by Defletter | 2025-06-20 19:44:44+00:00
> [the housing crisis] What is the system going to do other than agree that people need...

There are a multitude of things that could be done: public housing; rent caps; better zoning; ignoring nimby-ism; subisiding new and denser construction; subsidising first-time buyers; etc.

> [homelessness] What is the system going to do other than agree that people need...

Pass laws preventing (and undoing) hostile architecture; repeal vagrancy laws; open facilities for the safe consumption of drugs; more shelters; allow them to register a place (eg: a post office) as a permanent address to receive mail; subsidise places that open their toilets/showers to the homeless; repeal laws criminalising feeding the homeless; etc.

> [wage theft] What is the system going to do other than...

Make wage theft a crime instead of a civil wrong? And yes, one of the best ways is to join a union, so while we're here: repeal all union-busting laws; laws that prevent unions from striking; and laws that let employers retaliate against union action; laws that let employers hire temporary replacement staff during a strike; etc.

> ["delay, deny, defend"] The Amish...

It's a little odd that you comparing liberals to a religious group that reject basically any technology from the industrial revolution and onward. Like, yes, the Amish generally have day-to-day better health outcomes due to the manual labour and better diet... but once you get cancer or need an x-ray or a blood transfusion or bone-marrow transplant or birth complications? The way to fix all this is universal healthcare, period.

> [abortion rights] but at the end of the day rights are only as meaningful as the enforcement...

It's kind of odd that you bring up cannabis here since this is in large part a liberal success of getting governments to listen to them and pass state-legislation to legalise cannabis. This is also an exceptionally odd take with regard to abortions: you are effectively saying that hospitals and medical professionals will be willing to risk their careers, licences, fines, and jail time, if not execution, if enough people want them to? What? Do you happen to be an anarchist?

> [school shootings...] What is the systemic (or otherwise) solution here?

This is tricky because solutions that have worked in other countries likely wouldn't in the US because of its obsession with guns. Some people say that it's not a gun crisis but a mental-health crisis... okay then, then let's fund mental health programmes like crazy? Ultimately, the best way to reduce gun crime is to reduce the amount of guns in circulation. That could mean gun buybacks; banning bump-stocks; making gun companies liable for crimes committed with their guns; force guns to require insurance; background checks; reverse the Supreme Court decision to separate federal gun rights from well-regulated militias; etc.

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There's a pattern here in your responses where you question the existence of systemic solutions to societal problems, and I have to ask: do you consider other countries at all? Obviously, like I've already mentioned, it's not always possible to simply adopt another country's policies 1:1 and have them work. But different countries have different rates of these issues: do you think that countries with less just have a more charitable populous or something? I mean, there may be some truth to that, but all your responses here are essentially rejecting the notion of systemic solutions at all in favour of just being charitable.

Liberals are more likely to think in terms of systems, and I may concede that many liberals are stuck in systemic thinking. But all this is ultimately missing this point of my original comment: we're quibbling here over how to solve societal problems... conservatives don't do this, they just accept these issues as facts of life and don't spend time worrying about them at all.