and lock up.

Another option is 24 hour gyms where there are saunas, pools, and such.

> Another option is 24 hour gyms where there are saunas, pools, and such.

You mean in the Castro? wink wink

That was Frank Reynolds' rant from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia that came to mind :-)

Mental hospitals were their own kind of horror. The current complete lack of mental health supports is bad, but don't let those rose coloured glasses fool you, 70s style institutionalization is not the answer either.

"Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community" and such.

There are many contributing factors, not just screens, location mobility, or the decline of religion (churches being civic/social functions).

Parks used to have water fountains. Can't hardly find those anymore.

Children's parks used to have cool installations like decommissioned Korea era fighter jets in the sand pit and crawl-through metal sculptures. Those are all gone, replaced by perfectly safe, commercial, prefabricated sets.

We still have rent subsidies...

I'm happy I don't live in California anymore. Although some of my taxes were spent on these gender equal shades, I left 13 months ago.

You didn't have to bring in your entirely tangential culture war hobby horse, but ya did it anyway. Congrats. I don't know if your goal is to troll, but this is how you do it!

See, Americans grow up thinking that they are the best, and that socialism is there to rob you of your well earned pay. The irony in this is that capitalism instead is the root cause of all the dysfunction and more socialism, not less, would be the only solution to modern American problems.

The claim of greatness is obviously false; the failing of public infrastructure, healthcare and education is a common denominator of third world countries in my opinion, not of:

> Especially not when compared to the rest of the world, which is all poorer than us. Often much poorer.

Ever been to Switzerland? I wouldn't state it is poorer than the US. Not even the average EU country is.

The TL;DR here is that California has a housing crisis, which caused homelessness, which caused people to look into a bus stop design which doesn’t serve as a proper shelter.

Here’s a data-driven argument that homelessness is a problem with lack of homes, more so than mental health or drugs or whatever else: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-...

Fixing housing will have a lot of great downstream effects.

I'm not going to argue that building more housing will not help the situation, but I think it would also be worth looking at some of the underlying reasons for the lack of available housing.

I would bet my bottom dollar that the proportion of residences that are not used as a primary residence is higher today than it was 30 years ago.

A few reasons that this would be the case in my opinion:

- A second home (holiday home, pied-à-terre, land-banked, etc) used to cost you money, but with capital gains as they have been for the past few decades now makes you money - so naturally more people will take advantage if they have the means to.

- Investing in housing has advantages that other types of investments don't (residential mortgage rates are lower than rates for business loans, leveraging, tax advantages, etc).

- Short term renting is now incredibly convenient and lucrative.

I think any government that is seriously interested in addressing the housing crisis should start by determining how much of the housing stock is not used as a primary residence.

Sure, build more housing, but there are some simple regulatory changes that could improve the situation with little effort in my opinion.

A lot of people think this, but it's not a meaningful counterargument, nor do I think there are simple regulatory changes that would help much. https://journal.firsttuesday.us/californias-distinctly-low-v...

Thanks for sharing this link. It's rare to see people acknowledge the difference between the actual vacancy rate and the vacancy rate as measured by the proportion of properties in the rental market that are currently unoccupied.

9% as stated in the article is a lot in my opinion. That roughly one in every ten houses is not currently a primary residence points to a big problem (as I suggested in my earlier comment).

Could you elaborate on why you suggest this figure (or the content of the linked article) makes my argument not meaningful?

Here's a better link about vacancies, actually: https://socketsite.com/archives/2022/02/there-are-not-40000-...

I just don't think the numbers hold that second homes and short-term renting account for the problem. Remember, California needs to build four million new homes just to deal with existing demand. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_housing_shortage

IIRC also Vancouver (which is I think even more expensive than SF) tried to tax vacant homes and stuff and I don't think it made a dent. https://vancouversun.com/business/real-estate/three-years-in...

I'm not sure why people are so resistant to the obvious solution, but it seems to me no matter how you look at it, you just end up coming back to the most effective thing to do is going to be to get more housing built.

What’s with these “data-driven” nonsense posts? You live in a west coast city? Go outside! Use your eyeballs! You think the naked guy who’s floridly psychotic and taking a dump on the sidewalk would be A OK with a cheap dwelling?

The people smoking fentanyl at the train station and on the buses? They just need a little house and they’ll be fine? Such utter neoliberal nonsense.

Well if they had houses they'd be naked and shitting in their house, if they had housing they'd be smoking fentanyl in their house. So at least y'all'd stop going on and fucking on about "open air drug markets" and "the city looks like something out of mad max". It might not solve their problems, but it would solve yours.

No - it doesn’t solve anything. Some cheap crappy collection of houses that are “maintained” by whom? The psychotics and fentanyl users? The “solution” creates a ghetto that has to be maintained by city expenditure. And after that dumb expensive mess fails, then what?

Maybe that’s your neolib solution this entire time - ghettos. Typical.

neoliberalism is (broadly) an ideology that markets are/will-find the optimal solution for everything. Giving people housing, not being a market-based-solution, is not neoliberalism.

Also yes, maintained by city expenditure, it's been shown time and time again that housing is way fucking cheaper than a combination of policing and emergency medicine.

that's not even to touch the moral/ethical imperative that human life has intrinsic value and we should strive to provide everyone with the resources and dignity that they need.

For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you made me welcome, lacking clothes and you clothed me, sick and you visited me, in prison and you came to see me.

If it fails, then what is the question you need to answer, because my answer is: keep trying.

Yes yes very righteous and unproductive.

My answer: 3 strike rule and semi permanent sequestration by the state.

You get your cheap housing after all.

"sequestration"

Incarceration.

Slave labor.

Because you saw a penis three times.

Personally I’d rather the US revisit O’Connor v. Donaldson. Because these people are completely incapable of living safely. There’s constant overdoses, constant deadly auto v peds, and constant severe transmittable disease.

If the US allowed it again then these people should be sequestered in psychiatric units which can be comfortable and have amenities after the psychotic and bipolar have been stabilized. Rehabilitation centers for the addicted and managed convalescence centers. If they keep at their previous behaviors then they get longer and longer stays in sequestration.

If you want prisons and slaves - fine. If that’s your uncreative pitiful solution besides throwing cash away and creating ghettos, so be it. I’m not sure what the penis comment is about.

>centers.

That they're not allowed to leave?

>which can be comfortable and have amenities

That have to be maintained by city expenditure?

You're not even describing "prison with extra steps" you're just describing prison.

Yep that’s it. Everything is a prison. Zzzz

Not everything is prison, but involuntary holds in psychiatric facilities are, and they're more expensive than just paying somebodies rent.

Pay their rent? How about we just gather a bunch of money into a pile and burn it - at least that gets your bad idea over with quickly and we can move onto a different intervention. Maybe one with long term outcomes that might be a little better than seeing what happens when you pay a drug addicts rent. I mean jfc

And when they get discharged from these "comfortable" psych units and still have no housing... what then?

Also, what about the ones that don't have psychiatric problems (i.e. the vast majority of the unhoused)?

I wish everyone would get vaccinated against transmittable diseases to include covid and influenza, but if I started saying the government should mandate it, I'd be called an authoritarian. Forcing psychotropic drugs into people seems like quite a step beyond that.

Also, apparently these homeless people have much better insurance than I do if it's feasible for them to live in psychiatric hospitals with any kind of amenity.

These populations have HIV/AIDS, Hep C, and TB mostly.

Forcing psychotropic drugs on uncontrolled psychotic patients is already done. They are a danger to themselves and the people around them. Once stabilized they are discharged and they get scooped up again after the antipsychotics wear off. They really stand no chance without constant intervention.

Yep, that sounds pretty illiberal. Again, I'm all for it, but it seems pretty tough to justify it in the modern US where personal liberty is considered quite sacrosanct. I imagine we're sooner to allow them access to guns than provide long-term healthcare for able-bodied adults.

This is, obviously, intellectually lazy. The article discusses mental health and drugs and why they cannot be the main issue. Anecdotes don't really change that, hence why people use data instead of their emotions to solve problems.

Yea, I’d rather be “intellectually lazy” and grounded in reality.

These people aren’t using “data” to solve problems. What a joke.

Here’s what’s going to happen - voting citizens will eventually get tired of the drugs, property crime, and homeless and they’ll elect a mayor who is “tough on crime”. There will be a crack down and the public spaces will improve however eventually regress back. Then the cycle repeats. And a new academic group says if there were more cheap housing all the problems will be solved.

Why are you outright denying that the data exists? And you're calling it being "grounded in reality"? Seriously? That's lunacy. The data I provided demonstrates you are wrong about your theory of homelessness. I can't do anything else for you.

The data sucks and so did that blog. As if West Virginia and Mississippi are good comparisons! They don’t have as many homeless because their urban centers are minuscule, can’t support large homeless populations with limited social services, and with populations/laws less tolerant of vagrancy.

And yea, I’m grounded in reality - you are not. I don’t care about your silly data which captures multiple cohorts of homeless populations and tries to foist them into and analyze them as 1 population. Before you try doing “anything else” for me why don’t you try going outside and seeing for yourself. Or better yet, go work in the county Emergency room in a big city! Why don’t you try that? Maybe talk to a social worker there or case manager? That might be scary for you. Better put on your big boy pants if you have any.

I'm no longer interested in engaging with you on this (or any) topic.

There's a reason for the saying: "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics".

Intellectually lazy, maybe, but funny and easy to relate to.

Of course, a cheapo home won't help that guy. But without the 'data', we also don't know how much of the overall homeless population is like that. And regardless, that guy will still be there with more housing, so it'd be hard to call the problem solved.

A cheapo home probably would help that guy a lot. This is called a housing-first approach. It's easier to get off drugs when you're not, you know, homeless. But yes, other approaches are needed for serious drug problems. But we know that drug problems aren't the biggest factor in homelessness.

i bet homelessness arises from more reasons than a housing crisis, with drug addiction and mental illnesses examples.

I suspect it's mainly drug and alcohol addiction. Alcohol addiction isn't talked about as much as drug addiction, but it's just as bad, probably worse. Once you get your first few DUI's, you now have a record, you can't drive, and you have a much harder time finding meaningful work, much less getting there. Now you're depressed and you know what will make you feel better. Now you can't even hold a job because you're drunk all the time because you're depressed because you can't find meaningful work. I've seen it first hand, it's not pretty.

No need to bet, just look into it. I provided some reading on it.

>A removal of resources for the majority, because of concerns over “misuse” of less than one percent of residents.

Ah yes, the American way. The same justification I have heard as to why bathroom stalls need to have gaps and be unpleasant, "What if someone were to have sex and/or do drugs in there?!" Let them do it, just let me have a minor moment of privacy while I am pooping.

it’s not just in America. all over Europe you have "hostile architecture"[1]; for example, benches designed to be uncomfortable so that homeless people don’t sleep on them

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_architecture

There is a lot more of this in the US than anywhere else in the world though, and that's because the US also has by far the worst homeless problem.

...very rarely to the extent of US.

Well. Allowing for 'safe haven' for drug abusers in 'private' spaces comes with the side effect of attracting unsanitary behavior aswell, not letting you have a 'poopoo-peepee' time whatsoever.

"Anarcho-tyranny" describes this so perfectly. If a tiny minority of bad behaving people of people is making things worse for all of us, we could choose to help, punish, or sequester that minority, as appropriate. But instead, it's the majority that must suffer in accommodation.

Because homelessness. Because medical bankrupcy and opioid crisis. Caused by THE SAME industry. Nobody's responsible. Because USA is designed by and for small groups of people owning the companies providing for ridiculous money at insane conditions what everywhere else is cheap or free and well regulated.

As I posted elsewhere in this thread, not a good diagnosis of homelessness. https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-...

Houses per capita: https://imgur.com/oS9d2kf from https://www.oecd.org/els/family/HM1-1-Housing-stock-and-cons...

Homeless per 10k: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_ho...

Notice that USA has more houses per capita than countries with homeless populations that are significantly smaller.

People can move between American states easily. If there's a state where living as a homeless person is easier - people without homes will move there. Which will cause the problem to grow there and decrease in the origin state. If you really wanted to only compare American states - at least split the states by "homeless produced" vs "homeless exported". Otherwise it's just propaganda. Also - why would you only compare American states? Seems very manipulative. Like you wanted to ignore the possible causes of the problem that are shared by all American states.

I had a friend in college who lived in a trailer; he had a mortgage that was something like $17/month. The majority of the expense was renting the spot.

The truth is there already is cheap shelter available .. just not near downtown LA.

Not sure what you're talking about, but I think if you honestly look into the situation you'll find the right answer.

Which industry are you talking about?

The pharmaceutical industry is international. Many of the big players are headquartered in UK, Canada, etc.

Hospitals are mostly non-profit, and mostly purely domestic.

Is the non-profit status of hospitals supposed to mean that they are not driven by the allure of ripping their patients off?

It’s complicated. Hospitals aren’t necessarily making big bucks.

They have insane expenses. There are lots investments that are recouped in the doctors office: paying for medical school, buying downtown real estate, decades of medical research, etc.

Nobody says “we have $50 million to invest, let’s build a hospital.” Although investors occasionally buy them.

I don’t think US hospitals are for profit in the sense they have shareholder demanding a return on investment.

Doctors who have the ability to make lots of cash usually break out on their own asap.

So there’s probably some profit seeking, but not a lot.

I know plenty of folks who work for non-profit hospitals, and it’s a total mess. But it it’s usually organization chaos, and not profit seeking.

But I’ve heard stories of venture capital firms buying and shutting down hospitals, but never building them.

The pharma-hospital-insurance complex. The same non-profit hospitals in which at least one person you're seen by will be out of your insurance network because it makes more money for the hospital. The same pharma companies which evergreen and lobby for drugs to be ruled unsafe once patent rights run out. The same AMA that limits the number of doctors and ensures they are paid more than any other country while patients wait months for availability. The same insurance companies which intentionally hide their deals with hospitals to obscure the true cost of Healthcare services.

It's not a shadowy cabal deciding to make medicine worse to profit more, the sociopathy is efficiently diffused between everyone involved, many of whom work their asses off in incredibly stressful environments for a tiny share of these profits, powerless to change anything about the system.

But for purposes of discussion, it's one industry and it's fucking broken. It is impossible to fix anything by changing only one piece of this.

You’re taking about really different things.

In general:

* Insurers try very hard to keep costs down.

* Unions try very hard to keep labor costs up.

* Drug makers try very hard to keep drug costs up.

* Hospitals just try to survive.

* Medical provider try to keep a decent work life balance while paying off their student loans.

Doctors and other medical professionals working for the govt or qualified non-profits can get some or all of their loans forgiven or paid for. Not to mention there are specific programs to reduce it in general since they are in high demand. Some states are so desperate for doctors they will put you through medical school for free if you agree to work in state for a few years after.

https://www.aafp.org/students-residents/medical-students/beg...

I could accept these as true if the effect was comparable to any other place in the world. It's not. So either Americans are uniquely bad at trying really hard, or the system is set up with different goals in mind.

I'm talking about one thing, it's why healthcare in America sucks, and it has many reasons. Your point, which is that each of the major players in this game really are just trying to do their jobs the best, is the problem. There aren't easy solutions but we at least need to admit we have a problem.

I wonder what the cost of building cheap housing for the homeless would be. To house the entire homeless population. The negative externality of having them on the streets is probably far costlier for everyone, and it's downright embarrassing that we can't do more to help.

As I understand it, these folks want privacy, storage, pets, quick commutes to loved ones, and/or drugs/alcohol.

I think it'd be easy to offer privacy and storage. Let them have locks on their doors (that staff can open). Put cameras in the hallways. I think these things could be done affordably, especially if housing was built on cheap land.

Dogs might be possible and might help some of them recover. There would need to be a system to keep violet animals and maltreatment down, and sanitation would be important. Apart from that, animals help calm the mind. That's probably cheap to do too.

You'd need to feed and clothe everyone, but it needn't be expensive.

Transportation is expensive and should be offered in a limited basis. Non-profits probably already have this cornered, and you could do it at scale even cheaper.

The substance abuse problem I haven't the slightest idea on. You ideally want to get them to stop abusing, and most taxpayers would gag at the thought of providing homeless with the drugs of their choice as an incentive to get off the streets. Not sure how you compel the addicted to leave. Forcing them to leave would be illegal in most municipalities, and it feels a little wrong unless we have quantifiable data that it helps their outcomes.

And then there's the fact that each individual will fall into a range of mental health states. Some may be permanently disabled and in need of institutional housing (which I don't think we do anymore?)

It's a tough problem. Every nation has to deal with this, but some are clearly doing better.

I'm not well educated on this topic, so maybe I have the incorrect assumptions.

It's also a violation of Article 25 ¶1 of the UN's declaration of human rights:

```

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

```

https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...

So unbridled Capitalism?

More accurately, corporatism.

Exactly, most of the country’s most corrupt conglomerates could never survive capitalism, but thrive on government sponsored monopolies and taxpayer funded subsidies.

Capitalism doesn’t inherently mean companies get to alter the laws to favor themselves or government should decide winners and losers with bailouts. That’s a function of the political system involved.

This is something else. In some ways it’s closest too feudalism where the rule of law is subservient to various powerful entities and limited competition exists parallel to various monopolies. Though obviously it’s very different from the historical examples of feudal societies.

It kind of does? I go back and forth on this - I do hate the trope of blaming everything on "capitalism", because doing so seems like a recipe for something much worse.

But the best good faith definition of capitalism that I can come up with is that it's a framework focusing on capital first and foremost. Contrast with focusing on free markets first and foremost. A lot of people hand wave away the distinction between those two and treat them as synonyms, but they can be strikingly different and even directly opposed.

For example, imaginary property. A focus on capital leads one to conclude that creating new types of capital out of whole cloth is a good thing. Whereas a focus on free markets sees imaginary property as a market intervention (whether justifiable or not).

Similarly, capitalism would seem to include regulatory capture and other purchased legislation as a form of business capital.

> Similarly, capitalism would seem to include regulatory capture and other purchased legislation as a form of business capital.

That seems to equate our current system as the only thing that qualifies as capitalism. Slavery or the abolition of slavery both seem happy to coexist in our definition of capitalist societies. We are happy to talk about ownership of the means of production without including the ownership of workers. The same presumably applies to the existence or non existence of individual elements like intellectual property etc.

Ie. The idea of patents of limited duration alongside copyright of seemingly endless duration both seem to qualify as capitalism.

Capitalism is not uniform condition of a society, and private capital exists in societies that we wouldn't describe as capitalist. My point is that embracing "capitalism" creates a tendency to approach problems in terms of private capital, similar to how programming in an object oriented language causes a tendency to decompose problems into objects.

> The same presumably applies to the existence or non existence of intellectual property

If the two are orthogonal, why is it common for arguments against imaginary property to be characterized as anti-capitalist?

And is there not a general tendency for "capitalists" to push dividing up things that would otherwise be public commons or the purview of government, to parcel out for private ownership? eg water rights, radio frequencies, power grid, the Coase theorem in general. There have been varying amounts of success with privatizing each of these things, but the point I am making is that putting primacy on the private ownership aspect is a bit like putting the cart before the horse with regards to the overall quality of the outcome.

Calling things anti-capitalist is useful propaganda independent of it actually being anti-capitalist.

> private capital exists in societies that we wouldn’t describe as capitalist

Capitalism at its core is an outgrowth of respect for private property which creates incentives for further investment. A Neolithic hunter is going to invest time into better tools if he’s not worried about those tools being taken from them. As such, an inner city ghetto isn’t capitalist if people expect their stuff to be stolen regularly.

That’s the essential ground truth of capitalism, the minutiae isn’t nearly as important as the incentives. Civil asset forfeiture is directly anti capitalist in ways that changing specific IP laws isn’t.

> Capitalism at its core is an outgrowth of respect for private property which creates incentives for further investment. A Neolithic hunter is going to invest time into better tools if he’s not worried about those tools being taken from them. As such, an inner city ghetto isn’t capitalist if people expect their stuff to be stolen regularly.

Is this not one of the main justifications for imaginary property, putting the concept solidly under the banner of capitalism? The only possible difference I see is that physical property is exclusionary, while imaginary property is not. So it depends whether you consider "taken from" and "stolen" to refer to copying of non-exclusionary information or not. But "owners" of IP capital certainly seem to think so!

I do basically agree with the thrust of this quote! But it's also important to acknowledge the limitations, as massive capital holders will not. Especially when they can benefit even more from not-investing (eg the sorry state of telecom infrastructure in places where competition is non-existent).

First, I agree regularly capture is highly incentivized in capitalistic systems but I am going to argue regularly capture is in fact anti capitalist.

Anyway there’s a common argument for IP as being capitalist, but there’s also many arguments that limitations on IP are also capitalist. Many musicians only want to outlaw the most blatant forms of copyright infringement as they feel imitation drives things forward. There’s a huge spectrum of arguments around the idea that various forms of IP is in fact government granted monopolies on culture which limit competition. Obviously companies with valuable IP want to extract as much money as they can from it, but that’s just profit maximization.

To be clear I am not arguing for any specific set of rules for what is or isn’t capitalist. There’s advantages to more freewheeling systems where constant minor improvements can quickly play out in the market (Chinese copycat electronics) and there’s advantages to systems which promote larger scale investments (cars).

IMO, it’s the results being consistently applied that’s most important. Both vary stringent environmental regulations and nonexistent regulations are capitalist. What you can’t have is insiders able to bribe enforcement so only one company can make a competitive product because then the market isn’t rewarding investment. Which is exactly what you describe in the telecom industry.

I am trying to tease out what the term "capitalism" objectively means, because otherwise it's all too easily to do motte-and-bailey - where supporters of an -ism claim things that seem good while disowning things that seem not good. Perhaps it's ridiculous to think this is even possible in a world where a term can mean something different to each person. But if discourse is ever going to get past one camp asserting that "capitalism" is a great achievement of humankind and its detractors are fools that want to bring us closer to killing fields (plus the appropriate vice-versa for the other camp), then it is necessary to tease out the nuance of what "capitalism" actually means, rather than letting it take convenient credit for associated but distinct concepts.

> but there’s also many arguments that limitations on IP are also capitalist.

I've read plenty of them, and internalized them. After my infatuation with embracing the term "capitalism" faded, those arguments didn't really seem to be based on capital. Rather they bundled other often-associated concepts based on an assertion that they must obviously go hand in hand, while still carrying the "capitalism" banner most prominently. Your bit seems of the exact same vein - I agree musicians aren't generally IP maximalists, but most musicians aren't generally capitalists either, so that doesn't say much. Meanwhile the parts of the music industry that we would describe as the most capitalist are indeed IP maximalists, seeking to modify the law to maximize the scope of their capital.

Also I don't agree with your general assertion that any laws can be a foundation of a capitalist society as they're enforced consistently. A trivial refutation is a society that abolishes private property - no matter how consistent it is or what else it does, it could never be considered capitalist.

> I agree musicians aren't generally IP maximalists, but most musicians aren't generally capitalists either, so that doesn't say much.

Songwriting etc seems like a very capitalistic enterprise to me. You evaluate the market then invest X hours making something that is then judged on the open market. This is very different from most people simply work for someone else.

The parts of the music industry that’s IP maximalists on the other hand tend to simply buy existing IP rather than create it. They essentially face zero risk from infringing on others copyright because they aren’t creating anything. While that’s a form of investing there is several forms of investment in feudal society like making loans etc. Investing on it’s own doesn’t necessarily mean capitalist.

> a society that abolishes private property

I was suggesting it as a prerequisite rather than the only need. Obviously a communist society can enforce it’s laws without being capitalist.

That said there are many online communities which promote creativity etc based on acknowledgement and social credit rather than ownership. I don’t know how you could end up with a stable capitalist post scarcity society without any form of private ownership, but it’s one of those things we don’t have any direct evidence for either way.

Academia may actually be relevant model here. Mathematics isn’t owned by the individual who discovers it, but they still control and can invest in the means of production Aka themselves. Calling that capitalist doesn’t seem to fit, but it seems closer than the other options like socialism, anarchy, etc.

Hopefully that’s taken as food for thought rather than just being a ridiculous argument.

> Songwriting etc seems like a very capitalistic enterprise to me

I see where you're coming from with many aspects similar to say, starting a business [0]. But why is the specific label "capitalist" appropriate for songwriting, rather than songwriting merely being compatible with capitalism? Or describing it with similar terms like marked-based, enterprising, or something else? Without having "ownership" of the song afterwards, then the only resulting capital would be "social capital" for their name/reputation. But the term social capital is a stretch, as it cannot be freely traded with someone else the way a property right can be.

Would a songwriter in the SU, NK, or China do something different such that their songwriting isn't capitalist? Would a songwriter writing a song for a king be capitalist? Or even market based? It would be a stretch to call pleasing just a king and his court "a market", or preparing for it as "investment". So we're down to just human interaction of "is this other person going to appreciate what I've done", which "capitalism" can't really take credit for as a prescriptive paradigm. (There is a difference between using an -ism for analyzing traditional cases through its lens, and using it as a prescriptive model for shaping society)

> I don’t know how you could end up with a stable capitalist post scarcity society without any form of private ownership

This seems like another statement of a fundamental characteristic of capitalism that I agree with, but which supports my initial comment. If capitalism requires private ownership, then doesn't it stand to reason that a society which is more capitalist has more types of private ownership?

> Academia may actually be relevant model here. Mathematics isn’t owned by the individual who discovers it, but they still control and can invest in the means of production Aka themselves. Calling that capitalist doesn’t seem to fit, but it seems closer than the other options like socialism, anarchy, etc.

But the workers own the means of production, and can't really part with it (unless mathematicians were chattel). To me, it seems quite close to the ideal envisioned by communism [1], where individuals have implicit bodily autonomy but the fruits of their labor are shared for all to use.

[0] I've long said the SV startup scene is directly modeled on the LA music biz.

[1] I haven't read Marx and I'm definitely not implying that communism in practice could live up to this ideal across many types of endeavors!

Well, I did qualify it with "unbridled".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_capitalism

That's oligarchy, which is still capitalism.

Oligarchy doesn’t have anything to do with capitalism. The Roman Senate for example was really an aristocracy rather than what we would consider business leaders as power often flowed from parent to child within powerful families. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Senate

Capitalism is ok, as long as it's regulated by democracy.

Oligarchy is the problem.

The US doesn't have a homeless problem, California has a homeless problem.

I was stunned when I first saw San Francisco.

I’ve traveled a lot, and never seen anything like it.

It’s like a gigantic refugee camp. That’s not something you see in any other major city, including California.

That’s not “America” - that’s San Francisco.

Here is the top 10 states with their estimated homeless population: California (171,521), New York (74,178), Florida (25,959), Washington (25,211), Texas (24,432), Oregon (17,959), Massachusetts (15,507), Arizona (13,553), Pennsylvania (12,691), Georgia (10,689)

In 2022, the U.S. homeless population was estimated to be over 577,000, according to the annual point-in-time count.

It looks extremely illogical to me that we cannot solve this problem for the 500,000 or so people in one of the richest countries. The only explanation I have is the sheer lack of political will and a sense of misplaced entitlement.

If you think there are hordes of homeless taking all over bay area, think again. There is only 171K in all of CA (out of 12 million people).

[0] Source : https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/states-with...

> There is only 171K in all of CA (out of 12 million people).

California’s population is ~40 million.

Even better and even worse

Because the rest of the US sends them to California.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/...

I know I'll only get downvoted by more californians, but can't resist the relevant southpark link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsrBlKpbBS8

You get two thumbs up from this local!

I don’t know if it’s that simple. It’s gotten a lot worse in Philadelphia in the last few years, and there were still quite a few homeless in Philly when I was there before the new status quo.

It's gotten worse but then I live in the NYC area. NY is second (by far) to only California.

You're correct, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_ho...

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