Breakdown In Civil Order

[prideandfall]

It is probably true that if you just give these thugs enough money that they can live their lifestyle without the risk of stealing and robbing that many of them would decide that stealing and robbing for even more money is not worth it.
That does not make it a good policy to pay thieves and robbers to stop stealing and robbing. It's basically government paying a form of protection money to these thugs.

define "good policy" in this instance - is the goal to reduce crime, or is the goal to mete out punishment for behavior you don't like?
if you genuinely are concerned about crime and feel that crime is an affliction of suffering on the innocent, wouldn't the most efficient means to stop that happening be the ideal solution?
i'd wager just giving every poor person 50k a year would be quite effective at reducing crime, and based on what i know of the cost of militarized police forces and the US prison and legal system would cost tax payers substantially less than the current paradigm.

so, what is the end game? the reduction of crime and the tranquility of society, or government enforced satisfaction of your sadism boner?

First, these programs are supposed to be supplemental.

yes, and my argument is that is retarded. that is a pathetic, useless, and inefficient way to allocate resources.

Second, they are part of the social safety net. It's not a social hammock. It's not meant to provide a comfortable middle class life for doing nothing.

yes, and my argument is that is retarded. there's absolutely no justifiable reason for there not to be a social hammock, given that we have such an excessive abundance of resources just laying around collecting dust.
speaking strictly about the US, if we had an economy and a society that didn't generate more resource wealth than is needed to provide every human living within our geographic borders with a comfortable lower middle class life, then there could be an argument that we just don't have the money to be handing out hammocks.
but we do have the ability to, and having the ability to means there's no sane argument against doing so except pure irrational psychopathy.
(btw 333 million * 45k = 14 trillion. US GDP is about 21 trillion)

What should be done with them? A pat on the back and a generous stipend so they are not tempted to do it again? Hell no!

why not? it's cheaper than the way we do things now and likely far more effective at curtailing future errant behavior.

That would amount to rewarding people for being thieves and robbers. Why should anybody work for a living when they can just burgle a house once and get a free house plus a life stipend of $45k?

what difference does that make? is the goal to reduce crime, or is the goal to make you feel good that niggers are suffering for wanting shoes?

the equation is simple: in a situation of vastly inequitable resource allocation existing within a society that culturally idolizes materialistic consumerism, you are going to foster a certain type of behavior from the economically poor as they try to get access to the comforts and leisure that are possible but inaccessible to them (ie petty crime).
you can either: A. spend a shitload of money on punishing people for this behavior which does little to nothing to reduce the instance of that behavior, or B. spend less of a shitload of money on just giving them fancy shoes and meth so they don't need to commit crime in the first place.

shitload of money for no reduction in crime vs. less money spent and huge reduction in crime.

so i don't want to beat a dead horse on this but is your goal a reduction in crime, or is it your own apparent need for unhappy people to suffer even more?

Even if you did, you'd have done it by basically paying protection money.

so? if you look at the numbers, it varies wildly by state (from as little as about 20k a year in florida to 81k a year in california) to keep someone in prison for a year, with a national average of about 35k per year - factor in the legal system, court costs, the whole security apparatus around that, and the costs of the current militarized police force - it's about 115 billion a year, give or take.

that's within spitting distance of just giving out 45k a year to anyone who isn't getting that much on their own, and i still argue (and you have yet to refute so perhaps you agree with me on this) that it would be far more effective at reducing crime than the current system of punishment after the fact.

i'm talking purely in terms of what would effectively reduce crime, i don't give two salty shits about whether or not the means by which you reduce crime gets your amygdala fired up.

Here's a free house plus $45k a year for life so you don't rob people. It's a really dumb idea.

why? it's more economically frugal than the current system, and it has yet to be refuted that it would be more effective at reducing crime.

And what happens to their kids? Do they get a $45k stipend automatically (for being part of the subsidized criminal class by descent) when they turn 18 or do they have to commit a crime or two first?

if their kids want to do a job that pays more than that, then they can stop getting it i suppose.
i'm in favor of a minimum standard of living for all persons of adult age, full stop.
so, their kids.... your kids, my kids, whoever's kids.

mind, i'm saying '45k' as shorthand here - i've got a whole economic thesis on this which i'm not bothering to lay out because it's beyond the scope of this thread.
more accurately it should be "the entry point for being comfortably lower middle class", and however much that costs for the region one lives in.
i'd say 45k is a pretty good number for living here in denver - it's not enough to really save much if you live by yourself, but it's absolutely enough to live by yourself and cover your bills and have what i'd consider an acceptable amount of disposable income.
you wouldn't need to give someone 45k a year living in buttsweat alabama, and would probably need to give a bit more for seattle or new york, but my point is that the US has the economic resource to provide everyone with a minimum standard of living with no negative consequence to its economy.

Committing crimes and getting away with them.

removing the circumstances that lead to crime in the first place is a vastly more effective way of preventing crime than a system of punishment for crime after it's been committed.
so no, that argument really doesn't work.

First of all, "military gear" is a misnomer. Police departments do not have main battle tanks, F/A18s or F21s, or artillery. What they have is crowd control gear, something very necessary in light of widespread rioting and unrest. Of course extremists want police to get rid of those tools, as it would mean they will have an easier time when they decide they want to riot, burn and loot again in one or several US cities.

i consider 'crowd control gear' to be military gear, because it's gear suited for military applications.
the police are supposed to be a civil service and protection organization, not an enforcement arm of the state or land owners.
if there's a riot, the best way to stop the riot would be to address the issues that are causing the riot. short of that, deploy the national guard - that's why the national guard exists.
the police should not be involved in that.

And no, "defund" is not just restricted to gear. They want to drastically cut police budgets and staffing. In some cases, they want outright police and prison abolition.
People like AOC and Cori Bush are dangerous anti-police extremists.

you could not possibly find a way to come up with an offer large enough to bribe me into giving less fucks about your assinine hobby horse bullshit, nor your hit list of personal boner killers, so save yourself the time and bother.

Fewer cops on the beat, and thugs have an easier time thugging.

and how does that change how easy it is to commit a crime?
i get the sense that the overwhelmingly vast majority of crime is investigated after the fact, it is almost never stopped during the commission - though i'll confess up front my attempts to research this came up short, so i can't verify it for certain.
(if you can find any studies on the number of instances stopped mid-act vs. investigated and/or pursued after the fact i'd be quite interested in that data)

 

[bilby]

Robbers and thieves have a strong (but false) belief that they will not get caught.

This belief comes, in large part, from the fact that it's very unlikely that they will get caught in the act. And that remains true even in a severe police state - it's literally impossible to have a large enough police force to make catching such criminals in the act a likely occurrence. Police catch such criminals well after the event, via public assistance, informants, and detective work; And they secure convictions via forensic evidence, not police eyewitness statements.

This misapprehension amongst robbers and thieves about how policing works is shared by stupid non-criminals too, who assume that more cops on the beat would automatically mean less crime.

The fact is that highly visible policing has very little effect on crime; It can be effective in locally reducing crime in the small areas, but it just pushes the crime into the surrounding, less over-patrolled, areas instead.

Wealthy enclaves can therefore be protected to some degree, at great expense, but only at the cost of deflecting crime onto those who leave those enclaves, or who live outside them.

If you want a general reduction in crime, it needs to be made unattractive. And the only demonstrated way to do that is to improve the lives of potential criminals, so that they have proportionally less to gain and more to lose by robbery or theft.

Having lots of police, and harsh sentences for offenders, is a solution that is obvious, reasonable, popular, commonsensical, and completely and demonstrably wrong.

The solution to crime is to make people wealthier. And the easiest way to do that is to give them money.

If it costs $34,000/yr to keep someone in jail, then it's worth paying them up to that sum to not offend. That's equivalent to a full time (40 hour per week) $17/hr job. You could pay people half of that ($325/wk) as a UBI, fully funded by a tiny increase in income taxation, and see crime plummet.

Legalise and commercialise all drugs, and you could raise the tax to pay that UBI from that new industry using taxes similar to those currently levied on alcohol and nicotine.

When what you're currently doing clearly isn't working, calling for more of it is just insanity.

 

[Tigers!]

If you want a general reduction in crime, it needs to be made unattractive. And the only demonstrated way to do that is to improve the lives of potential criminals, so that they have proportionally less to gain and more to lose by robbery or theft.

If that were generally true then why do the 'rich' commit crimes? The proportion of thieves who steal because they are hungry is a very small compared to the overall number of thieves. Thieves steal because they can, want to or don't give a damn about anyone except themselves.

The solution to crime is to make people wealthier. And the easiest way to do that is to give them money.

If it costs $34,000/yr to keep someone in jail, then it's worth paying them up to that sum to not offend. That's equivalent to a full time (40 hour per week) $17/hr job. You could pay people half of that ($325/wk) as a UBI, fully funded by a tiny increase in income taxation, and see crime plummet.

Great. I can now be paid to not do what I am not already doing. Who says crime doesn't pay?

Legalise and commercialise all drugs, and you could raise the tax to pay that UBI from that new industry using taxes similar to those currently levied on alcohol and nicotine.

When what you're currently doing clearly isn't working, calling for more of it is just insanity.

Taxing alcohol and nicotine is clearly not solving the problems causing by those substances. Why would Legalise and commercialise all drugs solve the problems already caused by them?

As you noted

When what you're currently doing clearly isn't working, calling for more of it is just insanity.

 

[prideandfall]

If that were generally true then why do the 'rich' commit crimes?

because humans have a diseased global cultural attitude that there is no such thing as 'enough' - that your existential worth is defined by the excess you accumulate, and so having 30 billion dollars just isn't enough to fill the void inside your consciousness, but maybe 40 billion will do it.

this hollowness becomes exponential the more wealth you have, it seems. i'd be inclined to posit that there is a correlation between those who are soulless empty philosophically depraved losers and those who show extreme wealth-seeking behavior.

 

[Keith&Co.]

If that were generally true then why do the 'rich' commit crimes?

Because the rich don't typically go to jail.

That rich guy that flew his friends and their women into France early in the lockdown? Couldn't understand why they didn't just let him pay the fine and go on with his vacation.
For the very rich, fines are the cost of doing business, not a deterrent.

Or like Trump. Ended up admitting to stealing from charities with his foundation, paid a hefty fine, forbidden from running a charity....not fun, but nothing nearly as uncomfortable as a jail sentence.

 

[bilby]

If that were generally true then why do the 'rich' commit crimes? The proportion of thieves who steal because they are hungry is a very small compared to the overall number of thieves. Thieves steal because they can, want to or don't give a damn about anyone except themselves.

I am talking about robbery and theft. The rich DON'T commit those crimes. You snipped the top of my post, where I hope I made it clear; This is a discussion about housebreaking, burglary and robbery, not fraud, embezzlement, or insider trading. Crime committed by rich people requires different solutions, (although more police on the beat isn't a solution there, either).

Great. I can now be paid to not do what I am not already doing. Who says crime doesn't pay?

You're not already living?

Legalise and commercialise all drugs, and you could raise the tax to pay that UBI from that new industry using taxes similar to those currently levied on alcohol and nicotine.

When what you're currently doing clearly isn't working, calling for more of it is just insanity.

Taxing alcohol and nicotine is clearly not solving the problems causing by those substances.

I didn't say it was - I said that taxes of that kind on other drugs could be a revenue stream to fund a UBI without increasing income taxation.

And legalisation clearly IS solving some of the problems caused by those substances. The problems caused by ILLEGAL alcohol during prohibition were enormous, and were solved by re-legalising alcohol sales. Of course, legalisation doesn't solve ALL problems (and I never said that it solved ANY, other than a shortfall in tax revenues); But it observably does VASTLY more good than harm.

Why would Legalise and commercialise all drugs solve the problems already caused by them?

As you noted

When what you're currently doing clearly isn't working, calling for more of it is just insanity.

So it's a good thing that my actual argument wasn't the strawman you addressed, then.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

thirdly, for the most part the answer to your question is yes. if you took every burglar and repeat-offender petty criminal and just gave them a house or a decent apartment and 45k a year, petty crime would plummet.
you probably wouldn't see an immediate change in social and cultural behavior from that segment of the population, because unfortunately humans tend to be highly susceptible to behavior and attitudes learned up to their early teens and it's extremely difficult for them to unlearn those, but within a generation or two you'd see a radical change in that portion of society.

Disagree--the primary driver of petty crime is drugs. Providing them money would just end up being more drugs.

Please provide evidence for this extravagant claim. And note, evidence of people busted in "petty sale" does not support this claim, as that is petty crime done explicitly NOT for drugs, but rather for money. Nor purchases, which similarly do not say anything about the sorts of crimes that have victims.

A quick search turns up:

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2017/06/28/drugs/

21% of prisoners are there because of crime to get drugs. Note that this will way undercount the percentage as petty crime earns a much lighter sentence than serious crime.

 

[Jarhyn]

Please provide evidence for this extravagant claim. And note, evidence of people busted in "petty sale" does not support this claim, as that is petty crime done explicitly NOT for drugs, but rather for money. Nor purchases, which similarly do not say anything about the sorts of crimes that have victims.

A quick search turns up:

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2017/06/28/drugs/

21% of prisoners are there because of crime to get drugs. Note that this will way undercount the percentage as petty crime earns a much lighter sentence than serious crime.

That says 21% of crime is to get drugs. That's 1/5th. Now, without the visibility of the complete breakdown it's unsure but my guess is that the other 80% is for money. That would probably be more apt as a "primary" driver, I would say. Not even half of property crime is for drugs. I would also like to see what percentage of that is "incarcerated for stealing from a liquor store".

 

[Loren Pechtel]

thirdly, for the most part the answer to your question is yes. if you took every burglar and repeat-offender petty criminal and just gave them a house or a decent apartment and 45k a year, petty crime would plummet.
you probably wouldn't see an immediate change in social and cultural behavior from that segment of the population, because unfortunately humans tend to be highly susceptible to behavior and attitudes learned up to their early teens and it's extremely difficult for them to unlearn those, but within a generation or two you'd see a radical change in that portion of society.

Disagree--the primary driver of petty crime is drugs. Providing them money would just end up being more drugs.

so legalize drugs and make them easily accessible and affordable, and then if people are spending a portion of their yearly stipend on drugs it's just cycling through the economy as normal.
bonus is that if drugs aren't illegal, they're longer petty criminals for doing drugs. boom, decrease in crime.

Yup. I can see no benefit to society from having drugs be illegal. The experience from Amsterdam shows that we should prohibit advertising them, though.

(I would not utterly prohibit ads, just highly restricted: A store may have an add of a simple list of items/prices, purely price-based advertising. Within an area devoted solely to a certain drug there is no restriction on ads. I originally said this before the internet was a thing, these days I would permit a government registry where you can opt in to ads for specific drugs. I would apply the same rules to alcohol and tobacco, and I would define beer/wine/distilled as three separate drugs. The basic concept is you must take an action to show your desire for a drug before you can be exposed to any ads for it. And, yes, price-only ads for drugs are a thing now--we have a little scrap of Paiute land in town, part cemetery, part cigarette store. Being tribal land they escape a lot of taxes, thus they'll run ads that are the name/address of the store and a listing of major brands of cigarettes with prices.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

so legalize drugs and make them easily accessible and affordable,

I think marijuana should be fully legalized. Other drugs, like meth, cocaine or heroin, should not be fully legal, but we need a different approach - e.g. mere possession should not be a crime.

Anything we deem too dangerous to make fully legal should be available to addicts by prescription and the law explicitly state that addiction is a valid reason for a prescription. England used to do that with heroin--and had very few addicts because of it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Please provide evidence for this extravagant claim. And note, evidence of people busted in "petty sale" does not support this claim, as that is petty crime done explicitly NOT for drugs, but rather for money. Nor purchases, which similarly do not say anything about the sorts of crimes that have victims.

A quick search turns up:

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2017/06/28/drugs/

21% of prisoners are there because of crime to get drugs. Note that this will way undercount the percentage as petty crime earns a much lighter sentence than serious crime.

That says 21% of crime is to get drugs. That's 1/5th. Now, without the visibility of the complete breakdown it's unsure but my guess is that the other 80% is for money. That would probably be more apt as a "primary" driver, I would say. Not even half of property crime is for drugs. I would also like to see what percentage of that is "incarcerated for stealing from a liquor store".

You ignored the part where I explained this would severely undercount the actual percentage.

 

[Jarhyn]

That says 21% of crime is to get drugs. That's 1/5th. Now, without the visibility of the complete breakdown it's unsure but my guess is that the other 80% is for money. That would probably be more apt as a "primary" driver, I would say. Not even half of property crime is for drugs. I would also like to see what percentage of that is "incarcerated for stealing from a liquor store".

You ignored the part where I explained this would severely undercount the actual percentage.

You seem to have forgot my entire actual argument. The study says a number, I expect that those incarcerated for drug reasons would be the most likely to be caught. So severely over counted, perhaps.

See, I can wave my hands too. Either take it at face value or accept peer review.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

That says 21% of crime is to get drugs. That's 1/5th. Now, without the visibility of the complete breakdown it's unsure but my guess is that the other 80% is for money. That would probably be more apt as a "primary" driver, I would say. Not even half of property crime is for drugs. I would also like to see what percentage of that is "incarcerated for stealing from a liquor store".

You ignored the part where I explained this would severely undercount the actual percentage.

You seem to have forgot my entire actual argument. The study says a number, I expect that those incarcerated for drug reasons would be the most likely to be caught. So severely over counted, perhaps.

See, I can wave my hands too. Either take it at face value or accept peer review.

I'm taking it at face value for what it is--but pointing out that since the people in for property crime have lighter sentences than the people in for violent crime that the violent ones will be substantially overcounted by the method they used.

 

[Jarhyn]

You seem to have forgot my entire actual argument. The study says a number, I expect that those incarcerated for drug reasons would be the most likely to be caught. So severely over counted, perhaps.

See, I can wave my hands too. Either take it at face value or accept peer review.

I'm taking it at face value for what it is--but pointing out that since the people in for property crime have lighter sentences than the people in for violent crime that the violent ones will be substantially overcounted by the method they used.

You seem to forget about three strikes laws.

And besides, this even is discussing among people in specifically for property crime, as a distribution. Page 7 or something?

You claim it's drugs. They break down that less than half of property crime is drugs, specifically the property crime, if my cursory examination of the data, and to be fair I skimmed, is correct.

That number wouldn't be misrepresented by their method. "Of property crime" so much, (40%?) Was of pursuit of drugs. Or maybe I read a table wrong. And like, 1% of certain traffic crimes were motivated by acquiring drugs, or something? There's a story there, and I really want to know it. I bet it happened in Florida.

 

[SimpleDon]

Breakdown In Civil Order

Ah, old-fashioned policing works just fine. See New York City 1994 - 2013.

The decrease in crime over the period you quote had little to do with "old-fashion policing" and everything to do with a demographic change of fewer males 18 to 26-years old in the population because those are who commit street crimes.

<<snip>>​

I am not certain how increasing the corporate crime investigations will eliminate random shootings? Perhaps you could elaborate?

Breakdown In Civil Order

Crime actually has probably increased dramatically in that period in the dollar amount stolen because the other segment of the population who commit crimes has increased, the upper class. But we don't police these crimes with the vigor that we apply to street crimes. Witness the reduction in the policing by the IRS or the near-total, only one person, lack of criminal indictments for the criminal acts that caused the Great Financial Crisis and Recession of 2008.

Even if you argue that the upper class has gained their dramatic increase in income and wealth legally you can't deny that much of it was because the wealthy have dramatically increased their control of the government over the fifty years of neoliberalism to make more of what was previously illegal legal. Witness the reduced banking regulation leading directly to the Great Recession of 2008, the increase in the money in politics due to the lifting of any campaign contribution regulations, the reduced control of the stock market because of Congress, single-minded dedication to deregulation -- the provision that the government can't impose any regulation or oversight on derivatives,

So while the increased scrutiny of the corporations and the income tax forms of the very wealthy won't reduce common street crimes there are many other reasons to do these things. Allowing corporations to form cartels, monopolies, and monosomies result in reduced competition and higher prices. Turning a blind eye to income tax fraud by corporations and high-income individuals increase the national debt, reduces the money available for needed programs, and erodes the rule of law. Allowing this level of corruption to go unchecked leaves the losers in society susceptible to exploitation by a make-believe populist, putting an incompetent in charge of the government in times of a grave threat to the country.

Damn, man. Do people feel safe on the streets? Are they concerned about random assaults/shootings? Who cares about that, right? Eat the rich.

Of course, I care about the random assaults and shootings on the streets. And people are right to feel unsafe on the streets, I don't give those responsible a pass even if the violence stems from righteous protest, ala BLM rioters and looters. I don't give a pass to criminals in the upper class.

Most of my post was to Tigers! I have to write my posts in another program, Sublime text, and I somehow got my two posts combined. I apologize. Tigers! post I was responding to is shown above.

 

[fromderinside]

Of course the issue here is that "assist, rehabilitate and provide" is very very expensive. Far more expensive than "assess, put down threats, arrest". And there are very few communities that can afford $150 an hour psychologist cops in their community.

Evidence for that alleged great expense: {}

What is CAHOOTS? | White Bird Clinic

A November 2016 study published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine estimated that 20% to 50% of fatal encounters with law enforcement involved an individual with a mental illness. The CAHOOTS model demonstrates that these fatal encounters are not inevitable. Last year, out of a total of roughly 24,000 CAHOOTS calls, police backup was requested only 150 times.

The cost savings are considerable. The CAHOOTS program budget is about $2.1 million annually, while the combined annual budgets for the Eugene and Springfield police departments are $90 million. In 2017, the CAHOOTS teams answered 17% of the Eugene Police Department’s overall call volume. The program saves the city of Eugene an estimated $8.5 million in public safety spending annually.

Yes, that site claims that that alternative to policing *saves* money. It may seem like gross heresy to many right-wingers and some centrists, but I'm not surprised.

For your information: Whitebird clinic mission statement https://whitebirdclinic.org/

I'm posting this because 20% of police deaths are mentally ill persons. It is obvious that those who serve the mentally ill need to be on the quick dial list of police departments, perhaps even on the budgets of police departments.

My guess that services for poor and homeless need also be upgraded to police resources.

More or less what I posted above and lpetrich posted above is the meaning of the unfortunate 'defund the police' slogan.

Thank you very much Derec, Trump flag wavers and the r savant media sources and politicizers for making sure these facts were buried. Arseholes. FU very much.

 

[RVonse]

In Seattle community policing means letting communities and neighborhoods taking care of crime and drugs.

What does "take care" means? Vendettas?

Seattle already seems to be a pretty lawless place, and it is likely to get much worse.

Couple attacked, man killed while retrieving stolen items from Seattle homeless encampment

this is a fine example of something i have been saying for many, many years: the myth of the 'self made man' in america is just that, a myth.
if you have money, property, wealth, possessions, whatever... you don't have it because you earned it. you only have it because everyone else decided to let you have it.

In the capitalist economy, you get rich if you provide value to others. And yes, others are very willing to give you their wealth in exchange for the value you provided making their lives better.

there is a cabal of political and economic fascists in america who evidently are completely unaware of the existence of the french revolution.
if you shit on the lower class long enough, eventually the lower class will have a "let's chop everyone's heads off" parade.

if you want social stability and rule of law and to get to have your plasma TV and new car without fear of it being stolen or fear of you being attacked and murdered, stop funding police and the military and supporting austerity and get on vastly expanding social services... and do it fucking fast.

america is on a fast track to have its upper class be literally destroyed, which is an outcome i personally welcome but would entail an awful lot of whining from an awful lot of fucking pathetic dipshits that i'd be forced to listen to.

I agree with you.

But the very first Seattle, and other coastal cities should be doing is getting the price of property lower. It is the price of property that has caused this problem in the first place. You get the price of house where it should be and everything else goes away.

 

[RVonse]

Two lefties come upon a person who has just been robbed and beaten unconscious on the sidewalk. One lefty turns to the other and says: “We need to find who did this, and help them.”

It actually does sounds like something "Jesus" might have said in the new testament.

 

[RVonse]

So why should taxpayers foot the bill for a person who refuses to take personal responsibility for their life?

because they can, and with zero impact on the quality of life of anyone paying into it.
rather than basing my perception of the concept of civilization as being an apparatus which exists to facilitate commerce, elitism, and exclusion i view civilization as a mechanism for improving the quality of life of everyone who lives.

humans are herd animals, and civilization is just a herd that kept on growing - yes, because of the inconceivable size of it the original function is buried deep under layers of complication, the pragmatic compromises required for a social construct on this scale to even exist.
but at the end of the day, philosophically speaking, the entire point of civilization is to improve the lives of humans.
as such, i find it not only valid and warranted but entirely in keeping with the purpose of the enterprise in the first place to A. set a minimum standard of living that our technological progress has facilitated, and B. just give that to anyone who can't or won't acquire it on their own, because we have so much excess resources doing so is an irrelevant pittance.

rhetorically, i'd turn the question around: why should taxpayers and consumers foot the bill for people who refuse to take responsibility for their failed business models?
the economic structure of this country has made buying a house impossible for many and so they rent. rent prices have skyrocketed simply because "they can". people are becoming homeless because a huge swath of the economy is a scam predicated on trapping people in cycles of poverty in order to supply cheap labor, and thus they have no options for resource acquisition except for ones which are inadequate to allow for basic standards of living.

so, ok... fudrucker's needs to underpay their employees to the point where their employees can't survive in order to stay in business.
why should their employees suffer for a company that doesn't take responsibility for its business model not being economically viable?

In principal I agree with you. But I still say this can and should be fixed with lower property values first. Doing that first because paying people in need could cause a moral hazard. It is a fine line between motivating people not to commit crime without motivating them not to produce anything in their lives.

 

[RVonse]

How idealistically naive to the fact that that VAST majority of homelessness is by intentional choice of a damaged mental state, often brought on by severe drug addiction.

Hmmm, I wouldn't go so far as to say a VAST majority for LA County. Certainly a majority, probably quite a large majority fall into that category. There are plenty of veterans that are being denied assistance that are camped outside the grounds. But yeah, the majority are junkies and mental cases. It's not people that have fallen on hard times and need a helping hand.

Is it the chicken before the egg or vice versa? When you are down and out, that's also when you are more likely to become a junky.