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Comment by the_arun | Hacker News Reader

When you read this story - your heart warms & your eyes gets filled. It is crazy nice feeling. You feel like this world is such a better place. Yet, it hurts - to know there are so many homeless that our system needs corrections.

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It also reminds me that systems can’t fix situations like this. The system of “care,” as the story alludes to the autistic person experiencing in their youth, often looks a lot more like warehousing the people on the margins of society, often in unpleasant (and almost always in institutional) conditions. Some kinds of humanity can only ever happen person-to-person, and it’s a great treasure for everyone involved to encounter such an opportunity and choose to take it up.

Yep, we are part of the system.

"Incentivizing" doesn't really fix it either, as people take avantage of the incentives. You do have to make it possible for the people who do care to be able to, though.

I think that the _current_ systems are incapable of care, but that doesn’t mean systems can’t be in general.

I often think that they’re held back in large part by people who say “we can’t” rather than building a solution

It’s extremely easy to say that things could and should be better, but it’s about as useful as saying that things “can’t” be done.

The problem isn’t that nobody wants things to get better, it’s that we disagree on how to get there. This has literally always been the case.

Of course things could be better. Life could be perfect. Lacking this solution you’re hand-waving, it’s useless drivel.

I disagree that it’s as useless as saying they can’t be done, because acknowledging the possibility opens the door intellectually to think about solutions.

It’s a great way to pat yourself on the back and absolutely nothing else.

That’s an easy cop-out and disagree as an European with stronger social nets. But yes this is still a heart warming story.

This story takes places in Europe, so it sounds like those social safety nets aren’t really doing shit here, as OP implied.

It takes place in the UK, which many Europeans (British and non-British) do not include when they say "Europe."

Imagine Chinese saying they aren’t Asian, or Brazilians saying they aren’t South American! It would be equally as hilarious and important to ignore.

The UK in general is left out when talking about Europe or the EU because of a mix of historical behaviour and geography (i.e. not on the continent).

Nobody does this, it’s a disconnect between the UK’s believed place in the world vs. their true one. Literally nobody does this. They might say UK to differentiate from Europe because they’re SO intertwined that it can be legitimately difficult to separate the two in any other way.

Americas do it themselves. Imagine Americans (and they don't live in Asia, so have no right) saying Iranian Iraqi Saudis are not Asians.

Correct, this is just as stupid. You only say “Middle East” to differentiate from the rest of Asia because they’re so similar and intertwined otherwise. Pakistan is literally just India.

And it would be accurate if you were talking about political or legal safety nets which are common across Asia except in china, for example. Your attempt at being geographically correct is dismissive and counter productive to the conversation about something that is obviously not about the specific geographic usage of the word.

Nope, it still wouldn’t make any sense whatsoever. Nobody cares if the UK wants to pretend to be Asian or American or simply “not living on a continent” or whatever worthless distinction they’re clinging to. They’re European. Chinese are Asian. Brazilians are South American.

They’re the ones deviating from the usage the rest of the world uses. It would be identical to them pretending they’re the only ones driving on the correct side of the world. Nobody cares.

It makes perfect sense to everyone but you who’s intentionally being obtuse and argumentative. Show yourself out.

Is this a new meme or something?

"I am the only arbiter of how words ought to be used" is the totality of your argument.

No, it’s “people don’t get to randomly decide not to be part of the land they live on”, or even shorter: “words have meaning”

And how were America's social nets for, say an Autistic person, in 1975? ;3

Who cares

The so called safety net don't do jack shit. They are a way to give power to mean, power hungry bitches that can feel good about themselve for "taking care" and scolding other people that receive much less than they do for their bullshit job.

The funny thing is that if the wealth was actually shared fairly instead of politicaly, most of the recipient would fare a better life and we could do away with insane bureaucratic waste.

Another way would be to have less governement taxes and regulations that would allow for jobs to pay better and remove much of the need of the so-called safety nets. Of course, this way you would take power away from the mean girl bitches running those things so that can't happen.

From my experience, I can tell you that none of the people running those things have actually worked a single day in their life (as in, usefull work, that people would actually agree to pay for) but they can feel good about themselve because they are "helping".

It's hard to describe how corrupted the system is, church corruption seems a bit tame in comparison.

You see far more horrific cases in the current US system where minors are cared for by members of the general public at their homes. This self selects for both ends of the spectrum people who want to do good and very bad actors.

That’s the core issue so often ignored, we need systems to deal with people at their best and their worst.

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