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Three ways people respond to a problem (other than solving it)

improvesomething.today

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Re: Three ways people respond to a problem (other than solving it)

#101

Post by inigyou »

treis wrote: post #40
MattGrommes wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But they're not even doing that. It's not the case that tents and benches have been solved and the definition expanded. There are still people sleeping on benches and in tents - more than ever before.

Re: Three ways people respond to a problem (other than solving it)

#102

Post by c22 »

Swizec wrote: post #73
MattGrommes wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> how some group would go about preserving a problem like homelessness, even unintentionally Simplistic version: San Francisco spends roughly $100,000/year on each homeless person. In services, salaries for people working on it, rent for office buildings etc. I am willing to bet many of these people would not be homeless if we just gave them $100,000/year without all the middle bureaucracy layers.

Identifying and distributing 100k to each homeless person would require many layers of bureaucracy.

As it should. It is not responsible to give millions of dollars in taxpayer funds to an intern and tell them to start passing it out to random people on the street.

Re: Three ways people respond to a problem (other than solving it)

#103

Post by bluefirebrand »

shermantanktop wrote: post #99
bluefirebrand wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

They might agree that they would be a better person if they returned their shopping cart. But how many would sincerely state "I won't return the cart because I don't care about putting any effort into being a good person"? I'd bet you'd get a litany of complaints about the parking lot, the cart, the store, the weather, anything but their own decisions.

Yeah. What it boils down is "I don't want to put in even a tiny effort or suffer any inconvenience to do a simple chore that helps other people"

Which isn't something I think good people say

Re: Three ways people respond to a problem (other than solving it)

#104

Post by inigyou »

c22 wrote: post #102
Swizec wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how some group would go about preserving a problem like homelessness, even unintentionally Simplistic version: San Francisco spends roughly $100,000/year on each homeless person. In services, salaries for people working on it, rent for office buildings etc. I am willing to bet many of these people would not be homeless if we just gave them $100,000/year without all the middle bureaucracy layers.

Identifying and distributing 100k to each homeless person would require many layers of bureaucracy. As it should. It is not responsible to give millions of dollars in taxpayer funds to an intern and tell them to start passing it out to random people on the street.

We could just give 50k to every person, and then increase taxes enough to make up for it.

Re: Three ways people respond to a problem (other than solving it)

#105

Post by inigyou »

verteu wrote: post #100
Swizec wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how some group would go about preserving a problem like homelessness, even unintentionally Simplistic version: San Francisco spends roughly $100,000/year on each homeless person. In services, salaries for people working on it, rent for office buildings etc. I am willing to bet many of these people would not be homeless if we just gave them $100,000/year without all the middle bureaucracy layers.

This is a fallacy because it's not the same people homeless each year. There's substantial turnover in the homeless population. "Replace services with direct transfers" would eliminate homelessness for 1 year. Then new people would become homeless, and you'd have no services, because your budget is already committed to the "year 1 homeless-cohort." The money spent grows quadratically (not linearly) over time.

If you only gave $100k to the people who are currently homeless that year, then (ignoring that people would start keeping themselves homeless for several years on purpose) you'd still end up better than the present situation.

Re: Three ways people respond to a problem (other than solving it)

#106

Post by inigyou »

ChadNauseam wrote: post #83
nostrademons wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All you have to do is promote policies that make the problem more palatable but don't actually solve it. Treatments instead of cures. As long as the problem needs treatment, the organizations dedicated to treating it will still be around, but as soon as it is no longer a problem at all, those organizations will cease to exist and everyone working on it needs a new job. For homelessness, it's things like shelters, fre…

> For homelessness, it's things like shelters, free meals, needle exchanges, etc. Make the life of the homeless easier without actually getting them into permanent housing. The actual solution to eliminate homelessness is to build more housing, along with financial arrangements to incentivize ownership and make it possible. I love the idea of building more housing, but I think a lot of homeless people have an income…

If we literally gave them free housing it would be cheaper than whatever the fuck we're currently doing.

Re: Three ways people respond to a problem (other than solving it)

#107

Post by inigyou »

RugnirViking wrote: post #81
dmitrygr wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A LOT of crime can be solved. A huge percentage of perps are multi-repeat perps. Putting them away permanently would solve a lot of crime. "75% to 83% of released prisoners are arrested for a new crime" https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/2018-update-prisone...

Is it really true that in places with longer jail sentences (specifically, tile spent in prison) and/or higher prison populations as a share of general population that there is less crime?

America has the most people in prison (both absolute and per capita) and also some of the highest crime rates, so it seems the correlation is the opposite.

Re: Three ways people respond to a problem (other than solving it)

#108

Post by inigyou »

dmitrygr wrote: post #97
srveale wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just incarcerate everyone between the age of 15-27, if what we're worried about is crime rate.

Because most of those people are not repeat violent criminals? We only need to incarcerate repeat violent offenders to reduce crime noticeably. This is not controversial. The data is linked-to above.

If we incarcerated everyone, it would be even lower.

Re: Three ways people respond to a problem (other than solving it)

#109

Post by verteu »

inigyou wrote: post #105
verteu wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a fallacy because it's not the same people homeless each year. There's substantial turnover in the homeless population. "Replace services with direct transfers" would eliminate homelessness for 1 year. Then new people would become homeless, and you'd have no services, because your budget is already committed to the "year 1 homeless-cohort." The money spent grows quadratically (not linearly) over time.

If you only gave $100k to the people who are currently homeless that year, then (ignoring that people would start keeping themselves homeless for several years on purpose) you'd still end up better than the present situation.

Not likely: SF has ~7,973 homeless people now, and current spending provides housing for 14,498 "previously homeless" people: https://media.api.sf.gov/documents/Agenda_Item_9_HSH_Budget_...

Thus, cutting all budget for cash transfers could increase homelessness by 80%! (Are those 14,498 now-homeless people eligible for this year's $100k? They can't be, since you already spent it on the 7,973 currently-homeless people).

Model the situation as "X(t) people become homeless at year t, Y(t) people become housed at time t," and you'll see the most important metric is "how much can we decrease X and increase Y per dollar spent"?

"Number of dollars per current homeless" is not really meaningful at all.

Re: Three ways people respond to a problem (other than solving it)

#110

Post by shermantanktop »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #103
shermantanktop wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They might agree that they would be a better person if they returned their shopping cart. But how many would sincerely state "I won't return the cart because I don't care about putting any effort into being a good person"? I'd bet you'd get a litany of complaints about the parking lot, the cart, the store, the weather, anything but their own decisions.

Yeah. What it boils down is "I don't want to put in even a tiny effort or suffer any inconvenience to do a simple chore that helps other people" Which isn't something I think good people say

sure, but that's my point. People doing objectively bad things all day think they are doing just fine.

It's the inverse of the essentialist fallacy. Faced with a bunch of evidence (if they cared to look) that they are consistently making life worse for themselves and everyone around them, their reaction is "I am not a bad person. I didn't even really do bad things, I just did the same stuff anyone else would do, plus it wasn't that bad, plus I like to think I'm awesome, so that's what I think."

BTW I think this is an inherent human trait and I have it too. Some are just really good at it.

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