the structure of problems in America

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Peter Kropotkin
Posts: 1500
Joined: Wed Jun 22, 2022 5:11 am

the structure of problems in America

Post by Peter Kropotkin »

in the course of current commentary,
one reads how "left wing" cities like San Francisco,
are collapsing... because they are ''left wing"...or have
"liberal'' policies....and this dubious contention is also
about "left wing" states like California and NY...

two of the problems brought up is homelessness and drugs...
but as always, we have to understand these problems within
context...and that is the first problem with most of the current
commentary.. there is no context.. the headline might read,

''San Francisco has massive homelessness"

but once we put that problem into context, we see it for
what it is...SF has roughly 750,000 people or so....
and the estimated number of homeless in SF, is roughly
around 10,000.. and most likely a bit more...
but think about that number... that means that having
a homeless population of 10,000 is slightly more than
1% of the entire population of SF.. or roughly 7,500 is one percent...
(ten percent would be 75,000) and the estimated number of
homeless across the country is less than a million people...
in a country of 340 million... we have to put context into our numbers...
and taken into context, it doesn't look so bad...

so let us think about homelessness.... why can't a city like SF be
able to fix it homeless problem? Because of the very nature of the
problem.. the reason that people are homeless is much bigger
than any sort of fix that one city can do... people are homeless due
to a variety of reasons... one of the two major reasons is income...
they simply don't make enough money to afford a home/apartment....
here in SF, the average cost for a STUDIO apartment is 2,200 a month...
and a three bedroom, assuming you can find one, is around
5,000 or more a month...now I don't know about you, but I for one
couldn't afford an apartment in SF...but how can a city like SF
do anything about the cost of renting? for the most part, rent
is control by the owner of the property, not the city...and if we
were to purpose rent control, the owner crowd would scream
bloody murder about the "city overreach".....
so how can a public entity change or effect private ownership?
there is no path outside of laws and that would be challenged
seven ways from Sunday.. legally, politically, socially.. there is
no real path for a city like SF, to change the private
control of rents... and thus the marketplace of rental property
will still be in the hands of private owners who want the most
money possible for their buildings...and as long as the rental
property remains in the hands of the supply and demand chain,
there will be no changes in the rental market...

and once again, how does a city like SF, go about creating
cheaper housing for the 10,000 or so, homeless?
building housing would be one path, but once again,
there are those who believe that the private marketplace
should be the one to make the changes, not the city...
the faithful of private enterprise....will demand that the
city cease to build housing because it might, MIGHT cost
them some higher taxes... thus putting money ahead of
human beings... very ''pro-life'' isn't it?

so there is effectively no real way that a city, like SF,
can make enough changes to contain or lower the number
of homelessness... the solution, if any, must come from
somewhere beyond the city level...a single city cannot make
changes, without some dramatic support from all its citizens...

now the second problem is drugs.... that is one of the common
accusations against SF... and yet, once again, SF is not the only
city or public municipality with drug problems..
this too, requires more than just a city or even a state to
reduce the drug problems in this nation... but it comes
down to thinking about the real problem with drugs...
and what is that? is that we offer up no alternative to drugs in
people's lives....people choose drugs, and here I am including booze,
people choose drugs to create some change in their lives...
for ''most people they lead lives of quiet desperation''.....
so wrote Thoreau....the real answer to ending the drug
problems lay with ending this living in quiet desperation...
drug use stems from most people attempting to escape
their lives in some fashion...

change this and you change the need for drugs....
drug use is a light shined on our civilization and country....
and it reflects on how people are reacting to what our
state/society/civilization is doing.... name the states
with real drug problem and quite often, they are the states
with the highest drug use... West Virginia, DC, Arkansas,
Missouri, New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado and Michigan...
and the states with the biggest opioid problem?
again, WV, New Hampshire, Ohio, Rhode Island, Massachusetts,
Maryland, Kentucky, and Connecticut...

the country with the worst opioids problem in the world is the US....
and I would suggest that this is, in part, due to the problems
found in this country....with the major contributor being
that people feel that they have no control over their own lives....
we have no control over our lives in both our economic and
political world... why engage with politics when the
game is already rigged by the powerful and wealthy...
and why engage with the economics when that game
has been rigged for centuries...
how exactly do we have control over our lives?

and this is how we end the massive drug crisis in this country...
we give control of their lives back to the people... drug taking
is a response to the environment we have around us...
taking drugs isn't an isolated event... it exists within a society
and state and is impacted by the events within the city/state...
and therein lies the secret to recovering human beings...
to know that they don't exists in isolation to each other...
and in isolation to events in our lives...
both homelessness and drug use are part of the social structure..
change the social structure and you change both homelessness
and drug use... for drug use exists within our society and state..
it is bound and connected to the state/society...
and it exists, drug use, because of the nature of the state/society....
give people meaning and give people purpose and drug use will
drop... create hope and a future worth living, and drug use will
decrease...give people something to live for, not just money or
material possessions, or fame or titles, but something
that has actual value, and drug use will decrease....
as long as people feel there is no hope or future, drug
use will continue and in fact, increase....
those two ideas are connected.... hope and the future
with drug use...and that can only happen with a change
in how we address problems, finding solutions in the problems
facing our country....

and this idea that we answer the problems of drug use
or homelessness by "ad hoc" solutions will always fail...
because it doesn't address the problems that cause homelessness
and drug use... and that requires us to face these problems
as a nation, together, as one.... most problems facing us
as Americans, can only find solutions as a nation, not
within a city or a state, or individually, no, any problems
we have, is a problem that is generated by the state/society/
civilization that we live in... and any solutions to those
problems must also be generated by the state/society/
civilization we live in....

Kropotkin
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