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by buro9
3887 days ago
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> You say you have been homeless. I'd like to ask you what you think of my idea: instead of giving the homeless shelter in the city, and having them drain resources from people who produce wealth, meanwhile not producing anything, why not give them a cheap house in a small farmland with some chicken or turkey, rabbits, a vegetable garden, etc? I have been homeless, it's not something I just say. I disagree with your entire post. It's based on this false assumption, "the point of city is to be a wealth-creation center, not a welfare experiment". Definition of a city: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City "A city is a large and permanent human settlement.[1][2] Although there is no agreement on how a city is distinguished from a town in general English language meanings, many cities have a particular administrative, legal, or historical status based on local law." Nothing in there mentioned wealth, or welfare. Remove that personal bias/motive from your proposal and your proposal very quickly falls apart. That is before one would progress to the more offensive part of your argument: That those with money and wealth have more right to live in a city than those without. That those who work in lower paid industries have less of a right than those in higher paid industries. It seems horribly convenient as a concept, that you could put the poor and homeless on buses and drive them out of your sight. |
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That said, if people don't own land in the city and can't afford to rent some then they should not have a 'right' to use other's land there. Land ownership is a pretty basic part of society and I'd be hesitant to give everyone 'rights' to land in a city.
Those are the easy arguments to make. Let me also make a hard and unpopular one: Spreading our resources to people who won't provide ROI is a waste. In defending this, let me first claim broad experience here; I've let homeless people I barely know stay in my house and given them my keys for weeks. I have given out loans without paperwork. I've hung out with a lot of segments of society from prison inmates to college students from small towns. Just anecdotally, I think the ones who can provide real value are already finding their way through the system. For example, owning a computer and occasionally an internet connection is pretty much the only capital investment for getting a median-income job programming. I've lost count of how many poor people won't even try. Is that their fault? The fault of their upbringing? The fault of their genetics? It doesn't matter. If we throw our value away on them no one will get anywhere. Even putting aside questions of morality and property rights, if this was a communist dictatorship, the optimal choice is to play favorites with those that produce good value. And naturally we do invest in the ones that can generate value. One day that might not be true, but it still is today. Just last week I read about Ortega using Zara to turn himself from rags to richest person in the world. That's incredible upward mobility. There is more opportunity today than ever before. We just have to accept that opportunity != reality for everyone, ourselves included. I have limits. I know I won't reach the that level because I'm not good enough. But I'm good enough to admit I don't want to bring down those that can.