Earlier quoted context omitted.
> because private companies are more efficient than state-driven things. Yeah, right.
Should I had put sarcasm indicators? :)
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Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems
221–230 of 254 posts
Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course it matters, that's why I brought up the point that each state in the USA is supposedly small enough to have local governance, that they have enough state-level freedoms to solve localised problems and exactly why I compare the scale of Texas to all of the Nordics as they are very similar in GDP and population.
I think you're arguing against your own point - a single US State is the size of 4 countries. Sure it's a smaller scale than the nearly-continent sized US as a whole, but it's still a substantially larger scale. On top of this, individual US states do not have the same freedom to act that independent nation states do, nor the same budget levels. For example, Texas doesn't have an income tax, and its tax revenue in 20…
It's a state less vast in area than 4 small countries, with similar population and economy. 28 million people is not a large country population so the scale should be comparable, it's 10 million more than the Netherlands.
> For example, Texas doesn't have an income tax, and its tax revenue in 2022 was only 3.5 times that of Finland, despite having 5.5 times the population.
That's exactly my point, it's a failure of policy, not an issue of scale. The policy is to have low taxes, small government, whatever, and from that failure a US state comparable in terms of economy and population to the Nordics is not even close to these countries in social development.
Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, you pay to continue having hegemony over multiple continents. Don't call American military spending in any sense some kind of altruism, it's done to keep the USA power and money floating around.
> No, you pay to continue having hegemony over multiple continents. Sure, it's that too. It's both. Regardless, it should stop.
> Regardless, it should stop.
I don't see how that could happen after the US pushed for globalism, globalism inherently requires keeping trade routes protected from interference, the moment the US pulls out from providing protection is the moment where these routes start to erode. If you are ok with all the impacts that will have in your life, go for it, I'm all in for less American interference around the globe.
You just need to be aware that the life you are used to (if you live in the USA) will be vastly different after this.
Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just IMO, many Americans probably don't think homeless people deserve free housing, because they have (the taxpayers) have to pay for their own housing and also contribute to homeless housing via taxes. "Fuck you got mine" is real here. Just see the nauseating argument against discharging student loans.
Well that's the core (or one of the cores) of modern US society - everybody for themselves. Maybe its not written on dollar bill, but if you look closely enough you can see it in various aspects of society. Gun wielding (for protection from other folks but government too, very common mindset in gun culture), having right to shoot folks that enter your property, whole health insurance system, whole social system, and…
Original draft of declaration of independence had “life, liberty, and pursuit of property”
Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
your right ends where it takes away others. Forcing taxes on people is not that. I cannot violate others, and anyone who would give themselves the rights to do so, are bandits, oftentimes having formed a gang
> your right ends where it takes away others. This is exactly Proudhon's argument for his infamous "property is theft" - property rights limits the freedom of others by restricting them from e.g. making use of the land you arbitrarily fence off - and why Dejacque, the father of libertarianism [1], and a firm anarcho-communist, agreed with him. The right-libertarian property fetishism is founded on ignoring the restri…
Technically, you can probably opt out of taxes in return for opting out of using tax-funded services and infrastructure, especially in the U.S. and other countries with vast tracts of wilderness: just hike a few days into the woods/mountains, vanish into public lands and do not interact with society anymore. Of course, no libertarians actually go that far, because if they admit to it or not, they are pretty happy to accept the benefits of taxation (roads, police, emergency medical attention, the military, courts, etc.) even if they publicly decry any attempt at funding it. My impression is that libertarianism is basically an attempt by pretty well-off people to create a pseudo-scientific reason for them to free ride on the contributions of others to society.
Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, we pay to defend Europe from Russia, and we do it for free. We should stop doing that, and invest more in domestic needs.
Yeah, you (as in the US) should do that, and please take every US soldier in europe with you. We (as in central europe) either have nuclear weapons (France, Britain) or could easily build them (Germany)
I hope we do. But there is a powerful military-industrial complex fighting against this outcome.
Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
Effective at what? I lived near a motel that was part of a “housing first” initiative in SF. People treated the hotel like home base, and still spent their nights howling. I had to move the screaming was so loud. Not to mention the drugs, human trafficking, etc. In terms of environment, it didn’t deduce things like human feces on the street. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but the neighborhood was mostly unlivable. That’…
Good housing first programs do not cluster beneficiaries but try to integrate them into "normal" neighborhoods and provide them with ongoing support by social workers, medical attention, etc. Just dumping a couple of dozen homeless people in a motel is not a great way to approach this, I agree.
NY requires low income housing to be distributed among middle-class neighborhoods.
It’s helpful, but creates massive backlogs. Plenty of homeless people are on waiting lists.
It makes it impossible to convert money into housing. You have to wait until you find a vacancy in middle class neighborhood.
They can’t just buy a place and put people there - which is how housing usually works.
Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just IMO, many Americans probably don't think homeless people deserve free housing, because they have (the taxpayers) have to pay for their own housing and also contribute to homeless housing via taxes. "Fuck you got mine" is real here. Just see the nauseating argument against discharging student loans.
Student loans argument is not 1:1 at all. Every student loan forgiveness proposal I see suggests that taxpayers foot the bill and the counterargument is why should those who did not attend and/or those who paid off have to foot the bill. I agree with that counterargument and will never vote for forgiveness. However, send put a proposal in front of me that seizes assets from the universities selling these degrees that…
It seems 1:1 to me. With your counterargument logic then, why should the taxpayers have to foot the bill for homeless people? It's not like it's your fault they're homeless; you pay your own rent/mortgage so why should you foot the bill for others?
Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems
#229I lived in Finland for a while. Being homeless in that country is pretty hard core in the winter. Which is a reason that sheltering people there is not a nice to have; you either shelter them or you collect their dead bodies in the morning. It's that simple. Places like Helsinki never had a large community of homeless people to begin with (natural selection). But it has plenty of social issues of course. Alcoholism i…
I think you're confusing homeless with rough sleeping. Rough sleeping is sleeping outside, while homeless can include couch surfing (staying with friends for a few days at a time) or sleeping in shelters. Shelters provide beds but no privacy/no security from other residents and no space to build up possessions. In the article, Toronto provides shelters and Finland provides homes.
> ... no security from other residents and no space to build up possessions.
This seems a basic requirement for anyone trying to get to a better life. Are there no more enlightened shelters that provide some secure locker or parcel-checkin system?
Re: Given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with problems
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
> your right ends where it takes away others. This is exactly Proudhon's argument for his infamous "property is theft" - property rights limits the freedom of others by restricting them from e.g. making use of the land you arbitrarily fence off - and why Dejacque, the father of libertarianism [1], and a firm anarcho-communist, agreed with him. The right-libertarian property fetishism is founded on ignoring the restri…
Technically, you can probably opt out of taxes in return for opting out of using tax-funded services and infrastructure, especially in the U.S. and other countries with vast tracts of wilderness: just hike a few days into the woods/mountains, vanish into public lands and do not interact with society anymore. Of course, no libertarians actually go that far, because if they admit to it or not, they are pretty happy to…
Yeah, this is why I find bringing it up as a two way street to be the most productive way of dealing with right-libertarians, because the problem is not that they want to be free to do as they please per se, I have every sympathy with that, but how quick they are to gloss over that the rest of society has rights too, and if they are made as expansive as they want their own property rights to be, they'll find themselves without rights of access to all kinds of things they just presume they'll retain access to very quickly - incidentally a large part of the reason why the rejection of property rights is such a large part of left-libertarianism.