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How does a prosperous society combat insidious "compassion"?
The article then notes acts of violence including eggs thrown, paintballs shot, and one homeless beaten dead (though the motive is not specified). None of this seems particularly remarkable to me, as the base rate for being subject to intra-homeless violence and general excess mortality seems substantial in any American city.
Yet the article's top reader comments predictably shout from the rooftops "cruelty", "what happened to compassion", "these so-called Christians", "it's a war against the homeless, not homelessness". Worse, I don't get the sense this chorus is particularly performative as compared to other virtue signaling hobby horses. Instead, my read, based on nothing more than a decade-long familiarity of NYT reader comments, is that a majority of the readership genuinely believes the people of Kalispell, Montana to be deplorables as a result of their anti-homeless actions.
I haven't egged, paintballed, or beaten any homeless and don't intend to start, but I firmly believe that any city will be worse off if a "compassionate" genie magically conjured up 100 homeless people to live its streets; no comment on whether I think a city should welcome a "cruel" genie who's able and willing to magically poof away the same. I also understand second order effects and believe people respond to incentives. It seems to me, then, that every compassionate Times reader equals something like 0.0001 compassionate genies, and every cruel Kalispell resident 0.01 cruel genies. Mechanics and process aside, the end result is a San Fran full of growing compassion and ever more unhoused, and a Kalispell with a cruel lid on the homeless, and maybe even a reduction down the line.
The part I struggle with is, how does a society argue against compassion? Even if the rational counterarguments are themselves obvious, it seems like a fundamentally losing messaging game. We raise our children to be compassionate and we look for spouses who are compassionate. Trying to shout from the rooftops that compassion is actually bad when it comes to the homeless feels akin to telling the world that generosity is bad when it comes to tipping. Which is why I'm resigned that no matter how many articles are written about the tipping culture being out of control, it will creep up to more industries and circumstances and higher preset amounts. Similarly, I'm resigned that more tax and charity dollars will go to the homeless and the homeless industrial complex ad infinitum, because you can't argue against compassion, at least not outside of the ratsphere and among the voting masses.
But perhaps an answer is to change the framing entirely. Ivy League campus DEI would have never died from straight white men (and adjacent Asians) arguing how anti-white and anti-man the apparatus is; it's just not persuasive enough for the public long accustomed to hearing about oppression, systemic racism, patriarchy, and the value of diversity. Falling the accepted wisdom requires something entirely different, recently having one oppressed in-group fight another until the contradiction is impossible to sustain.
So is there an entirely different approach to beating back compassion when it comes to the homeless problem? Is it possible to effectively campaign for the cruel genie?
We raise our kids to lead with compassion in interpersonal settings where it is relatively easy to notice free-loaders (and for them to be punished for callousness as well). When dealing with freeloaders or people who not only can't participate in beneficial exchange but will actually punish you for trying, we tell them to stand up for themselves and not be gulls.
People get cut off all the time in interpersonal relationships (even the "pro-'Be Kind'" side is down with this). But they don't get to sue for human rights reasons to get back on the gravy train.
Many of us would find the sort of "compassion" suggested on a policy level that leads to defectors and the mentally ill corroding society absolutely asinine were it promoted to kids. It's not even acceptable when dealing with animals at the zoo.
We know a lot of people are not confused about this because "help your own, avoid freeloaders or impersonal systems that can create or incentivize freeloaders" is basic conservative ideology in America. Let's not even speak globally.
The problem isn't just compassion it seems. Eric Adams seems to want to change NY's position on right to shelter. But he can't do so unilaterally. He basically seems to be working to limit (or soft ban, if you're being a cynic) asylum seekers - another compassion case - but is also seemingly stymied by the political and legal situation.
How much of it is really legal and political barriers that favor those who can navigate such systems (and do have that version of "compassion")? If homeless people could be committed at will, it hardly matters what litigious bleeding hearts at some charity think. If the UK Home Office could simply summarily deport, it hardly matters that people protest. I suspect far more people - who consider themselves compassionate - are annoyed by the inability to just get rid of people, and are constantly given the runaround with the "it's the courts! Nothing we can do!"
To put it another way: I'm not sure that it's the general public that needs to be retrained here.
Jonathan Haidt identified the group who bucks this trend as WEIRD (Western Educated Industrial Rich and Democratic). It can feel like these people's values are dominant in the population if you live in a WEIRD enclave but as you mention, globally and even just in more conservative areas they really aren't, even if they are still able to hold an outsized amount of influence due to the concentration of mediatic, economic and political power in WEIRD enclaves. Haidt identified that WEIRD people tended to compress all moral judgement to the harm/care and cheating/fairness moral dimentions, wheras conservatives (and non WEIRDs) had a more multi-dimensional moral judgement.
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