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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?
The alternative hypothesis is that the homelessness in San Francisco is driven by a very brutal housing market.
For example, this paper finds that "a 10% reduction in housing costs is estimated to lower homelessness rates by around 4.5%". The median rent in SF is $3275 and $1434 in Kalispell, MT (i.e. 130% higher in SF).
It always kind of confuses me that people think treating the homeless a little bit meaner or nicer will have a meaningful effect. Being homeless really, really sucks. I don't think it is the lack-of-sucking that enables the homeless to keep being homeless.
Seriously think about it: you've homeless for 4 years, have no education, references, or work experience. 2/3 long-term homeless have mental health issues and 2/3 have drug issues, so tack on one of those.
Would somebody shooting paintballs at you actually motivate you to get a job? Would you be successful at finding one if it did? Would you still be looking for a job a week later?
(This isn't to say that typical "compassionate" solutions are effective either)
The paintballs are motivation to be homeless somewhere else. A local solution that is not masquerading as a global solution.
I don’t think @vpn’s comment is advocating for trying to create a negative sum game where cities race to the bottom to be as nasty as possible to the homeless, but he’s welcome to correct me.
As the others have noted, the cruel response is meant to motivate the homeless to go somewhere else. This seems optimal if it means moving them from a place that wishes to make itself known as "cruel" [to the chronically homeless] to a place that wants itself seen as "compassionate".
I'll add too that it's also optimal if it means moving them from high cost of living to low COL areas.
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I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding of the motivation behind the paintballs. The local citizens are not trying to solve the problem of homelessness, locally or globally. They are acting in their self interest, attempting to preserve the good aspects of their city and prevent them from sliding down into vagrancy, filth, violence, and drugs. This is a broad, human, historical civilizational norm.
Austin, SF, and Seattle violate this norm. They attract vagrancy rather than repel it.
If you want to solve homelessness, start with one. Pick a project person, take them into your home, let their problems become your problems, and I believe you will understand the nature of the solution and be able to advocate for it more effectively.
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