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Comment by Crito | Hacker News Reader

Punching random people in the streets is not normal behaviour, that man needs medical treatment and likely needs to be detained until said treatment takes effect.

That is not something that companies like Google are equipped to provide. Not by a long shot. It would not even be legal for them to take that situation into their own hands. The government of San Francisco is the most immediate entity actually in a position to do something there.

If the government of San Francisco needs more money to do their job, then you should be asking the government of San Francisco why the hell they aren't raising that money by, perhaps, taxing Google.

Asking why Google did not do anything is farcical.

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> why the hell they aren't raising that money by, perhaps, taxing Google.

Perhaps because Google hides most of its income from the US and California governments through various international subsidaries.

And perhaps also because the moment they worked around all these loopholes and actually started to get money out of Google, Google would simply up and move away, making things worse.

Google, Twitter, and companies in general, should have some duty to their communities, if only out of gratitude for providing an environment in which they could thrive. That they don't speaks volumes on their corporate values.

Personally, I think it's a problem with the "profit for shareholders above all else" which dominates the discussions about corporate values.

They may be hiding most of their international income in Ireland or wherever, but San Francisco does not need access to most of their income, do they? Tax the portion that they are able to tax.

If the tax avoidance becomes or is excessive, you refocus your efforts above local government to seek a solution.

"If we increase taxes they'll leave, so there is no point even trying" is a defeatist attitude. And assuming that is how Google really does operate, then expecting charity from Google is ludicrous anyway.

(And you are still ignoring the fact that Google is not in a position to do anything besides provide money anyway. Your local government is the one that can actually do something with that money to combat this problem.)

"They may be hiding most of their international income in Ireland"
Bermuda[1]. Google does its best to avoid paying tax in Ireland too.
[1] http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/10/to-reduce-its-tax-bu...

It's a competitive environment, you take every advantage you can get, because so will the other guys. A public company in case you forgot is an institution designed to create value for share holders. So the fault is not with these companies but squarely on the idiotic governments with their ridiculous tax codes. They deserve everything they get as, to a lesser extent, do the people who vote for them.

> A public company in case you forgot is an institution designed to create value for share holders.
I don't know much about US law regarding this, but I thought the only thing a public company shouldn't do is destroy value. I don't think a company has the obligation to specifically pursue the cheapest/fastest way to do something. Directors and executives have some freedom to run things as they see fit, but won't abuse their freedom to not be voted out of the company; not because the courts would punish them for it.

A public company's only goal is to create value for its share holders.
While I personally believe things should be different, they aren't. A company that doesn't make money is useless to it's shareholders, and typically shareholders vote to make sure a company makes as much money as possible. There is no natural pressure on a company to care about other things, which is why we have laws to try to get them to care a little bit.

Honestly, even when there's money for medical attention, these people still exist. In Toronto we still have people like that, though from what I heard, less of them. Here, a man like that would've had access to all the medical help he needed at no cost, but there's no way, apart from arresting him and then getting a judge to agree he's a danger to force it upon him. Without revoking his rights, there's really no way to force help upon him. And definitely no way for Twitter or Google to do it.

Absolutely. It is a sad Catch-22 that many of the people who need help the most do not receive it because they do not help themselves, but their inability to help themselves is part of what they need help with in the first place.
Waiting for the inevitable arrest is obviously unsatisfactory, but I don't know how you can improve this process without trampling on rights.

As ideal as it may seem, people are wary of government having too much control over forcing people into mental health treatment. Unfortunately, as it turns out this is for good reason, because even in recent history there's been some pretty horrifying abuse of that power.

Yeah, some of the studies of students checking themselves in and then trying to get out (perfectly sane students) are nightmarish.
How do you PROVE you aren't faking "sanity". shiver It gives the people in charge unchecked god like power over other human beings.

On the other hand, someone walking up to a stranger and punching them is a good indication of someone not getting some help they need.

Oh yea of course, there are always cases that are clear black-and-white, but the same could be said about due process. If fifty people watch a guy stab someone to death, a police investigation and full trial probably isn't quite as necessary; that doesn't mean due process shouldn't exist, because the job of determining the boundary for "obviously guilty (or obviously insane, in the original example)" needs to have some formalism around it.
I'm not even saying that the government _shouldn't_ be involved in assessing mental health, just that people are wary of it for a good reason (in the same way that people are wary of any form of testing as a requirement for voting, because of the way that it was so horribly abused in the past).

I don't think I disagree with any of that.

Well, if he punched somebody, then arresting him is an available option...

Why are we pigeonholing companies into financial contributions? Money is not the only way nor is it usually the best way to actually help. It is a tool that is sometimes needed to support an actual solution, but why aren't these companies getting really creative with how they help? Why isn't Google or Microsoft or Oracle or any huge company with billions in R&D trying to figuring out more efficient civil government processes? They could have 10 different programs (not necessarily software, but maybe software) going in 10 different communities to help figure out the most efficient ways to administer services in lots of different scenarios based on that community's needs. Why not have a research program run for efficient education delivery, or helping governments design and distribute public information or, or, or... think of all the numerous ways you bitch about government and then figure out a way to do it better. One small piece at a time. And that is how these companies, big and small, can help make their communities better. They need to walk alongside. Sometimes money is the needed resource, but usually its not.

Because I do not buy into the popular notion that techies can solve any and every problem. Google doesn't hire a bunch of political science guys or medical guys; they hire a bunch of CS, SE, CE, and mathematics guys.
Why do you think that techies are more qualified to solve problems that people who specialized in those problems are struggling with?
Remember that Google, and the tech industry in general, does not have a monopoly on smart people.

There are LOTS of start ups. Silicon Valley is full of people from EVERY discipline. This isn't just about the Googles and Twitters. Its about all of them, together, working to use their available talent resources to make a difference in their communities. Who's to say that techies couldn't help local case workers develop systems to better record their data and process it for correlations and trends. To help spot high risk individuals and offer more rapid responses or particular interventions. To help develop and implement more data standards for social workers or court systems or welfare programs. To help integrate food stamp programs into IRS and State tax data so people don't spend hours filling out the same information when they need to sign up for help and make a mistake on a form that causes weeks or months of delays. The amount of wasted time in setting up and delivering services to people is astounding. And yes, our governments are implementing some of this stuff, and yes some of it is a horrible bureaucratic mess... but it doesn't have to be. Silicon Valley communities are filled with the people that run and work at these companies. Why aren't they running for local office and bringing about winds of change to be a showcase of how it CAN be? Its a hotbed of disruption waiting to happen in both business and government... and I think some of the greatest gains for social good could happen if there was a collective effort from the tech community's citizens to be more involved in the actual running of local governments... maybe they could even translate that up to the state level in a couple of years. Just thinking aloud.

You assume mental illness and not alcohosm nor drug use? That's a bit of a stigmatising guess.
In the UK there is a section of the mental health act (section 136) that allows a police officer to take someone to a place of safety and hold them there for upto 72 hours. The person has to be in a public place and the pice have to think that you have a mental illness and need care.
In many places in the UK the place of safety might be the local police cells, although there are a few specially built places of safety built near the mental health hospital for easy access.
http://www.rethink.org/living-with-mental-illness/police-cou...
Other countries have similar law.
It needs to be said that peoe with a mental health problem are more likely to be the victim, rather than a perpetrator, of violence.
It is frustrating that people have jumped to the conclusion of mental illness rather than, say, drug use.

I'm not a mental health professional by any means, but I file addiction and drug abuse under the broad umbrella of things that are in the purview of mental health professionals.
Even if you don't though, Google cannot go around throwing people into drunk tanks.
There is a lot of work in the US that needs to be done with how we handle mental health, addiction, or just plain old drug abuse. Primarily, that work needs to be done in government.

I'm not sure Google specifically needs to be doing something, but the tech community at large certainly could be. Hence the original author's question, I presume: why isn't the tech community doing something?
It seems like a reasonable question. Most tech companies are focused on products for healthy, wealthy people (wealthy enough to buy tech products, I mean. Which is far wealthier than the homeless people living on the street)
What's to stop tech companies creating systems or products that directly help people at the bottom of society? Nothing really. It's a hard problem but that's what the tech community likes to boast about solving.
I know those sorts of products aren't particularly appealing to most companies but they'd be a darn site better for society than facebook is

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