Foreword: People are so easily persuaded that their version of reality is right, and at the same time, believe every demagogue and ideologue and politician. And some? If someone has enough starring roles in movies, or gold records, or sports achievements? We “know” that their word is good and they know what they are doing (and what we should do). The problem seems more to be desperately seek

So we come across something like this. This is a question asked by an anonymous social media user recently:

Homeless in the States versus northern Europe

If socialism doesn’t work, how come there are no (visible) homeless people in Norway and Denmark, whereas every major city in the US seems to have thousands of homeless people? Why is the US government unable to solve the problem?

One responder stated she was reminded of a classic story:

A Scandinavian economist once said to Milton Friedman, ‘In Scandinavia, we have no poverty’. Milton Friedman replied, ‘That’s interesting, because in America, among Scandinavians, we have no poverty, either’.

(Of course, today, the major American Scandinavian States (Minnesota and Wisconsin) have been flooded with non-Scandian immigrants, who see “poverty” (as defined by the FedGov) as their preferred state of life. Apparently not many migrants see North Dakota, another “Scandahoovian” and somewhat socialist State, as a viable place to live. We also note that neither of those countries are really (by dictionary definition) “socialist” and that there really are homeless people in those countries.)

Yet another response pointed out still Norway and Denmark are 54 to 72 degrees north of the equator, similar to the US state of Alaska. Not only are there few visible homeless people in Alaska, you will also not find many in more southerly states favored by Scandinavian immigrants: Minnesota, the Dakotas, Utah and Montana. (Although, as more and more societal conditions deteriorate, we see those numbers growing. But definitely not of Scandinavian extraction. Utah also has a lot of descendants of Scandinavian immigrants, but most of those immigrants completely adopted the culture of the LDS Church to which they had converted before migrating.)

Where do you find large visible homeless populations? California, Florida, Texas and Arizona. True, these states do not have high proportions of Scandinavian immigrants and their descendants. But a more important distinction? They are warm states where you can live outdoors without freezing to death in winter. (At least in many areas of California, Arizona and even Texas: you don’t find a lot of homeless people wandering around the Texas Panhandle, for example: a few ice storms and those winds… brrr!)

So let us write a new version of the story. Maybe the homeless people just aren’t visible in those States or in Northern Europe?

There are many types of homelessness. We have people with mental illnesses, drug or alcohol problems, (which we argue are two closely related conditions). We do have victims of domestic abuse (or other crimes). We have employed people who cannot afford housing (a situation highly visible in the San Francisco Bay area but not there alone: expect more in NYC as Mandami’s “reforms” are implemented. And we also have people with insecure (or informal!) housing: bumming off friends, families, or even employers. And we have more and more people in shelters. And because even shelters for the homeless have to have standards, people kicked out of shelters for bad behavior.

Now, making homelessness invisible generally means forcing people into shelters, or letting the weather do that for you.

But solving homelessness? That is more complicated. We need to treat people for mental illness, which is a very political matter. (For one things, there are no more “insane asylums” and little agreement on how to treat them. But it also means doing things like removing land use restrictions that make housing unaffordable near good jobs. We argue that some so-called “solutions” such as anti-poverty programs, or “more and better” public housing, and building and running more shelters actually does not solve homelessness.

They do not address the causes, merely try to put a Bandaid on the results.

We also note that most of these are described by many as “socialist” programs. We agree, not in the sense of workers owning the means of production, but in the sense of top-down planning replacing liberty-loving free-market solutions.

We believe strongly that the free market can solve the problem of the employed homeless. It is clear, from almost a century of historical records, that “top-down” constantly fails. This is yet another case where planning causes the problem. An unfettered market would solve it, and even one with some governmental interference (but not too much) could solve.

Some will argue that the free market would not help people with mental illness. In this, we beg to disagree: the psychiatric, psychological, and general medical professions today in the States are not free markets: too much is dictated “top-down.” A free market would allow for more choices in how to deal with these problems. The greatest challenge, we believe, are the voluntary homeless or other groups of people: victims of abuse and those falling to propaganda and temptations, then falling into vicious cycles. Once again, governments cannot solve these sort of individual problems. But people, whether with religious or humanistic motives, can individually and voluntarily help those.

Still, we must understand that like the poor and the sick, at least some homeless will always be with us. Solving the problem is no more possible for mandatory human government that it is possible for those same institutions to solve any problem. And in some cases, there is no solution possible. Ultimately, using top-down programs to attack social problems does not work, and not just governmental programs. The same is true for volunteer efforts, including religion. But if we believe that they can, then we are little more than suckers shelling out money to hoax-sters.