Scotland doesn't have the extreme levels of inequality that result in extreme levels of shoplifting, and therefore the shoplifting comparison doesn't hold up.
...relative to others with less of that; hence an inequality.
The issue with the chronically homeless who make up the other 20% is that they refuse the help because they don't want to follow rules such as curfews and no drugs & alcohol. The main reason for this is that most of them suffer from mental illness. This is a medical issue.
Also, the US is incapable of even reproducing itself, which falls far short of my definition of "works."
>they will not give their consent in the majority of cases for the same reasons that they refuse help from government programs and non-profits.
...because of the underlying mental illness.
Do you really believe that you can get consent from this group of people who you say should be in medical facilities, when they have self-sorted into that group mostly by being too unwilling or unable to conform to any rules or structures?
A lot of that is exactly for the reason the previous comment points out: mental health issues that unhoused people refuse to get treated. As someone who now works in that field, that person is correct. There is no way for case managers to "make" them get help. If the person is having a non-violent incident, then no one can really assist unless the person wants help. Even in some violent cases, police and PETs (Psychiatric Emergency Teams) can't help.
I work with the unhoused in LA, a city with one of the highest unhoused population counts. There is very little we can do if the people don't want help, which is a bigger majority than you assume. We also have a housing shortage for people that can afford rent, let alone landlords willing to help the unhoused. You make it sound easy, but it seems to me, you actually have no real experience in the field, which may be fine. But don't say a system isn't working when the services system can't help those that really need it.
Sure, maybe the US government can do more. They provide a lot of our funding and we also get a lot of assistance from private donors. But at this point it's yelling into the wind. Without fully supportive communities and government assistance, we're really moving nowhere. And it isn't just some shortcomings of the government. It's also private property NIMBY types that don't want services in their area. Example: our main office is in the Venice/Santa Monica area. We have rules and regulations brought upon by local NIMBYs on what time we can be there, who can be there, what services we can provide, and more. So while we help the unhoused in that area, we have offices elsewhere that some clients can't make it to, which reduces the assistance they are able to receive.
So while it's easy to say "it isn't working", how hard has everyone else really tried? I don't see many people quitting their dev jobs to make 1/2, sometimes 1/4 of the wage to do a more strenuous job. The only reason I did is because the agency I now work for also helped me when I was on the streets and they're willing to pay me more because of my lived experience. I still do web dev and IT stuff on the side to make up some of the wages I lost transitioning, but it was somewhat difficult to adjust to.
So, what are your experiences helping the unhoused?
How have you been able to help those around you?
How were you able to help those that refused?
Do you have a contact list of agencies that may help theunhoused? If so, can we collaborate so hopefully more people can get assistance? Well, maybe not, since you're probably in a different part of the world than me, but here's a starting point for the LA area: https://www.lahsa.org/get-help. Also on that site is a careers page that has a full listing of agencies in the different SPAs in LA county.
But if you know of national agencies that can assist the unhoused population, please, let me know. We are in dire need of real assistance, not empty words.
Edit: spelling
Grassroots movements start at a local area and grow, particularly where government doesnt help. What have you done besides make an excuse for taking action? Do you really think that being a random person complaining on the internet is actually helping the people you say need help?
I noticed you didn't answer any of my questions. Just filled space with empty words.
Again, I ask, what have you done to help unhoused people? Besides finding excuses why it won't happen, then complaining nothing gets done.
What you don't seem to understand is sitting around comfy and cozy in your residence complaining about stuff doesn't actually solve anything.
What needs to happen is individuals, such as yourself, actually need to try and help the unhoused instead of crying that the government doesn't do enough or that people as a whole will never make it happen.
How much of your life has actually been spent assist8ng others instead of being cynical and doubting? How many excuses have you made up in order to not help? I get that complaining on the internet is "cool" nowadays, but with society growing larger, we need more people to help instead of crying and whining about every step of the process (see my previous comment about NIMBYs). But everyone just wants to complain and be seen as someone who cares instead of actually doing it.
So again, what have you done to help? Because being upset nothing/not enough is being done and finding excuses to not do anything is quite frankly, useless.
I don't really do anything, other than giving food and whatever else the food pantry people ask for. I guess I theoretically try to improve the homeless vet problem, before they're vets...
Not to say this is a non-issue (it's hugely important), but it seems a bit odd in a context where Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Sub-Saharan Africa (plus a few central Asian and South American nations) hadn't really been invoked
Inequality is absolutely the correct term. The rich wield their means to exploit the poor. Without the rich, the poor are not exploited and poverty, drug abuse, and mental illness all decline. Every. Single. Time.
Just curious where you think those last 3 things stem from.
Drug abuse and mental illness are much more prevalent in those worst off economically. Poverty (in developed countries) is almost always a result of inequality due to bad policies (lack of social safety nets).
> Crime is as much a cultural problem as anything else.
Right, part of crime is cultural, and part is economic. But culture is also determined by lack of access to economic opportunities.
If the first half of your statement is true, then why do the billions of people subsisting on a few dollars a day around the world do not have society-wide problems with drug abuse and mental illness? Or are you implying that this causation only happens in developed countries?
What can you do to refute the idea that instead of drug abuse and mental illness being caused poverty, the same factors that predispose one to drug abuse and mental illness also predispose one to poverty?
> culture is also determined by lack of access to economic opportunities
Similarly, it's rather the other way around; lack of access to economic opportunities is caused by a culture that values human capital less. Of course, the two compound over time; but history is empirically full of examples of minority cultural groups that were discriminated against (whether legally, socially, or otherwise) but nevertheless succeeded economically due to the culture placing a high value on human capital[0].
[0]: Sowell, T. Discrimination and Disparities.
As stupid as the idea that inequality in itself causes these problems is, it doesn't have trouble explaining why this would only happen in developed countries.
Historic levels of inequality, including urban "anyone can easily see that their downstairs neighbor is a hundred times richer than they are" inequality, were much greater than modern ones and involved a lot less social pathology; maybe look in that direction.
> What can you do to refute the idea that instead of drug abuse and mental illness being caused poverty, the same factors that predispose one to drug abuse and mental illness also predispose one to poverty?
Looking for a root cause seems unnecessary for this question; mental illness can easily just cause poverty directly.
That one is absolutely not true.
"Social pathology" is way too undefined a term for me to argue with.
For example, we generally take Forbes as an authority on who's rich, but really rich people tend to be excluded from consideration, because Forbes can only measure certain kinds of wealth, and even when people's wealth mostly exists in that form, it can be hard to see.
Don't confuse a convenience metric with actual inequality.
I'm struggling to understand this one. Are you talking about the times of the cavemen, when I suppose everyone was equally materially poor? And yet you had other kinds of inequality back then, such as a bigger and stronger caveman being able to kill you and take your stuff, since there wasn't such a thing as a society or rule of law to protect you.
Or are you referring to the vast majority of people who for the vast majority of recorded history who lived in systems that elevated certain bloodlines above others, legally and culturally, and sometimes even to the status of gods? Certainly you cannot claim that, say, Queen Victoria and the common Englishman were more equal than King Charles is to his average subject, in every possible way.
What the fuck are you even talking about?
Is a society just if people with drug abuse, mental illness, and general dysfunction have equality of outcomes?
Of course, this simplistic debate belies the fact that all of these attributes have multifactorial causes, and most are in cyclical feedback with each other.
Dysfunction begets poverty begets dysfunction. No single intervention is socially curative outside of storybook logic.
Getting on my podium, I think that these factors are worse in developed societies than poor one (which often have greater inequality) for numerous reasons:
First would be the visibility of inequality. Next would be culture of material consumption. Next would be breakdown of social community (and the efficacy of social norms).
I think this explains why this types of behaviors are seen more in places like the US, which has a longstanding culture of materialism and individualism. I think it also explains why the behavior is more pronounced for outgroups and fractured broken communities.
This further explains why some groups within the US with strong social community have relatively low crime rates despite very poor economic conditions
They don't live in societies with extreme inequality and precarity. Under capitalism, inequality is the problem, not merely poverty.
It's just that for a long while, enforcement or the illusion of there being enforcement mostly kept everyone in order, but nowadays the illusions are breaking down. More and more people are pushing the boundaries and realizing that no actual enforcement is happening, so why should they stop?
We see the same in white-collar crime where companies constantly push the boundaries in blatant bad faith and this keeps happening because the illusions that kept everyone in order have broken down and actual enforcement isn't sufficient to deter the bad behavior.
Keep in mind that shoplifting isn't merely a survival issue, there are "professionals" who steal for resale.
Most people do not base their actions on some kind of spreadsheet where they are optimizing for economic success. Many people, I hazard to guess most, base their behavior on some sort of pile of moral ideas and/or general bonhomie. Most people are pretty chill and don't want to screw around with other people's livelihoods regardless of legal consequences.
How do you then explain every company out there being hostile to their customers and constantly pushing the boundaries of what's acceptable, or even things like wage theft which is surprisingly common? Or is there a double-standard here, where individuals are supposed to act in good faith but companies are not just allowed to be assholes, but rewarded for doing so by the market and lack of adequate law enforcement actions?
It's true that morality and good-faith behavior has mostly kept things working well, but it's clear that morals and good faith alone isn't good enough since there are entities that abuse the system so laws and enforcement should be there. If it's not, then I'm not going to be particularly angry about the little guys acting antisocially when the entire economic system is encouraging & rewarding it.
Look at it from an IT security perspective: it's great that most users are acting in good faith and are not trying to exploit your system, but you still need to plan for the worst and make sure your system can survive hostile encounters. The same should apply to our legal system.
Companies are sociopathic and we haven't figured out a good way to deal with this.
> you still need to plan for the worst and make sure your system can survive hostile encounters
Sure, but that's pretty different from saying it "just makes sense" to be a hostile actor.
Great, so let's start dealing with this rather than continuing the double-standard where the big guys are allowed & encouraged to behave antisocially while the little guys are shamed for it.
Until this is addressed, I'm not particularly surprised to see the little guys start acting anti-socially too; it makes perfect sense in the system of incentives we currently live in. Some people are lucky enough to survive while acting morally, but I don't think it's fair to be angry at those who don't instead of addressing the systemic problem that encourages antisocial behavior, both individual & corporate.
I'm not arguing that there are not some bad actors - this is clearly and obviously true. I think the legal system should act in whatever way optimizes its goals (presumably, the flourishing of living things or something) and I tend to think the punitive impulse typically doesn't do that. It's main appeal is that it feels good to imagine someone getting punished.
Well when it comes to companies the punishment and deterrent should be monetary damages that will effectively make the undesirable behavior unprofitable and thus discourage it in the future.
But we're not doing that, setting the standard that antisocial behavior is acceptable (and rewarded by the market by being more profitable than acting honestly), thus it is no surprise that the little guys have a go at it (and guess what, since we're not punishing that either, there is no downside to doing it repeatedly).
I think this is exactly the opposite of the right perspective for law and ethics. Society runs on trust, the more trust the better. ITSec runs best on zero trust. Applying the latter to the former lead to absurdities like "code is law" "smart" contracts.
And yet enforcement isn’t as strong of a predictor of shoplifting as poverty/inequality.
It’s like the joke - I murder as much as I want and it’s not the fear of enforcement that keeps the number at 0. It may be why you aren’t shoplifting but please don’t extrapolate to the rest of us.
> We see the same in white-collar crime where companies constantly push the boundaries in blatant bad faith and this keeps happening because the illusions that kept everyone in order have broken down and actual enforcement isn't sufficient to deter the bad behavior.
White collar and petty theft are very different. The simplest proof is that white collar crime as a concept didn’t even exist until the 20th century whereas petty theft has existed forever.
I agree because there's still some morality left. But morality itself can change, and if deviance is normalized by lack of enforcement we might very well end up in a situation where nobody thinks twice about shoplifting, just like when it comes to white-collar crime which is already normalized and keeps being rewarded by the market again and again, so it's not really surprising that more and more "blue-collar" crime is happening.
> White collar and petty theft are very different
Why? Are you saying stealing a 3£ chocolate bar is bad, but doing the same in software via a hidden fee or some arcane clause in the ToS that nobody read (and thus did not agree to) is acceptable? In both cases someone is out 3£.
That’s a strong claim, but is there any scientific basis for claiming that enforcement creates morality? Anecdotally I see morality police in super religious communities and all it seems to enforce is the appearance of morality but actually people are chafing against it and subverting it all the time - if anything the repression seems to create higher incidence of violent and sexual crimes. As for police, I haven’t checked recently but the number of police officers and the amount of crime that occurs seems to be fairly uncorrelated which is not supporting the hypothesis that more enforcement = better morality and less crime.
One place I saw this play is out is in the Bahamas where you and super rich white people putting up huge fences claiming that the locals had a culture of theft - if it’s accessible steal it - when the simpler, but more uncomfortable truth, seemed to be that poverty and inequality creates resentment and the amount of inequality was quite extreme.
> Why? Are you saying stealing a 3£ chocolate bar is bad, but doing the same in software via a hidden fee or some arcane clause in the ToS that nobody read (and thus did not agree to) is acceptable? In both cases someone is out 3£.
I agree both are unacceptable but legally one form is an acceptable way to do business. White collar crime is something totally different by the way - it’s about individual actions like embezzlement or corruption. Corporate behavior is a whole other category. A major difference of corporate misbehavior is that companies generally exhibit a very sociopathic behavior so they engage in that pure calculus you talk about and moral hazards are extremely real (largely because the market is allowed to reward sociopaths). People at the individual level however don’t operate that way though - aside from where the brain is broken and there’s a compulsive act formed for theft or crime (often due to formative experiences during childhood), most people just don’t want to hurt each other but that desire is weak vs self preservation and preservation of your family. And what starts out as preservation can spiral downward into trying to give yourself the life you think you want (that nice jacket or nice tv).
Not sure (and doubt it) but my argument is that if enforcement was adequate then you wouldn't need morality - morality would be a "bonus" but even if it were to go away, adequate enforcement would still deter the undesirable behavior by making it unprofitable.
> which is not supporting the hypothesis that more enforcement = better morality and less crime.
"Law enforcement" in general is too broad to be able to draw this conclusion. Which crimes actually trigger enforcement (and what is the penalty)? If police is too busy busting kids smoking pot (or other victimless crimes that are easy to prosecute) to attend shoplifting incidents/property crime then shoplifting will remain regardless of how much "enforcement" there is (and of course the second-order effects from punishing pot smokers will set them up for a life of crime where they'll then "upgrade" to other crime with actual victims).
> both are unacceptable but legally one form is an acceptable way to do business
But law != morality. From a moral point of view I'm not sure there's a difference - in both cases someone is unjustly enriching themselves at the expense of the victim. When talking about morals and how they prevent people from acting antisocially, those morals may evolve over time if the bad behavior has been normalized by financial reward & lack of consequences.
> People at the individual level however don’t operate that way though
That is true but the economic incentives that are there (and lack of deterrence) means that people may start operating that way and I'd argue more and more people do, whether by choice or by lack of other options.
I’d recommend trying to find any grounding in evidence of your claims because the poverty and inequality links to crime are pretty well established in the data.