| ▲ | doug_durham 2 days ago |
| And how exactly will someone do that. Many of the people living in the impacted area are below the poverty line and living paycheck to paycheck at best. How are they supposed to put together funds to relocate. Especially if their property is worth nothing. The minority of people privileged enough to be able to relocate will do that. The majority are stuck. |
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| ▲ | alex43578 2 days ago | parent | next [-] |
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| ▲ | munificent 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > If you’re genuinely that poor, moving is cheap. Abandon the implied worthless property, catch a greyhound out of town. When you're genuinely poor, your local community is a critical survival tool that can't be discarded. You've spent your whole life building a set of relationships through mutual help. When your car dies and you can't afford to go to a mechanic, you have a friend of a friend who can fix cars who owes you one since you helped replace his fence a few years back. That kind of thing, but every day, in a hundred ways. Throwing that out to move to a city where you have nothing is a great way to end up homeless. | | |
| ▲ | alex43578 2 days ago | parent [-] | | And by this article, staying in New Orleans is a great way to be poor, lose that network, and still end up homeless and literally underwater again. Nobody is making them move, but moving out of New Orleans certainly seems like the better play, even if it carries risk. |
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| ▲ | wat10000 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | If you’re genuinely poor then moving is cheap when viewed by someone who isn’t poor. Moving as a renter isn’t free. You’ll need to come up with a security deposit and coming up with two months of rent at once is not easy. Your slumlord landlord is going to keep your old one regardless of merit or law, so don’t think you can use that money. Convincing a new landlord that you’re a good risk is also not going to be easy when you’ve just moved and don’t have a job, so you’re looking at spending on a hotel for a while unless you’re lucky enough to know someone well enough to couch surf. | | |
| ▲ | alex43578 2 days ago | parent [-] | | If the article is to be believed, nobody is getting their deposits back in the coming decades when everything is under water. But again, if you genuinely can't move with a decade or more of notice because of a security deposit, there's something deeply wrong with how you are managing money and making decisions. | | |
| ▲ | wat10000 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Oh yeah, I forgot that it’s their own fault that poor people are poor. | | |
| ▲ | alex43578 2 days ago | parent [-] | | If, with 10 years notice, you can’t pull together a deposit, first/last month’s rent, and the $50 for a U-haul to move out of a city that will literally end up underwater, yes - it is your fault. | | |
| ▲ | wat10000 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Thanks for demonstrating the ongoing justification for this username. |
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| ▲ | hackable_sand 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You are wildly out of touch | | |
| ▲ | lioeters 2 days ago | parent [-] | | "Catch a greyhound out of town" is the "Let them eat cake" for the poor and homeless (sorry "unhoused") of New Orleans. Empathy is for the weak, said the oppressor. | | |
| ▲ | alex43578 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Billions have been spent rebuilding New Orleans once. Per the article, there's no realistic way to save New Orleans going forward. It's sad, it's unfortunate, it's reality. The poor and homeless of Louisiana are already receiving massive benefits: 4th in the country for the share of households on welfare, 18% of the population on food stamps, $14B+ in FY23 of federal dollars went to welfare/TANF/Medicaid/etc. | | |
| ▲ | ykonstant 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Damn, those poor and homeless are really living it up. | | |
| ▲ | alex43578 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Is the solution to further mortgage working and contributing citizens' futures via our exploding national debt, just to throw more cash at them? California spends $40K+ a year, per homeless person, but saw the homeless population grow and the problem get worse. For welfare, consider that a single parent with two school-age children who earns $11,000 annually from part-time work ends up qualifying for $64,128 in cash, aid, and benefits. The same family earning $64,128 by actually working wouldn’t be eligible for any of these welfare benefits in four-fifths of the states. | | |
| ▲ | lioeters 2 days ago | parent [-] | | For $14B+ we could have solved poverty and homelessness for all of New Orleans. Where did the money go? Not to the poor, obviously. The system is broken by design. | | |
| ▲ | alex43578 12 hours ago | parent [-] | | California clearly demonstrates that spending ever-more money on the homeless doesn't solve the issue for 90% of them. |
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| ▲ | habinero 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Move with what money? And go where? If they have property, sell to who, exactly? "Instant" lol. Gently, you talk like someone who's never even been broke, let alone been poor. | | |
| ▲ | alex43578 2 days ago | parent [-] | | A greyhound to Atlanta is $75. It’s not nothing to someone on a minimum wage/fixed income, but would be attainable within two months by saving about a dollar a day. Keep in mind, that’s the “extreme global poverty” standard for countries like South Sudan. Sell to whomever - but again, what property do they have if they are so poor they can’t afford a $75 bus ticket with notice? It’s always a Schrödinger’s poor person who simultaneously has a valuable property that’s also worthless, tied to a job but has 0 income, has a car but can’t travel, and is broke but can’t qualify for the plethora of government benefits they can receive anywhere. | | |
| ▲ | adi_kurian 2 days ago | parent [-] | | You should go to St Roch or Treme and inspire the locals with your dynamism. You could even bring bootsraps! | | |
| ▲ | selimthegrim 2 days ago | parent [-] | | He’s not inspiring me, and he won’t inspire their pitbulls. And by the way, I fulfill all of his Schrödinger’s poor person criteria, except for the first one about property. And I’m far from the only one here. |
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| ▲ | rayiner 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| The “majority” of people aren’t so poor they can’t move over the multi-decade timescale this article is talking about. This country has a huge level of internal migration. 17 million Americans move every year. Why do people have these blinders where they can’t view any issue except from the perspective of the minority of people who don’t have any resources? Why are so many people moving to places like Florida that are threatened by climate change? |
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| ▲ | AuthAuth 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | >Why do people have these blinders where they can’t view any issue except from the perspective of the minority of people who don’t have any resources I believe its because these people are young and repeating what they hear or they are old but have lived an insulated life and assume that people really cannot handle any upset in their life. | |
| ▲ | wat10000 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It’s not about being unable to view the issue except from that one perspective. It’s about having an aversion to mass suffering, and recognizing that this group will be subject to it. You’re basically saying, why are you so worried about all of these people who will have their lives destroyed when there are a bunch of other people who will be totally fine? I hope that when it’s put that way, you can see how ridiculous it is. | | |
| ▲ | rayiner 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | No, it's an emotional obsession with small percentages of the population that makes it impossible to discuss realistic solutions to problems that affect everyone. New Orleans is going to be underwater. That problem won't just affect poor people, it will affect everyone. So the first order of business is to encourage anyone who can do so to leave New Orleans to go somewhere that isn't underwater. That's the policy that's going to avoid the greatest amount of harm to the greatest number of people at the lowest cost. | | |
| ▲ | wat10000 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | What is there to discuss? If you have the ability to move away, then you move away, done. We aren't discussing this particular group because we're a too emotional to think straight. We're discussing this group because it's the one that will bear the brunt of the suffering and it's the one where there isn't an obvious "just let them figure it out and it'll be fine" solution. | | |
| ▲ | rayiner 2 days ago | parent [-] | | You’re both undervaluing and overvaluing collective action at the same time. We know from experience with people in disaster-prone areas that the majority aren’t going to do that. They’re going to stay, and when the disaster comes, it will be a huge problem and they’ll demand the Army Corps of Engineers performs some miracle to help them. |
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| ▲ | danaris 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > it's an emotional obsession with small percentages of the population Ah, right: it's a small percentage of the population, so we should just let them die, "and decrease the surplus population", right? This kind of callousness is one of the biggest problem with the tech industry today. We learned to think in numbers, and some of us never learned to think about the people behind those numbers. Yes, there are some kinds of problem where you really have to think about the numbers, and not the people, because if you try to save everyone you will end up saving no one. This is not one of those. The people who can move now, without financial hardship, get to make their own choices about when and whether to get out. The people we, as a society, should be thinking about are the people who cannot get out—either without financial ruination, or at all—because they are the ones we as a society must help. Tragically, given the state of America today, we aren't likely to help them. And many of them are likely to die, whether by drowning when the next Hurricane Katrina inundates New Orleans, or by slow starvation and disease when they and everyone else in their community and support network are left homeless. | | |
| ▲ | rayiner 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > The people who can move now, without financial hardship, get to make their own choices about when and whether to get out. The people we, as a society, should be thinking about are the people who cannot get out—either without financial ruination, or at all—because they are the ones we as a society must help. This is exactly the problematic thinking I’m talking about. Your obsession with using society to help those whose problems are the most intractable leads you to conclude to majority should be left “to make their own choices.” But the most effective use of social action is helping the majority. They can benefit from social organization and their problems are tractable. Here, leaving the majority to its own devices is going to cause the most damage in the long run. Society should push them to make good choices and relocate in an orderly manner while there’s time. | | |
| ▲ | danaris 2 days ago | parent [-] | | I assure you, the proportion of New Orleans residents who would be able to leave now without financial hardship are not the majority. Even for reasonably-stable middle-class people, moving—especially out of a place like NOLA—is going to cause financial hardship. | | |
| ▲ | rayiner 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | We don't need them to "leave now." We don't need them to move to California. We need them to move to Baton Rogue over a period of decades. Under a high emissions scenario, sea level is projected to rise 6 feet by 2100. New Orleans is on average 1-2 feet below sea level (up to 10 feet). Baton Rouge is 60 feet above sea level. The average elevation of the state is 100 feet. In any given year, 15% of the population moves, and 40% of them move to a different county. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/09/why-people-mo.... It's insane to say that most people wouldn't be able to make a once-in-a-lifetime move just a couple of towns over sometime over the next few decades. | | |
| ▲ | selimthegrim 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Baton Rouge is partially on a bluff. But didn't you see the 7m map? The coastline will be lapping at St. George, southern EBR Parish along Burbank Road and the south part of LSU campus at that point. | | |
| ▲ | rayiner 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | What’s the relevance of the 7m map? Are sea levels expected to rise much higher in the Gulf than the global average of 2m by 2100? |
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| ▲ | LargeWu 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | This is true. It is also true that waiting until things bottom out will make things even worse. It will be more expensive and options will be more limited. There will need to be a federal bailout to relocate everyone who needs help. The government should also probably announce a policy that there will be no future disaster relief that involves rebuilding, only relocating. New Orleans will be the first, but not the last American city to collapse. Miami is probably next. Salt Lake City could very well run out of water, nevermind the increasingly toxic lakebed. Phoenix too. In the next hundred years people are going to learn why environmentalists use the word "sustainability" so much. | | |
| ▲ | hollerith 14 hours ago | parent [-] | | Global warming increases evaporation and consequently increase global rainfall. Although it is true that it can shift the location of rainy spots and dry spots, unless you have some magic way to predict the locations they will shift to, I'm going to assume Phoenix's access to water is going to increase because it seems extremely unlikely to me that the entire watershed of the Colorado River (encompassing most of the American part of the Rockies probably) will become dryer on average. |
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| ▲ | Nasrudith 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | You're demonstrating the point I'm afraid. Rather than think of anything which can help 90%, you obsess on calling the people who want to save 90% of the people evil instead of thinking of anything to reduce the 10% further. |
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| ▲ | human_person 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | But that ignores the mass suffering that pushing people to move will prevent? It’s not
why are you so worried about all of these people who will have their lives destroyed when there are a bunch of other people who will be totally fine It’s
Why aren’t you worried about everyone having their life destroyed, if we can encourage people to move it may be challenging for them but it will save their lives. |
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| ▲ | habinero 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Because, friend, a lot of people believe climate change is a lib conspiracy theory. And people bring it up because a lot of folks in New Orleans couldn't afford to flee Katrina and 700 people died. It was kind of an enormous humanitarian disaster. If we don't talk about it, nothing will happen to stop it. |
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