[scoofy]

You seem to think need trumps all duty to your fellow citizen. I do not. By suggesting need trumps everything, you are demonstrating why the benches have disappeared.

If we live in a would where we accept that we allow some folks to disrupt complicated social programs, then those aspects of the social programs will disappear or the programs themselves will disappear.

This is exactly what the essay describes as happening. When someone on a bench disrupts the service and we will not remove the person creating the disruption, then we will end up removing the bench.

We can clutch our pearls all we like here, but people will stop using a social service they are uncomfortable using. And when they don't want to use it, they will stop funding it. As long as we live in a democracy, this will be in issue.

[squibonpig]

Glad you can enjoy homeless people's "duty" not to lay on a bench. Do you have a duty to give them food? I'm sure you're able to justify why you don't have a categorical imperative to help them.

[avazhi]

Society would be better off without the homeless on average, objectively.

Why does society have an obligation to assist and protect people who don't contribute to society? If you feel some moral imperative to assist some druggie slobbering in his own shit then by all means you do do, but don't rope me into it. The only people with any obligation to assist are their families or those whose religions command them to do so. Neither involve me.

[squibonpig]

I'll do what I can to force you to chip in, and you can do what you can to prevent me from forcing you.

[scoofy]

I do think we have a duty to help them.

[squibonpig]

When we neglect our duty why would we expect them not to neglect theirs?

[scoofy]

People neglect their duty all the time. That doesn't make it okay, and it doesn't mean we should find it acceptable.

Again, this is about creating a better society for everyone. If we operate a transportation system that is inefficient because many of the patrons do not want to use it because of quality of life issue, then all those gains from transportation efficiencies lost... they are lost and replaced with expenses instead.

This isn't a zero-sum game. When efficiencies are lost and instead become costs everyone becomes worse off, including the person sleeping on the bench. Efficiencies compound upon themselves. High-trust societies make people better of in almost every interaction, including folks who need assistance.

[squibonpig]

Man at the end of the day we're animals. When you deprive people in certain ways for long periods of time they act certain ways with high reliability. You can't blame them for that; it's like blaming the water for running down a stream. If you want to create a better society you need to give the water somewhere else to go. Duty and ethics are, frankly, useless ways to look at this problem, and all you'll achieve with this methodology is the brutalization of the already deprived. That's why I felt angry reading your comments. I figured that's what you really wanted.

[scoofy]

>That's why I felt angry reading your comments. I figured that's what you really wanted.

I'm sitting here arguing for improving outcomes for everyone and you think I'm trying to make people angry??? What?

Yes, I think analysis like the authors and yours is naive... but that is because I actually give a shit. For every one of me, there are probably a dozen folks who don't care at all, and would happily literally criminalize homelessness. I'm merely proposing that we prioritize efficient functional systems while also providing other places for folks in need to rest their heads.

That a bench in a subway system should be for people using the subway does not mean that we can't also have a bench in another place that could be used to sleep on. In a place that does not do more harm than good.

[cousin_it]

I believe in duty as much as the next guy. But duty goes both ways.

The Earth has lots of resources that are privately owned. The process by which these resources become privately owned has no satisfactory libertarian justification ("land and oil become yours when you mix them with your labor", really?) If the profit from these resources was divided equally, everyone would have enough for food and shelter. The people who have less than that are essentially victims of theft. Society should first pay these people the fair share that was stolen from them, and only then start telling them about their duties to society.

[scoofy]

Why do some people litter when they are steps away from a garbage can? Why do some people play their phones at high volume on public transit? Anti-social behavior comes in all shapes and sizes.

There is a distinction between pro- and anti-social behaviors beyond capitalist and socialist systems. You can have anti-social behavior in both systems. You can have pro-social behaviors in both systems. This should be fairly straight forward.

Not accommodating someone disrupting a service does not mean we need to be absolute pricks about it. This happens every day in public libraries, public parks, public toilets, and public transit systems. Simple because a need exists, doesn't mean the library or transit system does not also exist to meet needs.

If you think that socialism -- alone -- will end homelessness, I would ask you to check your history books. There was homelessness and vagrancy in the USSR. There are plenty of folks in San Francisco who refuse shelter when offered: https://x.com/LondonBreed/status/1734350588899717423 ... we are currently experiencing a move in large parts of the west from high-trust to low-trust societies. Much of the issues around homelessness, lack of housing, and refusal to provide adequate shelter space stem from folks engaging in low-trust behaviors, treating property as a zero-sum good, and cities as places that should exist in a type of stasis... rather than as communities that must continuously grow and change to meet needs. These low-trust issues certainly can persist in low-trust socialist societies as well.

[chadgpt2]

The USSR did massively reduce homelessness by providing homes. They discovered the surprising fact they if someone has a home they are not homeless.

[9x39]

They also mostly criminalized, imprisoned, and ostracized them as primary strategies, particularly if they were antisocial.

Unclear with the language permissible whether 20th century homelessness on another continent is comparable to western homelessness in 2026.