[ayaros]

I'm a younger millennial. I'm always seeing homeless people in my city and it's an issue that I think about on a daily basis. Couldn't we have spent the money on homeless shelters and food and other things? So many people are in poverty, they can't afford basic necessities. The world is shitty.

Yes, I know it's all capital from VC firms and investment firms and other private sources, but it's still capital. It should be spent on meeting people's basic human needs, not GPU power.

Yeah, the world is shitty, and resources aren't allocated ideally. Must it be so?

[ericmcer]

The last 10 years has seen CA spend more on homelessness than ever before, and more than any other state by a huge margin. The result of that giant expenditure is the problem is worse than ever.

I don't want to get deep in the philosophical weeds around human behavior, techno-optimism, etc., but it is a bit reductive to say "why don't we just give homeless people money".

[estearum]

What else happened in the last 10 years in CA?

Hint: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CASTHPI

[trenbologna]

In CA this issue has to do with Gavin giving that money to his friends who produce very little. Textbook cronyism

[mike50]

Spending money is not the solution. Spending money in a way that doesn't go to subcontractors is part of the solution. Building shelters beyond cots in a stadium is part of the solution. Building housing is a large part of actually solving the problem. People have tried just giving the money but without a way to convert cash to housing the money doesn't help. Also studies by people smarter then me suggest that without sufficient supply the money ends up going to landlords and pushing up housing costs anyway.

[emodendroket]

Well I mean, they didn't "just give homeless people money" or just give them homes or any of those things though. I think the issue might be the method and not the very concept of devoting resources to the problem.

[Izikiel43]

WA, specially Seattle, has done the same as CA with the same results.

They shouldn't just enable them, as a lot of homeless are happy in their situation as long as they get food and drugs, they should force them to get clean and become a responsible adult if they want benefits.

[SequoiaHope]

The Sikhs in India run multiple facilities across the country that each can serve 50,000-100,000 free meals a day. It doesn’t even take much in the form of resources, and we could do this in every major city in the US yet we still don’t do it. It’s quite disheartening.

https://youtu.be/5FWWe2U41N8

[selimthegrim]

They didn’t invent it but yes, they have refined it to a high degree.

[amluto]

From what I’ve read, addressing homelessness effectively requires competence more than it requires vast sums of money. Here’s one article:

https://calmatters.org/housing/2023/06/california-homeless-t...

Note that Houston’s approach seems to be largely working. It’s not exactly cheap, but the costs are not even in the same ballpark as AI capital expenses. Also, upzoning doesn’t require public funding at all.

[mrguyorama]

Wasn't houston's "approach" to buy bus tickets to California from a company that just resold commodity bus tickets and was owned by the governors friend and charged 10x market price?

The governor of Texas bragged about sending 100k homeless people to california (spending about $150 million in the process).

>in the Golden State, 439 people are homeless for every 100,000 residents – compared to 81 in the Lone Star State.

If I'm doing my math right, 81 per 100k in a state of 30 million people means 24k homeless people. So the state brags about bussing 100k homeless people to California, and then brags about only having 24k homeless people, and you think it's because they build an extra 100k houses a year?

The same math for California means that their homeless population is 175k. In other words, Texas is claiming to have more than doubled California's homeless population.

Maybe the reason Texas can build twice as many homes a year is because it literally has half the population density?

[gowld]

Houston has less homelessness than California because people at the edge of homelessness prefer to live in California than Houston.

[IAmGraydon]

The older I get, the more I realize that our choices in life come down to two options: benefit me or benefit others. The first one leads to nearly every trouble we have in the world. The second nearly always leads to happiness, whether directly or indirectly. Our bias as humans has always been toward the first, but our evolution is and will continue to slowly bring us toward the second option. Beyond simple reproduction, this realization is our purpose, in my opinion.

[jodrellblank]

Curiously, that is what I heard moments ago on Tom Campbell's theory of everything:

https://youtu.be/nWWRFA8v6aE?t=2629

https://youtu.be/nWWRFA8v6aE?t=3000

He was a physics grad, did some experiments with out of body experiences, decided the Universe is a simulation for immortal consciousness to experience making choices and dealing with their consequences, and reasoned from there that the purpose of life is to get rid of ego and fear and learn to benefit others instead of ourselves.

Quite how he got from one to the other isn't clear to me, or why it's physics related; the message seems to be a familiar religious one, deal with whatever struggles happen to you and try to be egoless and kind.

[GaryBluto]

> Yes, I know it's all capital from VC firms and investment firms and other private sources, but it's still capital. It should be spent on meeting people's basic human needs, not GPU power.

It's capital that belongs to people and those people can do what they like with the money they earned.

So many great scientific breakthroughs that saved tens of millions of lives would never have happened if you had your way.

[pnut]

Is that true, that it's money that belongs to people?

OpenAI isn't spending $1 trillion in hard earned cash on data centres, that is funny money from the ocean of financial liquid slushing around, seeing alpha.

It also certainly is not a cohort of accredited investors putting their grandchildren's inheritance on the line.

Misaligned incentives (regulations) both create and perpetuate that situation.

[saulpw]

> It's capital that belongs to people and those people can do what they like with the money they earned.

"earned", that may be the case with millionaires, but it is not the case with billionaires. A person can't "earn" a billion dollars. They steal and cheat and destroy competition illegally.

I also take issue with the idea that someone can do whatever they want with their money. That is not true. They are not allowed to corner the market on silver, they aren't allowed to bribe politicians, and they aren't allowed to buy sex from underage girls. These are established laws that are obviously for the unalloyed benefit of society as a whole, but the extremely wealthy have been guilty of all of these things, and statements like yours promote the sentiment that allows them to get away with it.

Finally, "great scientific breakthroughs that saved tens of millions of lives would never have happened if you had your way". No. You might be able to argue that today's advanced computing technology wouldn't have happened without private capital allocation (and that is debatable), but the breakthroughs that saved millions of lives--vaccines, antibiotics, insulin, for example--were not the result of directed private investment.

[UtopiaPunk]

"It's capital that belongs to people and those people..."

That's not a fundamental law of physics. It's how we've decided to arrange our current society, more or less, but it's always up for negotiation. Land used to be understood as a publicly shared resource, but then kings and the nobles decided it belong to them, and they fenced in the commons. The landed gentry became a ruling class because the land "belonged" to them. Then society renegotiated that, and decided that things primarily belonged to the "capitalist" class instead of noblemen.

Even under capitalism, we understand that that ownership is a little squishy. We have taxes. The rich understandably do not like taxes because it reduces their wealth (and Ayn Rand-styled libertarians also do not like taxes of any kind, but they are beyond understanding except to their own kind).

As a counterpoint, I and many others believe that one person or one corporation cannot generate massive amounts of wealth all by themselves. What does it mean to "earn" 10 billion dollars? Does such a person work thousdands of time harder or smarter than, say, a plumber or a school teacher? Of course not. They make money because they have money: they hire workers to make things for them that lead to profit, and they pay the workers less than the profit that is earned. Or they rent something that they own. Or they invest that money in something that is expected to earn them a higher return. In any scenario, how is it possible to earn that profit? They do so because they participate in a larger society. Workers are educated in schools, which the employer probably does not pay for in full. Customers and employees travel on infrastructure, maintained by towns and state governments. People live in houses which are built and managed by other parties. The rich are only able to grow wealth because they exist in a larger society. I would argue that it is not only fair, but crucial, that they pay back into the community.

[mrguyorama]

Please tell me which of Penicillin, insulin, the transistor, the discovery and analysis of the electric field, discovery of DNA, invention of mRNA vaccines, discovery of pottery, basket weaving, discovery of radiation, the recognition that citrus fruit or vitamin C prevents and cures scurvy (which we discovered like ten times), the process for creating artificial fertilizers, the creation of steel, domestication of beasts of burden, etc were done through Wealthy Barons or other capital holders funding them.

Many of the above were discovered by people explicitly rejecting profit as an outcome. Most of the above predate modern capitalism. Several were explicitly government funded.

Do you have a single example of a scientific breakthrough that saved tens of millions of lives that was done by capital owners?

[AstroBen]

> Couldn't we have spent the money on homeless shelters and food and other things

I suspect this is a much more complicated issue than just giving them food and shelter. Can money even solve it?

How would you allocate money to end obesity, for instance? It's primarily a behavioral issue, a cultural issue

[brokenmachine]

I guess it's food and exercise.

Healthy food is expensive, do things to make that relatively cheaper and thus more appealing.

Exercise is expensive, do things to make that relatively cheaper and thus more appealing.

Walkable cities are another issue. People shouldn't have to get in their car to go anywhere.

[dkural]

[ This comment I'm making is USA centric. ]. I agree with the idea of making our society better and more equitable - reducing homelessness, hunger, poverty, especially for our children. However, I think redirecting this to AI datacenter spending is a red-herring, here's why I think this: As a society we give a significant portion of our surplus to government. We then vote on what the government should spend this on. AI datacenter spending is massive, but if you add it all up, it doesn't cover half of a years worth of government spending. We need to change our politics to redirect taxation and spending to achieve a better society. Having a private healthcare system that spends twice the amount for the poorest results in the developed world is a policy choice. Spending more than the rest of the world combined on the military is a policy choice. Not increasing minimum wage so at least everyone with a full time job can afford a home is a policy job (google "working homelessness). VC is a teeny tiny part of the economy. All of tech is only about 6% of the global economy.

[limagnolia]

You can increase min wage all you want, if there aren't enough homes in an area for everyone who works full time in that area to have one, you will still have folks who work full time who don't have one. In fact, increasing min wage too much will exacerbate the problem by making it more expensive to build more (and maintain those that exist). Though at some point, it will fix the problem too, because everyone will move and then there will be plenty of homes for anyone who wants one.

[jkubicek]

> AI datacenter spending is massive, but if you add it all up, it doesn't cover half of a years worth of government spending.

I didn't check your math here, but if that's true, AI datacenter spending is a few orders of magnitude larger than I assumed. "massive" doesn't even begin to describe it

[kipchak]

>We need to change our politics to redirect taxation and spending to achieve a better society.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure there's much on the pie chart to redirect percentage wise. About 60% goes to non-discretionary programs like Social Security and Medicaid, and 13% is interest expense. While "non-discretionary" programs can potentially be cut, doing so is politically toxic and arguably counter to the goal of a better society.

Of the remaining discretionary portion half is programs like veterans benefits, transportation, education, income security and health (in order of size), and half military.

FY2025 spending in total was 3% over FY2024, with interest expense, social security and medicare having made up most of the increase ($249 billion)[1], and likely will for the foreseeable future[2] in part due to how many baby boomers are entering retirement years.

Assuming you cut military spending in half you'd free up only about 6% of federal spending. Moving the needle more than this requires either cutting programs and benefits, improving efficiency of existing spend (like for healthcare) or raising more revenue via taxes or inflation. All of this is potentially possible, but the path of least resistance is probably inflation.

[1] https://bipartisanpolicy.org/report/deficit-tracker/

[2] https://www.crfb.org/blogs/interest-social-security-and-heal...

[GolfPopper]

The current pattern of resource allocation is a necessary requirement for the existence of the billionaire-class, who put significant effort into making sure it continues.

[nine_zeros]

> but it's still capital. It should be spent on meeting people's basic human needs, not GPU power.

What you have just described is people wanting investment in common society - you see the return on this investment but ultra-capitalistic individuals don't see any returns on this investment because it doesn't benefit them.

In other words, you just asked for higher taxes on the rich that your elected officials could use for your desired investment. And the rich don't want that which is why they spend on lobbying.

[UtopiaPunk]

I don't think it is a coincidence that the areas with the wealhiest people/corporations are the same areas with the most extreme poverty. The details are, of course, complicated, but zooming way way out, the rich literally drain wealth from those around them.

[venturecruelty]

Thanks for pointing this out. Sorry you're getting downvoted. I visited San Francisco about ten years ago, and seeing a homeless person sheltering themselves under a flag or some sort of merch from a tech company really drove home just how bereft of humanity corporate power centers really are.

[newfriend]

Technological advancement is what has pulled billions of people out of poverty.

Giving handouts to layabouts isn't an ideal allocation of resources if we want to progress as a civilization.

[QuercusMax]

Lots of people lose their housing when they lose employment, and then they're stuck and can't get back into housing. A very large percentage of unhoused people are working jobs; they're not all "layabouts".

We know that just straight up giving money to the poorest of the poor results in positive outcomes.

[nativeit]

The proportion of people you write off as “layabouts” is always conveniently ambiguous…of the number of unemployed/underemployed, how many are you suggesting are simply too lazy to work for a living?

[estearum]

Technological advancements and cultural advancements that spread the benefits more broadly than naturally occurs in an industrialized economy. That is what pulled people out of poverty.

If you want to see what unfettered technological advancement does, you can read stories from the Gilded Age.

The cotton gin dramatically increased human enslavement.

The sewing machine decreased quality of life for seamstresses.

> During the shirtmakers' strike, one of the shirtmakers testified that she worked eleven hours in the shop and four at home, and had never in the best of times made over six dollars a week. Another stated that she worked from 4 o’clock in the morning to 11 at night. These girls had to find their own thread and pay for their own machines out of their wages.

These were children, by the way. Living perpetually at the brink of starvation from the day they were born until the day they died, but working like dogs all the while.

[LightBug1]

It's not unthinkable that one of those "layabouts" could have been the next Steve Jobs under different circumstances ...

People are our first, best resource. Closely followed by technology. You've lost sight of that.

[johnrob]

Invest in making food/shelter cheaper?

[droopyEyelids]

What if some of the homeless people are children or people who could lead normal lives but found themselves in dire circumstances?

Some of us believe that keeping children out of poverty may be an investment in the human capital of a country.

[sfink]

> Technological advancement is what has pulled billions of people out of poverty.

I agree with this. Perhaps that's what is driving the current billionaire class to say "never again!" and making sure that they capture all the value instead of letting any of it slip away and make it into the unwashed undeserving hands of lesser beings.

Chatbots actually can bring a lot of benefit to society at large. As in, they have the raw capability to. (I can't speak to whether it's worth the cost.) But that's not going to improve poverty this time around, because it's magnifying the disparities in wealth distribution and the haves aren't showing any brand new willingness to give anything up in order to even things out.

> Giving handouts to layabouts isn't an ideal allocation of resources if we want to progress as a civilization.

I agree with this too. Neither is giving handouts to billionaires (or the not quite as eye-wateringly wealthy class). However, giving handouts to struggling people who will improve their circumstances is a very good allocation of resources if we want to progress as a civilization. We haven't figured out any foolproof way of ensuring such money doesn't fall into the hands of layabouts or billionaires, but that's not an adequate reason to not do it at all. Perfect is the enemy of the good.

Some of those "layabouts" physically cannot do anything with it other than spending it on drugs, and that's an example of a set of people who we should endeavor to not give handouts to. (At least, not ones that can be easily exchanged for drugs.) Some of those billionaires similarly have no mental ability of ever using that money in a way that benefits anyone. (Including themselves; they're past the point that the numbers in their bank accounts have any effect on their lives.) That hasn't seemed to stop us from allowing things to continue in a way that funnels massive quantities of money to them.

It is a choice. If people en masse were really and truly bothered by this, we have more than enough mechanisms to change things. Those mechanisms are being rapidly dismantled, but we are nowhere near the point where figurative pitchforks and torches are ineffective.

[_DeadFred_]

In the USA cowboys were homeless guys. You know that right? Like they had no home, slept outside. Many were pretty big layabouts. Yet they are pretty big part of our foundation myth and we don't say 'man they just should have died'.

Can I go be a cowboy? Can I just go sleep outside? maybe work a few minimal paying cattle run jobs a year? No? If society won't allow me to just exist outside, then society has an obligation to make sure I have a place to lay my head.