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Comment by dumbo-octopus | Hacker News Reader

Public transit fares are generally malformed. I personally never pay the LA Metro fare. Why? Because I pay the Metrolink fare, which by their own admission covers same-day Metro transit. But police will actively seek me out as a person who looks like they have money and give me a hard time for not “tapping”, all while folks who very clearly have no money waltz on into the metro, stopping only to smoke crack on the elevator up. There’s a general problem in this country of what to do with law breakers who do not have money. It seems like the answer is to make them work and garnish their wages, but for whatever reason we are against that.

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It didn't used to be a problem, but over the course of the last 12 years or so, people have abdicated any agency they had. It started out in areas like the SF panhandle where well meaning folks got the cops to not arrest delinquents for trespassing, mistreating animals, loitering, begging, etc. Some got tired after a while and they passed redundant sit-lie laws... that stuck for a tiny bit, till riots were used as excuse to engage in all kinds of unlawful behavior and that in combination with Covid and a national defund-the-police movement led to a substantial increase in quality of life crime and petty crime that has now pervaded and has entrenched itself like an invasive species but the people responsible for this are loath to admit a mistake and now pretend it's not really an issue.

Maybe people will tire of this and hold officials accountable --but it will take a change of perspective from bleeding hearts and lots of time as well. It can be done. The wild west was tamed. This can be tamed as well but it takes will and commitment.

Yes. Even on this very form, a suggestion that folks who break the law are held accountable for their actions and are made to pay back society for their transgressions results in an immediate downvote brigade.

> substantial increase in quality of life crime and petty crime

Do you have any sources for that?

I was only able to find numbers on violent crime, which have gone down recently, and weren't as bad as thirty years ago. The 70s through 90s were pretty rough.

I've heard other people say that these minor crimes go unreported and undercounted, but then it's difficult to get past anecdotes without some kind of meaurement, for example perceptions may have shofted due to more news coverage, or as we've gotten older.

I notice more beggars in general. I take that as mental health, drug and poverty than crime. I also notice less traffic law enforcement and more reckless driving. A lot of other things seem to depend on the neighborhood.

I agree that mistakes have been made in some localities. Some of problems are too big to sweep under the rug.

There are no jobs that want jobless people. There's few that even want 18 year olds

Plenty of work for prison laborers.

Sure at 20-50 cents an hour, but that’s not really relevant here.

“Keep society functioning”? I’m not asking for them to man the electric grid, but there’s still a ton of work that is too inconsequential for any minimum wage job to be worth it, yet would still be a net benefit to society for somebody to do it. Things like picking trash up off the side of the highway.

Ah, a ninja-edit. Cool. But tell me: why isn’t that relevant here?

> work that is too inconsequential for any minimum wage job to be worth it

If it’s not worth minimum wage it’s been judged as not worth doing like that. You can automate picking up trash which is exactly the kinds of thing you avoid doing if labor is cheap enough. As such the wage floor is very much a benefit to society by opening a wedge for automation rather than having people do such tasks.

No, it’s been judged as not worth doing like that by people who have freedom. If you’ve chosen to rescind your freedom, you by extension rescind your right to choose not to do work for less than minimum wage.

If the automation existed that’d be one thing. But as it stands we have trashed streets and jobless bums. Clearly the system isn’t working.

You can set minimum wage to zero and you still get trashed streets because trashed streets aren’t considered worth fixing every week. Instead there’s an equilibrium where X money is used to maintain reasonably clean streets and people will just spend less if they already look ok.

Minimum wage isn’t the issue here. You said 30-50 cents an hour isn’t “relevant” yourself, but haven’t backed that up with anything. They could be paid 0 for all I care, the situation would be the same: folks who have stolen something from society (be it direct financial losses or more abstract things like health and safety and peaceful movement) being made to give retributions back to society for their crimes. There are easy wins here (trash), and more involved projects.

> haven’t backed that up with anything

It’s backed up by the finite supply of unemployed people willing and able to work below minimum wage.

As to your obsession with clean streets, the government does spend money on it the general public doesn’t actually care enough to spend more on it. It doesn’t matter how cheap it is as long as nobody is willing to fund it.

Elaborate. As of yet you’ve said nothing to refute the idea that forcing people who aren’t working to start working would result in more work being completed.

> Elaborate. As of yet you’ve said nothing to refute the idea that forcing people who aren’t working to start working would result in more work being completed.

That’s literally the first time you made that argument, so obviously I didn’t counter it.

That’s the concept behind the entire discussion. I don’t know how you’ve missed it.

Prisons labor is already forced. It’s even an enumerated exception in the constitution.

If you argument was simply to send these people to prison then just suggest that. The only thing worth discussing is non prison labor and thus non forced labor.

Has the parent comment already fallen out of your context window? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41386593 That’s exactly what I’m suggesting, you’re wasting my time if you can’t even keep track of a basic thread.

> out of your context window

Nope, the original context:

There are no jobs that want jobless people. There's few that even want 18 year olds

Your response was: Plenty of work for prison laborers.

My response of “at 20-50 cents an hour, but that’s not really relevant here.“ Obviously 20-50 cents is the nominal prison labor rate, but it also excludes the overhead of keeping prisoners which is what makes it “irrelevant” as a cost.

Thus by responding to the nominal rate you implicitly acknowledged we are no longer talking about prisoners because the actual cost of prison labor is ~64,000$ / year / inmate not their nominal wage.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41401102

“No, because the people are already a net drain on society.”

Not a 64,000$ drain on society. There’s roughly 1 correction officer per 4.9 inmates and that excludes many jobs associated with prisoners like administrative staff etc.

Inmates are really fucking expensive.

Oh you sweet summer child. I wish they only cost the taxpayers 64k a pop. (again, purely financial, ignoring the heath/safety/psychological).

> a single shelter bed could cost up to $70,000

https://sfstandard.com/2022/12/30/ending-homelessness-in-san...

64k is a slightly outdated national average. California pays $132,860 per inmate (2023) and SF is higher than that.

And again, nobody is willing to fund it at the current price. It’s simple economics that if the price were to be lower, the willingness to buy it would go up. I don’t need to explain this to you.

> willingness to buy it would go up

You are basing things on economics 101 models, demand curves max out. People don’t drink infinite water when it gets cheap enough. I don’t think streets need to be cleaned as much as they are, and that’s not based on how much it costs to clean them.

Okay so we won’t clean your street? Are so so naive to think there aren’t any streets in the entire country that could use cleaning?

I’ve never seen a street and thought it needed to be cleaned more often at taxpayer expense.

Have you ever seen a struggling person on the street and thought they could be rehabilitated to a working life at taxpayer expense?

Never really had that thought, most people get off the streets.

Long term homeless are on the streets almost exclusively for reasons of severe mental illness not lack of skills etc.

Ah. I should have guessed the “homeless people categorically cannot do the things I can do and never will” axiom was at the root of this argument. I chose not to be so defeatist nor elitist.

You have that backwards, plenty of ex homeless people working in IT.

Further most homeless end up in paying jobs, which says something about those who don’t make that transition.

Reality doesn't care about cost fixing attempts like minimum wage. People will just go around that and restore equilibrium to supply and demand. So long as excess labor is available, labor costs will be driven down until equilibrium is reached.

You might say "don't treat humans as commodities"; well, reality doesn't care specially about humans; we are just animals even if we like to think we aren't.

You are proposing a model that doesn’t fit observed reality.

"Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?"

I never thought I'd see someone unironically epouse the ideas of Ebeneezer Scrooge, but here we are.

What’s your solution?

The rebuttal to Scrooge involved a heavy reliance on divine intervention, ghosts and threats of eternal damnation in hell wrapped in heavy chains. While rhetorically powerful, I'm disputing that Dickens' opinions are the most thoughtful approach to direct social policy.

As a starting point to benefiting from society there is a reasonable expectation that people put a couple of hours a day into making life better for others. Prisoners can achieve that lofty goal. So can people travelling on the NY Metro without paying. There is a lot of room to haggle over the details, but argument from chubby ghost of Christmas present is not really the path to a good compromise.

Is this your first time visiting this site?

Slaves is such a nasty word. Prisoners with jobs.

The concern with slavery is the innocence of victim. When that’s removed, it’s no longer controversial. At least it shouldn’t be.

The concern with prison labor is that it's profitable to pay below market wages and then whoever is getting the profits has the incentive to lobby for more prisoners.

If the public at large is getting the profits (community service), and there are a high number of dangerous criminals who are not being prosecuted (there are), then… cool. We agree.

Community service has a particular problem in the context you're trying to use it in though, doesn't it?

Where community service works if for e.g. misbehaving kids with non-absentee parents. Because then the parents make sure the kid actually does the community service, and the kid is thereby deterred from doing it again.

If you do the same thing for someone who is going to blow off the community service, then you'd need the police to make them do the community service, and police get six figures in salary and benefits, so that's a very expensive babysitter and you've eliminated any kind of net benefit.

No, because the people are already a net drain on society. They already require dedicated police force, they already require dedicated sanitation force, food stamps, etcetcetc. And that’s not to mention the health and psychological cost on society of not being able to walk freely without fear cracked out guy will assault you.

I’m not proposing moving from these people providing $0.00 to taking whatever a person to monitor their work and provide institutional food costs, I’m proposing we move from these people costing a society a shitload, both financially and health/safety wise, to perhaps similar financially, but removing the health and safety burden and finally putting them on a path to success.

You're proposing putting them in prison, and for a reason, because otherwise they just blow it off. It turns out that's really expensive though, e.g. California pays $128k/prisoner/year. Now you're going to have them do some kind of menial labor with a value of what, $10k/year or less? You're still >$100k/year in the red, which has to be less than the per-person inconvenience of having them out in the world.

It also costs a lot more than building homeless shelters. It even costs more than mental health services and welfare programs, neither of which are cheap. It is quite possibly the most expensive option that anyone regularly proposes.

Uh, no, that is certainly not the only concern with slavery.

Go on?

If a prisoner refuses to do your work, what will you do to them?

If they’re able to do work and believe they robbed society, but simply do not feel paying someone back whom you have robbed is a good thing to do, that sounds like a serious mental issue that should be treated by asylum workers. Certainly not someone I’d want roaming the streets.

So… your solution is slavery?

You think slaves were all criminals who were simply paying back society commensurate to their transgressions? Got anything to back that up? My impression was they were free men captured and forced into a lifetime of work.

Are you proposing throwing people in prison for not paying a bus/train ticket?

If they didn’t pay, they should be made to pay. If they can’t pay and have no ability to pay in the near future, they should be helped into situation where they will be trained to develop capacity to work with guaranteed employment opportunities. Call it prison if you wish, but the cell isn’t the point, the job is.

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