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Comment by chii | Hacker News Reader

> What's in it for my ISP and cell provider to give me a discount? Were they receiving more back in kickbacks?

the person you're talking to probably earned a commission or bonus based on how many they can convince to sign up.

This is what happens to gov't incentive programs - the cash and value generation is distorted.

Look at how homelessness problems in california is not solved, despite paying more than some $200k per homeless person in subsidies and grants. This is more than most (or any) job would've paid to that person. And yet, it fails to achieve anything of note, because the value generation (taxation) is _not_ aligned with the value recipient (which is not the homeless person, but the various orgs that spring up to eat the value while attempting to prolong the gov't subsidy/grant).

Have a watch of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNxQ8JWxWMA

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Actually helping people who have become homeless is like two steps away from what it should be, of course. One step in the right directly would be more homelessness prevention (there's some, but not nearly enough). Two steps would be systemic changes so housing was more easily affordable.

That said, I had dinner tonight with a formerly unhoused person here in SF, who is now living her life successfully because of that help, has an apartment, is paying bills, etc.

So while you think it fails to achieve anything of note, I think the problem would be a heck of a lot worse without it.

I also think people be overly concerned with the “moochers”. that said we should still dedicate resources to make sure programs are applied fairly and not taken advantage of.

I love basic income for this. It prevents needing to solve any kind of missuse since everyone is supposed to get it.

A noble dream solution, but even in this case there will be folks who try to collect the UBI of others in addition to their own.

Not all, but many of these concerns are drummed up by people that want to add every conceivable resistance to wealth redistribution possible, and the rubes that believe their fabricated justification. Drug testing for food and housing assistance is a great example. A fraction of the amount of money spent gets “saved” and the rare addict thrown off will probably cost the system more money as a homeless addict. Ultimately, it comes down to contempt for people who have less, and wanting to see them humiliated.

Yes, wealth redistribution is genteel theft and should be thwarted at every turn.

Please stop hitting that straw man. My hay fever's starting to play up.

An effective test for determining if reading an opinion is a waste of your time is: watch for language that assigns an explanation to the behavior of others.

Basically: they don’t describe what happened. They describe how other people are less good.

“These concerns are drummed up by people who what to add every conceivable resistance to wealth redistribution possible”

Not the language of an open hearted soul. I’m going to default to “unconvincing argument” as the infinitely more plausible explanation.

> watch for language that assigns an explanation to the behavior of others.

> Not the language of an open hearted soul.

Found some.

Amazing the number of people on HN who dislike any measure of helping those less fortunate.

Amazing the number of people on HN take any criticism of some program as dislike for helping those less fortunate.

If what you consider evil is standing in the way of Marxist utopia, well bud, I think you have your moral heuristic exactly, murderously wrong.

We shoulda leave words like Marxist utopia out of conversations, even communism and capitalism. It shortcut people's thinking.

That said, welfare programs are probably more efficient if they applied more broadly to society as opposed to adding paperwork barriers to people applying for aids.

Evil is a useless term unless you’re discussing fictional super villains or religion. If you think basic assistance is a Marxist utopia, well bud, I think you need to look utopia up in the dictionary and learn what Marxism is from a different source than Newsmax.

Not everything slightly to the left of Genghis Khan is Marxist you buffoon

actually the moochers wear business clothing.. the actual homeless are often damaged and addicted people who are stuck in hell loops

The majority of homeless people are at work or in school during the daytime. The people you see on the street are the tip of an enormous iceberg.

Yeah there's some silly shit that I'm sick of states paying for.

Mandatory drug testing almost always costs more then it saves.

California's failures are part of throwing money at something with no feedback loop to kill off unsuccessful strategies (like a lot of government programs). California is too lax on enforcement side. If you don't have the ability to take drug addicts and mentally ill off the street and put them in therapeutic programs nothing will ever happen because those are 80-90% of the chronically homeless, the systems will absorb whatever money you throw at it and there will never be any positive results.

> despite paying more than some $200k per homeless

And yet we're told universal basic income is too expensive.

Give People Money [2018] https://www.amazon.com/Give-People-Money-Universal-Revolutio...

Am policy noob, so I don't know how to articulate this properly:

I support whatever social safety net wrap around services people may need.

But I don't support our top-down welfare bureaucracy. When a mere fraction of our spending benefits the actual people in need, wtf are we doing.

How I usually phrase it:

Help people help themselves. Then help those who can't.

(Rant over, thanks for listening.)

>When a mere fraction of our spending benefits the actual people in need, wtf are we doing.

Giving jobs to the people "worthy" of a non-profit position (unemployable anywhere else). Which isn't to say that non-profits are particularly useless, just that a large swath of jobs in the US are just there so that someone's friend or family member or neighbor won't become destitute. If you're not in the network? Tough luck.

I don't know about ACP, but its sister program Lifeline pays for signups. That's why here in Chicago's South Side there is someone giving away phones and tablets on every street corner. Really.

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