I don't know a name for this emotion

[mellowtigger]

*sigh* Sometimes, I just don't understand government or the people who vote to make it the way it is.

This morning, I looked out my kitchen window and saw a City Of Minneapolis Regulatory Service car sitting motionless in my alley. Was it here to complain about my back yard? I'm not sure what would be the problem. This looks okay from this weekend, right? Or was it here about my neighbor, which had 9 vehicles parked in the back yard recently? It's been bad for weeks/months, but 9 vehicles was a new record, so I took this photo yesterday.

If this is "broken windows policing", then I'm not a fan. These vehicles are not directly harming anything, so why waste taxpayer money on monitoring? I'd much rather have somebody driving around listening for obnoxious noises to track down, so they don't rattle my home windows.  The local noise pollution wears down the mind.  Why doesn't government spend this money instead on monitoring the powerful for stolen wages, missed taxes, or abused authority?

After my experience as a 54-year-old man being arrested at a homeless encampment facing eviction, I can sympathize with this 78-year-old woman arrested for feeding the homeless. There is also video of her arrest and her speaking about it.  Why is this happening? Is it really just religion? What breeds this contempt for humanity?  Seriously, why is this happening?

Why are people voting into office the representatives who make these laws and regulations? Why is anyone using their power in this world to enable such awful things like criminalizing poverty?  Our lives could be better.

Comments

[bitterlawngnome]

People don't seem to be able to get past the idea that they would be paying for someone else's housing. That's it. Your ideas are faaaaar more complicated than that. The logical response to that concern is to demonstrate that it's actually cheaper to just house ppl or give GBI, and it's been demonstrated several places in several ways, but you can't argue with angry or hungry, people are not coming from a place of rational decision making. The more riled up they get (FB, Fox, etc) and the more wealth is taken away from them (wealth concentration) the less rational and more emotional their decisions become, and that suits the people at the top of food chain very well.

Also I don't think it makes sense at all to talk about "the government". There isn't a government, there's only a whole mass of factions more or less battling each other for primacy, and of necessity that is their number one priority at all times (whatever your agenda might be, gaining or holding onto a position of power is a necessary first step in making it happen). Anything that gets accomplished is only ever in the service of that goal. If you can recast your arguments to help one faction or another feel they will get and hold more power then you have a chance of implementing your agenda, otherwise, you are irrelevant to them.

But again, perhaps you just wanted to vent?

[mellowtigger]

Sorry, I didn't answer your last question. Yes, I'm looking for creative answers. No, it's not rhetorical venting. I seriously want to understand the impediment. I'm tired of repeating the same philosophical arguments and getting nowhere. Your first sentence here may be the ultimate issue. It's the emotional part of perceived loss versus perceived gain. I think that's the psychological crux of the problem, where perceived loss is felt more keenly than an equivalent gain. Systemic solutions are always more complicated than just relocating a problem so we can temporarily stop perceiving it. Stupid evolution. ;)

But I have a thought experiment percolating in my brain. I'll write a new post when I have it better ironed out.

[mellowtigger]

Oh, quick distraction. Back to religion. I've read theories that religion is an invention meant to provide humans with easy-to-identify solutions to complex problems where knowledge is limited. But it's obviously failed CONSIDERABLY here. As a tweet I linked above points out, it's the religious types who seem most AGAINST doing the things that would help! Such a failure! Unless... we need a new religion? Since nobody listens to that longhair hippie freak any more, preferring the gospel of wealth instead.

[bitterlawngnome]

I would argue that religion is doing exactly that here - it's a whole lot simpler to just say campers are bad and should be punished. It's rather a complicated argument to get to public housing or GBI, and for most people completely counterintuitive.