We MUST End Homelessness | Episode #60

Hey folks, Dr. Mike here for the Making Progress Channel. Today's video is about homelessness. Specifically, me saying, sometimes screaming, that homelessness must come to an end. And believe it or not, it's not actually that complicated to end homelessness.

So, in this chat, we are going to talk about four things. First, why homelessness happens in the United States and other modern wealthy countries. Why it hasn't been a solved problem yet. Why almost everyone wants it solved, no matter their politics, no matter how various political factions can make it seem. Because someone's like, "Well, XYZ group doesn't care about homeless people." We'll get to that in a second. And number four, how to solve homelessness in the entire US. So, yes, I do have a policy proposal.

So, first question: Why does homelessness happen? PS, a trigger warning: various elements of this will be insanely politically incorrect. I also believe them to be true. And by that, I mean my intentions for sharing them are very, very humane, because homelessness is a terrible thing we have to stop. And so, I unabashedly and unapologetically will introduce these things, which are not controversial in a technical sense, but can get people feeling a little bit not so great after hearing them. Nonetheless, uh, something about killing the messenger.

Fundamentally, in the modern world, homelessness happens for almost one reason. Almost always for just one reason: is that homeless people are either insufficiently productive or conscientious. That is, productive in the sense of generating enough wealth, or conscientious organizing that wealth's distribution and, uh, end points good enough to organize their living situation. In other words, either they don't have the money to make rent, or they misspend would-be rent money on other things. And notice, we can say homeless people are insufficiently productive. It could mean that what would have to happen is you have to produce $300,000 a year for your medicine, but you only make $200,000 a year. Now you're homeless. It can be for any range of income distributions. Fundamentally, it's really important to remember homelessness is a matter of not being productive or conscientious enough to get yourself a place to live. That's a huge deal.

Now, one of the top reasons why people get into these states of an inability to either produce enough wealth or appropriately channel that wealth into getting a living situation sorted, there are a few reasons. Let's see, the vast majority is explained by about five situations. First, and I'm kind of going in order of how much the situations describe what's going on, is low IQ, low intelligence, low general intelligence. The thing about IQ and intelligence is most people don't have an intuitive understanding of just how broad the IQ spectrum is. How [ __ ] crazy smart some people can be, and how very unimpressively intellectual other people can be. Because most people don't have this intuitive understanding of how broad that spectrum is, most people don't understand how difficult it is to navigate the world with a low IQ.

But the best way to illustrate this is not to talk about various kinds of people and hypothesize them into existence. I can talk about real people. We all know have low IQs. They're called children. They have less intelligence categorically than adults do, but only relatively scaled because adults are mature. That doesn't mean children are bad. They're just not that smart yet, and that's totally fine. But here's the trippy part: we totally accede to the fact that children absolutely have lower intelligence than adults, all you know, categorically on average by a long shot. But we simultaneously don't expect middle schoolers to provide for themselves and pay the bills.

But when a person has an IQ of somewhere between 70 and 75, as an adult scaled to the standard scale, they're around low middle school abilities, and the lower end of what we'd expect for a typical middle schooler of an IQ 100, an average person. And we expect that adult to provide food and shelter for for themselves, even though they're operating with the intellect of a child. But why don't we expect 11-year-old Jimmy to like, pay rent and hold out a job? People say, like, "Dude, like, most kids, like, at least some kids, like, maybe a quarter of all kids who are 11 years old, they just can't do it. They're not going to remember to write things on time. They don't even know how to pay rent. If you tell them, they'll forget. They're too scatterbrained." Do you ever have 11-year-olds just run amok and do whatever the [ __ ] they want with just each other? Nothing much productive happens there. You need a lot of adult supervision, and then maybe you can extract some value out of them. But we're not even worried about extracting value out of 11-year-olds. We're worried about putting more value into them. The whole thing doesn't make any sense.

You say we have a person who is as intelligent as an 11-year-old, a not very smart 11-year-old. The idea that they're just going to be, if we fix all these societal things, capitalism, structural inequity, whatever [ __ ] we want to make up, that somehow that person is going to be okay on their own is literal nonsense. Now, look, does it seem weird to say that some adults don't have the intellectual capacity to be out on their own? Yeah, it's super weird. It's super paternalistic sounding. But it has another really big problem with it: it's just true. And some things that are bad and weird, they're just true. And one of the reasons why we started this channel to begin with is to tell you guys things that I think are just true. Maybe they're very hard pills to swallow. And sometimes it's really great news. But there's enough [ __ ] out there telling you whatever you want to believe and hear. This is going to be some real [ __ ].

So, it just happens to be that some people are not intelligent enough to have a productive job, wake up on time, pay the rent, all the US. So they can't organize that kind of thing. It's too grand a scheme for them to figure out. That's a real thing.

Number two, because it gets worse, is low conscientiousness. Is the other big explanatory factor for the biggest chunk of homeless people in the modern world. Conscientiousness, defined roughly, is your proclivity to be diligent, organized, responsible, and reliable. It involves a tendency to be thorough, careful, and goal-oriented, often leading to disciplined behavior and a strong sense of duty. Guess who also has low conscientiousness compared to adults? Children. Middle schoolers. Middle schoolers not the most organized people in the world, not the most goal-directed, very not so disciplined. And just like with IQ, conscientiousness is highly genetic and ranges from very high all the way down to very, very low. Conscientiousness, just like IQ, is incredibly predictive of success in modern society. And if we have something that on its upside predicts success, like intelligence and conscientiousness, what do you think it predicts on the bottom side?

When conscientiousness is low, it's very difficult to make ends meet, even with a decent IQ. The act of figuring out on what day your rent needs to be paid and even setting up the autopay, the act of checking into your bank account to make sure there's enough money in there, the act of planning to put out clothes to go to work tomorrow, the act of setting your alarm on your phone, it was tomorrow's a work day, I got to go to work. All of that is just showing off conscientiousness. And if your conscientiousness is low enough, those things are profoundly difficult.

Something that can severely degrade both intelligence and conscientiousness is alcohol. Acutely, you might be good at stuff, have eight drinks in a row, don't die or anything, and get [ __ ] up. And now your intelligence and conscientiousness are much lower down. Now try to do the regular [ __ ] that you normally do. You log into your [ __ ], you know, your coding account that you do your [ __ ], uh, you know, your software engineering work, and you're like, "What the [ __ ] am I even looking at, man?" You forget your password. The [ __ ] that I even see that? Who knows what's going on anymore? But for the blurry vision and the the weird movement stuff, being a low intelligence, a very low conscientiousness, you're going to come off as a person who handles their life something like a very drunk person handles her life, or less offensively, maybe a very young person, an 11-year-old or a 10-year-old or something like that.

Now, really quick, if we surmise that folks at the bottom 10% of intelligence and the bottom 10% of conscientiousness in a normally distributed society are going to have big problems providing for themselves, if you multiplicatively overlap that, and these traits do correlate with each other, so it's actually going to be a bigger number. I want to say, so this is the optimistic look. That means 1% of people in the United States are at the bottom 10% for both intelligence and conscientiousness at the same time. Adults. 1% of the US adult population is, last I checked, about two and a half million people. But I'm honestly pleasantly surprised that not that many people are homeless. The very generous estimates of homelessness currently, uh, are about 600,000 total people homeless in any one given year in the US at any one time. And like, that's really trippy because I would expect every single person of a low intelligence and low conscientiousness to be [ __ ] homeless. But it turns out it's nice.

And these two factors together, just conscientiousness and low intelligence paired, which we would expect millions of people in society to be that as adults, low intelligence, very low, and low conscientiousness, very low, just these two factors paired together, teach us that homelessness should not be surprising to anyone. Because what would you think would happen to people at the bottom of the intelligence and conscientious spectrum?

And here's where a bit of the politics get involved. A lot of people with fancy educations posit that it's structural inequities and systemic differences and a history of XYZ that creates homelessness. And maybe it can potentiate it to some extent, or make it more or less likely to occur. But, you know, you get some hard-left utterances every now and again of like, "Well, homelessness is just like the price you pay for capitalism." It's like, "Okay, is there any economic system in which the people at the bottom 10 percentile of both intelligence and conscientiousness are like, good to go, and we don't expect them to become homeless?" I don't know of a system like that. And so that's a big trip.

So, what I want to try to illustrate with this point here is, because not being homeless is a matter of capability, if you find people that are low enough on capability and their proclivity to deploying it, intelligence plus conscientiousness, you you can't be surprised about homelessness. You have to expect homelessness to occur. And a lot of times, more on this later in a bit, but most well-meaning college graduates who really try to take a good stab at the homelessness problem, every now and again, at least by, you know, talking about it in their seminar class in sociology at an expensive university and bleeding Harding, the whole [ __ ], um, a lot of them try to wrangle with the homelessness problem, tacitly, implicitly assumed that the average homeless person is a lot like them. Maybe not quite as smart or quite conscientious, but close. They went to nice private schools. Everyone in their extended family is pretty good at stuff. That's a big, big problem. That assumption. Because if you assume that everyone's roughly as intelligent as conscientious as you, a college student at a good school, um, you are going to have a real hard time explaining how the [ __ ] homelessness is a thing. And you'll have to be like, "It's got to be the exogenous factors. It's got to be structural oppression or workplace discrimination. It's got to be something, something like that. It can't be the person themselves can have nothing to do with it."

In reality, yeah, really talented graduate students are unlikely to ever be homeless by an enormous statistical margin. So you're true, you're right about yourself. But assuming that everyone's like you is absolutely the wrong assumption. Because it's wrong. Because a lot of people, millions in fact, are nothing like you at all. They have a much higher probability of being homeless. We're just through two. There's like five of these, and these are just the top ones.

Mental illness. Number three. If being of low intelligence and low conscientiousness wasn't bad enough already, a large fraction, depending on the measurement source you're interested in, upwards of 50% or more of homeless people are mentally ill, diagnosed. So often severely. If you've ever interacted with homeless people in real life, which I swear to God, a lot of homelessness advocates must never have, this is such a BAL claim that I won't spend any more time on it. A lot of homeless people are [ __ ] crazy. And you may have be able to figure this out if you've ever taken 200 milligrams of THC or [ __ ] eaten grams of mushrooms or some [ __ ] or triple dabbed the acid, that being mentally unwell is really makes productivity and organizing a home for yourself much more difficult. Imagine that you're also of low IQ and low conscientiousness. You're [ __ ] done.

But it gets even worse. One more rung of getting worse for you guys, just to drive in the point home that homelessness is not something that comes from systems and is external, and that in a natural world, all humans wouldn't have to be homeless. Homelessness is actually natural. By the way, real quick tangent, almost all animals are homeless. They live literally outdoors. They don't have anywhere to go at night. They just sleep in a little nook that they find. Humans were also homeless for forever until we physically built structures. But not all of us built. Just the most intelligent and conscientious people built them, and sometimes invited everyone in, and sometimes not. So if you think homelessness is something wrong with the system, no, no, no, no, no. It's just normal human life that causes most homelessness.

And that last part, number four, second to last, but the the last big hitter is that drug addiction is a real thing. And 50% or so, depending on where and how and why you measure it, of homeless people struggle with drug addiction. Obviously, being addicted to drugs keeps, uh, you makes a keeping a roof over your head much, much harder. But now imagine this: imagine you score below average, not crazy, just 35th percentile or something, low intelligence and conscientiousness, and you have mental health issues, and you're struggling with a drug addiction. To me, this quadruple confluence of not so great luck is illustrating the fact that it's a huge testament to how amazing individuals are and how amazing communities are and families and government programs that we don't have way more homeless people out in the street. I mean, some combination of lower intelligence, conscientiousness, mental illness, and drug abuse and addiction [ __ ] have to make you homeless at some point. Because all that [ __ ] into account, you still have to go to a job regularly enough to get money and still make rent on time and not get kicked out for various things. That's tough. Don't take that [ __ ] for granted.

So, those are the biggest factors by a long shot that cause almost all modern homelessness: low than average intelligence, substantially lower than average in most cases, very low conscientiousness, high degree of mental illness, and a high degree of struggling with drug addiction. You got three or four of those, you are very high risk for homelessness. You have zero of those, you're at almost no risk for homelessness at all. And that's really data-driven.

Now, there's a fifth category of homelessness, which absolutely deserves mentioning. It's the "everything else" category, really. I paint this category as bad luck during bad times falling upon otherwise people not prone to homelessness. This one is tricky. It's very tricky to measure the fraction of homeless people that are chronically homeless, like the skid row lifestyle for years kind of people, um, that were otherwise average and just fell on hard times. It's preposterously low. You go, I don't suggest you do this, it's not particularly safe. But if you go and talk to people on skid row and talk to various homeless people in homeless encampments, you're going to find very, very few people outside of some number of immigrants, which just don't speak the language, um, and have no no base of footing anywhere, so they have a pretty decent reason they're homeless. Other than some immigrants, you're going to find very, very few people that are not of some combination of very low intelligence, very low conscientiousness, proneness to mental illness, or drug addicted in some way, shape, or form. Very, very rare. You won't even find many people that have everything going for them, but they're just drug addicts. Even that is very rare. Most drug addicts are just fine. They look like you and me, and they go inside very nice homes and drive very nice cars. Cocaine in the '80s, that's the thing, right?

So, most homeless people are not the people that fell in bad times. Very few of them are. That makes total sense. But a problem is that most homelessness watchdog organizations define homelessness as broadly as possible to make the thing seem as bad as possible, which is sort of laudable. But you're also sort of lying to people, low-key. So it's not that great. And often times, in their way, they aggregate homelessness data. They'll include people to be homeless that have just, uh, had to sleep in their car one night in the past year. They'll categorize them as homeless for that year. They'll take college students who technically don't live with their parents anymore, and they exited their last lease, their new lease hasn't started, but for another week, they're just staying with a friend during that week. There are homelessness ORS that will catalog those people as homeless 100%. And then there's a data point for 2024 list of people that were homeless. Now we get to several million homeless people, or 600,000, where it's in reality much smaller than that, because those people aren't for real, for real homeless in that way that you know what I mean, chronically, consistently homeless, and if placed into a nice place and no other help offered, will be again consistently homeless very shortly thereafter.

So, yes, there are some people truly struggling with homelessness that just fell on really hard times. But those people almost always have a confluence of those four conditions as well: lower IQ, lower conscientiousness, proneness to mental illness, and a proclivity for drug addiction. That is most of homelessness. That's just the facts that matter.

Next question: Part two, why hasn't homelessness been solved yet? What the [ __ ]? We're sending people to the moon, for the love of God. We can't solve homelessness. When I look at that prior info, everything I just said, I think, "Damn, homelessness is kind of inevitable. Clearly, it is for some people." So we have to do something serious about it. And you would think others would have done so already. And but for a few reasons, homelessness remains unsolved. Though I will say, it could be solved, no problem, and for cheap. And I'll tell you more later about my crazy policy proposal. It's more just a theoretical idea for you guys to think about. Let's take a look at some stumbling blocks that have come up so far in attempts or conversations about ending homelessness and see what we can come up with.

Number one, these are not ranked in order, just a a good long list of reasons why homelessness has not been solved yet in the modern West. One is transitive assumptions of personality and capability by educated reformers. Educated reformers, the vast majority of people trying to work on homelessness, they're really good people, the best kind of people, and they have a lot of feelings of compassion and sympathy for everyone, and they don't like hierarchies, and they don't like assuming they're better than anyone, which is really [ __ ] beautiful and really awesome. The problem is, is they take that vision to homeless people, people. And so they can't quite figure out why homeless people can't be helped in the traditional way that you would help most normal people. Give them information, gives them some money, give them a place to be, offer them a job, and then they shouldn't be homeless anymore. I mean, most people just wouldn't be homeless if you did that for them. So why aren't homeless people buying, uh, the whole act? And you get these people, just massive waves of homeless people falling through the cracks. But in order to soak up the cracks and seal them, these educated reformers that have to admit, like, "Okay, some people really need help, like a lot of help, like all the time, like they just be out on their own." And in order for us to admit that, it would be like, obviously, none of this is logical or explicit, it's implicit, subconscious for them. They're just not willing to be like, "All right, all right, all right. We're going to have to take care of these people because they can't take care of themselves." That's not some [ __ ] you're going to hear out of almost any reformer's mouth. As I'll show you in just a bit with some, some illustrated web page browsing we're going to do together. But that's a big deal. It's kind of more of a theoretical problem, but it cuts off a ton of potentials to solve homelessness that would have snaked out of it. Uh, but they got to cut off those snakes because they're like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. We have to admit some really [ __ ] up [ __ ] and we're just not going to do it." So that's a thing.

Another one, very similar, is an unwillingness to blame the victim. People say, "Okay, so you're saying homeless people are at fault for their own homelessness?" Like, "That's what you just said for like half an hour?" Yeah, like any, you know, not some kind of moral, just total centrality of moral impetus of the universe falling on them kind of [ __ ]. No, but like, you know, like my eyes blink too much because I have like mini Tourette's or whatever the [ __ ] is. Is it my fault that my eyes blink? Yeah, who else are you going to blame? It's on me. It's happening to me. And so I take ownership of it. Yeah, it's [ __ ] blinking. It's just what happens when someone has very low IQ, very low conscientiousness, they're addicted to drugs, and they're insane. Why are they homeless? We don't have to blame the victim. But in the technical sense of, "Oh, you shouldn't," we can do that. It doesn't help much because they're still [ __ ] up and still can't support themselves. But we have to be willing to say, "Yeah, it's things they're doing or not doing that are determining their homelessness." Because if they just did a few simple things like get any job and get the cheapest, most minimal apartment and just continue to be employed, they just would just would not be homeless. Um, that's just it. So, yeah, blaming the victim sucks, but you got to do a little bit of it to get down to the ground truth about some [ __ ].

Another one, because I politically, my roots are very libertarian, there's a libertarian non-interference situation. We'll talk about that later in more depth. But basically, libertarians don't like the idea that the government can pull you off the street, sort of declaring you as homeless, and put you in an institution. They think that's bad. I agree, it's really bad. Uh, but there's trade-offs. Trade-offs. And so we'll talk about those in a bit.

Another one is a bad history of asylum abuses, specifically in California, from what I understand. During the 1970s, they had insane asylums, very low levels of homeless insane people in the streets, very high levels of insane, would-be homeless people, people living in asylums. Then a [ __ ] load of abuses, sexual abuse, the whole gamut, just totally insane hell. Um, that's a bad deal. Uh, I have retorts to it later. But what I'll say first is two things: one, just because it happened before doesn't mean it has to happen again. We can have insane levels of oversight. They didn't have body cameras or integrated security systems back then, and an oversight body. So we can just integrate those, and all the asylums are better. And also, is it better to be in an asylum where crazy [ __ ] happens to you and you're the victim all the time, but you're given three square meals a day and checked for diseases and given a warm place to sleep away from the elements? Or is it better to be also, by the way, if you look into sexual victimization rates of homeless people, they're absurd. It's a crime what's happening to homeless people in the streets. If you look at that and you go, "Okay, but we can get them in asylums and at least check the three meals per day off and check that they don't have to sleep in the [ __ ] rain with rats in the gutter." Already the asylum looks like it wasn't ideal, but if we improve it just a little, it already beats homelessness. But people had a lot of feelings, all bad asylum abuses. So what did the politicians do? They just cut all the asylums off. No more funding. That's it. They're gone. Where did all those people go? You ever been to California? That's where the [ __ ] they went.

Next reason homelessness hasn't been fixed nearly enough, or or really, I would say, almost at all, is a localization of the problem. I can worry about homelessness till I'm blue in the face. But when I drive uphill to my suburb outside of the Bay Area center region, I don't have to see any homeless people. Like, uh, you know, like it's it's it's real nice. Um, in, uh, in various communities in the Bay Area, you drive a little bit uphill, no more homeless people. As beautiful as palm trees, and there's a San Francisco skyline off in the distance. Yeah, Alameda is a [ __ ] dope place to be. It's [ __ ] no homeless people. Amazing. Yeah, I just don't go to the Tenderloin anymore. That's a real thing. And when it comes to voting and being super expressive, if it's a problem you see all the [ __ ] time, you're going to get to be an active voter real goddamn quick. Like, if your community, wherever you live, used to be nice, but now there's just stray dogs everywhere, as soon as there's a ballot open for a proposal, "Get rid of all the stray dogs," people are going to come out and drowsy. "No more." This is [ __ ] nuts. But with homeless people, if you just see them when you're at the office, and now we all work remotely, so it's one five-day period per month that I have to walk through the Tenderloin a few times. I hate it. And afterwards, I want to write my congressman. But then I'm spend another three weeks living in my [ __ ] villa in in in [ __ ], you know, Mission Viejo, or some [ __ ] like that, and it doesn't [ __ ] bother me at all. So that's a big thing. And and it definitely plays a role. It's got this really icky Elysian feel to it. I hate it. But that's a real thing.

Next, I would say one of the biggest reasons why homelessness is yet to be addressed properly is intellectual obfuscation via ideology. Unfortunately, the vast majority of anti-homelessness organizations are almost purely in the business of what I would call straight-up propaganda. If you ever Google "homelessness myth debunk," you Google search that, "homelessness myth debunked," you will get pages and pages of formal organizations with people in charge and funding and representation and all that posting these myths. And unfortunately, the myths are either actually true things with the opposite of myths, or total red herrings that have beside the point. They're like manufactured opposition that no one in their right mind really says in a proper policy debate. So I'm going to pull up one of these. This is rank one on Google for me when I searched it a few weeks back. Let's take a look really quick. What it has on its myths and facts about homelessness from the Council for the Homeless, which specializes in leadership, advocacy, and solutions, which I find really comical. Let's find out I'm talking that ship, but let's see.

All right, number one myth: "People who are homeless should just get a job, and then they would not be homeless." How many homeless people do you know with steady employment? How many homeless people do you know at all? I would ask. If you look at the data, the number of homeless people with steady employment is preposterously low. So if people who are homeless somehow magically just got a job, a large fraction of them would not, in fact, be homeless. That's not a myth. That's mostly true. If someone said, "Hey, if I got twice as strong, would I win more fistfights?" Yeah, you would. Does that mean you would beat everyone? No, of course not. There's technique matters, and, you know, does your hand break when you hit people matters. It's not all strength. That's a big part of the issue. And it says, let's see, fact: "Many people who are homeless do have jobs." Okay, here's a little fun fact of lying with statistics for you. What does "many" mean? Notice they didn't say the majority. They didn't say a minority. And here's the percent. They said "many." Guys, there are 300 [ __ ] some odd million people in the United States. Many people who are homeless absolutely have jobs. If you count "many" as hundreds or thousands, but that's a drop in the bucket compared to the number of homeless people and people in general. This is [ __ ] lying with statistics. And it says, "Many people who are homeless, uh, do have jobs, sometimes two or even three." You guys want to get me the metadata on how many homeless people have three steady jobs? This is absurd. The National Coalition for the Homeless, of course, another insanely biased group, estimates as many as 40 to 60% of people experiencing homelessness, that's the politically correct term, which is a fine term, whatever, nationwide are employed. Notice they didn't say if they're fully employed, employed in what capacity, if they're intermittently employed. This one of these things I suspect that if they've had a job for one part of a day for one part of the year, they count you as employed. And says, "However, a paycheck does not necessarily solve their homelessness or other challenges." Yeah, it doesn't necessarily solve them, but it sure [ __ ] helps. Certainly. This could have been architected in a different way. Moving on. There they give more details, and all of them are just more fads and fallacies. I could be here all day. Let's move on. Just do a couple more of these.

Number two myth: "People choose to be homeless." Scott, you're a real human being, roughly apolitical. Yes, are there real people out there on the moss that believe people choose to be homeless, or is this the biggest [ __ ] red herring straw man anyone's ever [ __ ]? I don't know anything. What the [ __ ]? Why is this even on here? Why is this on here? It says, "This myth is dangerous because you don't want dangerous myths and ignore the trauma of homelessness." No [ __ ] [ __ ]. And neurobiological effects trauma has on humans. Being homeless is stressful, humiliating, exhausting, and dangerous. It is a hard day-to-day existence for men, women, and children. So first of all, there are absolutely people that choose to be homeless. They're called street kids. They're just trying to do drugs and [ __ ] and do whatever the hell street kids do. But they do not represent the vast majority of homeless people. However, most people don't think that most people choose to be homeless. So the fact that this is rank two on their myths list is they're just going for the easy. Someone said it once as a contrarian teenager in their sociology class, "I think people choose to be homeless." Thank you, Frank. Your mom still buys you your food. You're functionally homeless. It's not for another person. If they're refuting Frank from [ __ ] sociology class in 10th grade, I got it. Fair sweep. Is this really what is the second most pertinent myth about homeless people? What the [ __ ]? Let's do one more and then we'll [ __ ] off and get to the rest of the discussion.

Myth number three: "People who are homeless are dangerous, violent, and or criminals." Fact: "A person who is homeless is no more likely to be a criminal than a person who is housed," with one legal exception: camping ordinances. I'm going to tell you right now, in no uncertain terms, this is a fabrication and it is a lie. Homeless people, by almost every measure of sexual crime, violent crime, drug crime, property destruction, theft, etc., are multiples times more likely to be criminal than people who are not homeless. I don't know why he would just make this [ __ ] up if not because you were a leftist, you just had a lot of feelings. That's the only one I have. And that says, "People who are homeless break the law merely by being unhoused." It's true. Camping ordinances, which are not enforced anymore, but whatever. The reality is that most spend their time and resources trying to survive and improve their situation. Oh my God. And here we have it. "Most homeless people are trying to improve their situation." You guys ever spend time around most homeless people? Any homeless people? Most of them are not trying to improve their situation. Most of them are trying, to some extent, to survive. The survival is really a matter of having warm things and food and a place to drink and [ __ ]. That's it. Humans are surviving. Most of them are going and having various interactions, uh, with drugs, or or are spending their time in a state of mental illness, total insanity, not trying to do hardly anything. Insane. This is what you get. By the way, these are the myths and facts. So this trying to stick to extreme leftist ideology to never blame the victim. Homelessness, you guys notice that the, in, you can read a little thread through that. Homeless people are not remotely at fault for anything. Who gives the [ __ ] hoots at fault? Morally, where can we get the most traction is the big question. And these folks are unwilling to answer it because sometimes where we can get the most traction is focusing on the behavior of the individual. And they don't want to do that because it makes them have very sad, very, uh, not so happy feelings. And I get where the feelings come from, of course. It's not cool to be like, "Yeah, some people just [ __ ] kind of aren't that great at taking care of themselves. We need to step in and help." That's not nice to say. It's a weird [ __ ] vibe, but it's true. And intellectually and ideologically, so many people are opposed to even seeing that that is true. They're not going to solve the problem. Most of their weapons are not even deployed by them because they're like, "Well, hold on. Those homelessness is, we can't, we can't blame this person." All right, sweet. We do nothing about it. And that's largely what's been happening.

Now, Point number three: Why it's true that almost everyone wants homelessness gone. Why am I saying? Why do I have to say this? Because this issue could be one where it's just not a large group of people that are homeless, and people who have friends and family that are homeless, affected by them, or live in homelessness, uh, sort of, uh, high homelessness, uh, communities. There's just not that many people. Maybe it's 20% of America. And well, 80% versus 20 votes that out every single time. And because it's not a large group of people's best interest to act on, um, that it just doesn't happen. But that's not true. Here is a list of who's against homelessness, if they thought it through and why. And we're going to paint some intentionally caricatured pictures here to catch even some of the extremes, so that you know the moderates, they're all good for real. Big wall up against homelessness. Let's pick on right-wingers for a second. We don't do that enough on this program. Right-wingers may not, in their best times, but maybe in some of their worst times, think a variety of these thoughts, and they're making some valid points, at least only as to convince themselves homelessness is an issue. So why am I saying this? There are people on the political left that will say, "Right-wingers don't give a [ __ ] about the homeless. They don't care about homelessness. They don't care about homeless people." [ __ ]. Maybe not from the perspective you want, but they care about homelessness. Here's why. Homelessness is disgusting, objectively. I won't debate anyone about this. It's just true. And is an embarrassment to America. You walk out in your community and there's homelessness. This is some dude in a [ __ ] [ __ ] in the street, and he has nowhere to go. You look at that beautiful waving American flag, it feels different. It doesn't feel like my [ __ ] America. Conservatives deeply care about how much pride they have in their family, their community, their city, their nation, their their state, and their nation. And they don't want [ __ ] to be all [ __ ] up. Homelessness is disgusting and an embarrassment to America for that reason alone. The vast majority of conservatives would want to fix homelessness. You bet. It's like if you give a a conservative person a magic wand and you're like, "If you wave this, no one has to work anymore and everyone gets stuff for free." They're not going to wave that. They're conservative [ __ ]. Were you kidding me? People will degrade. They need to work. But if you give them a magic wand to be, "We can end all homelessness," they'd be like, "Wave the [ __ ] out of that [ __ ]!" Only if not for the greatest reasons. They, it's disgusting. But they really do think like that. Most conservatives think like that. So opposition to homelessness programs on intellectual grounds won't come from from, uh, right-wingers very often. On procedural grounds, maybe. But that's a whole different discussion.

Next, for the right-wingers, tourists who right-wingers always suspect they're friendly too, but suspect you bringing your weird values from somewhere else. And leftists who are homegrown, but right-wingers hate them. Will 100% see homelessness as a detraction from the American way of doing things. There is a nice lady on the internet that I had some nice chats with once back in the day, and she was from Australia. And she came to visit America, and she went right to LA and went right to Skid Row. And she instantly thought that the reason Skid Row existed, which just, you know, if you don't know what Skid Row is, it's like thousands and thousands of homeless people on like just a few streets. If the only reason she attributed Skid Row is like a failure of capitalism in America, and we need to be more socialist and take care of more people. The fact that Los Angeles has like $75,000 a year per person to spend on homelessness and it goes nowhere. The fact that they can't even get their organizational structure to build any housing. The fact that most Angelenos are kind of like, "Well, I guess people can just be out in the street and it's okay. I'm not supposed to say that's bad, right? I I don't want to seem hateful." The fact that it's leftists in control of local and regional and state of California for the past forever [ __ ] amount of time, it never occurred to her. She was just like, "Boom, that's bad. That's America. That's capitalism." Right-wingers, you want them blaming that [ __ ]? You want them blaming capitalism in America and [ __ ] freedom and our great values that built this [ __ ] country? You want them blaming [ __ ] that homeless people like you say, "Oh yeah, I see you failed." And tourists, it's a [ __ ] weird guys. Myself and Mr. Nick Shaw were in Hollywood, California, recently for some work. Sounds like it's exactly what it sounds like. It was adult films. And we were walking around. Do zombies everywhere, bro? Like heroin addicts, fentanyl, the [ __ ] just people just walking around like foam with the mouth, the whole thing. Like real zombie land type of [ __ ]. Tons of homeless people. And I notice who goes to Hollywood? Like people want to walk and the [ __ ] see the stars and see where where's Michael Jackson's house? That whole thing. And dude, like, it's a [ __ ] bad vibe because people come here, they don't usually go to like somewhere North Dakota where everyone's super friendly and nice and there's no litter anywhere. They go to the big cities. They go to LA, they go to San Fran, they go to New York, they go to DC, sometimes they go to Chicago. Like, what the [ __ ] do you think they see over there? They see a shitload of homelessness. And it's a [ __ ] bad look. So if you have any pride in America or beautiful [ __ ] country, you don't want homeless people around [ __ ] it up. That sounds like I'm channeling, uh, what's his name, Homelander or whatever. And in a sense, I am, because I'm trying to be ultra hard right for the purpose of this. But like, just from a pure right-wing, not the best part of the right wing, the NY part, the mean part, the ashamed of our inhumanity part, that part, that part doesn't want homelessness either. Trying to look around, who the [ __ ] is for homelessness? No one, goddamn it. That's what I'm trying to say.

Now, another factor, for right-wingers, homeless people are much more likely to be criminals. And thus, having lots of them outside prevents that 1950s type of [ __ ] that right-wingers and conservatives love so much. Like letting your 5-year-old out to just go to the store and grab a loaf of bread, you know? Like, you already call the store owner, you've Venmoed him the money, it's okay. You don't even have to do the money thing. He knows Billy by name. Billy gets the bread, he puts it up, and good job, Billy. Billy fake scans it and gives Billy the bag of the bread, and Billy walks back home. People love that [ __ ]. That's conservatives love that. Who the [ __ ] doesn't love that? But you can't have that in a lot of communities anymore because Billy could get shanked with a [ __ ] fentanyl needle or whatever the hell, however that works. So conservatives don't like that [ __ ] at all because it ruins their beautiful America. So we can take conservatives being against doing something about homelessness and say, maybe in some technical grounds of some stuff they don't want to do, but nobody's for homelessness yet. Sure [ __ ] not right-wingers.

Left-wingers. This is actually going to be really short. I'm going to put it really simply. This is a good test to see if you're on the political left or not. If you fail this test, you're not actually on the political left. You need to take another political IQ test. Allowing humans who can't take care of themselves live in the streets with our mega wealth all around us is beyond contempt. The streets? People are you [ __ ] kidding me? The fact that leftists aren't up in arms about getting everybody [ __ ] off the street tomorrow is baffling. They're debating structural inequities, blah, blah, blah. There's people living in the [ __ ] street. So I know damn well there's no leftists. The conservatives will be like, "Leftists want homelessness. It's, it makes them look good politically." For whatever that part might be true, but they don't want homelessness. They hate it. It tugs at the heartstrings, as well as it should. And it should at everyone else, as a matter of fact.

Moderates. Almost everyone's a moderate. Moderates don't want homelessness. From a bit of both of the above. No one really. Everyone thinks homeless people are disgusting because it's [ __ ] gross. There's diseases and all other [ __ ]. The homeless people don't think they're [ __ ] clean. They're objectively less clean. And also, most moderates are like, "Jesus Christ, that person do to sleep in the street? That's [ __ ] up." So the best parts of left and right fuse. There's there's just almost no moderates that are pro-homelessness or like, "Oh, we shouldn't do anything about it. It's not a high priority." Everyone [ __ ] hates it. And another practical thing that filed under moderates is homelessness drives down real estate value and community attractiveness like crazy. If you're trying to sell your house or buy a house or just have a nice place to live, and increase in homelessness in your area is really [ __ ] bad news. Even if you're super psychopathic and pragmatic, you also don't want homelessness because it just drives down real estate values. Homelessness is just all around bad for everyone.

Lastly, my people, so to speak, uh, more my people than anyone else here, uh, Libertarians. Their critique of homelessness, uh, so, so let me say this in the best way that I can. Libertarians don't like the.

Police and the state being able to pull people off the street who they deem homeless and put them into some kind of center processing facility, that is a literal removal of freedom, and that's bad. And I'm right here with you 100%. It's [ __ ] up.

However, when you commit a crime, police can pull you off the street. Very few libertarians practically would debate that that's okay. Some guy just shoots his wife, and the cops are like, "Do what you want." No, you're going to get pulled off the street and get put, sent to jail. I'm not going to debate people, and maybe I'll make a funny video at some point of arguing against the "abolish all prisons" people. But those people are just having a lot of feelings, not a lot of thoughts. No one really wants to abolish all prisons if they think it through. And so, it's okay for the state to do some things that are [ __ ] up. It's not a slippery slope to say the state may be able to deal with homeless people in this way.

Now, here's the thing for libertarians. On a pure, on-shot ethics analysis, yeah, taking people off the street that you've arbitrarily determined as homeless is not cool. But if you think through and think ahead a little bit, you realize that critiques of homelessness turn into critiques of capitalism and freedom real fast. They turn into critiques of capitalism from the left. This is the most evident thing ever. Just Google it. Like, homelessness and the left-wing. Like, they'll just be like, "Capitalism, that's the problem." There was a, a high-up, I believe California or San Fran Board of, like, how to do, how to treat homeless people or whatever. She was interviewed, uh, I believe by, um, oh my God, what the [ __ ] is his name? Michael Shellenberger. And he was like, "So, how do we, like, fix homelessness? How do we solve it?" And she was like, "Uh, well, we don't solve it until we, like, disband capitalism." And I'm like, "All right, thanks for that one. That helps."

Um, so if you want people to have more ammo to be anti-capitalists, was something actionable and emotional to show for it, keep, keep it up. Let homelessness brew in, in all the major cities. And then people will be like, "Dude, it's capitalism doing this, right?" You're like, "No, no, no, no, no." Here's like a technical critique about capitalism and homelessness. Thing doesn't apply. They're not going to read that [ __ ]. But I tell you what, if we have a super high standard of living and basically no homeless people, and the left are like, "To [ __ ] revolt and break down capitalism," you'll be like, "Why? What are you nuts? We live in [ __ ] paradise. What are you crazy? Sure, we can reform some [ __ ], but got to blow up the whole system? There's tons of homeless people. It looks kind of bad. Kind of, as well it should."

And then what about conservatives and freedom? Well, social freedom is the first thing on the chopping block for conservatives. You have people doing tons of drugs, marijuana, cocaine, crack, meth, you name it. But they're doing these drugs in their own properties, inside their own homes, and they're never interfering with other people. How big of a problem is that socially? I got two answers for you. One, it's not. And two, to whatever it is, a big problem, it's a very, very invisible problem. And so conservatives don't get upset about it and start taking away our freedoms to put whatever the [ __ ] we want in our bodies. But if you have people using drugs and exercising the freedom of movement, and a shitload of them are [ __ ] homeless zombies, sorry, uh, it's a bad look. And then all of a sudden, regular Karen, who votes, she's a moderate, but she doesn't want her children around that bad stuff. She doesn't personally use marijuana. I pointed to myself because I do. She's like, "Well, these homeless people and that [ __ ] know marijuana. Yeah, let's, let's ban marijuana." And all of a sudden, you're banning all kinds of [ __ ] because some teeny fraction of people are doing it out in public, in the middle of the [ __ ] street, where it's not supposed to be done. And if you are a big freedom of movement fan, and homelessness gets bad enough, they're going to try to ban freedom of movement to sequester homeless people to various places. Then that goes too.

So, as a libertarian who thinks ahead, think about this. Homelessness is not a good, in real life, argument for libertarianism. And maybe something on the margins can be done that's maybe not so great, and is a little bit of the heavy-handed state, but better than the alternative of people being like, "Dude, we got to go way to the other end for this ship." All right, lastly, second to lastly, how to solve homelessness in the United States? My modest proposal. Consider this as just a thought experiment. The particulars here are not so important. It's the fact that I was able to, in about 20 minutes of thinking about it, generate a real decent structure, the likes of which you have not seen anywhere, except for a little bit in Western Europe, where precisely where homelessness is the lowest. With 1% of the federal budget, just 1%, we have roughly $100,000 per homeless person per, per year to spend on homelessness elimination. $100,000 per person per year. Let me ask you a question. If you had $100,000 per year that you didn't have to work for, could you keep yourself not homeless? What the [ __ ] does food and rent and basic medical cost? I'll tell you this, the average American isn't even close to homeless, and the average American makes about $50,000 per year. This is double. And by the way, if anyone wants to check my math to run the numbers, I was conservative on this. All right, 1% of the federal budget, $100,000 per homeless person per year. Let me ask you a question. Would you be okay to spend 1% less on some other things to eliminate homelessness in the entire United States? The answer is yes. By the way, it's just yes. Now, I know tradeoffs are important, etc., etc. But I'm sure we can find something in the education department budget, and something in the transportation department budget, some old [ __ ] [ __ ], some farm subsidies. We just like, do less farm subsidies. The market takes care of that anyway. It's a totally pointless waste of money. And then voila, we have $100,000 per person per year to spend on homeless, to eliminate all homelessness. I say this is a really big deal. Here's how to do it. How many points do I have in this [ __ ]? Three, four, and five. The five-point plan to eliminate homelessness in the United States. This goes hard right off the bat, so stay with me.

Number one, establish a three-tiered homelessness housing system. Let me describe the tiers. It's actually four tiers, but the last one's prison, and we already have that. Sounds [ __ ] up. I promise it's not as [ __ ] up as it sounds. Tier three, a small single room with a bathroom and shower. Okay, facilities built to have lots of these rooms in them. Think of like a very low-key college dorm type of facility. So the facility has a single room with a bathroom, shower, a place to sit and relax, a desk and a computer for work, internet and TV in room. All humans admissible so long as they are a legal US resident. I'm going to escape the holy legal [ __ ]. I'm just going to put that aside. That's another video. I already have an immigration video. As long as you are an American, you are admissible at any time in any major city or area that you go to that has one of these centers. You get a room, no problem. And if you don't think we can build enough of these, it's $100,000 per person per year. Holy [ __ ] [ __ ]. Some options. We could have a multi-person bunk bed family housing also available. Small frame, a small amount of space, but plenty of beds so that families can stay together. You could have it so that pets are allowed if they're safe to keep around others. And if you have to have a rule of inside, you walk them on a leash, and outside you get to go, you know, have them do their business or whatever. It's totally feasible for this amount of money, by a long shot, to have basic clothing provided for all. Because sometimes people show up at the homeless center and their [ __ ] is all caked and [ __ ] up. Like the employees take all their clothes for them, throw them the [ __ ] away, give them completely new attire to be super comfortable and warm and all that stuff. Your room, that domicile you live in in transition, is industrially cleaned once a week by the staff. So conscientiousness is irrelevant now because people clean for you. Again, for $100,000 a year, you just outright buy all the [ __ ] yourself. It'll just be purchased on, on your behalf. A central area to all these facilities that provides three meals a day, only healthy food and low palatability food. Why? Because healthy food, duh, that's what people need. And the food should be lower in palatability, not super tasty, because high palatability food is the reason we have an obesity epidemic. And so when you eat at this homeless people cafeteria, this tier three facility cafeteria, it'll be everything you need and nothing that is extra on top of that. You can always, always go out by yourself, freedom of movement, and, uh, buy your own tasty food if you wish. No problem. But at that facility, you will only be served super healthy foods that are not that exciting to eat. So we can honestly say, if we institute the system, no one ever has to go hungry ever again. But it's not cheeseburgers and pizzas, what I'm trying to say. Next, 24-hour medical center, all in the same facility, by the way, with vision, dental, the whole thing. Medicine's getting cheaper and cheaper to administer. Is is not a complex thing to do. They have this in tons of dorms already. A permanent career center. Okay, so, uh, a career center that helps you get a job if you want a job. And including jobs in the facilities themselves. Somebody who cleans the rooms could have a job and just live there. That's the thing. A permanent housing center. Most these centers are just like one office. So basically, if you are living there in transition and you want to find an apartment, the permanent housing center has all these connects to get you an apartment. A very low-income apartment to begin with. And then boom, you're out of that center. And one of the rules would be that you can go out and come back to your room as much as you like. You're not in jail, even for work or to save money. So you can have a job, live there, get yourself on your feet. By the way, you pay nothing for this. Everything's paid for. Your housing, your clothing, your medical care, your food, your heating, and all that stuff. Your environment is taken care of. You just go to work and come back. And you can stack up just to the brim all the money you want for savings. Some of the downsides, a prison-level security system, cameras in all rooms for all angles, a high number of staff with all body cams, zero tolerance for violence. All offenders are sent to tier zero, which, as a preview, that's prison. No violence whatsoever. You commit acts of violence, it's all caught on camera. It's very easy for a legal system to review. You don't go to tier three anymore. You go somewhere the [ __ ] else until you've served your time. Here's the thing, you don't get privacy in this shelter. That's the one big thing you give up. But it is necessary because if you give people tons of privacy and autonomy, we already know how this works, guys. Again, I'm keeping it real as [ __ ]. They're just going to [ __ ] roll up fentanyl needles and put them in the [ __ ] thing, put them in the vein in the [ __ ] room. They're going to drug deal. They're going to stab each other. There's going to be sexual assaults. That's just how it works with folks of that caliber. Uh, you got to have a complete surveillance state inside the facility. That's just how it has to be. Good news, there can be social workers, again, all super, super affordable, checking in regularly to help folks make their way out on their own. But if you want to live there long term, no problem. We say anyone who wants to stay at a place like this can. We'll never kick you out unless you [ __ ] up and do something stupid. And then we kick you out to one of the other centers I'll describe in just a sec. But generally speaking, we're not even putting the pressure for you have to leave at some point because we know something from earlier. Some people can't leave. Some people don't have the bandwidth, the cognitive abilities, the conscientiousness to ever support themselves on their own. So they'll be sort of semi-permanent residents. And then the social workers kind of know you, they're friendly with you, they try to help you with anything you need, maybe try to encourage you to upgrade your skill set, but nothing hardcore because we have the money for you. No big deal. The way to think about this is barely, it's, it's basically a barebones college dorm, but with high-level security presence to make safety very high. Of course, just as a random thought on the tangent, ex-cons might be housed in their own wing, potentially, and something like that. But, you know, that's a very specific problem. All right, so that's tier one.

Tier two, tier two is a drug addiction rehab center. It's all the same [ __ ] as, uh, the tier one system that I just talked about, but you're there for XYZ mandatory days at a time without the ability to leave. Very different than the other center. As you're a confirmed drug addict, so there it is. Theob of therapists to bring you off drugs safely. Once you have been brought off of drugs and confirmed as no longer addicted, then you transfer to tier three. That's how that works.

Tier one is an asylum for the mentally unwell who cannot take care of themselves. So if you are mentally well, but just not in a place where you are productive enough, intelligent, or conscientious enough, you might stay in tier three for an indeterminate amount of time, maybe forever. But if you're psychiatrically unwell, like legitimately, like whatever insane, whatever the technical polite term is, um, you need to live in an asylum. You need to live in a home where people take care of you. And having insane people and not insane people together tends to get really [ __ ] wacky. So tier one asylum would be that, um, same as, uh, tier two, though the asylums that kind of bring you off of drugs, but it's, it's kind of a permanent residence unless you re-eval. It turns out you're not nuts anymore because insanity comes and goes, and then you get freed up to do whatever. You get sent to another center, so on and so forth.

And lastly, and we already have this, but I have put a, a little spin on it, is tier zero, which I call jail/prison. Maybe two facilities, jail and a prison, right next to each other. Jail is temporary, super, super temporary. Prison is a little bit more permanent. I've talked about this before on the channel, but I think the prisons in modern countries should be very well-kept with loads of amenities, zero abuse tolerance for staff or other people, super kind treatment by the staff. We're not trying to teach people [ __ ]. We're not trying to go like this. You just, the thing with criminality is just need to be away from other people, and that's like 95% of the solution. Now, you get into that kind of prison situation for a short time if your offense is relatively small or your first offense. But as your offenses build into bigger offenses, and as you do more crimes in a row, we exponentially put you in there for longer. So there are some people that are just [ __ ] criminals, and they're just going to live their, their entire lives, more or less. That's already a thing that happens. It might as well happen with tons of humanity instead of making prisons terrible places. So that's part one. We build that structure out. Seems tough, but we have like damn near infinity money at this point. It is possible to do. We've done much more difficult things. Manhattan Project type of [ __ ]. Fighting World War Two. That even, it's not even close.

The second thing, and remember, there are some total of like 600,000 people that are even eligible for this sort of thing. So it's like, we have to help every American, not even close. Number two, points. That's point one, build the facility structure. Number two, make homelessness illegal. I know it sounds [ __ ] up, and it really is, but unless you want homelessness to persist, this is a must. Because if a person is [ __ ] rotting in the street by themselves, and we're like, "Whoa, he can be there." We got nothing. We got all these centers. They're going to go to the centers. By the way, there's already tons of stuff sort of like this in various cities, and people come in, they go, sometimes they don't even come in, they don't know what exists, they don't care. They're insane and on drugs and in the middle of the street. And so unless you can forcibly remove people with kindness, with gentleness, offering them options, then you don't have anything. So making homelessness illegal is a thing. But it's like littering is illegal. You're just not using your own body to produce litter with. I digress. But seriously, number three. So we have the facilities, we have the mandate. That's illegal to be, uh, actively homeless out anywhere. When police interact with homeless folks, so this is point three. They ask them to please not sleep on the street and please go home. That's how the interaction starts. If the person is obviously just drunk or high, they can just get a ride home, no problem. I think it's wonderful when the police drive people home. I love that 1950s Leave it to Beaver type of [ __ ]. Scott, you know what I'm talking about? "G, G, Mister, thanks for the ride. It's great." And the thing is, cops are usually great [ __ ] people, and they're more than happy to help you out. I think we should encourage more of a culture. People say, "Oh, like, you know, like [ __ ] the police." Like, "Okay, like, how do we make them better so they can help us better?" Like, "No, just abolish the police." Like, "You're an idiot if you abolish the police." I'm coming to your home tomorrow and taking half your [ __ ]. Watch you do nothing about it. It's a non-starter. So if we have police to do a good job, they might as well serve the community. And like, if you're [ __ ] up, drunk, or high, and they're not going to take you to jail, you're drunk, and public intoxication, all that [ __ ]. But if you're kind of like, it's 2 AM and there's no one else on the street, you're like, sort of passed out, you're like, "Huh?" And the cops are like, "What are you doing?" You're like, "I really [ __ ] up, fellas. Like, where do I live?" "Here's my ID. I think I live somewhere there." Like, "Okay, great. They drive you, they drop you off. You're good to go." That's like a third of all interactions. So don't worry to the libertarians. If this is explicit, and there's body cams on everything, so you can review every interaction, which is totally possible now, by the way. You don't have to worry about this [ __ ] dystopian thing of like, "I just pull you off the street for anything. I was just walking." It's highly unlikely, highly, highly likely. If the person doesn't have anywhere to go or refuses commands, they are arrested for homelessness and taken to a processing center. That's a civil infraction, by the way. Should be a civil infraction, not a criminal infraction. This is something that like is on your record forever. You can't get a job. Like, it's all right. You were just [ __ ] up and too [ __ ] up to talk to the cops. [ __ ] it. You're going to the homelessness center. The processing center has a very simple job. Determine which tier that person belongs in. If you're high on drugs, you go to tier two. And maybe you wake up the next day in tier two and you go, "Holy [ __ ] [ __ ]." And they're like, "Are you addicted to drugs?" You're like, "I don't think I am. I just got really drunk last night." They're like, "Well, fill out this questionnaire and let us administer a few tests." And they're like, "Nah, you're good. You're just got drunk. See you." They just open the door. Or if you're like, "No, I'm not. I'm not addicted to alcohol. Do you guys have any?" They're like, "Mhm." Take a couple more tests. Like, "You're an alcoholic. Would you like treatment?" "Yes." "No." Whatever the answer is, they administer. And so it goes. Tier one folk for folks who are, uh, not likely mental. You, sorry, good God, I said that wrong. Tier two for folks on drugs. Processing center. Tier two, people who are likely mental, get sent to tier one. Remember, you can test out of tier one if you show to the psychiatrist you're not insane. They just let you go. Here's the thing. Um, it's not that hard to figure out in real life who the [ __ ] goes into tier one, who goes into the insane asylum. It's not that hard. You ever deal with your homeless people, it's not that hard. And of course, you have tier zero, the jail side, first for criminal actors, if they're violent or whatever. So if you have a homeless person that's also caught in the act of doing violence, you don't just take them to the regular place. They go to tier zero. They go jail side. They figure out, okay, how do we adjudicate? How do we process? How do we go from there? And for everyone else, including folks just having a rough go, families put out on the street at deadbeat dads, etc., they go to tier three. They go to that dormitory situation where they get instantly housed, clothed, helped with cleaning, fed, and have access to all these resources right away. The police are taking you to a place not to punish you, not to sequester you, not to ostracize you. They're taking you to the place that the system assesses you are best helped in. That's my version of treating homelessness, helping as many people as possible.

Number four, to include in the system, you set up multiple watchdog organizations that watch for abuse and you keep them on it. Right? Separation of powers works really well. Oversight and transparency work really well. They're not perfect, but damn, they work super well in a variety of other contexts. We don't make these organizations against the system itself. They are designed to root out individual abuses and negligence at every level, all the way up from the guy that is in charge of the, of the insane asylum to the orderly that just changes the sheets and occasionally, you know, does insane unethical things to people. We need that. That's one of the reasons, probably the number one reason why we have cameras everywhere and body cams on everyone. We already know homeless people are going to do what they're going to do. You don't even need cameras to see it. We need most of the cameras to make sure the employees are not abusing the homeless people. That's a big deal. It's a big deal for really two reasons. One, abusing people is [ __ ] up and we should try to prevent it as much as possible. And two, we can honestly say, not only do we have very low abuse in the system, we're always working on making it much better. And it's really difficult to get abusive because you're always being surveilled. And if you're an employee to that system, you know in advance you're being surveilled. The probability you're going to do [ __ ] up [ __ ] is really, really much smaller. Now, we're unlikely to get zero abuses and negligence because zero is a fanciful number to have a high population of humans. But the idea is to keep them very low and lower and lower over time to make it a tenable system, to make it a system in which you're not do that. Homeless system, it's a good idea, but holy [ __ ], is it [ __ ] up. All the abuses? Nope, very low abuses and constantly in decline. That watchdog stuff is super, super, super pertinent.

All right, number five. That's kind of it. Homelessness with this system, I predict, would go to near zero. The reality is that a lot of folks will go from tier to tier. They'll, they'll get into tier three, they'll leave the tier three facility, which is like the sort of good one. They'll get crazy high on drugs, they'll come back, they'll be diagnosed as tier two, they go to tier two. They stab someone in the drug rehab facility, they go to tier zero prison for a while. They get out, they come back to tier three. That's just the nature because remember, the vast majority of the reason people are homeless and in various situations in their lives is because of their particular ability set and proclivity set. You're just going to get this kind of thing a lot. I don't want to say like, "Oh, like, we'll just fix homelessness and everyone's going to be rehabbed and have a job and a career and be independent. We can shut all these centers down." That's not going to happen. So you're going to have that. And all people just having a hard time. Like the spirit, purpose of why we care about homelessness will have, if you build the system and execute it, a humane place to go to collect themselves, perhaps go to school or start jobs, save money, and move out on their own. Remember, the facility charges you no rent. It charges you no fee. You can save all of the money, all of the money you get paid at work for whatever endeavor you want. You can go to school, anything, no problem. For very low IQ and very low conscientiousness folks, tier three might be more of a long-term residence. And that's okay. And here's why it's okay. Because what's the alternative? The alternative is that they're homeless. That's no bueno. They're going to be having a [ __ ] hard time living out in the street and doing all the other bad stuff. Homelessness is bringing that whole thing together. Mmm. If we're going to pay money to just keep them out of the [ __ ] street, that sounds like a great trade-off to me. 100%.

Now, this whole thing I described sounds like a lot, right? But for $100,000 per person per year, this is so beyond easily doable and then some that it's upsetting to think about the fact that we haven't done it yet. That being said, last little bit here, I want to respond to some criticisms in advance. So before you type in the comments section, I know no one will listen to this, uh, give some thought to the fact that I have thought a little bit about some problems in advance. Let's see if I can do okay with this.

So, civil liberties. Number one, I'm going to make a contention. I think it sounds [ __ ] up, but it's nonetheless, I believe it's true. People who cannot take care of themselves enough to stay off the street are entitled to fewer liberties, just like children are entitled to fewer liberties. If you are under the age of 18, especially under the age of 10, you could just go anywhere you want and just tell your parents to [ __ ] off. Like, no, you do not have a full complement of civil rights. And if you were demonstrably unable to keep yourself under a roof and housed, then you get fewer liberties, specifically the ones that allow you to stay in the street, unhoused. And only those liberties. This is not controversial. We're not out here giving dogs full civil rights. We're not out here giving children full civil rights. You want to give people who are very mentally unwell full complement of civil rights and say we can't never touch these dope? The consequentialist reality from that will not be pretty for the individuals that can't make it themselves. You're just going to have homelessness everywhere. If that's cool, dope. I don't like it. Not cool with me.

Number two, people talk about facilities abuses. Very, very, very, very pertinent concern. What about the abuse from the facility, the guards, the orderlies, the people in charge? Here's the thing, we already addressed a bunch of these. Just to reiterate, cameras all over. Not an inch of that facility goes unscanned. Body cameras on everyone. Multiple watchdog organizations overseeing all of this footage to sniff out any bit of abuse and instantly report it. Abuses will never be zero, but they can be very, very low. And remember, the watermark of abuse isn't zero. It's, is this still better than living in the street? If you have a, a homelessness facility which houses people that has just rife abuse, but that abuse is one-tenth what it is in the street, do you even have an argument for not letting people get in there? Come on now. Come on now. We could do a lot better than a tenth, but just putting that to perspective.

Number three, problem that I'm kind of looking out for, and this is the last one, is the nanny state entitlement effect. If you just let anyone live in tier three, which is totally free housing, why wouldn't lots of people just do it and then stop working and [ __ ] off and not pay taxes and just live in tier three? Isn't it great? Party in tier three. So first, there is the social stigma. I want to make something very clear. There are a lot of campaigns to destigmatize various things. I am for some of them and I'm against others. I think homelessness should be stigmatized. Why? Because homelessness is a bad thing for who? For everyone, including the people experiencing it. Unless you want to destigmatize animal cruelty, you want to destigmatize pollution and other terrible things that hurt real people and animals as well. Do not try to tell me that we need to destigmatize homelessness. So if you're living in a tier three facility, you living there should be stigmatized. It's not a proud thing to live in a tier three facility. It doesn't mean you have to hang your head in shame, but no one in their right mind is going to give you their best look ever being that you live in a homelessness facility. Living in a tier three center, a homelessness facility, as I've described, is an almost literal screaming out loud admission of having zero wealth. Because if you had wealth, why the [ __ ] would you be there? So most humans in almost every community will just not want to settle down in it. You could be big [ __ ] hood trap star, rap star, pimp, game 100%, and [ __ ] are like, "Oh [ __ ], you're the man. I love them rims." Like, "Yeah, what's up?" Shouty. They're like, "Where you stay?" You're like, "[ __ ] [ __ ] home. I live in, I live in the homelessness shelter." And you ain't getting [ __ ] [ __ ]. You some people will put out no matter what. I know that. But the magnitude of the social stigma is intense, as well it should be. We should not be seeking to destigmatize things that are not great things, unless again, you also want to destigmatize like beating the [ __ ] out of your dog in public. Don't destigmatize me. This is just how I do things. But the dog is suffering. Yeah, I agree. Homeless people are suffering. Homelessness and the associated sort of constellation with it should get in some sort of stigma. It's a very socially valuable stigma.

Second, the air-bones nature of the centers of the tier three housing, uh, is going to be a factor in keeping the abuse rates relatively low. Tier three housing is humane, but it's not the lap of luxury. It's a small room. It's like industrial looking. Think of like, uh, you know, some like Empire type of [ __ ]. I hate to paint it like that, but like a cozy version of the housing they have in the Star Wars Empire [ __ ]. Most folks who stay there will be there because they have no other choice, not because it's roomy and the food is amazing. Remember, the food isn't amazing and it's not roomy. It's a place where you can humanely survive and take that next step. It's not a place where people with other options, which is what the definition of abusing the system is, are likely to go. And yes, thirdly and lastly, some people will actually stay there for a long time or for good in these tier three centers. Social workers will regularly work with them to find ways to accumulate skills and wealth to get them out. And by the way, because everyone gets such really good attention from social workers consistently and camera monitoring, it's going to be easy to figure out who's [ __ ] around. Like, if you have someone staying at your center and they're like, counting their stacks of hundreds every day and putting off stacks and they're going out every night and just clubbing and just runchy [ __ ] and [ __ ] dealing drugs and coming back and they have more stacks and they're wiping off cocaine dust, it's very easy for a social worker to be like, "Bill, how's, how's looking for work?" Bill's like, "[ __ ] you, get out of my [ __ ]." Like, "Bill's probably going to jail or prison." Or there is an argument for telling Bill like, "Listen, um, you know, you're not working your way out of here and we have to have some serious conversations." Faring out abuse is definitely a thing. And if you're like, "Dude, you clearly have enough money, you're just staying here because what now? You're a piece of [ __ ]." Like, you can kick people out now. If they come back in and they're [ __ ] at it or whatever, you got to take them back. But you can kick people out. And they're like, "[ __ ] this place." They go and live in their actual apartment that they had. Again, these abuses, once you realize that staying in a homelessness shelter is something almost no one does voluntarily, and abusing that system, like abusing welfare, is easy because you get a check, you can live anywhere, you can do anything, get a welfare check, you falsify all the [ __ ], you still live in large, you still live man. But this isn't a check. This isn't, "We pay homeless people $100,000 a year and be like, [ __ ] off, go do whatever you want. Clearly you don't want to be homeless." That's not going to work. We're bringing people into centers. Not a lot of people want to live in a center. So already the use case for how much social work, fiing of abuses we have to make is small. But social workers are there for that as well. Here's the thing, social workers will do their best to get everyone on their feet. But some folks are going to be so low IQ, low conscientiousness, they're just going to be homeless again. If you kick them out, this is an important point because not all people in today's environment, short of genetic engineering, can be helped to stand on their own. That's just a thing. It's a thing you about the real world. You can't take every kid and turn him into a, a tennis pro. It's just not going to happen. Some people just do not have the requisite athleticism to do that. They just can't do it. Some people don't have what it takes to be self-supportive. And thus, we have the choice. Do we put those people up humanely in a tier three facility, or do we let them rot in the streets? And almost no one thinks the latter. Almost no one thinks, "Yeah, [ __ ] him, let him go into the streets." Very, very few people who've thought it through and who vote think like that. So what I ask you is this, let's think on this some more and then potentially act. Homelessness, I might not have all the answers. Certainly, you can pick apart my plan and find out a bunch of ways in which it failed. But this is me noodling on it for like 20 minutes. Certainly, we can have a comprehensive system like this that reduces homelessness by 95% or greater. Why do we want this? Because we know it doesn't cost a lot of money, because it just doesn't. And because homelessness in our modern, beautiful, exceptional world is unconscionable. The fact that it's still around is super [ __ ] up. We got to do something about it. And it has to be evidence-based and logical and bereft of really nasty emotions that extreme right-wingers sometimes portray, and really lovey-dovey but very misguided emotions that some left-wingers portray. Because homelessness is a serious, real thing in the world. We need a serious, logical approach. This has been mine. I don't know half the [ __ ] I said was right or wrong, but I put some thought into it. Give some thought yourself. Let me know what you think in the comments. And if you want any more videos on this kind of [ __ ], say something in the comments. And I'll see you there. Peace, homies.