Oh, man. Been in America--in the freakin' Castro district--for 19 days and already making generalizations?
Come here and work on hard problems – except the ones on our doorstep
101–110 of 387 posts
Re: Come here and work on hard problems – except the ones on our doorstep
#102This speaks to a larger problem: The world simply doesn't need many of the people born into it. Parents in the US have children for recreational purposes - child birth rates do not fluctuate with the demand for labor. These kids grow up, and many of them wind up sleeping on the streets of their chosen city or more commonly just barely living paycheck-to-paycheck, because there is no societal need for them. This bears…
FYI whomever is downvoting this - you can downvote it all you want. It doesn't make it any less true. I'll take the hit on my karma points on the off chance it makes someone think, even for a second, about not perpetrating the selfish act of cruelty that is bringing a child into an impoverished existence.
See you on the other side of this discussion if you loose your wealth and your job for whatever reasons. You'll enjoy beeing jugded by your own words.
Empathy and social justice are crucial for any society that wants to be respected. You are proposing barbary. Social Darwinism.
Re: Come here and work on hard problems – except the ones on our doorstep
#103This speaks to a larger problem: The world simply doesn't need many of the people born into it. Parents in the US have children for recreational purposes - child birth rates do not fluctuate with the demand for labor. These kids grow up, and many of them wind up sleeping on the streets of their chosen city or more commonly just barely living paycheck-to-paycheck, because there is no societal need for them. This bears…
FYI whomever is downvoting this - you can downvote it all you want. It doesn't make it any less true. I'll take the hit on my karma points on the off chance it makes someone think, even for a second, about not perpetrating the selfish act of cruelty that is bringing a child into an impoverished existence.
Coincidentally, many of the twenty and thirty somethings in Japan who didn't manage to score a stable, well paying corporate job (due to the economic downturns of the 90s and 2008-current period) -- which is at times said to be upwards of 30% of the male population in said age group [1] -- have been expressing their despair at their financial situation and grim economic outlook for their country and collapsing social security systems and have exclaimed, "Why would I want to have my hypothetical child suffer an even more grim fate than I have?"
A tragic mixture of having perspective, intelligence, and (relative) poverty.
[1] I say "male", because even in this day and age, female unemployment is much more socially acceptable than its male counterpart.
Re: Come here and work on hard problems – except the ones on our doorstep
#104This speaks to a larger problem: The world simply doesn't need many of the people born into it. Parents in the US have children for recreational purposes - child birth rates do not fluctuate with the demand for labor. These kids grow up, and many of them wind up sleeping on the streets of their chosen city or more commonly just barely living paycheck-to-paycheck, because there is no societal need for them. This bears…
FYI whomever is downvoting this - you can downvote it all you want. It doesn't make it any less true. I'll take the hit on my karma points on the off chance it makes someone think, even for a second, about not perpetrating the selfish act of cruelty that is bringing a child into an impoverished existence.
Take a peek at the meaning of "the Plague", something which happened in Europe way long ago. Those people were much worse than any of us and any homeless you can think of. They are quite probably ancestors of yours if you are a "standard" American.
You are judging them all as bad. It seems funny.
Re: Come here and work on hard problems – except the ones on our doorstep
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
You could also say that "San Francisco is a place that people historically migrate to to subjugate native populations and force them to adopt a new culture and religion". Does that make it ethically defensible? Or did we not learn anything from the last few hundred years? I should also point out that the reason companies started coming to San Francisco in the first place was because of the culture that is currently b…
I think you're smearing missionaries a bit - they haven't ALL engaged in forcible conversion of natives. Quite often it is a voluntary decision. But anyway, my point is that culture changes, and you can't stop it. Think of it as a culture free market. You can try to put up protectionist barriers to stop it, but you won't succeed. Not even the Amish are totally successful at it. I grew up in Redmond, WA in the 70s and…
>I think you're smearing missionaries a bit - they haven't ALL engaged in forcible conversion of natives. Quite often it is a voluntary decision.
I would disagree on this point, Sure not all were "forced." There are invisible points that cause native nations to collapse. The missionaries didn't have to force them to come, there presence alone had enough effect on the region to force them to move to the missions. Especially in the Bay Area: http://www.amazon.com/Time-Little-Choice-Disintegration-Anth...
Re: Come here and work on hard problems – except the ones on our doorstep
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are plenty of people sleeping on park benches in Europe, especially in large cities like London and Paris.
Now, I'm sure this is a difficult thing to measure, and there's lots of room for legitimate argument. Nonetheless Wikipedia tells me that 248 Londoners "sleep rough each night", where 3-5000 of San Francisco's homeless population "refuse shelter". That's a full order of magnitude difference even ignoring the fact that London's population is several times that of SF. And again, it gets to the safety net argument. It's…
http://www.thamesreach.org.uk/news-and-views/homelessness-fa...
"A mixture of street counts and estimates indicated 557 people slept rough on any one night in London 5,678 different people slept rough over a year in London (April 1 2011-March 31 2012)"
"According to SFGov, the total number of homeless individuals and families in San Francisco for 2011 was 6,455."
There are definitely more homeless as percentage of population in San Francisco though.
Re: Come here and work on hard problems – except the ones on our doorstep
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The solution is simple. You simply give every adult citizen enough money every year to insure that they can afford food, shelter, and other basic needs. Give it to everyone, rich or poor, same amount. BAM! You left out the part where the money comes from. Your idea is fine and dandy, but I doubt you are currently implementing it yourself by spending your own money. The idea depends on everybody being forced to pay.…
Those same arguments could be made against welfare to an extent. The advantage of this system is that it would be simpler and therefor cheaper to administer and possibly harder to game.
Yes, but I also figure that anyone smart enough to effectively game the welfare system is smart enough to do substantially better than what even gamed welfare can provide.
Re: Come here and work on hard problems – except the ones on our doorstep
#108I think that when people say "hard problems" they mean "problems that almost certainly have solutions if you are willing to put in the effort". Poverty on the other hand is a much, much harder problem than that. In fact, no one quite knows how to solve it in a general way (there are things that seem to work in certain contexts but not in others, many special case half-solutions). And on top of that, there probably is…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee The solution is simple. You simply give every adult citizen enough money every year to insure that they can afford food, shelter, and other basic needs. Give it to everyone, rich or poor, same amount. BAM! No more poverty, except in self-inflicted cases (drug addiction, for example), or things like severe and very expensive illness (which are covered by other means)…
Wouldn't this cause inflation? The price of food, shelter, and basic needs is determined by peoples' ability to pay. I'd expect the price to rise until a percentage of people were unable to pay, again.
Re: Come here and work on hard problems – except the ones on our doorstep
#109There is a disparity between rich and poor in this country, sure, but come on. Most of the homeless in SF actually want to be on the streets. So many of them are young and it used to make me sad but I have just learned to accept it. I always make a point to package up leftovers and hand them out. I'll even reach into my wallet and hand out a few dollars too. If there were more I could do though, I would be more than…
They don't choose to be on the streets, specifically. Instead, they make terrible choices that lead to being on the streets due to things like addiction and mental illness.
Re: Come here and work on hard problems – except the ones on our doorstep
#110The guy's Scottish, he thinks it's about San Fran specifically, it's really about AMERICA. Maybe San Fran puts it even more in your face. But compared to most any other country even half as rich as America, the lack of social safety net in the U.S. is kind of shocking. People in Europe don't really realize the extent of it.
I tend to think a lot of the social programs that do exist in this city (and there are many – healthy san francisco, housing subsidies, dozens of shelters, and even more food programs) don't really address the root problem that causes such a disparity. For instance, I've a number of friends who work in the tenderloin with some of those same social programs, and they're perspective is that the housing subsidies that b…
I live 4 blocks from Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles, and I feel exactly the same way. US-style homeless shelters just seem to concentrate the homeless in a geographic area, without providing them with anything they need (what most of them seem to need is access to mental health services and medications). I've heard multiple formerly incarcerated people say that staying in homeless shelters is worse than prison.
The end result seems to be a sort of outdoor insane asylum, with a bunch of privileged hipsters like me and my friends wandering from our high-end loft conversions to the latest trendy bars and restaurants.
I also feel that in many ways the property development companies are drawn to these dilapidated downtown areas with large homeless populations because it's "edgy" and the developments themselves are high-margin.