> Maybe you should take a look at the healthy San Francisco program, which basically arranges medical insurance for the indigent.
Maybe that increases the number of indigent? Why, in one of the richest, most beautiful cities in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, are there large numbers of feral humans roaming around? Why are entire neighborhoods off-limits to law-abiding citizens?
"Why, in one of the richest, most beautiful cities in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, are there large numbers of feral humans roaming around?"
Maybe because in other cities in the country those "feral humans" would simply be allowed to die off (or even helped on their way to extinction).
I've read that this is how NYC has "taken care of their homeless problem": they simply let the homeless die, which is quite easy to do in NYC during the winter by forcing the homeless to sleep outdoors, where the weather is much more deadly than it ever gets in San Francisco.
Also, it's pretty clear that many (if not most) of the homeless people in San Francisco are mentally ill. During the Reagan era the mental institutions were emptied, and the mentally ill were basically thrown out on the street. It's possible that San Francisco just has more mentally ill people than your typical American city (maybe because of the prevalence of drugs in the city, I don't know).
That's a lot of guess work on my part, but I've yet to hear a better explanation for why there are hordes of homeless in SF.
Saying that these people are "just lazy" because of their dependence on handouts and would just "get over it" if the help was taken away is just the sound of resentment without an ounce of compassion or understanding of the people who are really suffering.
I've read that this is how NYC has "taken care of their homeless problem": they simply let the homeless die, which is quite easy to do in NYC during the winter by forcing the homeless to sleep outdoors, where the weather is much more deadly than it ever gets in San Francisco.
What is wrong with letting the homeless die, though? We don't have any problem with letting rats die, or pigeons, if they can't manage to support themselves. Why do I have an obligation to help another animal just cuz it happens to be the same species as me?
I also appreciate your honesty, and I'll try to address your points.
Many people would save the life of a pigeon. They're just not very consistent about it.
One issue is how we measure progress.
We would generally think that a school program that increases the average performance of a school is a good thing. If it does this by expelling the low scoring students, then it is not an educational program. It does not make the school better, it just makes it look better.
So having no homeless in a city doesn't necessarily make that city a nicer place to be. It can still have the same weak economy and bad infrastructure. It's the difference between rebuilding a wall and repainting it.
A hypothetical city that achieves zero homeless with a great job market, low cost housing, and easy access to perfect psychological treatment is clearly better than a city that eats everyone making under 50k.
I think a more realistic city that reduces some of the impact of homelessness by having adequate shelters is better than a city without that net.
The first city solves the problems of the people in the city, while the second city does not. In the end, we have cities because they are tools. Better tools work more consistently.
Your Species is Irrelevant.
Personhood matters though, I think a person dying is a tragedy. I'm not sure 'obligation' is the right term, but I think if you were actually faced with the death of a person, you would value their life more. I'm not trying to make an 'I know better than you' argument here, just saying that a lot of our values are context sensitive and inconsistent. (as with pigeons)
Compassion doesn't mean you have to throw away buckets and buckets of money. You can't claim San Francisco is doing a good job of taking care of its less fortunate unless you can back that up with some data. Even the city can't.
That's a lot of guess work on my part, but I've yet to hear a better explanation for why there are hordes of homeless in SF.
Translation: I like my guess better than the explanation I'm responding to, so I'm going to label it as "better", even though I've just admitted that I have no data or idea of what I'm talking about.
The original post had no more data than the response. This post simply demonstrated that you could draw the exact opposite conclusion given the same amount of data (or lack thereof). Thus, it serves to invalidate the original remark without necessarily itself being correct.
I asked a feral human (which really, takes some doing) and he explained that by corralling the rich people into the cities, and getting them to help push out the feral -- well, it made the rich people easier to harvest or, more commonly, cull for meat. I offered that, well, if that is the motivation, then you can hardly call yourselves feral any longer for, clearly, you've developed animal husbandry. He conceded that I was probably right and that, for pointing out his error, I deserved some reward. So he gave me an approved lease on this apartment in the city! And I'm not even rich!
It's actually very difficult to forcibly put someone in a mental health facility in California since the 1970s, when a lawsuit by the ACLU succeeded in giving many mentally ill people the right to discharge themselves from care (this was a reaction against past abuses within the mental health system). Many facilities subsequently closed down for lack of sufficient patients, and in fact California lags in the provision on mental health services today.
Then, San Francisco is relatively tolerant of 'weirdos' and always has been...while many other cities, especially to the south, are not and give the homeless a fairly hard time. San Diego, for example, is reputed to keep itself free of homeless people by giving them a bus ticket out of town, and I've heard the same thing about other jurisdictions. And so they end up here.
This is only one reason among why the city has problems. Look back through the history of SF and you'll find it's always had a seamy underbelly, right back to the days of the gold rush.
San Diego, for example, is reputed to keep itself free of homeless people by giving them a bus ticket out of town, and I've heard the same thing about other jurisdictions. And so they end up here.
Ah, yes, the time-tested principle of solving problems by pushing them off onto someone else. Didn't work so well for me as a kid when I tried to clean my room by piling all the crap in a different room, but I guess it's okay for cities to do it.
Of course, the problem isn't having poor or mentally ill people living on the streets, the problem is that middle-class people might have to see the homeless which is obviously unacceptable.
I could cherry pick some senseless violence stories from any large American city. They don't prove anything.
While I do think San Francisco is poorly managed, it's naive to think that its homeless problem is caused solely by bad governance. It's a combination of a lot of different things: the hippies that turned into deranged homeless people, the strong lure of California for those down on their luck, the strong drug culture, the very consistent temperatures, the size of Golden Gate Park, etc.
Interesting line on non-sequiteurs you have there. I like how you seque from suggesting that providing health care to those without insurance makes poorer, to discussions of feral humans and crimes, as if these were all somehow caused by extending medical coverage to people.
Maybe that increases the number of indigent? Why, in one of the richest, most beautiful cities in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, are there large numbers of feral humans roaming around? Why are entire neighborhoods off-limits to law-abiding citizens?