Comment by derleth | Hacker News Reader

Comment by derleth | Hacker News Reader

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> The government has shown that it, too, cannot be relied upon to solve it.

Except governments in other countries have a better solution for it than the US government does. Denmark, for example, has a very low homelessness rate:

http://www.english.umd.edu/interpolations/3466

Here's some more statistics on homelessness. You'll need to divide by population to get percentages, which are the only useful way to present this data:

http://www.homelessworldcup.org/content/homelessness-statist...

As for the rest of your post: I'm not saying it's a majority yelling "Socialism". I'm saying it's a minority which has the power to, for example, shut down the government by blocking certain legislation because they think a health care plan created by the Heritage Foundation is Socialism.

So:

> When the government wants to spend money on something it seems to find a way.

Not if a minority within the government has found a way to rig the game such that it can make the rest of the party in control of the House of Representatives terrified of being primaried unless they back Ted Cruz.

Our system is full of checks and balances to prevent a majority from running roughshod over all of the minorities. The converse to that is that you do need broad (near-universal, by comparison to some other systems) support, or at least broad acquiescence, to institute major change. A well-positioned minority can halt things, even to the point of disaster, by digging in its heels far enough.

Except governments in other countries have a better solution for it than the US government does.

Sure. But they haven't solved it.

My main point being the the idea that government is the sole entity that can be relied upon to solve it, as claimed earlier post is false. At best they will play a role along with other entities.

I'm saying it's a minority which has the power to, for example, shut down the government by blocking certain legislation because they think a health care plan created by the Heritage Foundation is Socialism.

But what actually happened? The government was shut down briefly, then all went back to as it was. The GOP looked like even bigger fools. The AHCA is still the law of the land. What was blocked?

A well-positioned minority can halt things, even to the point of disaster, by digging in its heels far enough.

Yes, but my belief (clearly not argued well, I concede) is that many times things get halted because the majority has, for political reasons, decided to acquiesce, not because they lack the means to overcome the resistance of the minority.

This is not always a bad thing, but it suggests that even if the government, in the abstract, has the means to accomplish something in practice they cannot be relied on to do it, because of political self-interest (including, for example, being beholden to their campaign financial sources).

> the idea that government is the sole entity that can be relied upon to solve it, as claimed earlier post

I presented my argument wrong. My position is that the government is the only entity that can be relied upon to solve it entirely, not the only one that can be relied upon to help solve it. Private entities are too small to institute the broad changes needed to solve this, as has been demonstrated in the past, when they had the chance and failed.

My complaint was against the people who are convinced that the government must not be involved in any of this at all, because Socialism Is Evil.

> But what actually happened? The government was shut down briefly, then all went back to as it was. The GOP looked like even bigger fools.

The GOP only looks foolish to the people who were against it to begin with. They look like Brave Freedom Fighters to the people who voted them in, and will vote for them again in 2014, simply because they stood up to the Black Muslim Fascist Socialist (who is Black, by the way).

> Yes, but my belief (clearly not argued well, I concede) is that many times things get halted because the majority has, for political reasons, decided to acquiesce, not because they lack the means to overcome the resistance of the minority.

If the non-Tea-Party majority of the GOP in the House decided to risk being primaried en masse they could, indeed, kill the Ted Cruz contingent. I agree with you there, sure. But that's an extremely hard road to follow; it's a classic Prisoner's Dilemma, something right out of a game theory textbook, and politicians are trained to be risk-averse. (Which, in other scenarios, can be a good thing.)

> even if the government, in the abstract, has the means to accomplish something in practice they cannot be relied on to do it, because of political self-interest (including, for example, being beholden to their campaign financial sources)

And here is where I disagree with the Libertarians (including the Tea Party, which are Libertarian on this issue): The Libertarians say that if the government isn't perfect, it can never be part of the solution. I say that if the government isn't perfect, it's time to improve the government.

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