Come here and work on hard problems – except the ones on our doorstep

Humanity could be two people living in a grass hut finding just enough berries to eat each day, but it wouldn't be much fun.

So let them be.

I agree that fewer people should procreate but disagree with measuring the necessity of a person by net worth. The vast majority of wealth being accumulated by a few persons surely skews the demand for labor as we have many Fords but not many laborers paid enough to buy Ford's cars.

I said I think fewer children would be good, I just don't know which group of people should stop having children. I guess all of them should tone it down.

Also the numbers on net worth most likely take into account home values that have recently fallen off a cliff. While it's still accurate to say that most people have a zero or negative net worth you can't assume the value of the home/amount owed on the mortgage will always be static.

To instead overwork those who are employed and leave the rest to language is a conscious decision.

Regarding the homelessness situation in California, I learned in school that it had something to do with Governor Ronald Reagan dismantling the state's mental health system.

Have you seen skid row in Los Angeles? I can't imagine that such a scene exists anywhere in western Europe.

This article looks relevant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_Stat...

The homeless here are people mostly people with mental health issues that reject or don't respond to treatment.

It's by far not a perfect utopian system, but to have people being homeless just because they can't afford it would be considered an unacceptable failure of a civilized society. Decent housing, like healthcare, is considered a human right, not something people have to be able to "afford".

In the U.K. you get various benefits if you are unemployed and that includes accommodation normally - though there is a waiting list (and people with children are top of the list) and job seekers allowance.

Health is free (NHS) for everyone it doesn't matter if you have a job are rich/poor, have a job etc.

There are some people who are homeless - though it's not particularly common due to government support.

[However, I don't claim to be an expert on benefits system here, as I've never used them - fortunately]

- More social housing than the US

- Higher minimum wages (so fewer homeless)

- This is just a personal impression but Europeans are less mobile than Americans. Therefore there is more likely to be the family / friends safety net to catch you.

The English benefit system is complex. Here's an attempt to describe some of it.

We pay a national insurance. Some of our benefits are based on contributions you make. Other benefits are income related (means-tested.)

If you have a mortgage and lose your job you get the interest on the mortgage paid, but not the capital.

If you're renting there's something called the Local Housing Allowance - that's a list of property types (one room; one bed; two bed; etc) and maximum prices for those properties. You get all your rent if you're under the limit, but you have to pay anything over the limit yourself. Actually, it's a lot more complicated than that. You cannot be "over accommodated" (more on this later, with the 'bedroom tax'). You cannot have savings over a certain amount (£16,000?). It has to be a real rental situation; renting off family becomes tricky. There are rules about living with people as if you're married, etc.

Housing benefit is paid by the local council, using money they get from central government. It's a horrifically inefficient system, and has a lot of fraud.

Then there's "social housing". This is provided by companies providing it, or by local councils. Council houses tend to be high quality buildings in not-good areas. Rents are very cheap. There are very long waiting lists. Recently there's something people are calling the bedroom tax - if you're in a house that has extra bedrooms the rent for those rooms is not paid. This has always been the case with private renting. There's a bunch of reasons why this is horrible, and those exceptions should be baked into the new law.

Some people need emergency accommodation. Local authorities should provide bread and breakfast accommodation, or hostel accommodation. There are pretty strict rules about what counts as "homeless". And if you're found to be 'intentionally homeless' it's going to be very hard to get help.

Apologies for the garbled text. It is a complex, large, bit of law with many overlapping bits of legislation.

  Places with good weather have huge visible homeless 
  populations

For example, Honolulu has a huge homeless population despite the huge tourism industry. The city just pushes homeless towards parts of the island where tourists don't visit and thus aren't aware of the problem.

At least in SF a homeless person won't die from exposure in the wintertime.

The way I see it, European countries have a kind of nation-wide health insurance, vs individual insurance here. We have a nation-wide student loan, versus individual student loans. That helps controlling the costs and profits, and helps making sure that everybody who needs care or education can get it.

But whether it is related or not, America is more daring, more exciting, and there are more opportunities when you have the right cards to do something. But if you had a bad hand to start with, then you're royally screwed.

Put simply, it's better to be born poor in Europe than in the US, and better to be born rich in the US than in Europe.

It's not just warm weather that draws people to SF, but a plethora of social programs that are often poorly executed, underfunded, and addressed at superficial issues and not their core causes (education, for example).

Also, ironically enough, most Northern Europeans would already consider the circumstances of the underprivileged in Scotland unacceptable... The bad parts of Glasgow are considered the most horrible places in Western Europe. And the people there have housing, healthcare and access to education.

It really helped to volunteer at a nearby homeless shelter (Pine Street Inn). I was comforted to see some of worst cases (including people I encountered daily) have access to meals, a clinic, a shelter, and treated with courtesy.

I was also struck by how many people seemed normal - not someone who was mentally ill or spent time on the street.

In general America fulfills a lot of need with private charity - which can occasionally be really impressive. When I worked at a large financial institution there were lots of opportunities for matched giving and volunteering opportunities. I wish tech companies would do this more.

Simple. Work for places(or build startups) that:

1. Help develop better and cheaper healthcare systems, products and processes. 2. Help develop technology that reduces the price of construction and in general the cost of living. 3. Help non profits and social entrepreneurs. 4. Help political change through technology.

And yes, doing some of this things might mean less wages , and not living in San Francisco.

Yes, it is.

> It's a question about what to do with people who are mentally handicapped and/or drug abusers.

Drug addicts and the mentally ill and/or handicapped who are not also poor have support systems and treatment options available, and are not part of the homelessness problem. So, yes, its about mental illness and drug addiction -- but also very much about rich vs. poor.

> This is partially a money problem, but it's largely a social problem.

Its a resource distribution problem; its not "partially a money problem" or "largely a social problem", its is completely both (money problems are equivalent to resource distribution problems and are a subset of social problems.)

> A lot of other countries deal with this better because they have stronger family support structures.

There may be some cases where countries do this better because of family support structures, but I can't think of any clear examples -- perhaps you could provide some. Most modern developed nations do it better because they have stronger public social support structures.

> Programming can help, but this isn't a programming problem.

This much is true. Its a policy (and, at a more fundamental level, values) problem, not a technical problem.

> Everyone here who's arguing about their superior European social programs are really preaching to the quire,

"Choir" is probably the word you are looking for; preaching to sheets of paper isn't exactly a sensible metaphor.

> because most Americans on Hacker News would kill to have these social programs.

I don't see much evidence for that "most Americans on Hacker news" would be willing to give up America's bias toward largely privatized health care financing, and income tax system that's heavily favorable to capital, and policy of financing a major part of the existing social support system via additional taxes that fall exclusively on labor for a stronger social support systems, much less that they would be willing to "kill" for such systems.

My daughter really tries to stop us from visiting San Francisco, because there is nothing that she can do to help the homeless. So even though I like the city, I don't get to make much use of it (plus, on an not-unrelated note, the city is child unfriendly).

Making matters even more surreal, the Willows Market in Menlo Park now sells caviar at the checkout counter, nestled amongst the chocolate and other things targeted for impulse buys.

One thing you realize is that a lot of the people on the streets have major mental conditions (usually schizophrenia, and major drug addictions or chronic alcoholism), and there is almost no way to just rehab them, and put them in a place that they can take care of themselves. Some of them are beyond the point of return and some need so much care, then only loving family can provide. Externally, you can't do much.

Other countries have both better mental care provided from the state, and especially a social net. Usually family will take care of their ill.

Be happy with what you got, do a good job, and make sure to be close to your family and have close friends. You will realize that is part of life, and once and a while you will have a need for support from closed ones, but as long as you an handle yourself well most of the time and try to live a good life you wont have to worry.

Sure, you'll hear from the guy who got hooked on drugs and pissed away his money, but you'll also hear about people who had work in construction and industry whose jobs dried up during one of many economic downturns while at the same time dealing with rising rent costs. Getting back into the game isn't easy either without clean clothes, a place to shower, or even a phone to be reached at for an interview. A lot of what we take for granted (like wearing $300-1500 outfits for interviews) simply isn't available to homeless people.

It's not about if someone wants to be homeless, if there is a simple choice between shelter and homeless, people will always prefer shelter. But if the choice is between working hard with a shelter, and live carefree and homeless, the answer will not be so clear.

My routine: wake up around 8, or whenever I wake up (no alarm clock), work straight through until about 6pm. Walk downhill to the neighborhood/sports bar to grab dinner, watch the ballgame (no discussion of work as none of the people there do tech work). Get a pleasant buzz on, hang out with friends. Go home, sleep, rinse, repeat. Works well for me.

San Francisco is a place that people historically migrate to when looking for gold. The aspects of the culture that creates, the ones you like, anyway, are unpredictable and subject to change.

Indeed:

"A change in public policy saw the mass discharge of Riverview Hospital's patients as an effort to integrate them into the community while the province considered the land for development. However, this caused a large influx of mentally ill into the DTES as poor follow-up support failed to reach a majority of these individuals."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downtown_Eastside#Mental_Illnes...

> Thing is, those in poorer situations flock here, because they can get healthcare, support, and help, but other times it just feels like a passive aggressive fuck-you-got-mine. if you don’t tip, it isn’t so much a snub, it’s saying “i don’t think you deserve healthcare”. Alternatively for those with healthcare provided, it locks them into their job.

The solution is simple. You simply give every adult citizen enough money every year to insure that they can afford food, shelter, and other basic needs. Give it to everyone, rich or poor, same amount. BAM! No more poverty, except in self-inflicted cases (drug addiction, for example), or things like severe and very expensive illness (which are covered by other means). This can be paid for in large part by the abolition of welfare systems, unemployment, Social Security, etc.

The stock criticism is that people wouldn't work, because they wouldn't have to. Frankly, I don't want such poorly motivated people working anyway, because they're not productive. And anyone who wants more than barely-poverty will get a job or start a business.

Another nice feature is that this supports people who want to do something productive but not financially valuable - charity work, ministry, art.

Everyone keeps saying that, as if there were only two alternatives: 1) completely fix poverty in a general way or 2) keep the status quo (and allow it to get worse).

There has to be some way to get from the current wealth inequality [1] to something more humane.

[1]: http://www.upworthy.com/9-out-of-10-americans-are-completely...

But the point was broader, that relative to the rest of the industrial world the US has far more people at the "bottom" , falling out of the net. Walking around cities in Europe, you generally don't find people sleeping on park benches or camping under highway interchanges, etc... In most US cities, that's fairly routine. And many of us consider that a bad thing.

Note that none of that excuses the poorly informed and counterproductive moralizing in the linked article. The author is a jerk. But the problem is real.

One reason the quality of life is so high in Germany is that it is, as far as I can tell, a nation of engineers. With an economy based on high value products for export, Germany can afford one of the shortest work-weeks in the world and some of the best social services.

Email is in my profile if you want to chat.

Everything about American Rural and Suburb culture drives out those who Rent, and don't want to own full-size autos with all the "rat-race" keeping up with payments and insurance and taxes... Right up until people retire and realize they can't keep up.

When the super-rich have all the money, the super-rich drive up the cost of living. The middle class then must directly serve the interests of the rich in order to get enough profit to afford the higher cost of living.

It quickly becomes uneconomical to sell anything to poor people.

It's a poverty spiral. Uneducated families just get more uneducated without state intervention. Rich families just get richer, driving up cost of living, cornering markets to destroy the free market, and making the poor families poorer in comparison.

When are we going to wake up from this Randian dystopia we're creating??

EDIT: I should say "unprofitable without legislation"

The reasons for this are historical. What you call the "socialist" elements result from the idea that part of being truly "free" (i.e, liberty) requires that people be treated equally, thus liberals in this sense have a focus on social justice. (See this on "positive liberty": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_liberty .) You can get good summary of differences between meanings of "liberal" in other Wikipedia articles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism#Classical_and_modern

Because of the way the word's meaning has developed historically, you really need to be aware of the context where it's being used. But there are nevertheless strands connecting all the meanings, namely focus on "freedom" and "equality".

"More doubtfully compatible with the liberal conception of equality is another measure which also gained wide support in liberal circles, namely the use of progressive taxation as a means to effect a redistribution of income in favour of the poorer classes. Since no criterion can be found by which such progression can be made to correspond to a rule which may be said to be the same for all, or which would limit the degree of extra burden on the more wealthy, it would seem that a generally progressive taxation is in conflict with the principle of equality before the law and it was in general so regarded by liberals in the nineteenth century."

- Liberalism, F. A. Hayek

In living in the SV sandbox/bubble, it seems we forget about some of our global compassion. Nobody says we need to be 100% charitable in our actions, or follow some strict socialist regimen, but I think it's useful to acknowledge that we do overlook some of the problems at our doorstep. If we cared, we could definitely create solutions to some of them, and some of those solutions might even be profitable.

Corporatism isn't a nation with a lot of powerful business corporations, it was a proto-fascist ideological movement in the syndicalist tradition.

Ref: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/138442/corporatism

That is perhaps the most ignorant sentence I have ever read on HN. Most homeless people don't have a choice. If they do have a choice, the fact that they choose to live on the streets likely speaks to the horrific situation they would face at their home. I can assure you that no one wants to be homeless.

I have heard this from many americans, for some reason my european mindset cannot get why someone would not want shelter or food.. a reliable manner.

Most of these people have not had the opportunity to do any better. It is not their fault.

{{Citation needed}}

To those surprised by this sentence, jarjoura might be influenced by this recent Priceonomics blog post: http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/43085729257/the-street-kid...

"Most street kids we spoke to came from one of two backgrounds: either they had job prospects (whether good or dead-end) but preferred the freedom of homelessness, or were transient homeless who fell in love with the street kid community...Street kids defied our expectations of living on the street as a last resort; instead they seem to be drawn to the Haight."

I don't think anyone can say (with a straight face) that most people who live in poverty have chosen that lifestyle.

This is ludicrous. By almost every metric being homeless sucks: access to work is harder to find and keep, medical care isn't as available, physical safety is harder to keep, you are more likely to be arrested, you are more likely to be assaulted, etc. This mindset is straight out of the Victorian era.

> So many of them are young and it used to make me sad but I have just learned to accept it. I always make a point to package up leftovers and hand them out. I'll even reach into my wallet and hand out a few dollars too.

> If there were more I could do though, I would be more than happy to donate some of my time, as I'm sure many in this city would too.

Homelessness is a systemic issue that can't just be solved only with individual people's time and/or money.

> Also, is more public housing the answer? Not sure about that one. They all look like government buildings with horrible fluorescent off-green lighting filled with junkies and drug addicts far from being cured.

That is because the issues that go with homelessness are not simply done once someone gets shelter. Also, public housing in most places in the US is at capacity and cannot accommodate any more people until someone dies or moves out. Some locales also put qualifications on public housing that will, by definition, keep people homeless or dependent on that public housing indefinitely.

You're right, it is hard to imagine how we would survive without Yet Another SocialMobilePhotoSharing Application.

Remember the Dark Days, my friends? When to share a photo you actually had to be around people, and talk to them? Ugh. I shudder to think upon it. We lived like savages, back then; filthy, stinking savages.