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Everywhere I go, I see the decline
Coercion accelerates decline.
Every day I go for a walk, almost without fail. Some days I have to stay inside. Most days I go out and I see the progress. As the days go by, I see the subdivisions go up. Stacks of materials like wood, drywall and bags of cement, are turned into houses for people to live in. it’s all we can do here in Utah. If we build more houses, more people have a place to live.
Homelessness is a sign of coercion.
While I do see progress, I also see decline. I just don’t see that many people living here in 20 years. I believe that in 20 years, half of the houses in my subdivision will be empty. We won’t make enough people to keep the homes full.
The decline that I see in America also is one of economic decline. The wealthy have taken far too much out of the economy for their own benefit. Sure, they have projects like going to Mars and AI, but those projects don’t build houses. People do that. People who build houses have the skills required to build a house, and if they make enough money, they will tell others how to do the same thing.
People need houses more than they need to go to Mars or have a computer that thinks for them.
In every study I’ve ever seen, more houses means less homeless people. People aren’t homeless because they’ve lost their minds. They lose their minds because they are homeless.
Abraham Maslow was right.
When our basic needs are met, we begin to exercise judgment of a higher order. We plan farther ahead than before. A homeless man plans for the next hour. A man with a family in a home plans for the next month, or decade, depending on the level of his wealth. As wealth accumulates, we have more time to plan ahead.
Much of the decline stems from people who want money for nothing. They want the money without doing the work. This is as true for the billionaire as it is for the grifters of DC. They must think there is no other way to get money or they would do better.
Think of economics as a game of tit for tat. If I give you $5 for an hour of work, and you know you can sustain yourself on that money, you’ll keep working. But then you discover that I have hundreds of employees doing…
