Slashdot Mirror
Is 'SimCity' Homelessness a Bug Or a Feature?
sarahnaomi writes: SimCity players have discussed a variety of creative strategies for their virtual homelessness problem. They've suggested waiting for natural disasters like tornadoes to blow the vagrants away, bulldozing parks where they congregate, or creating such a woefully insufficient city infrastructure that the homeless would leave on their own.
You can read all of these proposed final solutions in Matteo Bittanti's How to Get Rid of Homelessness, "a 600-page epic split in two volumes documenting the so-called 'homeless scandal' that affected 2013's SimCity." Bittanti collected, selected, and transcribed thousands of these messages exchanged by players on publisher Electronic Arts' official forums, Reddit, and the largest online SimCity community Simtropolis, who experienced and then tried to "eradicate" the phenomenon of homelessness that "plagued" SimCity."
You can read all of these proposed final solutions in Matteo Bittanti's How to Get Rid of Homelessness, "a 600-page epic split in two volumes documenting the so-called 'homeless scandal' that affected 2013's SimCity." Bittanti collected, selected, and transcribed thousands of these messages exchanged by players on publisher Electronic Arts' official forums, Reddit, and the largest online SimCity community Simtropolis, who experienced and then tried to "eradicate" the phenomenon of homelessness that "plagued" SimCity."
This is noise.
It sure is a good thing that players' behavior as modeled in games has no effect whatsoever on their offline behavior, or in any way informs us about their attitudes toward the real world. That might be disconcerting.
Clearly your city needs a better welfare and education system, and perhaps a work incentive scheme.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Nope
signed
northern canada
We used to forcibly institutionalize mentally ill people instead of kicking them out on the street en mass to fend for themselves. A significant portion of what we call "homeless" have mental health and substance abuse issues, of course. Is releasing them to life in the streets more compassionate or humanitarian than confining them to an institution where they can actually get some help? I'm not sure there's an easy answer there, to be honest. In my neck of the woods, people are getting robbed and assaulted on the streets by homeless people on a pretty regular basis. It's not a good situation for anyone.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
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There's really not a lot of correlation between success and productivity.
Sure there's some, but not as much as you might think.
Software should be free!
Unless I'm producing it. Then you should pay for my time.
As long as there are people starving and going mad in the streets
Mental health problems are far more likely to be the cause of homelessness than the reverse.
And I encounter someone who is mentally ill on the street, I'm not sure what you think I could do for them that the social workers and the police couldn't.
Don't worry, eventually we'll get smart enough to blame the parasites leeching off the system to the disadvantage of the rest of us....
By which I mean the Insurance companies, of course, who did YOU think I was talking about?
1.a) our patchwork of federal, state, and municipal programs and 1.b) the American idea of self-help and individualism.
And reason c: People are worried someone might abuse the system. For some reason, people like the idea that it is better to let 9 guilty men go than an innocent man go to prison, so promote the idea of a justice system that makes it harder to get convicted (or at least used to...), but think it is better to let 9 people starve so one person can't scam his way into a small amount of money and crappy way of life.
After 6 months, most of them were empty, the homeless didn't want them. Probably had something to do with a requirement that in return for a FREE PLACE TO LIVE, they had to actually look for work, or attend job training.
I kid you not, a free place to live, a working bathroom with a toilet and shower, an address to use to get back on their feet and the homeless by and large didn't want it.
Given that a lot of homeless people have a mental illness and/or are addicted to drugs, that is not surprising.
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No, the truth is uglier than that. A society committed to "self-help and individualism" would strive to ensure opportunities are available to anyone who cares to take them, no matter where they happen to be, and that one can actually risk failing without also risking homelessness. Such societies exist, and are typically derided as "nanny states" by Americans - because compensating for human frailties and failings is what it takes to actually make it possible for people to follow their own path and seek their dreams.
Someone once said US's problem is that everyone thinks they're a temporarily embarassed millionaire. But that leaves out a key fact: everyone thinks they're a temporarily embarassed millionaire who wants to ensure they can stomp on those below them, once they get to the top, and votes accordingly. Thus the seemingly irrational support from middle class to policies destructive to said middle class. It's a self-made hell.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
To me video games are the so-called 'real America,'" he said. "The real America operates according to a video game logic, and that game logic is neo-liberalism, and that absolutely manifests in San Francisco, that to me is the epicenter of inequality. In San Francisco you either have a Tesla and you drink a seven dollar cappuccino or you're homeless in the streets."
I think he's been playing games too long. SimCity's reality distortion field claims another victim, which is amazing because it's crap compared to its' predecessors.
Ever lived in San Francisco? Sounds pretty close to reality to me. Not everyone who isn't rich is homeless in the streets, though. Some of them are students with rich parents, but they themselves aren't technically rich yet. They just look rich with their Audi and their expensive clothes and new phone every year. While the rank and file who make the seven dollar cappucinos, flip the burgers and whatnot are stacked up five or six to a house with people living in hallways and closets.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
1.a) our patchwork of federal, state, and municipal programs and 1.b) the American idea of self-help and individualism.
And reason c: People are worried someone might abuse the system. For some reason, people like the idea that it is better to let 9 guilty men go than an innocent man go to prison, so promote the idea of a justice system that makes it harder to get convicted (or at least used to...), but think it is better to let 9 people starve so one person can't scam his way into a small amount of money and crappy way of life.
People _DO_ abuse the system, in fact show me a country with any form of welfare that is not abused. The problem in the US is that those abuses are on both ends of the spectrum. Like other countries we have people that camp on welfare because it's easier than working. That is the portion of risk we consider to be manageable and expected because the percentage is generally very small. Where the US differs greatly is that our programs are abused at the top as well. People "managing" these services receive extra pay for not doing their job. Performing actions like cancelling programs instead of improving programs. This is a very open corruption that anyone can see, though few dare call it corruption... our media calls it "cost saving". This does not just happen with Welfare either, but VA benefits, and Social Security, and just about everything else.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Origin doesn't "steal" information - you don't lose it.
Oh come on, EA hasn't thought like that for a long time. After all, if you download EA's game from TPB, they will say that you stole a game.
There is also an incredible lack of knowledge about other systems. The choice isn't between working people starving on the streets and French style socialism where every job and employer has tons of regulation and tons of worker classifications along with huge welfare payments.
I've come to enjoy the Japanese system. It has a fundamental thread of responsibilitythat resonates with me and a strong sense of EVERYONE pays something, even the guy with 0 income for an extended period. It may not be much (20 bucks a month for health insurance) but you are legally required to get it and pay for it. The state will watch out for you, as long as you always fulfill your own responsibilities to society.
And yeah, if you go cheap and try to save 20 bucks don't get sick because you are expected to show an ability to pay immediately (but you can always get back into the state program by paying all your owed back premiums).
I know my sig says "hire me", but I have had offers in real-life and turned them down because I didn't agree with the what/how the employer produced.
I took a two minute glance at your blog. I read your comment here and a little bit of your other writings. You sound like you have a decent level of intelligence. I am gonna go out on a limb and assume that you are young (20 - 30). At some point in your life you are going to realize your wasted potential. When that moment of clarity hits you,... it is going to hit you like a stone to the head.
Part of 'being a man' is doing the work you don't want to do. It is the daily struggle so you can provide for a family; not living under a bridge so your values can remain intact. We are all idealistic at some point in our lives, but, there comes a time to grow up. Don't wait until it is too late.
my $.02
+1 Insightful
It's so easy to say that software should be free when you're not doing the hard work of producing it.
Bullshit, software doesn't want anything - *you* want it to be free so you aren't burdened with the problem of paying someone for it.
Doing what you don't want to do is the very definition of wasting rather than realising your potential.
Hanging out in a library reading and posting on Slashdot is probably a hell of a lot more fun than sitting on a park bench in the rain.
I write this while homeless in Santa Monica, CA
Yet, you can somehow manage to post on slashdot.
Your priorities are puzzling to say the least.
I may be able to shed some light. I volunteered at a soup kitchen once, and when we were serving a whole room full of people, I noticed a couple of them had laptops. While I cannot know the exact reason, I had made a few guesses myself. I guessed that maybe a relative or a friend had given it to them, or they may have acquired it during a more plentiful portion of their lives, or an old laptop from the garbage that people start to throw out not so uncommon these days. So I would say it would be possible for a laptop to be in the possession of the homeless' stash.
As for priorities, I would say that being connected to the rest of the world, even though if only online, would be a great way for someone homeless to stay mentally sane and updated on the world and perhaps find access to support programmes or odd jobs. Without a support tools, it is very hard for somebody homeless to re-enter society. Thus, I would say that our homeless friend who posted on slashdot's priorities make sense to me.