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No Silver Bullet Solutions to the Werewolf Crisis

progressandpoverty.substack.com

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Re: No Silver Bullet Solutions to the Werewolf Crisis

#11

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

gwern wrote: post #9
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is, an allegory about how the USA could conceivably (but most likely won't) address its problem with mass shootings.

No. It's an allegory about housing costs and Georgism. The author has been advocating for Georgism for a while. (You might understandably not know that or the background, but also note the 'smart mixed use' shot, which would make no sense in a gun-control allegory, or describing advocates for land-value tax as a 'few cranks' - clearly not true of gun control advocacy, where that's practically the majority position -…

Ok. It seems to work reasonably well for other subjects too. And the whole "werewolves killing people" thing makes me think more of killings than of housing.

Re: No Silver Bullet Solutions to the Werewolf Crisis

#12

Post by DoreenMichele »

tdba wrote: post #10
DoreenMichele wrote: post #3

The primary root cause of homelessness is a lack of affordable housing. Meanwhile, everyone argues over what a complex and nuanced problem it is. Or just says that homeless people are a bunch of junkies and crazies who simply cannot be helped.

Unfortunately it is genuinely a complex problem. It is true that in general adding more housing lowers prices, but in detail the exact opposite is often true. For one, adding housing can lead to more demand for services (eg schools) which in turn makes a location more desirable which makes more people come which makes housing prices go up. The densest cities in the USA are also some of the most expensive for housing.…

I've actually studied housing issues.

Good housing and a thriving community with the right mix of services in the right place is complicated.

Housing that would be an improvement over homelessness is not that complicated. We just have underbuilt in the US for decades, is the short version.

Re: No Silver Bullet Solutions to the Werewolf Crisis

#13

Post by lockhouse »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #3

The primary root cause of homelessness is a lack of affordable housing. Meanwhile, everyone argues over what a complex and nuanced problem it is. Or just says that homeless people are a bunch of junkies and crazies who simply cannot be helped.

If you've ever spent time around the homeless you'll realize pretty quickly that mental health plays a big role in homelessness. It's not the whole picture by any means, but you can't hand wave it away either.

Re: No Silver Bullet Solutions to the Werewolf Crisis

#14

Post by DoreenMichele »

lockhouse wrote: post #13
DoreenMichele wrote: post #3

The primary root cause of homelessness is a lack of affordable housing. Meanwhile, everyone argues over what a complex and nuanced problem it is. Or just says that homeless people are a bunch of junkies and crazies who simply cannot be helped.

If you've ever spent time around the homeless you'll realize pretty quickly that mental health plays a big role in homelessness. It's not the whole picture by any means, but you can't hand wave it away either.

I actually can hand wave it away.

I spent nearly six years homeless, I've had a college class on Homelessness and Public Policy and I've written about homelessness for years.

Being homeless and socially cut off is hard on your mental health. It's not always obvious which direction cause and effect runs.

Plenty of people have serious mental health issues and manage to largely hide it if they can remain housed, on any pertinent medication, etc. There is no direct cause and effect relationship between mental health and homelessness or drug use and homelessness.

Instead, studies show that increased rates of homelessness are more than 90 percent accounted for by rising rents in an area.

Re: No Silver Bullet Solutions to the Werewolf Crisis

#15

Post by AtlasBarfed »

gwern wrote: post #9
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is, an allegory about how the USA could conceivably (but most likely won't) address its problem with mass shootings.

No. It's an allegory about housing costs and Georgism. The author has been advocating for Georgism for a while. (You might understandably not know that or the background, but also note the 'smart mixed use' shot, which would make no sense in a gun-control allegory, or describing advocates for land-value tax as a 'few cranks' - clearly not true of gun control advocacy, where that's practically the majority position -…

Unfortunately, the allegory has a very concrete end result to test: dead werewolves.

Housing fixes everything is a lot more difficult to measure outcomes.

Also, killing werewolves increases every existing owner's property values, but increasing housing does not, and should, per economics, tend toward devaluing their precious property values.

Re: No Silver Bullet Solutions to the Werewolf Crisis

#16

Post by andriesm »

What I find interesting, was the starting assumption that serious societal problems need to be solved centrally, at the top, by a govermental-type body like a "town council".

This article shows why "rule by committee" is such a unresponsive way to solve real world problems.

The bigger the committee, the higher the ratio of useless distractions to merit-worthy ideas.

Big committees surface many more, and broader, considerations. But doesn't do much in terms of vetting for quality.

The more collective (and thus diffuse) responsibility becomes when you scale up to large committees with many members, the worse it gets at filtering for quality.

Good ideas routinely get thrown out along with bad ideas at these committees, in fact the few good ideas often get drowned out by the bad ones.

Sometimes you really just need someone in the committee to say "screw this" and pick up their crossbow and show that it works, by actually DOING it.

It's often times the disaffected splinter factions on the edges of these large committees that provide the pivotal breakthroughs - in my experience.

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