quercusgrisea

Exactly, the main problem these people are having is not a mystery - it's that they don't have housing. There are often addiction or mental health issues, but anyone who has experienced these problems in the past understands that being homeless at the same time is catastrophic. Giving people housing while they get on their feet is the simplest, cheapest, most humane, and most effective policy. It's been proven to work in Finland and other places to great effect: https://amp.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jun/03/its-a-miracle...

I think it says a lot about the HN crowd that people are downvoting you for saying this. Everyone wants either to police/arrest homeless people (even more than they already are, apparently) or to make their lives even harder so they'll go somewhere else. Neither of those "solutions" addresses the root of the problem - that these people have nowhere to go - and homelessness will continue until they are provided with housing. People love to wring their hands about how homelessness is such a hard problem but they don't want to even consider the obvious solution that would both fix the root problem and treat people with dignity.

How is that a better solution for the environment than using the windmills to power homes?

You rightly acknowledge that it's a difference in scale not in kind.

I find it useful to point out the faulty core of a person's argument when they're making a bad point that will hurt people, so that others who come across it don't give it undue deference.

They put child prisoners in cages owned by for-profit prison companies

The critical point is that the US has never cared about any other country in the world. Every foreign policy decision is based on what is advantageous to the US at the time. For example, you seem to believe that the US is fighting Islamic extremism for the good of the world and the people in the places it's bombing. If that were a priority for the US, don't you think they'd have a problem with the Islamic extremism and dictatorship promoted and brutally enforced by their close allies in the Saudi Arabian government? Instead, the US just agreed to sell the Saudi regime more weapons.

The US engages with the rest of the world in a way that is advantageous to the US. This is clear when you learn about the modern history of US foreign policy[1]. The US backed over 40 authoritarian coups through the 20th century. To write such a long comment about how the US cares about the places they bomb is at best naivety and at worst willful ignorance.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

In the US, that is how hard it is to get a government benefit like unemployment or food stamps, but public schools are one exception. There have been several states that have passed laws banning undocumented immigrant, but those laws were ruled to be unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court in 1981 because to deny education to these children would ”deny them the ability to live within the structure of our civic institutions, and foreclose any realistic possibility that they will contribute in even the smallest way to the progress of our Nation." More info here: https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/plyler-v.... As you can imagine, people who hate immigrants also hate that court decision, but it's the law of the land and I think it is fair.

The case with employment is pretty different, I don't know much about it other than that the employers figure out how to pay people with cash in a way that they're able to not get caught very often.

But really my point is just that undocumented immigrants work incredibly hard at essential jobs and have very difficult lives, and hating them for not going through a long legal process that's usually not even open to them is unfair.

I agree with you that the employers exploiting the workers is the core problem. My disagreement is that you can't blame undocumented immigrants for taking the job, they're just trying to survive.

how [undocumented immigrants] can stay in the country (and even get benefits, send kids to school, etc.) "Immigrants taking benefits" is a big misconception pushed by right wingers and others with anti-immigrant sentiments. Getting any kind of government benefit of significance in the US is hard even for citizens. If you don't have documents they'll laugh you out of the office.

I hope you're not suggesting banning the children of undocumented immigrants from attending school would somehow be more fair. Pretty clearly they didn't have a choice in the matter.

Because they have no incentive to? Not sure what that question has to do with my response.

I'll try making my point in a different way. You seem to have some kind of resentment for undocumented immigrants because you went through a long immigration process and they didn't, and now you both work in the US. My point is that the facts that you're both immigrants and work in the US are the only similarities. They have to work hard jobs for little pay, and look over their shoulders for their whole lives knowing they could be locked up at any moment. They're not getting the same reward that you did for going through the immigration process. You don't have anything to be resentful towards them about.

When such people get their papers, green cards, and work in USA for some time, their opinion on illegal immigrants, who skip the whole process (and sometimes even get praised for that) is a lot different than the comments you see on reddit. They might not say it there, but they say it here.

Surely you realize that the people who come to the US without documents aren't doing the same job or getting close to the same compensation as you? If you want to pay a smuggler a few thousand dollars so you can work in a meat packing plant and risk you and your kids being locked up at any time, you can also follow their path. The fact that this is the best option for these people should tell you something about the circumstances they are in and how they differ from yours.

There is not a single democratic govt in the ME sans Israel

The millions of Palestinians unable to vote for the government that controls their movement, trade, and lives in general would probably disagree with your characterization of Israel as a democracy.

That they've eradicated coronavirus in Wuhan? The photos are pretty self-evident. If there was a government cover-up and people were still getting sick then we wouldn't see people putting themselves at risk to go to a music festival.

AFAIK they have kicked out all non-Chinese journalists so that they have sole control over the truth.

I'm not able to find a source to confirm that, but I do see some news articles from earlier this year abiut China revoking press credentials for journalists from 3 US news outlets. AFAICT from searching, journalists from other countries and news outlets are not affected.

It seems to be an article from a book written by an academic. There's a page of citations at the end that you may have missed.

If only history had any examples of unfair laws...

If a corporation is going to transplant workers to a plantation in an unsafe place, then the corporation has responsibility for keeping the workers safe.

A big element of their case that's oddly not mentioned in this Guardian article is that the violence was foreseeable and nothing was done to stop it. The tensions did not bubble up overnight, and this was not the first instance of violence in an otherwise peaceful place. There were many signs that something like this could happen, and Unilever declined to spend resources on keeping the workers safe. As a result many of the workers were raped and murdered. Now the survivors are seeking justice, and they deserve it.

Unilever are the corporation who was ultimately profiting from the employees' work, so the survivors have a right to seek justice from them directly.

What I disagreed with was when you said centralized control is always worse, not a command economy. I asked for any evidence you have for that claim and you don't seem to have any.

I'm aware of the market reforms in China over the last half century. They've moved the country closer to something like capitalism, but it's still incredibly far from anything in the West.

You seem to be unaware that ~30% of the Chinese economy is owned by state owned enterprises, and China in general, or you wouldn't say something as incorrect as "Compared to other countries, China is around the median in terms of how much control the government has over their economy."

But again, you're dodging the question of why you believe, in the US, widespread hunger is an unfortunate necessity, but in communist countries, it was the result of the economic structure. I'd encourage you to consider why you believe that, and whether it's reasonable.

Exactly. If the publishers could, they would make libraries buy five copies for every one they lend out. People need to stop letting the publishers' PR teams convince them that they care about freedom or knowledge or anything other than increasing their profits.

You think that half of governments have more control over their economy than China? You keep bringing up China not being a command economy today. I never said they were, just that they exercise relatively more control over their economy than other states.

In case you don't know, in addition to the portions of the Chinese economy directly owned by state-owned enterprises, the Chinese government exercises a large amount of control over the private enterprises in the country. You might find this article helpful: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/25/china-business...

All of this is distracting from my point earlier which is what exactly do you see as the difference between hunger experienced by people in communist countries in the past and the 37 million people in the US who experience food insecurity each year today? You mentioned that people don't have to "line up" for food in the US, but thousands of people do, every day.

Compared to most countries in the world today, would you say the Chinese government exercises relatively more or less control over their economy?

"Food insecurity" is nowhere near the same thing as going to another city to stand in line for potatoes and onions.

What's the difference? Millions of people in the US have to line up at soup kitchens and food banks in order to avoid starvation.

On the whole, decentralized distribution is always better than when centrally controlled

That's a strong claim; I'd be interested to look at evidence for it if you have any.

One major counterpoint would be the enormous reductions in poverty that China has achieved over the last decades. Quoting from Wikipedia here:

The dramatic progress in reducing poverty over the past three decades in China is well known. According to the World Bank, more than 850 million Chinese people have been lifted out of extreme poverty; China's poverty rate fell from 88 percent in 1981 to 0.7 percent in 2015, as measured by the percentage of people living on the equivalent of US$1.90 or less per day in 2011 purchasing price parity terms.

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

Food insecurity is not specific to communist countries, it's a massive problem in capitalist countries today. The US is the richest country in the world and 37 million people experienced food insecurity in 2018 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_in_the_United_States

Do you think it's necessary for a novel to take a strong position on the Cold War? Propaganda from an enemy state is not a way to get a clear picture of what a place was like.

If you think these numbers are anything other than the tip of the iceberg you're incredibly naive. Consider how many victims of police violence have the means to make a complaint to the CCRB. The fact that these complaints (to this point) have almost never resulted in the firing or disciplining of violent officers makes filing the complaint itself mostly pointless. Add to that the fear of retribution from the NYPD, who have your address and have already made you a victim, and it's shocking that there are this many on file.

Considering they've spent years on this I'd be pretty surprised if they'd get any value out of giving an MBA a bucket of cash to tell them that bamboo exists

Why? A library lending someone a book belonging to a partner library because that library is not easily accessible to the lendee is common practice.

Why is this necessary when there are already many examples of successful remote companies that don't need to constantly watch and listen to their employees?