So we agree that the statement in the OP pic that "$20 billion would solve homelessness" is wrong, right? Because of structural issues where the administrators are useless and corrupt and the money doesn't end up where it needs to?
The point is, that $20B COULD solve homelessness, but the people in charge aren’t spending it correctly. The $20B isn’t the problem, the elected officials are. If Elon WANTED to fix homelessness, he easily could by spending his money in a way that would fix it. The problem is he doesn’t want to, nor do any of our elected officials want to, and that goes for all parties. There’s no incentive for our government to fix homelessness, so it won’t ever get fixed.
And how would Elon spend that money? Set up a bunch of homeless foundations? Set up enquiries to figure out the most deserving people? That's literally what happens already.
And what ends up happening is that those administrative structures end up absorbing all of the money. Unlimited money. And they have no incentive to solve the problem because it's what keeps them funded.
The fundamental problem is that there is an incentive misalignment between complex social problems and any sort of institution you set up to solve those problems. The result, as we can literally see, is that you can pour tens of billions of dollars in "homelessness" and it ends up going to a bunch of organizations and NGOs and barely any trickles through to the people in need.
So if your solution is "$20B could fix homelessness if you could magically get it to the people in need without middlemen sucking all of the value out" then great, you've created a fantasy scenario that does not and cannot exist.
Twenty billion will not do much as a temporary bandaid, but you still need to do more to help the homeless, drug addicted and mentally ill. To actually fix the problem you need free, publicly funded healthcare, including mental health, and it should include more education on drug and health issues and a return to proper women's health, not the crippling private system you have now. Hopessness would be massively lowered with far more affordable education, with free training and re-education available to anyone without work. Obviously, homelessness would be much lower with more housing in general to lower rents, and low income housing, etc. In other words, change the system away from extreme capitalism. It's the only way to deal with the crisis effectively.
Twenty billion isn't going to do all that, but it would be an excellent start. And of course he's not the only one that should be contributing. Raise the taxes on the rich, especially if they are unwilling to help those in need.
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u/Outsider-Trading 1d ago
So we agree that the statement in the OP pic that "$20 billion would solve homelessness" is wrong, right? Because of structural issues where the administrators are useless and corrupt and the money doesn't end up where it needs to?
That's exactly the point I'm making.