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Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by lmilcin on Sunday July 25, 2021 @11:10AM (#27949699)
I always wonder what is the point of progress if we can't use it to solve basic problems like people not having food, shelter or access to basic medical help.
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by yarky on Sunday July 25, 2021 @11:23AM (#27949807)
I'd guess it's all about individual vs collective progress. I've realized that places with homogeneous demographics (e.g. nordics) are usually those interested in solving what you call basic problems while the focus tends towards individual progress wherever people look less alike.

I guess there must be well understood tribe/ethnic reasons to explain that.

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by lmilcin on Sunday July 25, 2021 @11:31AM (#27949874)
Nordic countries are kinda special in this regard. Historically, you were very unlikely to survive in northern climate on your own. Being part of community was necessary prerequisite for survival.

I have been on couple trips to northern Norway/Sweden. People there did not even have locks in their houses, it wasn't even necessary. I wonder if it changed now with advent of migrations from eastern Europe and Middle East.

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by jacquesm on Sunday July 25, 2021 @11:35AM (#27949905)
Same in Northern Canada. When buying a house there usually at the end of the financial part of the transfer of a house you get the keys. The previous owners rather sheepishly admitted they didn't have them. Lawyer pipes up 'then we'll have to change the locks'. Owners say that's going to be a lot of work because the doors never had any locks in the first place. We kept it like that.
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by wccrawford on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:23PM (#27950401)
I can't even imagine not changes the locks on a house you just bought. (Unless, as in your case, locks aren't even desired.) Even if the previous owner had no malicious intent, they might have accidentally kept a key that someone else could get ahold of... Or they might have given out a key, etc. There's no good reason to avoid it, IMO.
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by wincy on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:56PM (#27950768)
As a middle point, I’ve been living at my house in the Midwest for 4 years now and while we have locks, I didn’t changed them out from the previous owners. I suppose they could have some extra keys but I trust that they don’t and won’t come into my house (and unless they’re playing a really long game, they haven’t, and the previous owners live fairly close as we got some letters from their child’s daycare accidentally sent to us).
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by bittercynic on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:32PM (#27950482)
It's also a fun thing to do.

The re-key kit is only a few bucks, and it's a pretty simple process, and you get to enjoy the ingenuity contained in the lock while you work on it.

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by psadri on Sunday July 25, 2021 @11:50AM (#27950054)
What makes you think Middle Eastern or Eastern Europeans specifically would change anything?
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by lmilcin on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:17PM (#27950326)
The last time I paid attention to statistics, in Norway the migrants were a small minority of inhabitants but large majority of all crimes.

As a note, the people who like to "do crime" for some reason are not willing to move up north and prefer to stay in Oslo.

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by Popegaf on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:35PM (#27950522)
What statistics? Are there stats on convicted criminals by country of origin in Norway?
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by karencarits on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:47PM (#27950653)
Sure: https://www.ssb.no/sosiale-forhold-og-kriminalitet/artikler-...

Regarding countries; when adjusting for gender and age, three countries have > 100 offenders per 1000 immigrant (table 3.3), namely Kosovo, Somalia and Iraq. The lowest rate is 26.8 for the Netherlands (or 10.1 for Oceania, but data not available per country).

Note that immigrants, in general, were underrepresented for some crimes (damage to property, drug-related) and overrepresented for others (ratios): 1.73 for theft, 1.5 for violence and abuse, 1.2 for trafic. When adjusted for age, gender, place of living, and occupational status, immigrants from Africa were overrepresented by 174% and 101% for violence/abuse and offending public order/integrity, respectively (p. 34).

From the abstract:

> [W]e use data on all immigrants, Norwegian-born persons with two immigrant parents and people in the remaining population who were 15 years or older and permanent residents as of January 1, 2010, and explore the proportion in each group that was charged with at least one offense committed between 2010 and 2013. The results show that both immigrants and Norwegian-born persons with two immigrant parents are overrepresented as registered offenders, with the rate of overrepresentation being highest in the latter group. Among immigrants, the overrepresentation is most substantial among family immigrants and refugees, as well as for individuals from African countries. For Asian immigrants the picture is more complex. Overall, Asian immigrants are overrepresented. However, while immigrants from certain Asian countries are similarly overrepresented, other Asian countries are underrepresented. Individuals from Western Europe and North America, as well as education immigrants, are underrepresented as well. The pattern is, with some minor exceptions, relatively similar for Norwegian-born persons with two immigrant parents. The patterns of over- and underrepresentation also apply to most types of offenses, except for drug offenses where most immigrant groups are underrepresented. Overall the overrepresentation is substantially reduced when we account for differences in age and gender, especially in the groups with the highest rates of overrepresentation – including Norwegian-born persons with immigrant parents. Place of residence and employment have limited explanatory power once the demographic differences are accounted for. For most immigrant groups a certain level overrepresentation persists also after sociodemographic characteristics are taken into account. It is, however, important to stress that the vast majority of individuals in all population groups were not registered as offenders during the period we consider.

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by aaron-santos on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:45PM (#27950625)
To understand the parent commenter's question (in a US-centric way) you have to examine the political-economic parallels, historical and contemporary, between the US and Nordic countries and decide whether the same structures and conditions exist or not. Presumably, the parent commenter was hinting at the way by which US elites in the 1600s developed a theological basis for social-economic stratification which divided and maligned non-property holders in order to maintain the status quo the effects of which reverberate to this day. Nordic countries, being perceived by the US as being racially homogeneous presumably wouldn't have be susceptible to the same divisive forces, but with shifting racial demographics, inch themselves closer to those same initial conditions.

To answer the original question, it depends on the likelihood that social divisiveness foments either spontaneously or cultivated purposefully. Someone with more knowledge on topics like the Sweden Democrats, Norway's Progress Party and their progress toward social division would be better at addressing it than me.

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by zo1 on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:03PM (#27950159)
Also curious why he forgot about all the migration from Africa. Everyone locks their doors here in Africa and builds cages around their houses effectively.
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by bsanr2 on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:13PM (#27950278)
As a point of comparison, North America has harsh winters that can be difficult to survive if one is unprepared. Many (a majority of?) early European colonists died within a year of arrival for this reason. Indigenous peoples were instrumental in their coming to understand the cultural and behavioral changes that needed to be made for Europeans to survive in America at the technological level they were at. This did not foster a communal spirit, however; the general rule seems to be that European diseases decimated Indigenous populations, and many (though not all) of the survivors were slaughtered in land disputes. Curiously, there are cases up and down the East Coast of European-Native American integration; it would be interesting to see why they were different, and where the tipping point between true communal integration and simple appopriation is when survival is on the line.
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by kurofune on Sunday July 25, 2021 @11:43AM (#27949994)
That also seemed to be the norm in northern Spain not so long ago, none of my grandparents (maternal/paternal side) locked their doors, even at night.
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by rhino369 on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:11PM (#27950255)
People don’t lock their doors in many parts of America either like safe suburbs.

My house growing up couldn’t really even be properly locked up. You could lock the door but the first floor windows and sliding door on the deck didn’t lock at all.

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by wincy on Sunday July 25, 2021 @01:00PM (#27950806)
If I notice the door is unlocked before bed I’ll lock it, but my neighborhood is very safe and I’m sure the locks often go unlocked before we go to sleep.

Before we moved here after our daughter was born, we lived in a rougher part of town and would instinctively lock the doors any time we went in our out. Our neighbor got robbed while she was at work, and my wife was at home when it happened, so we were very cautious. As a last resort we had a gun, which luckily we never had occasion to use.

It’s amazing how moving 10 miles away was such a huge stress reducer for me and my family.

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by throwaway09223 on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:59PM (#27950804)
I haven't ever locked my door unless I'm leaving for a several day trip.
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by ekianjo on Sunday July 25, 2021 @11:46AM (#27950014)
That was also the case in France at least till the 50/60s
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by bluGill on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:17PM (#27950332)
It wasn't that long ago when there were only 4 unique keys in the world and a thief had a skeleton key that would replace them all. In those days nobody locked their door because there was no point. As lock technology got better people in places of crime installed good locks and told their friends to do the same. Most people have no need to lock their door, but nobody knows if they are the exception.
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by heikkilevanto on Sunday July 25, 2021 @01:49PM (#27951297)
With all respect, I call bullshit to your "4 unique keys" theory. Locks have a long and varied history all around the world. There is no way a single skeleton key would even fit into an Arabic, Chinese, Indian, Venetian, Swiss, or German lock.
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by bluGill on Sunday July 25, 2021 @10:39PM (#27954970)
For practical purposes you are wrong. In any given city 4 door locks is about right. There are padlocks and other types of lock, but the subject here is door locks in one location so4 is close enough and was the truth in the US where my grandparents grew up.

Until not long ago all locks were bad

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by adventured on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:08PM (#27950229)
Where I grew up in the US - Appalachia - in the 1980s and 1990s it was common to not lock your house or car. Crime was rare, murder was non-existent, homelessness didn't exist, and drugs weren't a problem yet. In my neighborhood everybody knew everybody else, all working class types (mixture of middle class and lower middle class mostly), it simply wasn't much of a concern.

Small groups of people with intimacy and a culture of low rates of crime. Violence or crime would make you an immediate outcast.

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by Hasnep on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:14PM (#27950297)
I'm not sure about that because places like Japan, Korea and the UAE are very ethnically homogeneous, but my impression is that they are quite individualistic. Although from skimming Wikipedia, Korea and Japan have extremely low levels of homelessness so maybe there is a link!
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by ketzu on Sunday July 25, 2021 @01:19PM (#27951013)
Korea and Japan are usually some of the first examples when discussing individualistic vs collectivistic cultures, where they are examples for colectivistic cultures.
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by michaelscott on Sunday July 25, 2021 @01:46PM (#27951273)
I think half the success of this approach is due to culture as well. I know in my home country, an approach like this would definitely not work and you'd be stuck with unemployed squatters with slow legal recourse to get rid of them (and if you have to get rid of them are you really successful in the first place?).
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by fighterpilot on Sunday July 25, 2021 @11:58AM (#27950111)
Most definitely. You see this effect within Amazon fulfilment centers too. More ethnic diversity is correlated with less willingness to unionize on an inter-center basis.
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by bluGill on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:21PM (#27950378)
Unions depend on a feeling of we are all together, so diversity is one possible Union killer. There are others, and unions need other things, but a sense of togetherness is part of it
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by baron816 on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:39PM (#27950558)
Unions have also historically been pretty racist--explicitly excluding anyone who wasn't a white male. That's probably less the case today, but they're still dominated by white, socially conservative men.
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by eplanit on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:38PM (#27950545)
That's actually a good anti-diversity argument (not saying that's necessarily your intent). Japan is another, similar example re: "solving what you call basic problems".
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by ASalazarMX on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:02PM (#27950153)
The bigger the country, the more diverse their population is, and empathy is less generalized. Colonizers used ethnic cleansing as a workaround, but as the population grows, it starts differentiating again.

It seems nations, like people, can get too big for their own health.

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by throwaway-x123 on Sunday July 25, 2021 @11:43AM (#27949989)
Lets consider more common case with working poor. At the same time we see high income inequality. We see unemployment. We see that productivity is a few times higher than it was in 1930. What is the solution? I think you know it, it was done once, 100 years ago. The work day was reduced to 8 hours/day. It could be reduced now to say 4 hours/day. No wage cut. In the past, who reduced the work day? The workers organized and reduced the work day. Why they do not do that? I think they do not know that they can work less. They still think they need to work more to produce all the food, more houses, etc. While in reality they produce income inequality, lots of bullshit jobs and unemployment.

You can help, agitate, organize, join union for shorter workday same wage.

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by ericd on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:12PM (#27950264)
There are also far fewer barriers to working with people around the world who don't demand nearly so much as you are, than there were in 1930. We could put some up, but it's not as just simple as saying "we want twice the hourly wage and half the workday".

Cheap international flights, instant high fidelity telecommunication, standardized container shipping, and streamlined trade with low trade barriers are just a few of the things that have made it less necessary to find workers locally.

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by vidarh on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:04PM (#27950188)
A point on the 8 hour work day, because a lot of people will instantly think "Ford", is that it took decades of union campaigning, and quite a few dead and injured in clashes with police and Pinkerton agents, to start getting traction. By the time Ford shortened his working hours, the unions had already gotten hours cut a lot and put in a huge amount of effort changing the narrative on working hours.

Most people are also unaware that May 1st as the international day for labour demonstrations is in part in commemoration of the Chicago Haymarket Massacre, and as the starting point for a renewed fight for the 8-hour working day in its aftermath, on the request of the AFL president at the time.

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by hereforphone on Sunday July 25, 2021 @11:19AM (#27949766)
It's almost like the problem's harder than it seems at first glance or something
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by kiba on Sunday July 25, 2021 @11:28AM (#27949852)
The most difficult problems in life are sometime political, not physics or technical challenges.
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by lmilcin on Sunday July 25, 2021 @11:36AM (#27949915)
Not sure why you are getting downvoted, obviously you are right.

Now, the political problem reflects us as people. If people wanted the problem solved, politicians would find a way to solve it for the sake of their own interest.

The way I understand it is that most people are really selfish in that they only care about themselves and maybe family and friends.

And it doesn't get any better because people are more and more focusing on themselves and getting cut off from community.

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by jeffrallen on Sunday July 25, 2021 @11:22AM (#27949794)
The first job is buy-in. When a society collectively chooses to solve some difficult problem, it gets solved, no matter how hard it is. Apollo program or homelessness.
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by patrec on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:00PM (#27950126)
Back in reality, the majority of society was opposed to the Apollo program (even after the successful landing support was only lukewarm) and I have no difficulty thinking of difficult problems with enormous societal buy-in and vast funding that proved intractable.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/moond...

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by tedunangst on Sunday July 25, 2021 @11:56AM (#27950097)
When was the last time somebody stepped on the moon? If that's success criteria, we just need to stick all the homeless in a hotel for a night, declare the problem solved, then kick them out in the morning.
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by bradleyjg on Sunday July 25, 2021 @11:47AM (#27950024)
It depends on the kind of problem. An engineering challenge, even a really difficult one, is something that can be attacked with effort. Changing human beings is far far more difficult. Perhaps impossible on timescales less than generations.

We’ve had societies that really wanted to stop people from using mind altering substances, agree with that goal or not it was something that multiple societies choose to try to solve and mostly they failed. The ones that partly succeeded were the ones that used heinously brutal methods.

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by umvi on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:33PM (#27950497)
I don't buy it. Apollo almost failed many times by administrative churn and lack of public support. Apollo was successful because of passionate engineers working on the problem not by public support
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by ben_w on Sunday July 25, 2021 @03:31PM (#27952182)
Their passion helped, but it consumed 4.4% of the US federal budget at peak and might well have been cancelled if JFK hadn’t been assassinated — for basically the same reason no human has returned there since Apollo or gone to Mars at all, and for the same reason Space Station Freedom was cut back and morphed into the ISS — or if NASAs work hadn’t been deliberately spread through most states to make it a pork barrel for senators looking to boost their own state using the Federal budget.

It’s basically only now that we have a new space race run by absurdly rich space-nerds that we don’t need active public support, merely that the criticism is limited to grumbling.

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by lmilcin on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:50PM (#27950700)
The engineers did not pay for the project or their salaries. And certainly they weren't working for free or even under market rate.
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by umvi on Sunday July 25, 2021 @02:23PM (#27951568)
The salaried engineers worked way more hours than a 9-5 and were not paid overtime AFAIK
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by lmilcin on Sunday July 25, 2021 @03:25PM (#27952123)
Which is almost every company I have worked for for the past 20 years.

Listen, these guys were very good, dedicated engineers.

But to say they did this without public support is stupid, because they were paid for from public money in the first place.

The public support comes in many ways. Just because some people didn't like the idea doesn't mean there was no public support.

The ultimate public support is the government, which is officials elected by... wait for it... THE PUBLIC.

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by umvi on Sunday July 25, 2021 @05:16PM (#27952992)
> The ultimate public support is the government, which is officials elected by... wait for it... THE PUBLIC.

Well if that's your definition of "public support", Apollo just barely had enough to succeed. The Lyndon B. Johnson Administration that came after JFK was actively defunding Apollo and trying to dismantle the space program.

Back to my original point, society didn't "collectively decide" to make moon landings happen. JFK made a few bold claims to boost his public image against Russia and his successors tried to dismantle said space program. If it weren't for the tenacious engineers and leaders at NASA, moon landings would not have happened. In other words, if the engineers/leaders at NASA were not passionate enough, LBJ would have succeeded at dismantling Apollo.

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by orzig on Sunday July 25, 2021 @11:32AM (#27949888)
Or cancer! Oh oops
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by jeffrallen on Sunday July 25, 2021 @11:36AM (#27949912)
5-year survival rates have improved — for some cancers — in adolescents and young adults https://sph.unc.edu/sph-news/5-year-survival-rates-have-impr...
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by ben_w on Sunday July 25, 2021 @11:36AM (#27949920)
Cancer is many things rather than one, and some of those things have been solved.
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by FeepingCreature on Sunday July 25, 2021 @11:54AM (#27950079)
So's homelessness.
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by lmilcin on Sunday July 25, 2021 @11:37AM (#27949933)
Cancer is a hugely complex problem. It is not a single attack vector like a virus.

But we are still making great progress on it, just think that the best vaccines for Covid came as fruit of cancer research.

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by im_down_w_otp on Sunday July 25, 2021 @11:23AM (#27949806)
Certainly half of it is. Unfortunately, it's not the half of the problem that progress is helping with since we're not for a lack of productive output or a dearth of needless waste.
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by runarberg on Sunday July 25, 2021 @11:28AM (#27949846)
Nah, these are two separate problems. First is the technological problem of producing enough food, building material, medicine, etc. Then there is the problem of the political class not unwilling to fund infrastructure and projects to put this technology in use.

Think of it like a software team that has excellent developers but terrible devops. The developers have long long since fixed many of the bugs and implemented most of the features, but the devops is slow, corrupt, and incompetent so very few of the features actually make it to production.

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by lmilcin on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:06PM (#27950200)
> Nah, these are two separate problems. First is the technological problem of producing enough food, building material, medicine, etc.

There is no technological problem. We are already wasting more food that would be necessary to feed people who are starving.

Even USSR, at the height of its inefficiency, was able to build housing for most of its inhabitants. It wasn't palaces but it did its job.

And when we need we can somehow find a way to crank out vaccine to vaccinate entire countries. And these are given out for free (of course, we pay for them in taxes, but still it can be done...)

> Then there is the problem of the political class not unwilling

I think you meant "willing".

Here, this is the problem.

When you say it is "political class", what you really say it is not your problem. And this is the cause of why this is not getting solved.

Because the problem is really you and other people like you who think it is not their problem.

If the people decided it is a problem worth solving and supported it with their votes, the "political class" would follow and solve the problem.

The "political class" responds to what is on peoples minds and to what people want. If people decide to spend their focus quabbling over building big walls or election results or vaccine efficacy, guess what is not getting solved? Anything else isn't getting solved.

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by inglor_cz on Sunday July 25, 2021 @01:20PM (#27951023)
In USSR and many other countries of the Soviet Bloc, it was also illegal not to work.

Exceptions applied (mothers with young kids, registered artists), but otherwise this was enforced and if you stayed out of work for a certain period and didn't have a valid employer stamp in your papers, you would be chucked into prison for Parasitism (that was the name of the crime).

As a result, the Bloc had almost no visible homelessness, but this kind of solution would probably not fly in the West.

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by lmilcin on Sunday July 25, 2021 @01:31PM (#27951119)
I am certainly not defending USSR.

Just showing that there is no need for technological progress to build a lot of housing from public budget, only willingness to do it.

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by mantas on Monday July 26, 2021 @02:19AM (#27956265)
> Even USSR, at the height of its inefficiency, was able to build housing for most of its inhabitants. It wasn't palaces but it did its job.

Roof over the head sure does the job. But in exchange a big portion of USSR population lived in essentially shared housing. You get a room and shared amenities (shared kitchen, shared shower, shared WC). In most career paths it would take a decade or more to be eligible for an apartment. And that apartment would be tiny. Got a kid? Great, you go up the queue and you get 1 room (kitchen + room, no living room) apartment! Got 2 kids? Nice, you get 2 rooms (not 2 bedrooms).

Of course, in some career paths it was much more comfy. A nuclear power plant built in bumfucknowhere? Well, anybody willing to go there even for an unqualified job gets a super spacious (compared to above) apartment on arrival. In exchange someone in a big city with no kids may be stuck in shared housing whole life with no chance to have his own apartment.

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by runarberg on Tuesday July 27, 2021 @07:17PM (#27978748)
Doesn’t sound that much different from today’s Europe or North America. Except low skilled workers in low payed career paths get sub-par living conditions irregardless of family size.

Perhaps the only difference is that low payed workers in Europe and North America have the option to live far away from their work and suffer long commute hours instead of the small living quarters. Although that option is starting to feel like it is forced upon us now as even the tiniest of apartments are also out of reach for normal working families in big cities.

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by amalcon on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:51PM (#27950716)
The technological problem (assuming it exists, which I tend to agree it does not) is in logistics, not in production.
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by runarberg on Sunday July 25, 2021 @02:59PM (#27951883)
That feels like an excuse a politician would make. Logistics is never a real problem that halts execution. Yes it is often a hard problem and is often done wrong, resulting in things getting done slowly and inefficiently. However it is seldom the reason for nothing being done at all. E.g. usually we don’t wait months or years until the logistics problem has been solved.

The technological problem of feeding and housing every human on earth has been solved many times over. The logistics of distributing the available food and shelter to those that need is poorly designed and needs an overhaul. This is a political problem and can only be fixed with the political class that is seemingly unwilling.

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by runarberg on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:28PM (#27950444)
Being an immigrant and not allowed to vote, it is not fair to claim I’m responsible for the political class.

Also public opinion rarely results in policy. Most Americans for example favor spending on green infrastructure to tackle the climate crisis, most Americans favor a more universal health care system, etc. yet the political class is hesitant.

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by lmilcin on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:53PM (#27950743)
Being an immigrant you are in a special position. In most countries people do have power to change things, if enough of them want to.

There are some exceptions like China or various regimes.

But even Chinese Communist Party is very scared to allow their population to exchange knowledge freely, for fear they can just coordinate and decide together.

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by crisdux on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:50PM (#27950703)
We have solved those issues for the vast majority of the country! Heck we provide all of that and more. Now we are even giving welfare payments to middle and upper middle income families(in the form of an enhanced child tax credit).
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by gmadsen on Sunday July 25, 2021 @11:54AM (#27950078)
because those problems involve messy parts of the human experience. math/physics, basic science can be pretty divorced from human sociology/psychology/etc.

you don't need to think of the 2nd/3rd/4th order effects on society if you prove some theorem in number theory.

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by ithinkso on Sunday July 25, 2021 @02:13PM (#27951487)
I think it comes down to 'I work to have what I have, why others should have things for free'. Even though the things you get for working are good and you have a great life, and the free things are shit but let you at least survive just barely, it's still too much. 'If I work to have a great life, those that don't are not eligible for anything, not even the smallest things' and then you can complain about homelessness in your area because it's more important to be able to complain than to solve the issue and get rid of the issue to complain about
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by endisneigh on Sunday July 25, 2021 @11:49AM (#27950047)
you could make a strong argument that humanity has barely progressed socially in spite of vast technological development
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by ashtonkem on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:04PM (#27950175)
I’d argue that progress and “people not having food, shelter, or access to basic medical help” are definitionally incompatible.
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by panic on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:03PM (#27950169)
What we think of as 'progress' depends on a lot of dangerous and unpleasant labor. It would be difficult to get people to do this labor without the the threat of homelessness and starvation.
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by sokoloff on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:11PM (#27950259)
Perhaps viewed differently: providing everyone with food, water, power, housing, and medical care takes a lot of unpleasant and coordinated effort and that needs to be paid for somehow.
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by bsanr2 on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:24PM (#27950410)
There are many historical examples of people participating in less-than-ideal labor situations because they were well-compensated and saw that their work would lead to greater prosperity for their community and country. The carrot was enough and the stick superfluous.

Capitalists often fall prey to the notion that hard and productive work isn't being performed unless someone is sacrificing their health or safety or happiness; that's wrong. We can do these things and provide a good life for the people doing them, too. In some cases this will mean that the doing will be its value itself, or even a loss leader for other efforts. That's fine; not everything needs to be profitable to be valuable.

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by rayiner on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:39PM (#27950571)
We do all of those things! Medicaid, Section 8, SNAP, SSDI, etc.
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by agumonkey on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:34PM (#27950510)
world is complex, i'm not excusing but i've seen enough absurdity like these to start to know that, at large scales, simple becomes problematic. money flows where big pockets and trends go, unless it's a country which values a solid higher ground for all, you'll be left out
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by EGreg on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:01PM (#27950134)
This is not a new question. In fact, over 100 years ago, a person got really famous writing a book called Progress and Poverty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_and_Poverty

His name was Henry George, and he famously recommended reducing all taxes to one: the land tax. His book was hailed by everyone from Milton Friedman to Leo Tolstoy and US Presidents wrote glowing reviews. And somehow, it is all forgotten today, except among trained economists who had to maybe read it in college. Most libertarians in the US today are capitalist, and have no concept of Georgism or left-libertarianism.

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by lmilcin on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:12PM (#27950262)
The trouble is that the times of land meaning anything are over.

In today's world of intangible goods you can produce without owning any land.

Why would multi-billion pharma company pay less taxes than a local farmer, because the land needed for offices to run bio-research is less than a small field to grow crops for couple families?

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by inglor_cz on Sunday July 25, 2021 @01:22PM (#27951034)
Looking at real estate prices, land is far from worthless.
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by lmilcin on Sunday July 25, 2021 @01:32PM (#27951137)
I am not saying land is worthless. I am saying that owning land is no longer prerequisite for producing a lot.

Two hundred years ago you had to own land to be "big", because most ways to produce anything required land to grow crops or land to extract natural resources or services with connection with those two types of activity.

If you look at top 10 largest companies in the world, only one is tied to a lot of land or services for other companies with lots of land (Saudi Aramco).

Before one hundred years ago the largest companies or wealth creators would inevitably be largest land owners or ones that provide services for largest land owners.

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by at_compile_time on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:43PM (#27950605)
Link to the audiobook for anyone else interested: https://librivox.org/progress-and-poverty-by-henry-george/
Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by jokoon on Sunday July 25, 2021 @11:37AM (#27949932)
Well, technological progress doesn't necessarily cause social progress, but it might allow it though.

It's a problem of values. Despite abundance, people still believe that people who don't work a 9to5 job are not worthy or good treatment.

Most people still believe in a hierarchy of people and values, and that "there is no free meal", except yes, there is: most food is subsidized and cheap.

Like it or not, "Arbeit macht frei" ("Work sets you free") was displayed at the entrance of concentration camps, and I really think that if you ask people around, they would still hold the same opinion that 100% of people should work and that nobody should escape that.

Now, work is divided between "noble" work, which is essentially office work, and "essential" jobs, which are necessary. Like in the middle ages, nobility is better valued because they're privileged.

Society is really upside down, and despite the years of communism and socialism, which are mostly dead now, it seems we haven't really evolved.

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by stadium on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:41PM (#27950587)
> Most people still believe in a hierarchy of people

This is a broad generalization and it varies widely by culture.

Some people believe that all work is important.

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by jokoon on Monday July 26, 2021 @09:14AM (#27958953)
Which culture?

> Some people believe that all work is important.

Sure, but I think it's a minuscule part.

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by stadium on Tuesday July 27, 2021 @12:33PM (#27974397)
Many Western cultures and Christian religious sects. Also more prevalent in countries with free movement of people and ideas.

Very few people living in poverty really wants or chooses to be there. It's usually generational.

Re:Finland provides housing and counseling to the homeless (... by imtringued on Sunday July 25, 2021 @12:21PM (#27950375)
The contradiction lies in the fact that people work so they can work less and once there are people that do not have to work then how do they get access to that abundance? Through their own work? That would defeat the point. Through the work of others? The working people will get angry because they want to work and for the sake of fairness, they demand others to work just as hard even if there is no work for them to be done. Yes you can create more work so that everyone has work but what people forget is that you have to create those jobs in the first place.

The reason why politicians should strive for full employment is that abundance of labor leads to desperation, which leads to a worse treatment of workers and thus employers are more willing to waste their time. When there is full employment then labor is scarce and precious, meaning the time of the workers is scarce and precious which means employers will either make sure that the workers are treated well and enjoy their time or at least let their time be used for more "productive" endeavors.

>Society is really upside down, and despite the years of communism and socialism, which are mostly dead now, it seems we haven't really evolved.

They are solving the wrong problem. Really, just make sure basic macroeconomic accounting rules work and everything will be fine. For example: Everything produced must be consumed. When you apply this principle on labor, full employment becomes inevitable. How does our economic system violate that rule? It is possible to earn more than you spend, meaning you produce more than you consume. The excess is the deposit in your bank account. If you don't consume labor through work then it will be consumed by being idle. Thus the real value of your savings is eroding day by day until one day your savings have no value because all the freed time was spent idle.

Thus the logical conclusion is that there must be a deadline for your savings. At some point you must spend them before they lost all their value, not because there is an evil government stealing your money or whatever, because nature is eroding the real value of your money. Labor is spoiling the same way fruit spoil. If you want to save then you should save in real terms. i.e. you use your money to buy goods that last longer than labor (a house or industrial machinery) or a promise of a future payment (bonds or stocks). Saving in real terms leads to the employment of other people rather than their unemployment because it still counts as spending for accounting purposes.

The reason why a gold standard is a stupid idea is that linking money to something like gold will make people hold onto the currency because of the exposure of gold. When gold goes up in value people will stop spending because their nominal wealth is going up even though their real wealth isn't going up. In fact, by not spending your money there will be people that didn't work and your real wealth is actually going down.

There is another reason why spending should be forced or encouraged: Debts create money and repaying them destroys money. Holding onto money prevents debts from being repaid or in other words: The debt will exist as long as the deposit exists. There are obvious implications: Government debt can never go down because deposits never go down because people are not forced to spend them.