Recently I came across this video from Jonathan Pie. He basically states that homelessness is a sign that there is something wrong with society and that we can fix it by following his designated strategy. I think his analysis is superficial and seriously flawed.
It is understandable to want to make emotional arguments about the subject but this is also why most arguments tend to fail. Nonetheless, let us play along his rhyme of thought simply to demonstrate the absurdity of his assumptions.
Let us increase social welfare and house more people as he proposes. Heck, we even take the thousands of tons of free food that we burn every year just to keep the prices steady and use it to feed the entire planet. Sounds pretty great right?
But what would be the long term result of such action? The poor people that did not have the initial means to support themselves, will breed carelessly. Eventually, we will have even more homeless and hungry people on an exponential distribution. Fast forward 2 decades, and we suddenly need the square root of the initial food supplied just to sustain the new people added into this ecosystem.
Could start picturing what would happen in matters of housing housing? If one wants an active parallel in regards to how the environment got screwed by mindless welfare breeding then look no further than the plague of cats. Stray cats alone have caused massive environmental damage so far that ranges from uncontrollable diseases to mass extinctions of other species. We constantly support their breeding because they are cute, meanwhile causing a tremendous ecosystem disturbance.
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Society is not broken because of homelessness. This is how societies actually work. It is important to also note than I am not blaming the homeless for the situation they are into. The phenomenon is merely a statistical distribution. The best we can do to keep the phenomenon at bay is to stop intervening. Remember, much like everything else in life, when you subsidize something, you get more of it. Historically whether that was social welfare, bullying, single mothers or any other issue that the government tried to control, the numbers increased. People are lazy. Humans will always strive to find the easy way out whether that is an elaborate business plan or a way to get that government check.
Let us not forget that more and more people today live much better even if they live in the streets. If you want to help the homeless in the long run, then stop helping them so they won't breed and multiply the problem. Yes, it might sound gruesome since they will probably die, but at least you won't assist to the future death of exponentially more people that will end up in the same situation, causing even more problems to society.
We have to accept that a percentage of people will be fucked no matter what we do. Same thing applies to those who are millionaires. It is a statistical variant in a universe that is build on supply and demand. The reason we see extreme %'s while most of us are somewhere in the middle relies on the same universal principles. Rare genetic mutations will always happen same as extreme weather phenomena. We cannot get away with it. We cannot build a perfect society or a perfect universe.
There is no eternal heaven nor a utopia here on earth where everybody is comfy. Most religions have capitalized on the idea of salvation and elimination of suffering because they simply had a lack of understanding about basic statistical distribution. Don't worry, most gamblers still have the same problem. Humans are not build for math. We are build for narratives. This is why the homelessness problem is supported emotionally and not logically.
This is also where political ideologies fall short as most religious affiliations. In such groups there is a tendency to perceive the world as some kind of immediate direct causation, ignoring the intermediate trillion-chaotic events that take place in between. For example, if one makes an animal sacrifice they will get the reward they wish for. If they perform a rain dance then rain will come to feed the crops. If these events do not occur then the ritual has not been performed correctly and needs to be repeated. In the same simplistic respect, more people would think that if you increase homeless centers then you will get rid of homelessness. This is too simplistic, too emotional, too narrow minded.
You can even catch this cognitive dissonance while one makes the homelessness argument. For example they will explain to you how life is chaotic and how that specific human became homeless from a series of unexpected events that were beyond his control — which is true. They are absolutely correct. When it comes to the solution though, they will neglect all the trillions of causal events that cause homelessness, and they will find the solution from just a simple causal action - e.g: build more shelters.
We have to accept that phenomena like homelessness exist because of simple statistical distribution and often there is very little we can do about it. The entire world works under complicated relationships that are extremely hard to decipher. Homelessness is a problem, but sometimes the solution is simply to stop intervening, just to minimize its effect. Society is not broken because such unfortunate events take place. Decay, problems and death are part of a healthy system that evolves and changes. Society would be broken if everything appeared to be perfect.