Aaron, this is Jamila, you were replying to my post. I guess my name wound up somewhere else on the page. On my resource allocation point, again, what I’m trying to say is that our current individualistic paradigm doesn’t allow us to see the positive externalities that free and decent housing could have. We subsidize vaccinations, and schools and I think that we can all agree that that leads to better outcomes for everyone. Maybe everyone doesn’t pay, but would you rather face the threat of disease or subsidize someone’s measles vaccination? We didn’t do this in the past, but over time we can came to see that it made us all better off.

A friend pointed out to me that in practice free riding isn’t a huge problem in our public housing. Unfortunately, much of it is in such a sorry state that many non-poor people aren’t looking to cheat their way into public housing, or get section 8 vouchers that they can barely use. Historically, residential segregation has made it so that many people can elect not to experience the effects of poverty in America, but I don’t think that will be the case forever. As Uchechi points out, the problem is more complex than just the visible homeless. With the current economic situation it’s growing as working people increasingly lose their homes. As poverty hits more closely to home, I think people might be more willing to change their points of view. Experience does a good job of incentivizing, my family lives in North East DC and I can speak from my own, I grew up on the East Side of Detroit, unfortunately the poverty has long since been a reality in both of those places is spreading.

Looking back to the Arnold, when people’s needs are not met, they are more open to change (maybe more drastic than Obama’s version). We’re watching our capitalist system fail and Arnold’s idea gives us a way to defeat the free rider problem. Social norms motivate people to do things differently, including choosing to allocate society’s resources toward public housing. If we create an ideology that tells people “I am because we are,” or that there’s more to be gained collectively from working together to elevate people from barely subsisting all than there is about worrying about who might not be paying, maybe it would work. As Prof. Moglen said in his comment, things like civil liberties often wind up being a concern for those living above a subsistence level. Wouldn’t it be better if we had more voices contributing to those debates? Putting the ideology into practice with a good government would be difficult, but perhaps with a collective mindset as a baseline, rather than an individualistic one, it’d be possible. The social norms of this ideology would incentivize people to contribute to the public good, since others’ perceptions can be a powerful motivator.

We might not feel the effects now, but the situation is worsening. The problem of persistent poverty will come back to bite us all in the form of social unrest sooner or later, if not in this downturn, then maybe in a subsequent one, and not just in the inner city. Just like over-securitization, it’s not sustainable.

-- JamilaMcCoy - 19 Feb 2009