Food for Thought

[brynndragon]

What do car pollution and homelessness have in common? A hockey-stick-curve instead of a bell-curve and solutions rendered impossible (or at least extremely difficult) by the human psyche: Million-Dollar Murray

Comments

[roamin-umpire.livejournal.com]

It's a common knock that many political "solutions" to problems are merely cosmetic changes designed to make the policitians look good and to make the electorate feel better about themselves. But I've never seen it put in such damning terms before - and the point about it violating our ideas of fairness and responsibility are 100% dead on. I found myself wondering about who decides who gets the apartments, and just why they should be the ones deciding. But on the flip side, mswae is constantly telling me about just how much emergency room visits end up costing hospitals (and thus everyone indirectly through taxes and health insurance premiums).

I've been tempted to subscribe to The New Yorker for a while now. The only catch is, I'm not sure I'd have time to read it.

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

I thought the "why people won't like it" bit was the best part of the entire essay - they rest was merely interesting, but that bit explains so much of what we do as a society. Oddly enough, the notion that it was unfair to the homeless folks for assuming that they couldn't be independant and functional came up for me as readily as the notion that it was unfair to people barely getting by but paying their own way.

The thing is, for it to work *someone* had to decide who does and does not get an apartment, which is a situation ripe for abuse (sayeth the person who learned about an innocent getting killed last night by business-as-usual in the political halls of her fair city). The problem, as metahacker is fond of saying, is people.