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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025

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I'm generally sympathetic, but even if your utility function has a straight 0 for the welfare of bums, you still have to account for second order effects of any policies you implement on ordinary people.

Simply displacing them immediately runs into public goods dilemmas. If you don't want them in your neighborhood so you bus them a couple miles East, then they start harassing the people who live there. But then your neighbor doesn't want them in their neighborhood so they bus them a couple miles West and they're your problem again. Now you both have the same number of bums but you're both paying extra for wranglers and bus fares for no net benefit.

Massive jail terms for small misdemeanors runs into issues with non-bums who occasional have small misdemeanors. You get drunk at a bar and your asshole buddy who's supposed to be the DD bails and leaves you stranded so you try to walk home but fall asleep on the sidewalk. Or your spouse cheats on you and you find out while in public and start yelling at her. Or a bum starts assaulting you and you defend yourself but the police end up arresting both of you and both end up in trouble. Ordinary and sympathetic people get in trouble with the law way way way less often than bums, but it's not unheard of. It's not as if the laws are perfectly just and you, by being a good person, are automatically immune to ever getting in trouble with it. If you get a 5 year jail penalty for something stupid it could ruin your life, which is why small things normally carry small penalties.

If you straight up genocide the bums you run into huge PR problems, human rights violations, and again, the opportunity for this to sometimes happen to regular people.

There are sophisticated, intelligent, and probably effective solutions that people are unwilling to do, such as escalating penalties for repeat offenders (much more than whatever they do now). But then it DOES matter what the solution is, because bad solutions are bad, even for you.