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[return to "Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not"]
1. TheMag+KY[view] [source] 2018-09-12 07:21:42
>>tysone+(OP)
America is a country of huge wealth. Wealthy in natural resources, capital equipment, labor ... fucking everything.

And yet we have such terrible poverty.

When I read stories about poor people in America, always there is lurking just below the surface the key element of scarcity. Not food. Not transportation. Not clothing. Not even, surprisingly, health care. The missing factor in all these broken lives is the simplest thing. Space. Some space to fucking sleep and live.

How can such a large country suffer from a bigger housing crisis than we find in jammed up dense countries like Singapore, South Korea, and India?

Why hasn't the market solved this problem?

Believe it or not, its not impossible to manufacture a living space in a factory and assemble it on site in a day, to provide extremely well made and affordable housing structures.

There is space enough in American cities if density is allowed to be increased. In other words if these fake "liberal" NIMBYs in American cities can be persuaded to give up the precious "character" of their neighborhoods, we can make space for everyone. CHEAP space.

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2. ojii+401[view] [source] 2018-09-12 07:43:35
>>TheMag+KY
> Why hasn't the market solved this problem?

Maybe "the market" is not a good tool to solve inequality.

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3. throwa+n01[view] [source] 2018-09-12 07:47:41
>>ojii+401
Solving inequality goes against everything in nature. The market is as close to an evolutionary natural state as we can get.
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4. peterw+A31[view] [source] 2018-09-12 08:31:07
>>throwa+n01
We develop drugs and medical practices to artificially extend our lives. We build gigantic civilizations and trade goods around the globe. We take the coffee beans from a farmer in a poor nation undergoing drought, pay that farmer between $0.07-$0.50 per kilo of coffee, and then sell that kilo in a coffee shop (after roasting and brewing) for about $70.

We aren't natural. We don't need natural evolutionary states. We need unnatural, human-oriented, ethical states.

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5. throwa+d41[view] [source] 2018-09-12 08:38:10
>>peterw+A31
None of that is my responsibility. I'm not obligated to help anyone but myself. Nobody asked me for consent before flinging me into existence, and now I have to follow all these rules that people make up?

I don't need "unnatural, human-oriented, ethical states". I'm perfectly happy with a state where I can acquire as many resources as possible, even if that incurs a significant cost to others.

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6. vertex+r51[view] [source] 2018-09-12 08:53:15
>>throwa+d41
Would I be incorrect in saying you don’t feel empathy very often?
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7. throwa+671[view] [source] 2018-09-12 09:10:37
>>vertex+r51
No, you'd be correct.
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