| It is easy to justify "inaction" on this. 1) This kind of article is pure propaganda, intended to make money for Business Insider by "raising questions" and selling ad revenue against the pageviews. 2) "We" aren't responsible for the decisions of people who live within a 100 mile radius. If "we" are held responsible for their outcomes, financially and morally responsible, then "we" will also demand control over their lives to a degree you'd find unpalatable. This can be trivially solved by re-institutionalization and a Boston-Bombings-style sweep and cleanup of the camp. It won't be because the idea is to give them (and Business Insider) our money without giving us any control over their behavior or the use of funds. 3) The questions raised by BI are highly selective. For example, they put expensive homes on this map:
http://www.businessinsider.com/homeless-in-silicon-valley-in... But they don't talk about quantitative easing or Bernanke's 85B/month in mortgage purchases, which have the express intent of driving up home prices. One could go on. But the right answer is that we didn't cause this, we're only paying attention to it because of BI's SEO, BI itself isn't going to dedicate its operation to donating money, you aren't going to dedicate your life to helping them, and so on. The right answer is no action on this issue that you heard about today, will forget about tomorrow, and is insoluble anyway. Refuse to be guilt-tripped by cynical manipulators relying on maudlin sympathy, people who want to draw your attention to an issue, blame it on you, and then charge you (involuntarily via tax) a pretty penny for not solving it. For how many billions have been spent on "the homeless" to date? The result is only to subsidize them and build a permanent caste of homeless caretakers. The real solution is to reverse de-institutionalization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation), but that would be fought tooth and nail by "homeless advocates" who'd see their budgets vanish in a trice. Public homelessness as we know it is subsidized, it is a government-and-NGO-caused phenomenon. |