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The Unexotic Underclass

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Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#271

Post by prawn »

tsunamifury wrote: post #260
prewett wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to find out more about your brother's program. How does he find work for them? What are the key barriers to their finding and keeping effective employment? What are the important factors that contribute to the 0% recidivism he sees?

He starts his own small businesses and employs a set of ex-cons while mentoring them. He then turns management over to the most talented over the year, and finally hands the entire company over to the most senior person in the program. Meanwhile ownership is retained by the parent non-profit. He has done it three times and the key to low recidivism is his hands on approach. He spends time with every worker, has a mag…

Almost sounds like a reality TV program without the cameras. Good on him.

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#272

Post by jamesash »

jazzyk wrote: post #152
jamesash wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Somehow Europe, Canada, Japan, etc, all make health care work but we can't. The countries you mentioned largely have outsourced their national defence concerns to the United States, allowing them to have defence budgets of <10% of spending while the USA's defence spending stands at 17% of spending. That is not irrelevant to this discussion.

What does national defense cost have to do with it? France, ranked consistently as one of the countries with the best health-care, spends 12% vs the US (ranked waaay lower) spending 18%. Several other countries have even better quality-to-cost ratios (Japan, etc)

>What does national defense cost have to do with it?

Uh, more headroom for entitlement programs in general?

I see France at 10%, not 12%,http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_de_l'État_français but even at the latter number, that 6% difference (280 bn) would pay for a quarter of Medicare+Medicaid. With Medicaid costs set to expand by 12% under Obamacare next year (by 50 bn) eventually leading to 50% reduction in uninsured by 2024, having that kind of room in the budget would easily allow for universal coverage.

I cede the point, made above, that dollar-for-dollar US healthcare spending is less effective, but dispute that health care reform is entirely about making it more efficient. Decreasing the amount of uninsured has been at least as important an issue in the debate.

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#273

Post by jamesash »

PeterisP wrote: post #190
jamesash wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Somehow Europe, Canada, Japan, etc, all make health care work but we can't. The countries you mentioned largely have outsourced their national defence concerns to the United States, allowing them to have defence budgets of <10% of spending while the USA's defence spending stands at 17% of spending. That is not irrelevant to this discussion.

Amount of money going to healthcare is actually NOT relevant to this discussion - all the countries are spending less on healthcare than USA, none of those health advantages are caused by being able to afford healthcare because of some or other reason reason. The call for health reforms isn't "give medicine more money", but "fix the system so that you stop getting shit priced as gold".

Point taken on lower efficiency of US health care spending.

http://www.vox.com/2014/9/2/6089693/health-care-facts-whats-...

Worth noting, however, that Europe, Canada, and the ROW get to freeload on innovative on-patent medicines whose R&D is essentially supported by higher American drug prices.

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#274

Post by dropit_sphere »

tinco wrote: post #76

I would really love to cater to the unexotic underclass, but how? I mean he goes on and on about how much opportunity there is, but I don't see it. I know how to get 500 white liberal suburbanite young males to pay me $10 per month. They have the money and they love to spend it on tech and gadgetry that makes their lives even more comfortable. But single house mothers? Poor Romanians? How would I even get them to pay…

I suspect the key to making money off the poor is buying from them low, rather than selling to them high. In other words...sweatshops. Pimps. Mechanical Turk.

These are all distasteful, but what makes them unsuitable for the task of Helping Humanity is that these transactions are really bad transactions to be making, for reasons the financials don't show. A 3rd-year developer is worth more than a 1st-year developer---is a 3rd-year sweatshop laborer worth meaningfully more than a 1st-year sweatshop laborer?

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#275

Post by dropit_sphere »

aianus wrote: post #186
JabavuAdams wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Organ donation 2.0 and prostitution 2.0. But we're helping the poor to make their own decisions about how to generate wealth.

Let me understand how I'm supposed to see this: A-OK: Rich Americans die from kidney failure while poor Africans die from malnutrition/AIDS/TB/whatever. Reprehensible exploitation: Rich American buys a kidney from a poor African, feeding his family for a decade in the process. Nobody dies.

(worth reading, tangentially answers your question, 10/10) http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#276

Post by JabavuAdams »

aianus wrote: post #216
jwgur wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a false premise - the "Rich American" has a duty to help those who are less fortunate (poor Africans), and that duty extends further than just quid pro quo transactions.

That's not going to happen and in the meantime this idealism is killing people.

We don't know that. In any case, the example is too simplistic anytime there is a lucrative market in organs, there will be middlemen who coerce victims into donating. That will / does kill people, no doubt.

Whenever you're thinking about human systems, you need to think about how humans will game the system. Essentially, you're not facing a static adversary, but an adaptive, motivated one.

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#277

Post by ctchocula »

dropit_sphere wrote: post #275
aianus wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me understand how I'm supposed to see this: A-OK: Rich Americans die from kidney failure while poor Africans die from malnutrition/AIDS/TB/whatever. Reprehensible exploitation: Rich American buys a kidney from a poor African, feeding his family for a decade in the process. Nobody dies.

(worth reading, tangentially answers your question, 10/10) http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

Thanks for sharing this blog. It really jived with me how we could be in a dystopia no single person is responsible for creating, but which inertia keeps bringing forth untold misery.

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#278

Post by prawn »

Houshalter wrote: post #266
graeme wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, this is the future. I say unfortunately, because I think if we could see the final version, we'd recoil. The sharing economy, at heart, is about the monetization of spare capacity. So far it's mostly been physical assets, but spare time is next. Anywhere you find a poor person watching TV (or, god forbid, reading a book) there's spare capacity ready to be monetized. And, why are they sleeping so much?…

I'm not aware of much like this besides mechanical turk. In any case, no one is forcing people to work, it's just an option they otherwise wouldn't have. You can argue their lives won't be any better with it, but I can't see how they would be worse. You make it sound like they are going to be rounded up by slave drivers, and otherwise would be pretty well off. The worst case would be existing industries that are curr…

There's a short story I read a while back showing where things will likely head. 'Zero Hours' - https://medium.com/futures-exchange/f68f17e8c12a

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#279

Post by prawn »

jimbokun wrote: post #248
tinco wrote: post #76

I would really love to cater to the unexotic underclass, but how? I mean he goes on and on about how much opportunity there is, but I don't see it. I know how to get 500 white liberal suburbanite young males to pay me $10 per month. They have the money and they love to spend it on tech and gadgetry that makes their lives even more comfortable. But single house mothers? Poor Romanians? How would I even get them to pay…

The best example I can think of in this category is Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University. http://www.daveramsey.com/fpu It's a comprehensive course on putting your finances in order. $100 per person or family taking the course. Scholarships often offered to callers to his show and others who demonstrate motivation but lack of means to pay. Many Americans are poor not due to having no income, but getting themselve…

"Many Americans are poor not due to having no income, but getting themselves into too much debt through scams like credit cards and student loans."

See, the poor are already well-served by entrepreneurs! ;) Would make for a tough fight against that given that everyone wants to live ahead of themselves, have the latest things, impress their friends, eat more, take it easier, etc.

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#280

Post by wutbrodo »

ceejayoz wrote: post #229
aianus wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me understand how I'm supposed to see this: A-OK: Rich Americans die from kidney failure while poor Africans die from malnutrition/AIDS/TB/whatever. Reprehensible exploitation: Rich American buys a kidney from a poor African, feeding his family for a decade in the process. Nobody dies.

> Rich American buys a kidney from a poor African, feeding his family for a decade in the process. Nobody dies. Until the poor African's one remaining kidney goes bad, he can't get a transplant (nor the lifetime of expensive drugs to retain one), and his family starves for lack of a breadwinner.

I think that organ sales are substantially more complicated than this conversation is making it, but your point here could not possibly make less sense. It should be obvious with a moment's thought that "My family and I will starve right now" is way worse than "there's a small chance my second kidney will fail and then my family will starve" (and that's without considering the effect on the person who got a transplant).
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