• LustyArgonian@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    I actually kind of went to a major fancy pants conference in Portland last year for homelessness issues.

    Yes, it was extremely dystopian to drink wine and wear jewelry and fancy dresses while seeing presentations on homelessness. The whole thing was depressing. The other people who were there to genuinely resolve the issue were also depressed. Everyone got drunk. We talked a bit.

    The problem is that it’s all a gridlock and all controversial and these people don’t face any real discomfort from that gridlock or from prolonging the situation. They still get paid. As much as they wince and say how it’s bad and they can’t figure out how to work with NIMBY’s and all the stigma and regulations etc- they still get paid. And they get to brag to all their friends about how kind and amazing they are for being the head of the Sad Pathetic Homeless People NonProfit Fund for the last 8 years.

    It’s like they sympathy jerk off. They are just edging to the suffering in a different way. If they were effective, then they wouldn’t look so amazing and charitable because the homeless wouldn’t be an issue. They couldn’t keep jerking off to their own saintly ego.

    • stabby_cicada@slrpnk.netOP
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      4 months ago

      The nonprofit industrial complex is a leech. At least government agencies have some level of accountability, because if they fail to solve a problem, the voters blame the politicians, and the politicians shit downhill on the agencies. Nonprofits don’t even have that minimal level of accountability. They just spend all the government money they get, write grants saying “we spent all the money you gave us doing stuff, please give us more”, and get more money.

      But this is what you get when both the left and right have bought into libertarian free market ideology and agree that privatizing government services is more efficient than letting the government do its goddamn job.