Peterkin

No.

He's been fomenting since before the election he stole.

Thanks! That's super cool (cheap pun). I've known about this place for a long time, but have never been inside.

That works better for an astronomer, than a tightrope walker. Of course, most of us would not be served well by either focus: we need to look at the road, at the screen, at the classroom, at the camera, at what our hands are doing. And that's a fine slogan for people who are able to carry on doing the work they chose and love. For others, retirement makes sense. I have not found this to be true. What I'm wondering is: Do you have a purpose in offering us this bumper-sticker medley?

It sounds more like a computer game world than the one I'm living in.

Who does the implementing?

When does that take effect? So far, all we've had was warring and competing factions. I get the UN index. They have a theory of how humans ought to live, they set that standard as a goal to achieve, and they can measure progress toward, or I assume away from, that goal. That's what progress means: motion in a given direction toward a specified destination. This goal was not identified in the OP. Nor was "efficiency" defined. So, OK, you adopt the UN's aspiration as an absolute goal. That's fine; it's a pretty good standard. And you want to make an index like the UN's? What for?

I don't see a any definitions of 'civilization' and 'efficiency'. Is there a performance standard or benchmarks for efficiency? Is civilization as whole, globally, from 6000BCE to the present, the entity under consideration, or some sub-units, such as nations or regimes? Over what period of time? Are there criteria to be included and excluded? Is there a unit of measurement? A host of problems. But my biggest one is with 'efficiency'. The word suggests that the system being assessed has a specific function to perform, and there is some absolute known standard of product quality, cost/gain ratio and production time to meet. The most efficient social organizations are those depicted in Brave New World and Kazohinia where no progress or evolution is possible, because maximum efficiency has already been achieved. You can probably set up criteria for work/hours per citizen, energy usage, food consumed, waste generated, allocation of resources to productive vs non-productive activities. But how will such an index ? I just can't picture how this would work.

There are all kinds of landlords, not all equally innocent of avarice and fraud.

That's not just old people; that applies to most homeless people. Something bad happened, then another bad thing and another, they lost control of their life, had a breakdown or self-medicated to excess, until finally, they couldn't afford the mortgage or the rent and utilities.... The cracks keep getting wider and more people fall through.

How old a kid? When I was 10, we packed a minimum of belongings and left our home. I was very much aware that we would never go back, never see that apartment, or that city, ever again. It was terrifying, even though I was with both my parents. My brother was 5, and pretty much took things as they came. Later, he had only scrappy memories of the next eight months, while I retain every landscape, voyage and temporary shelter to this day. I do understand why some old people, on losing their home, lose the will to live. And why people with mental health issues can't possibly get better until they have a safe place of their own. Not an institution, not a hostel, not a rehabilitation camp with bunk beds - a room with a door they can lock and a light they can turn out or leave on and a bed where nobody else is allowed to crash, except by their invitation.

No. That was a facile example. It was Americans believing that complex problems have simple solutions that do not involve them having to examine their past actions, or give up anything of their comfort and convenience. Closing their eyes to consequences and sweeping past injustice and present disparity under rugs. That might even be true. For about five minutes. But you have not detailed the costing and funding, let alone the legislations required to make your solution available to all c600,000 homeless Americans, and who knows how many world-wide. Who's going to sort out the drug addicts from the alcoholics from the mildly or severely mentally ill from the people who just got evicted because their landlord wanted to flip a tenement into an upscale condo and give each of those people the help appropriate to their need? There are plenty of good ideas, but not enough support or resources. When you resort to force, a whole lot of people fall through, or get stuck in, a whole lot of cracks.

That's true. I did caricature the OP suggestion, since I found the approach objectionable and have some idea where such approaches lead in real world situations. Donald Trump showed us an example of how detaining illegal immigrants can go very badly wrong. Any mass detention can - and they usually do. We know too many instances to leave our guard down when any facile blanket 'solution' to a societal problem is proposed, especially if that solution involves people indiscriminately rounded up by police.

Good, aren't they? Nature tries everything, until something works really well, then leaves it alone for a few million years.

OK, I agree. I had assumed the objective of the OP was to solve both problems of homeless addicts. However, if you put people who intend to keep using in an urban setting, there could be trouble from/with the neighbours, among other possible setbacks. Neither would I hardened users together with those who are trying to get clean (and/or sober); that probably wouldn't turn out well. So the villages would have to zoned as 'safe sites' or 'drug-free' or 'dry', and I certainly wouldn't put children in non-recovery communities.

Aha! It's the straight branch! https://wpi.digication.com/honey-stealing-moths-BB2050-D20/home The death's head hawkmoth doesn't just look like bees; it smells like a bee. I just saw it today in a beautiful documentary (middle-school level) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10JTbfSecC4

Yes.... they're just too expensive. After a gall-bladder operation you're expected to recover and go home in 3-5 days. After a schizophrenic break, you might need a month or longer. So, back on the street you go. Whatever treatment option is offered, secure housing is key to its success.

It will for addicts who want to recover and people with mild emotional impairments, if an appropriate medical regimen comes with the tiny village placement. A support group is readily available on site, but without the intimidating, relapse-inducing barbed wire and guard towers. People with severe mental illness should be hospitalized and treated, not imprisoned.

The topic was closed before I could follow this up. Decided it was interesting enough anyway, so here we are: article https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/uk/21/04/effect-spanking-brain paper https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/cdev.13565

Bread was the first thing my brother mastered after leaving home. Then soup. He already had pork chops and apple pie down cold before he left home. That's as far as he ever got: when invited to dinner at his place, you knew exactly what to expect. Like many restaurants. I used to like going out, maybe once a month for dinner, and more often in summer to someplace with a patio for lunch, a nice way to celebrate special occasions, a nice way to spend leisure time, people-watching. We had some favourite places and favourite dishes. During the pandemic, we tried ordering takeout from two of them and didn't enjoy it at all. It was never about the food.... I do sometimes watch cooking shows for ideas. I leave out about about half the ingredients: they tend to overcomplicate. My best friend is a slow cooker, but there is a bread machine on the way, which I intend to place right next to her, so they can make each other jealous while cooking bread and soup, just like my brother used to make.

Seriously? You pay $6 for a bowl of oatmeal with fruit on top? Nice berries, but it's still oatmeal! If you don't like oatmeal, just eat some fruit. Buy whole grain bread and put jam on your toast. Nobody has to eat oatmeal (though I suddenly feel like making some, with brown sugar and allspice); there are other wholesome grains, and other ways to incorporate oats into your diet. No, restaurant food doesn't tell you anything about healthy food. The point of going to a restaurant is to step out of routine, indulge yourself and let somebody else do the work. (Unless you fall for the meal-kit scam, where you overpay for the ingredients and still do the work.) If you want to eat well, buy wholesome groceries, get recipes off the internet, like this https://www.eatingwell.com/recipes/ and just do it. You might even try piling different fruits and nuts on your oatmeal. I think you'd better take her out pretty soon.

They may be happy with apartment in theory, but who can afford an apartment anymore? Even if they can find one anywhere close to their job, people near the low end of the pay-scale spend half or more of their earnings on basic shelter, which leaves barely enough for necessities and no possibility of saving. One down-sizing, serious injury or family crisis from eviction. All the time. And so did the price of everything else.

On the flip-side, some people own more residences than they can occupy. While depriving the unrich of even one identity.... and also: Seems, like the Italian villages, they're just in the wrong place.

That got me thinking back on trailer parks. Used to be where you went when you couldn't afford a house or apartment, but still had a job. Some of those communities became completely immobile self-contained villages, with additions and gardens and fences. They still exist, but they're endangered. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/may/03/owning-trailer-parks-mobile-home-university-investment https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2021/12/22/five-reasons-why-mobile-home-parks-in-the-united-states-are-disappearing/?sh=50e550354b64 Will that happen to the tiny villages? One possibility: When/if Canadian and US cities get smart enough to imitate the Europeans and ban cars from their downtown, replacing them with clean, efficient, cheap public transit, there will be a lot of vacant municipal parking lots. City services readily available, just arrange the prefabs (recycled plastic; lightweight and weatherproof) in a pleasing configuration, add some deep bins of earth for vegetable gardening and move in the people. The multi-level ones can be turned into apartments; the underground ones into hydroponic gardens and mushroom cellars. Nothing will improve as long the jillionnaires abscond offshore without paying taxes.

There is something to learned from that incident, if we put it next to many other comments. There is a general aversion in NA public discourse - and policy? - to what is called 'enabling'. The attitude, I think, is based on the pioneer mentality, the mythos of rugged individualism and personal responsibility, standing on your own two bootstraps, etc.. This is a quintessentially settler-American attitude and it runs counter to community effort, social responsibility, brother's keeper, which is also embedded in the culture through its Christian heritage. So, the economic organization has a lot of casualties, who are seen as weak, defective, substandard in some way. But they ought to be helped. And the social organization tends to offer heavy-handed, authoritarian, blame-splashing help, which does very little for the morale of the victims. This problem will just keep growing, unless there is a change in attitude that's translated to votes for better policy and political action. Sorry you read it that way. (ED: I mean sincerely regretful of the ambiguity.) I agreed with you that some people refuse the help that is offered, cited an article in support of that observation, then went on to elaborate how this fact is used by the advocated of punitive police action. The agreement and citation was a response to your post; the indictment was general, and not directed at you. (I should have separated them better.)