[pwgentleman]

Most problems seem pretty simple until one actively tries to solve them.

One thing that _is_ actually simple is simply criticizing.

I would argue that a lot more good has been done by individuals that decided to "do something about it" that big government initiatives.

[mdip]

  > I would argue that a lot more good has been done by individuals that decided to "do something about it" that big government initiatives. 

You couldn't be more right.

"It's amazing to me in a country as rich as ours", "In a city with the wealth of San Francisco", etc... Check your calendar. How many of us did something, last year, anything (beyond voting/picketing/"complaining") that directly helped this problem?

Hell, how many of us gave even $100 to an organization helping the homeless? How many of us even did the basic research to find a suitable organization to donate to (rather than just tossing that money at a charity run like a big government initiative)? There was a movement a while back to get people used to the idea of spending $4.00 for an app (you spend that much on a cup of coffee!). We have tons of government initiatives to help with poverty/homelessness. Upset that too much of our taxes are spent on war? Your donation is tax deductible. So tossing some money at a homeless support organization results in you indirectly re-balancing things. Less of your money supports things you don't and the money you've moved away from things you "do support" is being used more efficiently toward that support.

[triceratops]

> how many of us gave even $100 to an organization helping the homeless?

I did.

> How many of us even did the basic research to find a suitable organization to donate to (rather than just tossing that money at a charity run like a big government initiative)?

You may sneer at "big government". But the advantage of having an efficient government that does good work is people can simply throw their money at it and assume that things will be taken care of. By making everyone do research, it increases the barrier to help for a lot of people . Not everyone has the time or knows what to look for in a good charitable org.

Imagine if government health inspectors didn't exist and you had to rely on Yelp reviews and word of mouth to decide if a restaurant was clean enough to eat at.

> Your donation is tax deductible.

Only if you itemize taxes. Most renters do not. And it's a deduction to taxable income, not a tax credit.

[mdip]

  > the advantage of having an efficient government that does good work is people can simply throw their money at it and assume that things will be taken care of

We have the government we have. It is far from efficient, and I'm not sure how it could be more efficient at solving this particular problem since what we're really trying to "solve" is the outcome of a number of problems that took place in that person's life. Those are going to be related, sometimes, to things unique to that area which will not be solved easily from hundreds of miles away.

Unfortunately, what usually occurs is this large, resource-heavy (financially both directly and indirectly) organization becomes a really attractive target for people wanting to do things other than "help the homeless". And I'm not really picking entirely on government here. There are some very large charities that have made the mistake of attempting to centrally manage these sorts of assistance programs. It doesn't work as well as moving that money to local organizations that are already demonstrating their effectiveness.

  > Imagine if government health inspectors didn't exist and you had to rely on Yelp reviews and word of mouth to decide if a restaurant was clean enough to eat at.

I sort-of laughed at this -- I've made the opposite argument time and again. How many times have I visited Yelp before "eating adventurously" because I have zero trust[0] in the effectiveness of a government health inspector to keep me safe. Yes, they check a lot of stuff -- much of it meaningless, and it's as good as department involved, the inspector and the things they check (where I live, that can really vary, and where my family has a home, the restaurant owner was the mayor, the chief of police[0]). On the flip side, Yelp reviews have been incredibly reliable at me avoiding bad food, dirty restaurants/bathrooms and -- I suspect -- food sickness.

To be clear: I'm not saying taking away government inspections wouldn't result in things being worse than they are, today. I'm simply saying that given the choice between the two, I'd feel safer in a world with Yelp and no government inspections than the other way around[1]. I don't have data to back it up, and I'm one of those people that always looks up a place before we eat (my wife usually beats me too it, though). The "fun" stories I used to hear from my high-on locker partner about how he "got that large arm bandage" cooking at Ram's Horn... you don't want to know.

Outside of restaurants, I would trust a large number of positive reviews (assuming appropriate context) for a hair stylist who is unlicensed (hypothetically, since I've never really paid any attention to the funny looking document hanging by the mirror -- I assume I've never visited an unlicensed stylist, but I can't be certain) over a stylist with a license and no reviews.

There's a whole lot of services I'd be willing to ditch the government side for commercial options that didn't exist when the government option was created. I don't believe there's an adequate replacement for credentialing for doctors/surgeons, but -- even in those scenarios, if I have a choice, I'm going to research the hell out of that doctor -- the government-only solutions are helpful, but they're part of a broader set of data -- much of which are not/can't realistically be provided from the government source.

  > ... taxable income ...

... it must have been very late at night and considering I just went through this, recently, I shouldn't have had such a large brain-fart. And yes, you must itemize. Where I live, that's extremely common (though, less so since the last tax code changes). Renting is rare because it is usually less -- on purely monthly mortgage payments -- to own. Most will choose to have more money in their pocket every month, especially if it comes with something they can sell later. Even as a deduction, though, you can have a warm and fuzzy feeling that you've slightly reduced the amount of money you pay to things you don't support (assuming you don't support the vast majority of what the government spends your money on).

[0] And had tens of visible violations -- one of which wagged its tail, looked longingly at me and occasionally left a foul-smelling gift. We loved the place, were never sick, and we ate there twice most weekends for three summers (as did many local celebrities, which was one of the reasons we loved the place).

[1] I've put a little though to this one over the years ... Family who owned restaurants/personal/friends/family experience in food service. I have a sibling who was a C-Level exec at the company who's logo is on all of the equipment in the kitchen (I've even seen it on flatware) at practically every legally operating restaurant in the US (look at the soft drink machine for three letters in a circle -- they're one of those weird ubiquitous logos, like UL, that once pointed out, you see everywhere)

[closeparen]

I gave $12,000 to affordable-housing nonprofits last year. If just 5 other people did the same every year, we could almost sustain one tent [0].

The costs involved here are a bottomless pit. That donation made me feel good, but if it helped even one person, it was only for a couple of months.

Housing in San Francisco is a zero sum game. Unless attitudes towards development and density can be changed, the only way to house 10,000 people is to outbid 10,000 others. It is hard for a charity to win that game.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/article/S-F-pays-61-000-a-...

[mdip]

San Francisco is an interesting place, and far from the world I live in -- definitely does not have the kind of cost of living famous of San Francisco. It's interesting -- every place has a set of its own unique problems, but hop over to San Francisco, and you folks just get to figure out how to handle all of them, it seems.

Our cost of living is high, especially considering surrounding areas, but $12,000 would be a dream budget for projects I've done. While it's hard for "a charity to win that game", there are things a charity can do that a business cannot.

The example that comes to mind was a nightmare project I did two days on. The story was the foundation was bad, we had a terrible spring, the basement started torrent-leaking revealing mold and other dangerous things (it was finished, to boot). The water was up to your neck when I saw it the first time. It took four weekends (and a few Thursdays for some of the teams), I believe it was high 4-figures, most spent a month before on environmental-related -- high cost even when the services are being nearly donated.

Outside of that, We had a master electrician and plumber, a licensed architect who owned a local survey company, many former builders, and between them got the cement company donated labour on with nothing more than a phone call and an explanation. This was all done for no real benefit to those providing the services -- this was a small church program that if you called their direct line would likely take several tries to find someone who even knew we were affiliated with them. Almost all of our weekend labour were folks who had jobs/owned other companies and attended my church on Sunday[0]. It was the most difficult job that I can ever remember working on. My favorite part is that all of the work "us inexperienced jackasses" (those of us, like me, who hobby in this stuff but haven't done it for a living) had everything we did pass inspection on the first go. Generally, everything did, but the project was delayed for a few weeks because the mold removal was incomplete and (I think) the sump Radon system needed a near re-do, and I believe the latter one was something we had to pay someone to handle, originally[1]

[0] That's not always the case -- our church doesn't do the whole "we only talk with Jesus People" thing. I remember because this specific case, the owner of the cement company (initially, uncomfortably, probably out of fear we'd be interested in Bible-Thumping him) let us know he is Jewish. He stayed 6 hours after his truck left, hanging off the side of the house nailing in boards for the roof repairs (he looked about 80, I'd guess he was 70+cigarettes). Incidentally, he saved us thousands of dollars because the roofing company just ... didn't show up, phone disconnected ... vanished into thin-air ... and he ended up getting the entirety of a two-day estimated job done with another man and his 20-year old son.

[1] ...and I remember this specifically because we were really frustrated. Ended up that one of our "former construction" guys took copious notes, showed up the next day/ripped it out and re-did it rather than bringing back the bozos who cost a fortune and did it wrong. Certain that wasn't legal, but it passed inspection and it works. But the piles of stupid was that there was one guy who inspected each of the various things and for whatever reason, they refused to send him here one time to do each of the 5-minute inspections all at once, like makes sense for everyone involved. It wasn't even his fault -- the lone inspector had no control over his own schedule!

[closeparen]

It sounds like your community's affordable-housing problem is fighting the ravages of nature and entropy to build and maintain habitable structures. That is certainly not easy or cheap, but there is an amount of money that it costs, and it's theoretically possible for resources to be abundant enough that everyone clears the floor.

In San Francisco there is no changing the numbers of people who can and can't get housing. Affordable housing work can only mess with their identities.

[mdip]

  > It sounds like your community's affordable-housing problem is fighting the ravages of nature and entropy to build and maintain habitable structures.

Welcome to Detroit[0]. $20,000 can get you a huge old house in an unsafe neighborhood with an outstanding liability to the water department. The area I live costs about $225,000 for 1,500 sq. ft. in a nice, zero-crime, residential neighborhood.

Back when I was doing this frequently, the work was mostly centered around making homes livable/saleable that had problems the home-owners couldn't deal with (many, many cancer patients with weakened immune systems who couldn't live at home due to environmental toxins). We never touched the dangerous stuff, but after the folks in HAZMAT suits clear out, you're going to be hanging a lot of drywall, at a minimum. Often houses with these kinds of problems had several others that weren't found until the obvious problems were removed.

Reading over my responses, I'm a little disappointed at how frustrated some of them sound. While I am frustrated at folks who choose to complain rather than doing something. There's this thinking that "If I complain, then I'm putting myself outside of the group that's 'causing' the problem"...meanwhile the sentence often ends with "...in America!", where the person complaining is often located.

And, frankly, where I live -- charity, and government dollars would be better spent elsewhere.

[0] Like most who are "from Detroit", I live outside the city limits.

[sonotathrowaway]

Homelessness and home insecurity is especially pernicious, as it ties into many other issues - income inequality, zoning and city policy, mental health.

That’s why it’s much easier to sit behind a keyboard and make snide remarks about people who actually act.

[wintermutestwin]

I wonder if individuals stepping up decreases or increases the chance that government will solve problems that are clearly systemic in nature (and thus the responsibility of government to resolve).

Is charity making it easier for governments to shirk their responsibilities?

[mdip]

  > clearly systemic in nature

It's surprising to me how many people believe this. Are there systemic problems? Sure. Is the only solution to solve these? I hope not. I think some would like to convince the world that this is required. I'd love to see some good, practical, options that have been tried and have been successful, but so far capitalism appears to be the one that involves the least death/suffering.

Having been involved in charities, and having witnessed the destruction that a well meaning government program can bring, I'm not sure that even if charity is making it easier for governments to shirk their responsibilities that it would really be a bad thing. That's not coming from the position of "Big Government Bad(tm)" but rather a practical one -- at least as far as America is concerned, most of the money comes from Washington and it doesn't come without strings attached. It is the least efficient way to pay for something, and they are operating in a vacuum of information.

A (local) charity is in the community and knows what the community needs. The money is spent very efficiently, and there's not much of it to spend. They get taken advantage of less frequently, as well. Even injecting government into that situation breaks it. Once a large amount of money is a potential outcome, criminal activity is not far behind -- you see small organizations getting formed out of larger ones, spending 90% of donations on administration (spending all of that money on the appearance of being the right, small, charity ... because the real ones don't have the budget for lobbiests).

[wintermutestwin]

>The money is spent very efficiently

Doesn't the fact that there are systemic causes at the root of a problem means that trimming the branches is not an efficient manner of resolving the issue?

Note that I am asking this as someone who spends more than 1/2 of my life "trimming the branches."

Obviously, the way that government deals with systemic issues is highly flawed, but that is all tied up in the systemic issues that need to be resolved right?