[robswc]

The problem isn't "solved." The problem is you have to deal with it in a way that most/everyone would be OK with and vote for. I don't think we can do that in the US.

We could "solve" the problem like Singapore or China (some of these 'many countries'), and simply throw everyone in jail for petty crimes. In fact, IIRC Singapore is one of the safest places on earth. I'm sure SF (and California, and the country at large) would probably take issue with a sudden step up in policing.

[JimDabell]

> We could "solve" the problem like Singapore or China (some of these 'many countries'), and simply throw everyone in jail for petty crimes

The incarceration rate of the USA is 541/100k:

https://www.prisonstudies.org/country/united-states-america

The incarceration rate of Singapore is 164/100k:

https://www.prisonstudies.org/country/singapore

The homelessness rate in the USA is 19.5/10k. The homelessness rate in Singapore is 1.9/10k.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_ho...

Singapore doesn’t have a homelessness problem because they build as much public housing as possible, sell it to citizens at a massively subsidised rate, and follow up with schemes to rent to people who fall through the system for practically nothing.

If you want to reduce homelessness, you need to build a large volume of housing. San Francisco is doing the exact opposite and getting the exact opposite results.

[robswc]

Do the math on the execution rate. You do _not_ want to be a criminal in Singapore. You especially do not want to be a criminal involved with drugs (which is the highest % offense of prisoners in the US).

> Singapore doesn’t have a homelessness problem because they build as much public housing as possible, sell it to citizens at a massively subsidised rate, and follow up with schemes to rent to people who fall through the system for practically nothing.

How policed are these public housing projects? I wouldn't have a problem living near or even in a place like that if there weren't criminals running around.

The problem I was referencing was the problem of trying to get the general populace to live with antisocial types. I don't think that can be "solved" in the US anytime soon.

> If you want to reduce homelessness, you need to build a large volume of housing. San Francisco is doing the exact opposite and getting the exact opposite results.

Sure. I just don't see that happening in the US without it turning into a dump. I didn't even live in a homeless shelter. I lived in an income restricted place. It was a magnet for criminals and non-criminals are punished for it.

[JimDabell]

> Do the math on the execution rate. You do _not_ want to be a criminal in Singapore.

In 2023, Singapore executed 5 people, which is less than one in a million:

https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/policy/internatio...

You basically have to bring drugs into the country to be executed. So as long as you don’t do that, this statistic doesn’t affect you at all.

> How policed are these public housing projects? I wouldn't have a problem living near or even in a place like that if there weren't criminals running around.

Three quarters of Singaporeans live in these places, and there is no significant police presence. There doesn’t have to be because the crime rate is so low. Criminals aren’t running around.

> Sure. I just don't see that happening in the US without it turning into a dump. I didn't even live in a homeless shelter. I lived in an income restricted place. It was a magnet for criminals and non-criminals are punished for it.

I think you read “public housing” and interpreted it as something like you have in America, with high crime and poverty. That’s a misinterpretation. This is the type of place most people live in Singapore. They are nice places to live, they are just massively subsidised by the government.

[wahnfrieden]

Why are people always championing Singapore as a paragon of free markets while nearly all its residents live in government provided housing

[ToucanLoucan]

Your (likely rhetorical) question presumes that a nation which is devoted to free markets would require housing to be distributed via free markets, but that's not necessarily true. In fact I'd say there's a lot of evidence built up now that the free market is in fact, not actually that great at distributing property, because necessarily to engage with a market, one must have money, and everyone needs a home, but not everyone has money.

Personally in my ideal world, we would distribute life's essentials in such a way as to be free at point of use, and then leave markets to handle things they're actually good at, like televisions and such.

[johnnyanmac]

You're assuming that US federal/states do not also subsidize housing.

They are a "a paragon of free markets" because their social safeties actually work. Housing probably isn't a stock to hoard like in the US, nor owned by private equity to treat as a business. so you can focus on more than just staying alive and do actual work/passions.

[fragmede]

Given the numerous housing crisis's all over the world, are you sure that the free market is best positioned to provide housing?

[zozbot234]

The "housing crisis" all over the world is not really a housing crisis per se. The problem is not with the cost of building more shelter. It's a crisis of land values (they aren't making any more of it, so the free market cannot "provide" it in any real sense) and misguided government regulation, viz. zoning (that has nothing to do with the free market). If you want to improve free market dynamics in the housing sector, get rid of Prop 13 and put a higher property tax on urban land values (that are seeing most of the actual "crisis") while untaxing the built structures. Then local governments will be incented to provide the best living arrangements, since these will directly translate into higher tax revenues.

[BurningFrog]

Typically building housing is illegal without tons of difficult to impossible permits.

That makes it very far from a free market, even if the preexisting housing units are distributed on a fairly free market to the growing population.

[wahnfrieden]

Not at all. I'm curious about those who seek to import Singapore's authoritarian climate while praising its free market and rebuking social welfare policies at home

[novok]

You don't have to compare Singapore or other places. Just comparing the USA to other English countries shows stark differences. The UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and NZ have way less of the bad kind of "low income", better incarceration rates, homeless and more than the USA. And in many ways, people are poorer in those countries than the USA too. It's not money, it's political will and organization.

[mkl]

*English-speaking

Part of the UK is English, but none of the rest are.

[atoav]

You are mentally on a wrong track there. If imprisonment solved your problem, it would already be solved. The US has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world (see: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarce...). Fifth place versus Singapore on 105th. The US incarcerates 3.5 times more of it's population than Singapore.

If you have the money to imprison the homeless you could use that very same money to just build more affordable housing and that would give you more in terms of results per dollar spent.

But that doesn't jive well with the American idea of having to morally punish unwanted behavior, instead of just helping people.

Jailing homeless people is like jailing people who break a leg: Nobody plans to break a leg, so jailing people who do won't reduce the number of people who do. The only thing criminalization of such involuntary traits achieves is to reduce visibility and pushing people to hide it.

[robswc]

> The US incarcerates 3.5 times more of it's population than Singapore.

And Singapore executes ~3.5 times more of it's population than the US. Singapore is a heavily policed state. They still cane people there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_in_Singapore

There is a _huge_ difference between how crime is handled in the US and how it is handled in Singapore.

> If you have the money to imprison the homeless you could use that very same money to just build more affordable housing and that would give you more in terms of results per dollar spent.

I'm not talking about the homeless. The people I lived next to had homes (that were unfortunately adjacent to mine). They would constantly commit crime and face 0 repercussions for it. I knew of someone in the building that was on their 5th DUI somehow. They were still driving, still causing problems nearly every week.

[atoav]

In 2024 Singapore executed 9 people, that is a rate of 0.149 per 100k of their population.

The rate of people shot by police in the US is 0.34 per 100k of its population. Who needs capital punishment when you shoot people your police doesn't like even before they have been found guilty?

And your anecdotal evidence is not really valuable in the discussion at hand. Somebody else can say the opposite, I for example live in a country where crime is treated differently and we have less violent crime. You can leave your doors unlocked in a major city, despite living in a red light district with its own share of homeless, drug addicts and mentally ill.

[panick21_]

Singapore might execute more people, but now go and compare how many people get killed by the state. I always think its hilarious how people argue about execution when the police kills astronomically more people to the point where actual executions are a statistically insignificant.

> They were still driving, still causing problems nearly every week.

That's what you get when you build a car dependent society. You can't actually prevent people from driving because people can't practically live without driving.

[BurningFrog]

Caning is very cost effective!

Costs almost nothing compared to prisons, and has a comparable deterrence effect.

[johnnyanmac]

We don't actually execute that many people in the US, so this was an instant fail on the sniff test:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Singap...

540 ish executions in 35 years. 50 executions last decade. I don't think these are the statistics that make me thing Singapore is a kill happy country.

>m not talking about the homeless. The people I lived next to had homes (that were unfortunately adjacent to mine). They would constantly commit crime and face 0

Anecdotes are just that. I've been in a nice neighborhood. I don't think people are naturally evil.

[Agentus]

—— If you have the money to imprison the homeless you could use that very same money to just build more affordable housing and that would give you more in terms of results per dollar spent. But that doesn't jive well with the American idea of having to morally punish unwanted behavior, instead of just helping people. Jailing homeless people is like jailing people who break a leg: —- Forgive me if i misinterpret you. But i think theirs three relevant perspectives here whereof two and a half disagree with your points that americans dont punish people down on their luck.

first perspective is the common american sympathetic or not to homeless and their perspective on penal code. then 2nd, theres reactive use and enforcement of code, which is the main punishment for homelessness. and third is the figurative cognitive behavior modifiers but instead of being therapists they are american rulers who want subjects to behave in a certain manner ( more on that at the end).

first perspective is divided into two camps i think. empathetic yes lets not punish homelessness, lets help them out. they seem to have more influence in liberal states. then theres the “lazy bum” castigators, like trump said or would say. no sympathy, get a job types.

2nd perspective matters more because homelessness in-effect criminalized if police enforce laws and the laws are sufficient to cause more than a minor inconvenience to the homeless. Most states technically have all types of laws to put homeless people in jail, but in certain states and certain contexts do homelessness get more aggressively targeted and thus punished. its in the form of no body wants to deal with homeless people where they hang out at (nimbyism) so they have police remove them however the police are instructed and allowed to do, which might be making and enforcing laws incidentally target behavior homeless are more likely to do but everyone does like loitering.

3rd perspective is more conjecture but is based on academic documented equivalent cases in french and british colonies (found in david graebers writings) and extrapolated to say that people who make the laws in america must think like cognitive behaviorists specifically to wielding the threat of homelessness as a tool to modify the populations behavior to their agendas. this is conjecture but not unreasonable, and its substantiated.

But places in America do penalize homelessness if not intentionally implicitly. examples include hostile archtecture, no sitting rules in transportation hubs, sleep police in new york, and consequences for being, acting, or appearing homeless in various municipalities which sometimes results in jail.

[zozbot234]

People get jailed/locked up when they are a physical danger to those around them. The reason jails are the way they are is not so much to punish the inmates but far more relevantly, to protect them from one another. As it turns out, unfortunately, much of the supposed problem with the really long term homeless is that, rightly or wrongly, they are perceived as a physical threat to others. So, even assuming the best possible intentions on your part, whatever place you put the homeless is going to look a lot like jail.

[Qwertious]

>no sympathy, get a job types.

This was a valid perspective in the 1960s - jobs grew on trees, most people who didn't have a job just didn't want a job. Some people built that perspective in the 1960s, and then never updated it despite jobs no longer growing on trees.

[seanmcdirmid]

> But that doesn't jive well with the American idea of having to morally punish unwanted behavior, instead of just helping people.

I advocate a Singapore-style justice system then thanks to atoav's revelation that they do much better on crime than we do with punishments like caning and execution for most hard drug offenses.

[reportingsjr]

> We could "solve" the problem like Singapore or China (some of these 'many countries'), and simply throw everyone in jail for petty crimes.

This clearly isn’t true, as the US has a per capita prison population four to five times that of China & Singapore! We jail far, far more people than they do.

[carlosjobim]

Why do you count "per capita" when it should be counted "per crime"? Per capita means nothing for this argument.

[Aunche]

You're right, but progressives treat crime statistics as dog whistles for racism, which to be fair isn't uncommon. However, you can make a very similar "woke" argument. Much of crime is caused by centuries of systemic racism that Singapore and China never experienced, so you can't do an apple to apple comparison between incarcerations per capita.

Overall, Singapore and China are significantly more willing to sacrifice freedom in exchange for security. There is more surveillance and no trial by jury, for example.

[_DeadFred_]

US Police have qualified immunity, protecting them from their actions against the people, Singapore's Police don't. Who's sacrificing their morals in exchange for security?

[Aunche]

What gives you the idea that police in Singapore don't have qualified immunity? It sounds like you're treating it as a buzzword. The police anywhere are not liable for the actions they take as part of their job.

[_DeadFred_]

The fact that police in Singapore only have qualified immunity when serving warrants/etc.

Qualified immunity was made up the United States Supreme Court in the 1960s. It is a buzzword.

[robswc]

It could simply be that more people in China and Singapore are afraid to commit crimes. Their prison sentences and punishments are much worse. In 2022, they executed 11 people, the US executed 18. The US has a ~50x larger population.

I'm not even saying the solution is more/harsher policing. I'm saying it is a solution that seemingly works.

[johnnyanmac]

It could also be that they didn't governmental distribute drugs to their population with the purpose of mass arresting for petty crimes. So half their criminal population aren't just in for smoking pit.

[11101010001100]

This is speculation, the parent replied with statistics.

[sightbroke]

As far as I can tell, the bottom line is king in the US.

So the way I figure, you spend money on imprisoning (though private prisons make more money and can sell non-violent labor).

Or spend money on housing and social workers and maybe a good chunk of this individuals rejoin the workforce and pay taxes.

Or you spend money on cleaning up after, paying for medical emergencies, and increased private security costs.

The option selected is either the one that the invisible hand found to be the most efficient or a better option was not sold well enough.

[Aunche]

If the bottom line were actually king, we'd have a VAT, LVT, functional public transit, and sensible zoning laws among other things. Hell, even a fully socialized healthcare system would be more economically efficient than the public-private Frankenstein we have today.

A common meme on both sides of the political aisle is that public spending that they don't like is motivated by someone else's profit, but that's never the why the spending happens. I'd like the government to give me a million bucks to dig a hole in my backyard, but that's not going to happen unless if the voters agree to it.

[throwawaymaths]

if you think prison privatization is the problem... you should see state run prisons. while studies show that private prisons are "statistically" worse (lots of problems with the statistics, e.g. commingling criminal incarceration contracts with migrant incarceration contracts), the difference is marginal, at best.

[johnnyanmac]

The incentive structure is the bigger issue here, not necessarily prisoner treatment (though yes, we can address that too). A state wants to minimize prisons. A profit run prison wants to keep getting prisoners.

[throwawaymaths]

state run prisons and prison guard unions also have this problem. and these orgs are known to have successfully put legislative pressure on laws that will increase incarceration rates

[Agentus]

You don’t have to even go to more authoritarian places to see the “solved” phenomenon. Many conservative states have harsher sentences or are more proactive in enforcement of petty crimes to “solve” undesirable/nonconformist behavior. Also solve is a funny word to describe dealing with people who ultimately dont want to conform to arbitrary restrictions on behavior.

Humans naturally evolved in a hunter gathering setting, yet certain governing “civilizing” forces had the audacity to eliminate that as possible lifestyle, and then label people who defy that restriction on lifestyle choice as problemmatic.

[cheriot]

I don't see a pattern of conservative states solving drugs or violent crime.

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/place-based-...

https://americaninequality.substack.com/p/violent-crime-and-...

[Agentus]

yeah the pattern is indiscernible because i was talking about petty crimes and related behavior (specifically homelessness) that have a lower per capita rate. violence isnt petty and i assume many drugs offenses arent considered petty. a quick google has validating statistics, although i cant find sources better than business insider at the moment. homeless population per capita by state and homelessness criminalization by state.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> Humans naturally evolved in a hunter gathering setting

Frequently asserted, but not really well substantiated. Plenty of new (or previously) ignored archeological and anthropological evidence that humans moved back and forth fairly seamlessly between hunting, gathering and cultivating in many differents part of the world.

You sound like the kind of person who would have somehow managed to read "The Dawn of Everything" by Graeber & Wengrow, but apparently either did not or for some reason disagree with one of their fundamental conclusions.

[Agentus]

yup, in the process of reading Wengrow