Comment by AlexandrB
5 days ago
> i.e. the morality of homelessness and not having a disdain for them but empathy for them instead.
Ok, I'll bite. What is having empathy for the homeless? Is allowing unconstrained immigration to increase competition for entry-level positions empathy? What about restrictions on construction that make housing completely unaffordable? Is that empathy? Is leaving the drug-addicted portion of the homeless out on the street to battle their addictions on their own empathy[1]?
Saying nice words (not having disdain) is not the same thing as helping someone.
[1] https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/you-call-that-compassio...
While "Empathy for the homeless" can situationally mean talking nicely about them, it also means stopping, blocking, and undoing directly terrible actions against the homeless.
Bulldozing peoples' stuff is in fact pretty bad. Having laws against giving money to people is in fact pretty bad. Putting hostile architecture everywhere is in fact pretty bad. People make decisions, over and over again, to not just hurt homeless people, but also hurt the people trying to help homeless people.
Stopping people from doing that is called "empathy for the homeless". It's called that because saying and feeling bad things about people is part of the process of hurting them. It's how people agree who is and isn't okay to hurt. By stopping group efforts to make things worse, you only have to worry about random individuals trying to make things worse for other random individuals. Which is unstoppable but untargeted.
Sounds nice and virtuous... until you remember there exist gangs of homeless people who mug law-abiding citizens, retreat into the structures that you want defended from demolishing, and cry victim when people want to stop their crimes. Not to mention they use the said structures as a hub to distribute drugs to the local community of teenagers.
You see, the problem with every such discussion is the lack of nuance and the willingness to demonize e.g. parents who want their kids to be safe in their neighborhoods.
What you call lack of empathy for the homeless is, in some instances, the concern and actions of the said parents.
So do these parents truly lack empathy, how do you think? Or they say "no matter what hand life dealt you, please just stay away from my kids"?
What's your opinion?
If people are mugging, they should be arrested. I see no need for the other laws.
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Your dislike of "gangs of homeless people" existing shouldn't be directed at the homeless people, but the gangs. In an area where black communities have high crime rates, the answer wouldn't be to go after black people, but address the crime directly. I don't see why this should any different.
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> Sounds nice and virtuous... until you remember there exist gangs of homeless people who mug law-abiding citizens, retreat into the structures that you want defended from demolishing, and cry victim when people want to stop their crimes. Not to mention they use the said structures as a hub to distribute drugs to the local community of teenagers.
There are folks who are not homeless who participate in criminal enterprise.
It's unlikely that a successful criminal is homeless, as doing crime successfully generally leaves you with money.
Like wage theft.
> So do these parents truly lack empathy, how do you think? Or they say "no matter what hand life dealt you, please just stay away from my kids"? > > What's your opinion?
Yes, some parents let the empathetic part of their brain that covers people not in their family die. "Fuck you, I got mine" is a popular mentality amongst those who believe in bootstrap and american excepptionalism.
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My view is that you cannot sacrifice other peoples' lives and belongings, and call it good, without also sacrificing some of your own. It does not actually have to be "an eye for an eye", the sacrifices do not have to be anywhere close to balanced. But willingly hurting other people and paying no price whatsoever cannot possibly be considered good.
> Sounds nice and virtuous Yeah it is. I care about people about as much as it is possible to care about people, because I can't truly separate myself from anyone. If I know someone is happy, I feel like I am happy. If I am aware of someone on death row, I feel like I am on death row. My brain doesn't actually mix up real and imagined sensations, but I lack the ability to hear of something happening to someone and go "that can't happen to me". In some sense, I "am" humanity: I want everyone to be happy and get what they want. I empathize towards trans people and transphobes simultaneously (though ultimately side with trans people). I feel near-completely unable of actually making a difference with anything, but my mind does give me rather strong yanks to "make this war go away" all the time. Though the one exception to all this is people who hurt other people and call it good, especially if they call it "for their own good". I feel quite a lot of rage when I hear about incidents like that.
If you share goals and desires with someone, you are "the same person" as them. You are a "law-abiding citizen". Their successes are your successes, their failures are your failures. You are not the same person as "homeless people". Their successes mean nothing to you. Same with your failures. They are capable of causing problems to you (as all people do), but your desire to retaliate is not limited by the desire to not "cut off your nose to spite your face" that you would have if the cause of the problem was a "law-abiding citizen".
In my understanding of the world, it is not possible to convince you to care about homeless people. The desires of different people are fundamentally not comparable. My desire to stay alive does not outweigh your desire to not stub your toe, and if those desires come into conflict, it does not matter which one wins. (Though as I also consider myself to be you to some extent, I desire both to stay alive and for you to not stub your toe. And you too are probably also "humanity" to some extent, though probably not as strongly as I am. Not that it actually matters beyond simply describing what happens)
I see groups of parents looking out for their kids and feel good. I see groups of homeless people being hurt and feel bad. You go, "I'm defending the lives and non-drugginess of the kids of my community. That makes me a good person". Does it? You are making a decision to help the people you feel closest to at the expense of the people you feel further away from. On one hand, no such decision is better than any other decision. On the other hand, people are being hurt at all.
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> Ok, I'll bite. What is having empathy for the homeless?
Let's start by changing how we think about housing and shelter from an investment to basic rights.
Or maybe stop criminalizing being poor.
> Is allowing unconstrained immigration to increase competition for entry-level positions empathy?
That's not a thing.
>What about restrictions on construction that make housing completely unaffordable?
Which ones? Some like quality and safety standards add cost short term but save long term.
However SFH rules hurt density, and cause grater strain on infrastructure and resources, while also driving up costs.
> Is leaving the drug-addicted portion of the homeless out on the street to battle their addictions on their own empathy[1]?
Medical safe injection sites could be part of the solution. But this requires thinking beyond "drugs are bad mkay"
Investing in diversion and rehab is another good use of resources.
> Saying nice words (not having disdain) is not the same thing as helping someone.
But if you can't even say nice words, your brain is so broken that you look at the unhoused with fear or contempt, how will you ever support investment in those same people?
I am very sympathetic to the idea that some harm-reduction policies do more to enable drug addiction among the homeless than help them.
But the immigration stuff is just right-wing nonsense. a) We don't have anything like unrestrained immigration, that's propaganda. Obama and Biden both deported more people than any other presidents in history to that point (https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/biden-deportation-re..., https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/obamas-deportation-policy-nu...). And b) the percentage of homeless who might compete with a Honduran immigrant for a day-laborer job is a tiny sliver.
On the immigration issue, I'm mostly speaking from personal experience. I think this issue, just like immigration itself, is very regional and doesn't present the same way everywhere. In the town where I live it's now basically impossible to get an entry level job - the competition is fierce[1]. This is a result of a mass influx of foreign students thanks to a local diploma mill. Not surprisingly, the rents and homeless population have increased rapidly over the same period.
[1] https://www.therecord.com/news/waterloo-region/massive-lineu...
Your description of capitalism is surprisingly lacking in awareness