It’s just like communism in that it entirely ignores the needs and capacity of an individual and makes them slaves to the idealism of the state.

They’re no better than a homeless encampment because you can’t give people a house and then expect them to act like a homeowner overnight. It was the wrong problem to solve, and I think people rush to solve it out of self conscious guilt and a desire to quickly make the apparent parts of the problem disappear from common view.

It’s a cruel and ridiculous strategy.

HN has had enough of those damn moochers, too:

I have found that many people who receive housing benefits are very poor stewards of their personal resources.

The first thing someone does when they get housed is to invite all their homeless friends over, to shower, to eat, to crash, to do drugs, to play games, whatever.

So your typical Section 8 housing recipient is not just a single person/family benefiting from housing, they’re dragging in their entire circle of loser friends who don’t have those benefits, and so now you’ve got a cluster of mooches who aren’t invested nor responsible for disruption or damage in that community.

It’s really an unfortunate thing, and I just saw it over and over again. So many people lose their benefits very quickly because they can’t resist helping other folks out, but that’s not what you do with welfare and entitlements.

  • self@awful.systemsEnglish
    12·
    10 months ago

    it’s fucking fascinating how many times I’ve seen the “it’s downvoted, what’s the problem” thing from orange site regulars, when the fash element on that site doesn’t particularly care about downvotes if they can still control the conversation. plus there’s the degree to which the orange site’s shit moderation structure covers up these issues — anything problematic just gets deleted way after it’s had its intended effect. then you watch orange site regulars defend mass flagging trans and antifascist folks off of the site, and you realize none of this is an accident or due to incompetence; these systems are working as intended to empower bigots. flagging on HN isn’t an anti-spam measure, it’s a way to invisibly give control to the worst people on the site.

    • corbin@awful.systemsEnglish
      7·
      10 months ago

      Exactly! Quoting myself from the conversation I linked above:

      With [HN] in mind, I don’t really want to give Dan G. any benefit of the doubt. He’s had years to decide whether to open-source the forum, add features like a moderation log, switch the forum to invite-only mode, add reputation tracking, etc. It’s his website, and he chooses to leave these comments up.

      At this point, reporting bad posts only serves to let Dan G. and his buddies sweep the fascists under the rug.

      • self@awful.systemsEnglish
        8·
        10 months ago

        hacker news really is the cryptocurrency of tech sites: incredibly poorly implemented (dang begs folks to log out when threads get popular), controlled by technofascists, enabled by an extremely mediocre but remarkably fanatical fanbase, and everybody’s abusing amphetamines nootropics. but any day now, they’ll come up with something that solves all of its problems! it’s only been 16 years!

        why in fuck is tech like this