Laws. Well,...
Laws.
I absolute think there are laws that shouldn't be. And laws that should be. I think it should be illegal for a society to force people into homelessness. It's hard to enforce something like that, because you're making a law for the government to enforce on itself.
I was just reading an article in the Los Angeles Times about people getting evicted from their homes because a group of investors had bought the building and was raising the rents. The people living in this building did not have the money available to them to let them move to a new place, so many of them were facing homelessness. And I feel just helpless in the face of knowing this happens. I often imagine what I could do to solve these problems if I had, say, Jeff Bezos' wealth. Snap your fingers, build a giant apartment building, and offer free apartments to people who are displaced all over the city... which would probably put some much needed downward pressure on rents all over this city.
But I don't have his money, and there's no financial incentive for him to do that, and he didn't get his money by being charitable in the extreme, you know? We cannot expect billionaires to solve the problems created by the economics that made them billionaires.
And so, we turn to laws. I digress?
Are laws guidelines? Not generally. Should they be? No, not if they are just laws. But so many of them aren't just laws and are applied irregularly. People of color are more likely to receive harsh sentences for the same crime than white folks. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/11/16/black-men-sentenced-to-more-time-for-committing-the-exact-same-crime-as-a-white-person-study-finds/?noredirect=on)
I... it's a big topic. There are my 3 cents worth.
LOL, 3 cents! that's more than most people's 2!
...but on a more serious note. You can do that in America? Evict people without finding them housing? In the Netherlands, if something similar happened (or if someone bought a house that already had tenants), the tenants have the right to stay, or be relocated to a similar housing (I think that this bit would have to be negotiated).
Yep, and it happens all the time. It should absolutely be illegal.
I just also digested the last bit (I got stuck on the first part of your answer). Yes, the problem of unequal application of laws is also a big problem. I was also thinking of the proportional penalties. For instance, a particular fine (lets say 100 euro), is nothing to one person and a disaster to another. On the other hand, making it a percentage of income would introduce it's own perverse incentives....
Exactly! To musk, a parking ticket isn't a deterrent. To someone else, it's the beginning of the path to homelessness. We have to solve our world's income inequality before we can even begin to figure out how much a parking ticket should be. maybe a judge should decide, but bias is a whole nother ball of wax
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Thanks! What a great regular contest! We should still chat about parenthood sometime. He had a rough napping day today, and finished the day with tiny little laugh/cry/cough sounds like a metronome. Very silly.