> I don’t think the sentiment is that they “deserve to suffer” so much as “why should I be subsidizing the comfort of a group that is so aggressively antisocial?”.
What is the effective difference between believing someone deserves to suffer, and purposefully withholding aid that could be rendered? One might be dressed up in more comfortable language, but they both result in homeless people not being helped on purpose.
Homeless people have objectively been let down by society, of course they're antisocial. They're hungry, exposed to the elements, and treated like garbage by most people they interact with. Every single one of us would behave in antisocial ways if we were in that situation. If you want them to change, you have to begin changing the circumstances that motive their current behavior. Denying aid until they change is just a polite way to deny aid permanently.
> What is the effective difference between believing someone deserves to suffer, and purposefully withholding aid that could be rendered?
This is silly. By your logic we in the Western world are essentially causing the suffering of the Uyghurs in China because we haven't started a war to stop their oppression.
You aren't complicit just because you don't try to fix every wrong in the world.
The real world is difficult and involves suffering, pain, unfairness, etc. Our resources to limit these negative aspects of existence are finite. When we view someone "suffering" and see it as the result of their own actions, yea, I think we are even more reluctant to do anything.
All that to say: Good luck convincing people that they should allocate scarce resources to help out the people who throw containers of urine at them and defecate on the sidewalk in front of their apartment.
> This is silly. By your logic we in the Western world are essentially causing the suffering of the Uyghurs in China because we haven't started a war to stop their oppression.
The last time we invaded a country to liberate people went so well, right? Clearly we should always be doing that, since it consistently reduces human suffering in the regions we invade with no risks whatsoever. Given the consistent good outcome of invasions, it's obvious that not giving people houses in our cities and not being willing to risk WW3 in order to help out the Uyghurs are morally equivalent things, good argument.
Dripping sarcasm aside, we should absolutely do something about the Uyghur genocide. But trying to draw a moral equivalency between inaction on both these things is pushing the "good faith" rule to the limit. One of them has obvious avenues for harm reduction right now, while the other is a messy thing with plenty of avenues for us to accidentally end up making things much worse for the people we're trying to help and potentially get a bunch of other random people killed to boot. These two things are not the same, at all.
Also, America created its own homelessness crisis. Surely we have a moral obligation to resolve any issues that we ourselves created, no?
> Our resources to limit these negative aspects of existence are finite.
Come now, you can't possibly think that the reason why we don't house the homeless is because of resource limitations, can you? That's just a ridiculous argument; we've magically run out of resources and coincidentally the limit was helping the homeless in our cities. Please ignore any increased consumption anywhere else, we're just absolutely out of resources, and are powerless to change that.
I'm sure you've calculated the cost of sending the police around to harass homeless people, right? Sure would be unfortunate if you make an argument about us being unable to help while we end up spending more money harassing and abusing the homeless than it would cost for us to give them homes[0]. That would make it look like we're just being cruel for the hell of it, rather than because this is the cheaper way forward.
> You aren't complicit just because you don't try to fix every wrong in the world.
You literally said above that people don't want to subsidize the homeless because they're angry at them. That is worlds apart from "terribly sorry, can't help". You’re absolutely moving the goalposts from “too angry to help” to “not my duty to help”.
And that's before we begin to discuss the circumstances that have made homelessness a thing. They didn't just appear out of nowhere, you know. Homelessness is a policy outcome, not an act of god. We absolutely are complicit as a society for homelessness in our society, because it is a consequence of the decisions we’ve made as a society. We have a moral obligation to fix the problems we have ourselves caused at a minimum.
> Additionally, good luck convincing people that they should allocate scarce resources to help out the people who throw containers of urine at them and defecate on the sidewalk in front of their apartment.
Maybe if we send in the cops to tear up their tents and beat them up it'll solve it this time. Hasn't worked for decades, but maybe this last time will be the trick! Heaven forbid we try something new.
Also, maybe we should install some public toilets. Just a thought. Humans have to defecate, if you don't give people a place to do it they will do it in the streets. It honestly seems like a lot of people would rather see their cities literally covered in feces rather than give homeless people a toilet.
What is the effective difference between believing someone deserves to suffer, and purposefully withholding aid that could be rendered? One might be dressed up in more comfortable language, but they both result in homeless people not being helped on purpose.
Homeless people have objectively been let down by society, of course they're antisocial. They're hungry, exposed to the elements, and treated like garbage by most people they interact with. Every single one of us would behave in antisocial ways if we were in that situation. If you want them to change, you have to begin changing the circumstances that motive their current behavior. Denying aid until they change is just a polite way to deny aid permanently.