Do you think people look in the mirror and say “I’m going to be a terrible person today?” They look in the mirror and say “good job playing the hand you’re dealt - keep it up!” even while what they do is objectively terrible. Humans have an incredible capacity for rationalizing their own behavior.
That’s definitely not “inadvertent.”
It is.
Everyone rationalizes their emotional responses. Hangry. Rush-hour impatience in traffic. If you can avoid it, never appear before a judge just before lunch or the end of the day.
I'm genuinely curious about even a hypothetical more detailed example of how some group would go about preserving a problem like homelessness, even unintentionally. I can't wrap my mind about how it would actually happen beyond simplistic sayings. I live in Portland, OR where we have a large homeless problem and I continually hear that the groups being given money to help are incentivized to keep homelessness high fo…
You start by fixing the problem of people sleeping on benches and in tents. Then you go to those in cars, then those crashing on a couch, then those living 8 to a house, then families with small places, and so on. What the problem is keeps expanding until the resources allocated to it are spent.
Often, the homeless programs provide aid to the homeless with food and clothing and health care, not necessarily to make them not homeless.
It is much harder and expensive for homeless programs to create shelters or homes. It is also difficult if not illegal to force people into housing.
People often attribute the government's inability to solve a problem even after throwing billions of dollars at it; as a sign of incompetence. While there is plenty of incompetence within government; I think the 'Preserve the Problem' response is mostly to blame. If we 'solved' crime, homelessness, drug use, poverty, etc.; then budgets would decrease and political power would diminish. Those in charge of solving the…
I'm genuinely curious about even a hypothetical more detailed example of how some group would go about preserving a problem like homelessness, even unintentionally. I can't wrap my mind about how it would actually happen beyond simplistic sayings. I live in Portland, OR where we have a large homeless problem and I continually hear that the groups being given money to help are incentivized to keep homelessness high fo…
In the homelessness example, it's not so much that the programs and groups want to justify their continued existence (though that might be happening too). It's that the programs themselves incentivize more of the problem. When they give things to homeless people, such as food, shelter, clothes, social services, even needles and a "safe place" to get high in some cases, and often with few or no conditions, they make being homeless more tolerable. Word gets around, and people who could not feasibly be homeless where they are are drawn to Portland because they will get more support there.
People often attribute the government's inability to solve a problem even after throwing billions of dollars at it; as a sign of incompetence. While there is plenty of incompetence within government; I think the 'Preserve the Problem' response is mostly to blame. If we 'solved' crime, homelessness, drug use, poverty, etc.; then budgets would decrease and political power would diminish. Those in charge of solving the…
While preserving problems is undoubtedly a natural incentive, I think Hanlon's razor applies here. Just today I was reading Competent Bureaucracy - Rebuilding State Capacity ( https://cdn.sanity.io/files/d8lrla4f/staging/cf7eedaf5d21d27... >) on the topic of agency structure promoting success (the author has done a nice amount of work in the past - e.g. https://www.statecapacitance.pub into this history of this topic…
Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy: every organization has two groups of people. The first group cares about the organization's main goal. The second group cares about the organization itself. Group two always wins, takes control, and writes the rules.
So NGO’s go from combating homelessness to being the organization about homelessness.
I sometimes think organizations should be set up with hard end dates. At which point the organization is disbanded and resources redistributed. If the problem still exists a new ord should be created with a new scope and new timeline.
> … they inadvertently perpetuate the problem “Inadvertently”? Seldom.
Do you think people look in the mirror and say “I’m going to be a terrible person today?” They look in the mirror and say “good job playing the hand you’re dealt - keep it up!” even while what they do is objectively terrible. Humans have an incredible capacity for rationalizing their own behavior.
> Do you think people look in the mirror and say “I’m going to be a terrible person today?”
Not so directly, but I do think that a lot of people don't put any effort into being a good person.
Think of the shopping cart problem. Good people return their shopping carts to the store or a cart return. Many people can't be bothered to do that.
People think "oh I'm not bad for leaving my cart in a parking spot" they think "stealing or damaging a shopping cart is what bad people do"
But they're still kinda bad people for not returning their carts. They're certainly choosing not to actively be good people.
It is. Everyone rationalizes their emotional responses. Hangry. Rush-hour impatience in traffic. If you can avoid it, never appear before a judge just before lunch or the end of the day.
A response that needs to be rationalized is sort of by definition not inadvertent
It might not be intentional but it's not inadvertent
I read the comment you're replying to as saying, "in the US, but other countries may have different policies that result in lower recidivism, and that might change the conclusion; maybe people aren't inherently criminally insane, but can become useful members of society, if given a chance"
People often attribute the government's inability to solve a problem even after throwing billions of dollars at it; as a sign of incompetence. While there is plenty of incompetence within government; I think the 'Preserve the Problem' response is mostly to blame. If we 'solved' crime, homelessness, drug use, poverty, etc.; then budgets would decrease and political power would diminish. Those in charge of solving the…
Big Pharma is trying to preserve cancer. Wake up sheeple!