Will the Air Man Deliver Door to Door?

[from 2/10/10]

I can't help but think that I'm not explaining homelessness well. I've been trying to do so for over 14 years now, and I just don't seem to be getting the main points across. Truly, I haven't been very good at explaining the major, major, drawbacks of pre-emptive warfare either, but we don't have readers seeing pre-emptive warfare on their own streets everyday, so it's very hard to make that real. But homelessness? I mean, there it is, here's why, here's why it's bad, here's what needs to be done, and that's what gets done, right? Problem seen is a problem solved? Right?

OK, not right. So I'm going to try again by using what we may call a fictitious parallel. I will present a scenario that might happen in the future that would be similar to homelessness, and hopefully everyone will see that the imagined situation would be wrong, and how to make it right again, and see that something like that might work for the problem at hand.

Forget global warming. Let's pretend that the US economy collapses first because the Chinese want their investment back. Suppose this results in the Chinafication of America. Don't worry, it doesn't mean we'll all be speaking Chinese. Not right away. It just means that we'll be running our businesses like they do, or we won't have any. So our cities will end up like Beijing, and you won't be able to breathe the air anymore.

Suppose that happens all over the world. As LA goes, so goes Paris, London, Johannesburg, and Papeete. I know it's a stretch. Buy the premise.

There is already, in this city, with no real shortage of tap water, a hoarding of water resources. There are almost no working water fountains left on Seattle streets. Homeless people who want water are expected to pay for it at coffee shops and fast food joints. No outside cups are allowed. Only the establishment's cups, which cost.

If there were a real clean air shortage, there would be clean air hoarding. Clean air can be made at slight cost, but it would be sold at a markup. "We have to make a profit or we can't stay in business," the producers would say. Only as much clean air would be produced as could be sold at "optimal" profit margins. If it's free no one makes a profit. If even Bill Gates can't afford it, then, likewise, no one makes money. In between those extremes, the total net profit rises from zero and falls back to zero. The price is set at the peak.

Everybody who can't afford the optimal price doesn't get clean air. Everybody whose income allows them to afford the optimal price, pays through the nose for clean air, but they at least get to breathe while doing so. The clean-air-less are the ones who can't afford it.

The air gets worse. The clean-air-less become a social problem. They start costing society money! They show up at emergency rooms with expensive respiratory illnesses.

While in the hospital they get air as part of their treatment, but as soon as they're well enough they get put out into the bad air as before.

As the clean-air-less become desperate, some panhandle, in the hopes of either making enough change to buy some air for an hour or so, or at least a bottle of wine, so they can forget about the problem. Others beg for a hit of clean air directly, just for a half minute of relief. Others just walk around coughing. The general public gets tired of this behavior. Why do they cough so much? How rude. Why don't these people earn more money so they can pay for their own air?

Well, if you were paying attention above, you'd know all that would do is move the optimal peak price up. So every effort to get people to solve their own breathing problems, by getting their own lives together, would fail.