Comment by travisjungroth | Hacker News Reader

Comment by travisjungroth | Hacker News Reader

If your solution would work except for some reason, then you don’t actually have a solution. A drill that works in space except for all that vacuum and radiation isn’t actually a space drill. It’s a space drill for some alternate reality, meaning the one you’re not actually in. You haven’t solved the problem. You’re not as good of a problem solver as you think you are, sorry. Stop acting like you’ve solved it. You haven’t.

In the exact same way, any solution that would work “except humans” is a non-solution. Maybe it’s a near solution, or a solution for a different time. But it’s not one right now.

When you find yourself getting angry at the world, it’s worth considering that just maybe you’ve made the approximately easiest mistake in problem solving: underestimating the difficulty of the problem (especially someone else’s problem).

If I ranted and raved about how it’s a crime against humanity we don’t already have underground moon bases, you would just think I’m unhinged. Sure, it’s theoretically possible, but problems don’t get solved at the speed of my imagination.

“But if we had perfect coordination…” yeah, well, if it didn’t take so much energy to leave Earth’s orbit, we’d do it more often. But it does, so we don’t. We also don’t have total software security and all cancers cured. I’m sorry. Everyone is doing their best.

The author almost, but not quite, reached the point where they realize they contradict themselves: Claiming that socialized healthcare would cure cancer, but not explaining how to move the US to socialized healthcare (nevermind that countries with socialized healthcare haven't cured cancer either). Claiming that we could lay fiber cable to every house, but not how to actually do it. Claiming that an alternative voting system would improve policits, but not how to move to an alternative voting system.

The "solution" presented here is a first step in _mapping_ the problem and doesn't even begin to solve anything.

There are two unexamined assumptions in the article: first that the “we” in “we can solve everything” is synonymous with “government,” and next that “we” know the correct answers.

The former is a very twentieth century notion. The identification of government with society (“we”) went hand in hand with the idea that government should have power in every domain of human life and co-opt or liquidate every competing authority like academia or media or church. Here, it’s that “we” the government should take over healthcare (although regulatory approval of a cancer treatment was cited as one obstacle) and fiber-laying instead of leaving those to non-governmental authorities. Carl Schmitt in the early twentieth century had a great term for such a totalizing government: the Totalstaat. It’s not clear, however, that a Totalstaat is actually a good idea. Governments have never solved many problems at all—-homelessness comes to mind—-and it’s not clear that a government seeking to expand its power into previously non-governmental domains will serve its own interests best by solving problems rather than by providing treatments that abate problems without solving them. Treating a problem expands a state’s authority while preserving the problem as a reason for further government action; solving a problem would end that authority by ending the reason for it. Winning a war, for example, used to remove the need for a standing army until the twentieth century saw the invention of a “cold war” and “war on terror” and a perpetual standing army to treat the unsolved problem of a lingering threat. It’s not clear that this increase in government power was a good thing.

Secondly, the idea that “we” (government) “know” the answers is hubris. The author claims that “we” know it would be good to send everyone to college for free, but is that actually best for everyone? Or does that just turn college to more high school, lower the quality of education, waste a lot of people’s time, slow down the creation of families and negatively impinge on demographic trends, etc? “Knowing” the solution presupposes knowledge of second-order effects, and people are generally very bad at that. Thinking that a total state “knows” the best solutions to problems is a good way to impose lots of (potentially negative) second-order effects without much recourse to do anything about it, since this total state has all the authority and no longer has competing authorities to check its hubris.

> Governments have never solved many problems at all—-homelessness comes to mind

North Korean dissidents in South Korea disagree strongly with your claim: several of them publicly expressed their shame to see such a rich country failing to fulfill this very basic human need when their super poor communist country of origin had no such problem. Homelessness is a society-wide self-inflected wound: it could be stopped in a few years, but that would be landlord gentry's biggest nightmare.

Citing a totalitarian government as the solution to homelessness supports the original commenter's claim rather than detracts from it.

If a totalitarian state that doesn't care about its people at all and cannot even manage to properly feed its population can do it, then surely the biggest economy in the world can do it too.

The true conditions of poverty in North Korea are shrouded in secrecy, with reports of famine, starvation, and human rights violations. The extent of homelessness is unknown, but defectors' stories don't paint a good picture. Homelessness affects children ("Kotjebi") and elderly individuals, often abandoned due to an inability to support them. The government denies their existence, and homeless individuals are rounded up, their destination unknown.

https://borgenproject.org/homelessness-in-north-korea/

> Homelessness is a society-wide self-inflected wound: it could be stopped in a few years, but that would be landlord gentry's biggest nightmare.

I think you are making the same mistake as the author of the article. Can you describe the steps necessary to solve homelessness, without resorting to "steps" that simply describe a condition that won't be fulfilled, such as "people have to..." or "the government has to..."?

Or, in other words, let's assume that I want to solve homelessness. What do I have to do for that?

You would need to introduce an equilibrium encouraging money system and prevent the extraction of land rents. Those things are never going to happen, because they are too obvious of a solution.

The current money system heavily discourages equilibrium formation, which allows disequilibria like the geographical concentration of money to occur, which in turn make it harder to earn money outside of large city hubs with expensive real estate. It is not possible for these homeless people to move away and earn a living on their own, because it would mean distancing themselves from where the jobs are moving towards. However, even if you make jobs available outside of expensive locations, there are still going to be people who need to live in the expensive location for whatever non job related reason. Those still need a solution to densify the existing location so more people can live there. That is why you need to prevent land owners from extracting benefits created by the collective surrounded the plot of land.

Again, the solution is too obvious for anyone to care about it. We can't demonize people, we can only demonize their ability to do bad things and set the incentives up in such a way that "greedy" people and "morally good" people do the same thing.

If you wanted the same answer in short: Demurrage currencies and land value taxes. Too simple to be believable.

> You would need to introduce an equilibrium encouraging money system and prevent the extraction of land rents. Those things are never going to happen, because they are too obvious of a solution.

If these two action items are "never going to happen", as you say, then they are not (part of) a solution. Like the author of the article, you have just started mapping the problem.

> If you wanted the same answer in short: Demurrage currencies and land value taxes. Too simple to be believable.

If things are as simple as you claim, why don't you describe a plan to overcome the obstacles and actually implement the two changes you described?

This is such a lazy argument. You can't write out in this moment how to solve this <insert large problem here> therefore it's too complex to solve.

It's all about incentives. Our society is incentivized to make a few people rich, not to solve these sorts of problems. If we wanted to solve them, we would. But that's not profitable, so it's not "worth" it.

Humans never had the technological capabilities we have today, which could solve most, if not all, of these problems. But because of our current economic system we rather spend trillions on advertising instead of reducing human suffering.

It's sad to realize that, unlike any other time in history, we as a society choose to not solve these issues.

> This is such a lazy argument. You can't write out in this moment how to solve this <insert large problem here> therefore it's too complex to solve.

Au contraire: not only can he do that, he is (currently) unlikely to be able to do otherwise.

Culture is an extremely powerful force, one that is typically very difficult to detect (culture frowns upon self-criticism, forces the subject to be changed, moderators/experts to step in and enforce the Overton Window to restore order, etc).

> This is such a lazy argument. You can't write out in this moment how to solve this <insert large problem here> therefore it's too complex to solve.

I wasn't arguing that the problem is too complex to solve, and in fact I don't see any evidence that it is.

Instead, I am arguing that the replies in this thread who claim that the problem is "simple", "not rocket science" etc. underestimate the problem's complexity, and challenged them to present a solution if they think it is simple.

> Or, in other words, let's assume that I want to solve homelessness. What do I have to do for that?

Build housing would be a great start! Markets don't care about low-profit cheap small apartments, so there's no supply and the demand isn't being met, so it's the mission of the state to step up and compensate this market failure.

Then you can also tax properties based on their occupied land area, which incentives the private sector to build higher density, which is much cheaper in terms of infrastructure cost and cost of living as well.

Then you'll stay with homeless junkies and vets, for which you'll need social workers and dedicated structures, but you could also try fixing your social issues and wage less wars and the number of people to take care of will plummet and become more similar to what you can find in other developed countries.

> Build housing would be a great start! Markets don't care about low-profit cheap small apartments, so there's no supply and the demand isn't being met, so it's the mission of the state to step up and compensate this market failure.

Let's start here. What are the steps needed to get the state to do this? Is the money for it taken from other places, or by increasing the deficit, or by raising taxes? How do you convince other politicians of your plan? Where is the land taken from?

Again, this seems only like a first step in mapping the problem.

These are secondary concerns: you need to agree to the end goal before you can even reach them, and the biggest problem is that many, if not most, affluent people don't want to solve the problem in the first place for either ideological and/or financial reasons, which in the American plutocracy means this will never happen.

If you agree to the end goal, you can pick whatever answer you like to your financing question, it's not really more important than “what color should the buildings be” as the cost would be a small fraction of say IRA or the yearly defense budget, or Trump's tax cuts.

The legitimate question being: what to do with the plutocracy, and to that question I'm afraid I don't think you Americans will see democracy ever again untill you are willing to get back to your revolutionary roots and take it (or at least make the oligarchs scared enough to give up part of the power, which is the best case scenario TBH).

> (...) and the biggest problem is that many, if not most, affluent people don't want to solve the problem in the first place for either ideological and/or financial reasons, which in the American plutocracy means this will never happen.

There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding in this discussion, because to me it seems like we're jumping from "this is really simple" to "it can't be done" and back. Which is it -- is it simple, or is it so complex that it's impossible?

You are indeed misunderstanding, not only my arguments but also the arguments in the original article, so let me rephrase it:

1. Many problems, including homelessness, are relatively straightforward to solve for a willing State entity in a developed country. Everyone in power that says otherwise is simply lying. This is the “this is really simple” part.

2. The people that get elected and are ruling are not willing to fix these problems. And the reason they aren't is that it's really hard for someone who is willing to actually get elected because of the plutocratic nature of the system. This is the “really hard” part. It's not that it's complex, it's that the interest of the people is fighting against the ideology and economic interests of the ones who have the political power to get someone elected.

See, there's no contradiction at all, and reminding people that “yes, we can in fact have nice things” is actually a political strategy to try overcome #2.

Have you any opinions on the scientific method?

> Or, in other words, let's assume that I want to solve homelessness. What do I have to do for that?

In Finland at least this was (mostly) solved by, you know, giving homeless people homes. Ones owned by municipalities. Decided by elected representatives. Who were elected by voters who care about more than their own ass on this quarter.

This is really not rocket science or fusion power stuff.

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

I was assuming that the original topic was about the US, so my apologies if we were just talking about different countries here. So to be more precise: Is the problem a simple one in the US? If so, what is the solution?

Or, in case you were referring to Finland's solution being a solution "template" for the US, what are the steps to implement that solution in the US?

> ... competing authority like academia or media or church

These are beholden to themselves, their owners, and to a deity, while the government (in theory at least) is supposed to be beholden to the governed.

There are many problems solved by a government, it's easy to ignore them because we assume they are a given and only think about the marginal issues that ail us at present.

> Claiming that we could lay fiber cable to every house, but not how to actually do it.

This one is pretty simple if you can accept 98% as "every house". Reality is that not every house needs fiber.

I fully agree with the rest of your comment.

Also, the US basically solved an earlier version of this with the 1936 Rural Electrification Act. In 1936, many rural communities and farmhouses in the US had no electricity while it was standard in towns and cities for decades. It was decided that having electricity was just something everyone should have access to and we were willing to pay the price to make that happen. Eventually it even made sense economically besides morally because many rural areas eventually became suburbs. We could do the same with fiber. It's not some utopian idea.

We are doing that with fiber in Poland. Just got mine in on christmas in small town, construction was subsidized by EU.

Absolutely not everyone is doing their best, and not everyone's best effort is in the common best interest. Healthcare works in Scandinavia, Germany, France and some other places. It doesn't in the US. That's not a law of nature.

There are shades of grey between no coordination and perfect coordination, and every step in the right direction makes things better. Care, make changes locally, vote accordingly, and you will move the needle.

I hear your point - if humans are part of the problem then an effective solution has to allow for humans in the loop.

I'd extend that thought to be more narrow though. Local human political and economic factors need to be allowed for.

So, for example, a medical solution will be different in a country that practices medicine for profit over those places where medicine is non profit.

Equally the "can't build nuclear energy" problem us solved in places where public opinion counts for nothing, and environmental concerns are, um, less concerning. [1]

If one focuses on the profit motive though, then the article is correct (it seems to be written for a US context) - we mostly don't fix the problem because someone is profiting immensely from the problem existing.

[1] avoiding for the moment the merits of said concerns, which -may- be over-described for other political reasons.

> So, for example, a medical solution will be different in a country that practices medicine for profit over those places where medicine is non profit.

There are some differences, but doctors still need to eat, equipment needs to be purchased, etc. Making medicine non profit isn't going to cure cancer.

"Non-profit" does not imply nobody gets paid. https://donorbox.org/nonprofit-blog/guide-to-nonprofit-salar...

That's my point. Money still has to come from somewhere. Being a non-profit doesn't solve the problem of things costing money.

"Non-profit" also does not imply that money isn't coming in from donations, grants, or fees.

I think it’s worthwhile to be able to say “we could solve the problem if it weren’t for X” so we can talk about why “X” is the way it is.

That is, the job of philosophers is not to solve problems, but to articulate a way of looking at problems which may lead to solutions.

> I think it’s worthwhile to be able to say “we could solve the problem if it weren’t for X” so we can talk about why “X” is the way it is.

Fully agree. But we shouldn't confuse “we could solve the problem if it weren’t for X” with a solution. It is a starting point to understand the problem better, and a first step on the journey towards a solution.

I’d say something similar. But, I don’t think the value is in talking about why X is the way it is. The value is in knowing the next obstacle to overcome. Having a space drill except it needs higher voltage than the station supplies is what I mean by “near-solution”. So now you need to lower the voltage need or increase the supply.

Here’s where things go wrong. You’ve identified the next obstacle, and it is likely going to need time and attention to solve. It’s worthy of respect in a “respect your enemy” sort of way. But when the near-solution is engineering and the obstacle is social, people adopt this harumph attitude. Making glib statements like “we could, but we just don’t”. I don’t think that does anything to actually help solve the problem. It reduces a tremendous amount of someone else’s work to an annoyance.

This is the exact same as an idea guy coming in and expecting the engineers to “just implement it”. This is not an effective way to motivate people or enact a vision.

Yeah, whole article could be summed up with Mencken quote from 1920:

> There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.

Reïnvented by South Park as the Underpants Gnomes:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/underpants_gnome

Don't get me wrong, I agree, but aren't all solutions to problems situated in reality conterfactual to some degree. To the extent of my knowledge, isn't it all deterministic. To enact a stategy is to presume a free agent, individual or collective, acts according to that strategy. The act of communicating that strategy is in essence to convince those interests align with the outcome to act accordingly. We deal with imperfect information, it could be possible that someone, or a small group can unilaterally disseminate a strategy that drives wider cooperation, but those are probably unknown unknowns far too complicated to decipher by any cooperating party.

Of course this isn't it. Warp drives and luxury space communism seem to be something we could only stumble into.

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