This is a great and very insightful post (and some good comments too). Definitely time well spent reading all of this.
One tragic example of this that we see every day is homelessness. I presume I’m not the only person living in a city where there are people sleeping outside even during the winter, while the city council is spending millions and many years renovating existing buildings to make them meet exacting standards so that they can eventually house these people.
And it feels like we need someone to go in there and say “listen, living in a substandard apartment, even one that doesn’t meet the requirements for fire-safety or accessibility is still far, far safer and better than living on the street when it’s below freezing and there are criminals and addicts likely to attack you.” But I imagine that if I’m a city bureaucrat, the reward-system facing me is that if I house 10 people and they are all happy, I get a good score, but if I house 100 and one of them suffers an accident due to a flaw in the building, I will likely get fired—an evaluation that fails to factor in what would happen to the other 90 people if they spent the winter sleeping on the street.
At the same time, they can also go too far in the other direction (where impact loss doesn’t apply), for example providing hostels which offer no safety or privacy, so that many people actually choose to stay on the street.
I don’t want to over-simplify, I’m not an expert on this area. Nor do I want to criticise the many people who I’m sure are doing everything they can to help, including many public servants. I just think it’s one of many areas where Lizka’s reasoning and approach would be very valuable, and it feels like it’s not happening.
This is a great and very insightful post (and some good comments too). Definitely time well spent reading all of this.
One tragic example of this that we see every day is homelessness. I presume I’m not the only person living in a city where there are people sleeping outside even during the winter, while the city council is spending millions and many years renovating existing buildings to make them meet exacting standards so that they can eventually house these people.
And it feels like we need someone to go in there and say “listen, living in a substandard apartment, even one that doesn’t meet the requirements for fire-safety or accessibility is still far, far safer and better than living on the street when it’s below freezing and there are criminals and addicts likely to attack you.” But I imagine that if I’m a city bureaucrat, the reward-system facing me is that if I house 10 people and they are all happy, I get a good score, but if I house 100 and one of them suffers an accident due to a flaw in the building, I will likely get fired—an evaluation that fails to factor in what would happen to the other 90 people if they spent the winter sleeping on the street.
At the same time, they can also go too far in the other direction (where impact loss doesn’t apply), for example providing hostels which offer no safety or privacy, so that many people actually choose to stay on the street.
I don’t want to over-simplify, I’m not an expert on this area. Nor do I want to criticise the many people who I’m sure are doing everything they can to help, including many public servants. I just think it’s one of many areas where Lizka’s reasoning and approach would be very valuable, and it feels like it’s not happening.