If society evolved to 10% unhoused but working, healthy, and non criminal, I strongly suspect systems could be adapted. Non-destitute tent cities could likely be supported as easily as a large fairgrounds.
It’s possible then that the balance of outliers such as me are because most people just want to be housed? So the balance of light amenities for the unhoused in Taiwan is at equilibrium (and needs more amenities in the USA, probably). NB that surely I am not the first or only person in TW to do this. The countryside night-market culture seems possibly to involve healthy non criminal transient merchants for example. At any rate, implicitly the system is designed for the number of people doing this. No?
Back to my question above, what actual drain did I pose on society? If I could know what those are, I could mitigate them. I will likely be back in Taiwan to continue my permanent residency visa in 2025. I will be bringing in outside money and again probably living out of a bike or a motorcycle. Other than keeping things clean and obeying laws, what should I do to make sure I haven’t done harm?
At any rate, implicitly the system is designed for the number of people doing this. No?
No. That’s like saying that stores’ budgets are designed to allow for a certain amount of shoplifting (which is true), so it’s okay to shoplift. The fact that the system is designed to survive some amount of cheating, and that it doesn’t spend as much effort to catch cheaters as it could, doesn’t make cheating okay.
Back to my question above, what actual drain did I pose on society?
That depends on your definition of drain. If by “drain” you mean “used far more than your fair share” everything you did that wouldn’t be done so often by someone with a home was a drain. Your post mentions using public restrooms, using public places for sleeping, and being protected from crime even though you lived in the streets (and presumably was more vulnerable to crime than you would be in a home).
Other than keeping things clean and obeying laws, what should I do to make sure I haven’t done harm?
Get a home?
(And if your answer is “that means I have to pay for my restroom and sleeping space, and that would cost me money”, that’s pretty much the point.)
Thank you for the ongoing conversation. I do appreciate this.
”If by “drain” you mean “used far more than your fair share” everything you did that wouldn’t be done so often by someone with a home was a drain.”
Why should we assume “cost” by default when not conforming to systemic expectations? And why should we assume others doing it should have a bad result?
I think that would only be a drain if someone else’s use was diminished afterwards. You never mention, for example, my days spent snorkeling in Hualien. Hours and hours and hours for several weeks with my head in the water, looking at starfish and such. This was arguably “more than my fair share” but I did not diminish the resource for anyone else who wants to use it. And this is also something that might not be done by someone who is paying for a home. I think it’s not instinctively mentioned in the conversation because we both know I could do this essentially infinitely and not diminish anyone else’s use of that commons.
Likewise, if I leave everything in the condition I found it, am not breaking laws, and paying for food, gas, taxes, and whatever else I need or want, then what is our definition of “drain?” or even “fair share?” Fair share is a more complicated term because some who have houses got them free, perhaps through inheritance, along with money, or even regular middle class people might be using more of the countryside in a destructive way in their time off than I am (such as the trashed up barbeque sites you see along many rivers in Taiwan).
To delve into this a bit more, you may be effectively saying that we should look at any existing system, and regardless of our views on it, we owe it an attempt to conform to what we assume it assumes. It seems that could fail on multiple vectors, no?
We need something clearer than just “I think this society expects x, and so I assume that doing other than x is destroying the commons.”
To think of it another way, if a culture of (lawful and clean) vagabonds were to evolve in Taiwan, for all we know it might create a new culture of innovation, versus the “lie flat” culture that some of Asia is falling prey to. Taiwanese youths with newfound time and freedom, at least some of them, might become a creative force. It could birth a silicon valley, or at the very least create a hopefulness of some systemic slack that many find lacking, which has serious social costs in that country right now. Or, given a feeling of less pressure to take and spend money, might have more children, helping the country’s coming demographic collapse. Or, maybe a lot of biking/camping tourists will go to the Island and bring in money that way through use of the 70% which is mountainous and undeveloped land. Any of these are possible, so why should we assume bad outcomes?
You never mention, for example, my days spent snorkeling in Hualien.
I never mention it because you are not overusing it compared to someone in a home.
even regular middle class people might be using more of the countryside in a destructive way in their time off than I am
“People who are not causing the particular harm I am causing, may be causing different sorts of harm” doesn’t really justify it.
To think of it another way, if a culture of (lawful and clean) vagabonds were to evolve in Taiwan, for all we know it might create a new culture of innovation, versus the “lie flat” culture that some of Asia is falling pray to.
This is a rationalization. It’s like saying “if a culture of shoplifters arose, for all we know it could create a culture of innovation, where stores benefit from the publicity caused by shoplifting, customers consider stores with frequent shoplifters to have high quality goods so shoplifting attracts customers, tourists shoplift occasionally but spend more money in the areas where they shoplift, etc.” You can always invent hypothetical scenarios where your harm doesn’t really cause harm. The clause after the “for all we know” is wishful thinking and supported by nothing whatsoever.
Seriously, being homeless might create a Silicon Valley?
You still aren’t telling me why I should assume I am contributing to bad outcomes instead of good ones or neutral ones without actual any actual crime or damage being done. I’m not building anything resembling a shoplifting ring here.
Let me try to think some of this through that you might be getting at. One of the things you mention is my depending on the lower crime rates. This is the single thing that keeps me from doing the exact same thing in the USA. In fact I/other people do the same thing in the USA sometimes, such as camping on national parklands, or even sleeping at a rest stop, even frequenting the same stop multiple times when it seems clearly safe.
So then the first question is, “Did I personally contribute to an increased crime rate or decreased safety on the island?” I think the answer is obviously no, but I would be interested to hear if I am overlooking something.
The second question would be, “What mass of people, if doing the same thing, would increase the crime rate?” This is harder to get into, and requires some speculation.
First of all, Taiwan does not allow any private handgun ownership, and very little private gun ownership in any form. Secondly, I think East Asian culture is less prone to interpersonal violence. The Chinese cities, even where there is increased poverty, don’t pose the same kind of threat as most urban areas in the USA. In Taiwan, a random mugging or victimization is rare. In Japan it’s close to non-existant. There is still Domestic violence, but nothing that a vagabond who isn’t partnered to a violent person need worry about. I think the lack of crime is largely baked into the culture, and non-destitute, non-criminal unhoused are highly unlikely to really move any needles on this.
But let’s say that a bunch of people decided to do what I did. I think one group might be the sort of miscreants who generally stay up using alcohol and stimulants and playing video games in internet bars. A few have made international news for dying playing video games (and no one noticed).
So, you take that demographic, and create a culture of groups on scooters riding around and camping in the mountains and sometimes in the cities. I could see that you would basically have a lot of kids sitting around drinking, surely trashing up the places where they camped. Probably communities would ask police to crack down on them. That might legitimately trash the commons. But isn’t the problem there that they are drinking, maybe causing trouble, and littering? If you removed those issues, would there be any problem with it?
Regarding “Silicon Valley,” yes, I think if a group of non-criminal, non-littering youth were to emerge that decided to be localized digital nomads instead of “lying flat” it could be a major force, creating a lot of new outputs. Not “silicon valley” on the scale of USA, (which required a time, place, and etc) but yes, potentially a highly innovative and important culture that could have a major impact. In order to create an innovative culture, at scale or even personally, a primary requirement is systemic slack. Inflation, housing costs, and red queen races of education are eating slack everywhere. Maybe spreading just the idea that people don’t have to work all the time would have a positive impact on the culture. People need to breathe to create. It evidently needs to be easier to breathe than it is in most places.
Remember, we are talking about a country and an area that is headed rapidly to demographic collapse, where the young are already opting out in dysfunctional ways because the existing society is systemically failing them (as in the culture of just hanging out all the time in internet cafes, sometimes literally unto death). The “Lying flat” culture started in Japan and China and has spread to Taiwan as well (and the USA, for that matter). Camping out by hot springs and oceans and working while living in a hammock in the hills above one’s town hardly seems like a dangerous abuse of the commons, given the actual contexts of the world.
But perhaps you believe we should not opt out of what we assume the system assumes. I could see a sort of “Schelling Fence” argument for that, but there should also be some limitation. If I am sure I am doing nothing criminal nor damaging to the environment, nor apparently reducing the commons of the land anymore than I did of the sea, then is there still a good reason I should not cross the fence?
I can also see some point where a critical mass of unhoused might cause social problems. On the other hand, normally a critical mass of unhoused is also destitute, which causes its own set of problems. I would not know how to unwind those two factors. I still think a tent city for the non-destitute would be great, but perhaps this would strain the social system of rents and employment by eliminating legibility and dependence on employers and landlords? Some might think that is a good thing, but on the other hand, let’s just say it contributes to “market volatility,” so even if the change might be net good, managing the interim could be hard.
But I am reaching here, circling back and forth on what I already thought about the matter. I feel like there must be something specific in your mind or intuition that led you to think I was trashing the commons, and I think making it lucid should be very valuable. Even if I indeed go back to Taiwan and camp (urban and non) again, it might help me ameliorate any actual degrading of the commons, which I am motivated to do as I love my second country there.
So then the first question is, “Did I personally contribute to an increased crime rate or decreased safety on the island?” I think the answer is obviously no, but I would be interested to hear if I am overlooking something.
You didn’t commit extra crimes, but it requires more resources to protect you from crimes. (And again, since you are a single person, the extra resources get lost in the noise. But if many people did this, there would be more crime.)
You still aren’t giving any reason why I should assume I am contributing to bad outcomes instead of good ones or neutral ones.
I could say the same thing about the shoplifter. There are scenarios where shoplifting might, in theory, be a benefit to the stores. It would not be possible to prove that these scenarios are false. Maybe it really is true that tourists like being able to occasionally shoplift and otherwise spend enough money to make up for the loss. You can invent an infinite number of such scenarios.
What I can observe, however, is that stores don’t gather together to promote an area of town as the shoplifting district, and nobody’s trying to legalize shoplifting. The people who would best know about the consequences seem to think the bad outcomes are the realistic scenario. Likewise, Taiwan doesn’t take out ads saying “come to Taiwan and experience being homeless” or even have designated homeless encampment areas, shopping malls don’t compete on how good their homeless person amenities are, and I really doubt that being homeless gives you high status among your colleagues at work, if you even told them.
“You didn’t commit extra crimes, but it requires more resources to protect you from crimes. (And again, since you are a single person, the extra resources get lost in the noise. But if many people did this, there would be more crime.)”
Is me creating an opportunity for someone to commit a crime constitute my doing something bad to the commons or is it on the actual criminals? It seems you are quite literally blaming (potential) victims for their drag on society. Doesn’t 100% of the responsibility for that, and whatever costs are incurred lie with those who would do the crimes?
The rest of it, about shoplifting, seems hard to connect, as no one is advocating doing something illegal. I think what I said above about creating slack is less speculative than you are making it out to be (especially given many of the real conditions, as I pointed out above).
To try and do justice to the rest of your post… are you saying that people would just see someone riding around the island, camping outside as a public nuisance, basically, and dislike it, so therefore it shouldn’t be done?
(A) What would balance the “dislike” concern? I give you credit that you do not believe we should infinitely defer to the possibility that society would find a set of actions distasteful. I guess it is correct that a few frowns if someone found out I was sleeping in a Hammock in the woods might matter, though we don’t also know who would think it was cool. FWIW, old people walking on the mountain trails some mornings who saw me camping out usually smiled and said “Oh, ni li hai!” (“You are very capable” which is normally a compliment). So how much deference do we owe to what amounts to speculations of distaste?
(B) A lot of the objection also seems to revolve around speculation that “if more people did this, a cascade of bad outcomes would happen.” I think this is resolvable to (1) apparently there is systemic equilibrium in that most other people empirically do not choose to do this (and those who have no choice are a separate problem where everything we are saying is basically moot, the discussion would be a completely different one) and (2) your speculations that outcomes should be bad still seems to have at most equal footing to my speculations that it should be good or neutral.
So what level of deference do we owe to speculations of bad outcomes in the contra-factual case if my behavior somehow caught on with more people and they did what I am doing?
(C) Normal cases of destroying the commons usually require that the equilibrium of people choosing to do something tends towards overwhelming the common resource. In the USA, you see signs and ordinances trying to stop people from sleeping outside, so that equilibrium is currently out of balance (and most of those people do not have a choice). Without evidence, is there even any reason for me not to assume the system in Taiwan is currently in a functional and fine equilibrium at whatever number of people do what I was doing?
(TL;DR: D) I still think there may be something inside what you are saying that “Systems are designed on a set of assumptions, and this constitutes the social contract. Violating those assumptions always produces an unexpected systemic draw.” As a systems engineer, I find this line of thinking intriguing. What I would guess is actually happening is there are many different forms of such draws. Most look different to mine, and look different to each other, but indeed, each stepping out of bounds of systemic assumptions and legibility does create a draw on the system. I am not quite sure how to address this, as it is extremely difficult to know if and what damage is being done, as it all amounts to noise.
It seems like there is some argument to be made that we should try to operate within all established social systems. However, I don’t think it’s infinitely true. The question then, like all my other points above, how much? If I guess I am contributing more than I am taking by my level of noise then is this okay? Moreover, am I even being accurate in understanding my own level of systemic draining noise? How much can I actually go around knowing if a particular action is producing a drain at all (I’m still not convinced being voluntarily unhoused did that in Taiwan)? Should I run it like GARP accounting standards where I always rule against myself, and if there is any question I am creating noise which increases systemic burdens, I should not do the action?
Honestly, maybe as a default that is okay. However, at some point, if I did it all the time, then the lack of slack may create enough drains on the user that their reduced mental health or capacity ends up creating a bigger drain. In other words, I am willing to take that position and I think you are correct about it if that’s the crux of your argument—but I think that would need to be held very loosely, otherwise we would do more damage handcuffing ourselves than the system noise of our lives.
Is me creating an opportunity for someone to commit a crime constitute my doing something bad to the commons or is it on the actual criminals?
It’s on both.
The rest of it, about shoplifting, seems hard to connect, as no one is advocating doing something illegal.
The shoplifting comparison has nothing to do with whether shoplifting is illegal. The point of the comparison is that you can endlessly speculate that something really has a positive effect by imagining some scenario where it does. I am able to imagine such a positive effect for shoplifting, but it would not convince you that shoplifting is positive. I’m not going to be convinced that homelessness is positive by you imagining some scenario where it is.
If I guess I am contributing more than I am taking by my level of noise then is this okay?
My answer to this is the same as for the similar question about shoplifting: I would expect that if homelessness or shoplifting had a positive effect, stores and governments would act as though it does. You personally cannot become “okay” on your own—you don’t get to decide that your shoplifting is actually contributing more to tourist publicity than it harms the stores, and you don’t get to decide that your homelessness creates a positive contribution.
“Is me creating an opportunity for someone to commit a crime constitute my doing something bad to the commons or is it on the actual criminals?”
“It’s on both”
These situations seem to be very extreme, but I have this less dark example: Say I go swimming in a place where the lifeguard can’t see me. Is it my fault I drowned or the lifeguards? The lifeguard is supposed to watch everyone… but I put myself in that situation in the first place. (After typing this out I realized it’s still pretty dark, oh well)
“Of course, you can argue “if they didn’t want homeless people using them, they shouldn’t provide them for free to homeless people”. The consequence of this attitude, at large, is why we can’t have nice things.” - (This was in the second-from-the-top comment in this chain)
Another extreme situation. Here’s a similar but softer one which seems positive... Airplane tickets to Las Vegas are often much cheaper than tickets to literally anywhere else. That’s because Las Vegas bets that people will be attracted to the cheap tickets and go to Las Vegas, then proceed to spend tons of money at the casinos. My family doesn’t go to these casinos, we just travel to Vegas because we have friends nearby. We’re benefiting but not contributing.
My point is that I noticed that some of the situations Jiao Bu’s been in can be rewritten to get the other person to react differently. Maybe that’s just me, though.
Say I go swimming in a place where the lifeguard can’t see me. Is it my fault I drowned or the lifeguards?
The issue is not whose fault it is for the crime, but whose fault it is for the using up the extra resources to prevent the crime, which is not an issue in the lifeguard example. And that itself is a specific case of “how much more than average do you have to use the commons before you can be blamed for overusing the commons”. Which is partly a matter of degree and depends on things like how much you use it, what people’s expectations are, what reasonable expectations are, and what the intentions are of the people providing the resources.
My family doesn’t go to these casinos, we just travel to Vegas because we have friends nearby. We’re benefiting but not contributing.
I’ve done that myself (for busses to Atlantic City). Since the owner can change the price freely, and can change it incrementally or for specific customers, I’d generally not consider it to be overusing the commons if there is a price. In the case of loss-leader trips, it’s also very hard to overuse the trips anyway, as opposed to just using them more than average—you probably couldn’t use more than one trip every couple of days.
If stores in Taiwan charged for use of bathrooms, and the government rented out spaces for homeless on the ground, and charged a “homeless stay tax” which covers the costs of police and such, I would agree that it would be okay to go homeless and use them at the given prices. (If there is a two tier price where the homeless are charged more, the homeless tourist would have to pay the homeless tier price, and not cheat even if it isn’t enforced well.)
If society evolved to 10% unhoused but working, healthy, and non criminal, I strongly suspect systems could be adapted. Non-destitute tent cities could likely be supported as easily as a large fairgrounds.
It’s possible then that the balance of outliers such as me are because most people just want to be housed? So the balance of light amenities for the unhoused in Taiwan is at equilibrium (and needs more amenities in the USA, probably). NB that surely I am not the first or only person in TW to do this. The countryside night-market culture seems possibly to involve healthy non criminal transient merchants for example. At any rate, implicitly the system is designed for the number of people doing this. No?
Back to my question above, what actual drain did I pose on society? If I could know what those are, I could mitigate them. I will likely be back in Taiwan to continue my permanent residency visa in 2025. I will be bringing in outside money and again probably living out of a bike or a motorcycle. Other than keeping things clean and obeying laws, what should I do to make sure I haven’t done harm?
No. That’s like saying that stores’ budgets are designed to allow for a certain amount of shoplifting (which is true), so it’s okay to shoplift. The fact that the system is designed to survive some amount of cheating, and that it doesn’t spend as much effort to catch cheaters as it could, doesn’t make cheating okay.
That depends on your definition of drain. If by “drain” you mean “used far more than your fair share” everything you did that wouldn’t be done so often by someone with a home was a drain. Your post mentions using public restrooms, using public places for sleeping, and being protected from crime even though you lived in the streets (and presumably was more vulnerable to crime than you would be in a home).
Get a home?
(And if your answer is “that means I have to pay for my restroom and sleeping space, and that would cost me money”, that’s pretty much the point.)
Thank you for the ongoing conversation. I do appreciate this.
”If by “drain” you mean “used far more than your fair share” everything you did that wouldn’t be done so often by someone with a home was a drain.”
Why should we assume “cost” by default when not conforming to systemic expectations? And why should we assume others doing it should have a bad result?
I think that would only be a drain if someone else’s use was diminished afterwards. You never mention, for example, my days spent snorkeling in Hualien. Hours and hours and hours for several weeks with my head in the water, looking at starfish and such. This was arguably “more than my fair share” but I did not diminish the resource for anyone else who wants to use it. And this is also something that might not be done by someone who is paying for a home. I think it’s not instinctively mentioned in the conversation because we both know I could do this essentially infinitely and not diminish anyone else’s use of that commons.
Likewise, if I leave everything in the condition I found it, am not breaking laws, and paying for food, gas, taxes, and whatever else I need or want, then what is our definition of “drain?” or even “fair share?” Fair share is a more complicated term because some who have houses got them free, perhaps through inheritance, along with money, or even regular middle class people might be using more of the countryside in a destructive way in their time off than I am (such as the trashed up barbeque sites you see along many rivers in Taiwan).
To delve into this a bit more, you may be effectively saying that we should look at any existing system, and regardless of our views on it, we owe it an attempt to conform to what we assume it assumes. It seems that could fail on multiple vectors, no?
We need something clearer than just “I think this society expects x, and so I assume that doing other than x is destroying the commons.”
To think of it another way, if a culture of (lawful and clean) vagabonds were to evolve in Taiwan, for all we know it might create a new culture of innovation, versus the “lie flat” culture that some of Asia is falling prey to. Taiwanese youths with newfound time and freedom, at least some of them, might become a creative force. It could birth a silicon valley, or at the very least create a hopefulness of some systemic slack that many find lacking, which has serious social costs in that country right now. Or, given a feeling of less pressure to take and spend money, might have more children, helping the country’s coming demographic collapse. Or, maybe a lot of biking/camping tourists will go to the Island and bring in money that way through use of the 70% which is mountainous and undeveloped land. Any of these are possible, so why should we assume bad outcomes?
I never mention it because you are not overusing it compared to someone in a home.
“People who are not causing the particular harm I am causing, may be causing different sorts of harm” doesn’t really justify it.
This is a rationalization. It’s like saying “if a culture of shoplifters arose, for all we know it could create a culture of innovation, where stores benefit from the publicity caused by shoplifting, customers consider stores with frequent shoplifters to have high quality goods so shoplifting attracts customers, tourists shoplift occasionally but spend more money in the areas where they shoplift, etc.” You can always invent hypothetical scenarios where your harm doesn’t really cause harm. The clause after the “for all we know” is wishful thinking and supported by nothing whatsoever.
Seriously, being homeless might create a Silicon Valley?
You still aren’t telling me why I should assume I am contributing to bad outcomes instead of good ones or neutral ones without actual any actual crime or damage being done. I’m not building anything resembling a shoplifting ring here.
Let me try to think some of this through that you might be getting at. One of the things you mention is my depending on the lower crime rates. This is the single thing that keeps me from doing the exact same thing in the USA. In fact I/other people do the same thing in the USA sometimes, such as camping on national parklands, or even sleeping at a rest stop, even frequenting the same stop multiple times when it seems clearly safe.
So then the first question is, “Did I personally contribute to an increased crime rate or decreased safety on the island?” I think the answer is obviously no, but I would be interested to hear if I am overlooking something.
The second question would be, “What mass of people, if doing the same thing, would increase the crime rate?” This is harder to get into, and requires some speculation.
First of all, Taiwan does not allow any private handgun ownership, and very little private gun ownership in any form. Secondly, I think East Asian culture is less prone to interpersonal violence. The Chinese cities, even where there is increased poverty, don’t pose the same kind of threat as most urban areas in the USA. In Taiwan, a random mugging or victimization is rare. In Japan it’s close to non-existant. There is still Domestic violence, but nothing that a vagabond who isn’t partnered to a violent person need worry about. I think the lack of crime is largely baked into the culture, and non-destitute, non-criminal unhoused are highly unlikely to really move any needles on this.
But let’s say that a bunch of people decided to do what I did. I think one group might be the sort of miscreants who generally stay up using alcohol and stimulants and playing video games in internet bars. A few have made international news for dying playing video games (and no one noticed).
So, you take that demographic, and create a culture of groups on scooters riding around and camping in the mountains and sometimes in the cities. I could see that you would basically have a lot of kids sitting around drinking, surely trashing up the places where they camped. Probably communities would ask police to crack down on them. That might legitimately trash the commons. But isn’t the problem there that they are drinking, maybe causing trouble, and littering? If you removed those issues, would there be any problem with it?
Regarding “Silicon Valley,” yes, I think if a group of non-criminal, non-littering youth were to emerge that decided to be localized digital nomads instead of “lying flat” it could be a major force, creating a lot of new outputs. Not “silicon valley” on the scale of USA, (which required a time, place, and etc) but yes, potentially a highly innovative and important culture that could have a major impact. In order to create an innovative culture, at scale or even personally, a primary requirement is systemic slack. Inflation, housing costs, and red queen races of education are eating slack everywhere. Maybe spreading just the idea that people don’t have to work all the time would have a positive impact on the culture. People need to breathe to create. It evidently needs to be easier to breathe than it is in most places.
Remember, we are talking about a country and an area that is headed rapidly to demographic collapse, where the young are already opting out in dysfunctional ways because the existing society is systemically failing them (as in the culture of just hanging out all the time in internet cafes, sometimes literally unto death). The “Lying flat” culture started in Japan and China and has spread to Taiwan as well (and the USA, for that matter). Camping out by hot springs and oceans and working while living in a hammock in the hills above one’s town hardly seems like a dangerous abuse of the commons, given the actual contexts of the world.
But perhaps you believe we should not opt out of what we assume the system assumes. I could see a sort of “Schelling Fence” argument for that, but there should also be some limitation. If I am sure I am doing nothing criminal nor damaging to the environment, nor apparently reducing the commons of the land anymore than I did of the sea, then is there still a good reason I should not cross the fence?
I can also see some point where a critical mass of unhoused might cause social problems. On the other hand, normally a critical mass of unhoused is also destitute, which causes its own set of problems. I would not know how to unwind those two factors. I still think a tent city for the non-destitute would be great, but perhaps this would strain the social system of rents and employment by eliminating legibility and dependence on employers and landlords? Some might think that is a good thing, but on the other hand, let’s just say it contributes to “market volatility,” so even if the change might be net good, managing the interim could be hard.
But I am reaching here, circling back and forth on what I already thought about the matter. I feel like there must be something specific in your mind or intuition that led you to think I was trashing the commons, and I think making it lucid should be very valuable. Even if I indeed go back to Taiwan and camp (urban and non) again, it might help me ameliorate any actual degrading of the commons, which I am motivated to do as I love my second country there.
You didn’t commit extra crimes, but it requires more resources to protect you from crimes. (And again, since you are a single person, the extra resources get lost in the noise. But if many people did this, there would be more crime.)
I could say the same thing about the shoplifter. There are scenarios where shoplifting might, in theory, be a benefit to the stores. It would not be possible to prove that these scenarios are false. Maybe it really is true that tourists like being able to occasionally shoplift and otherwise spend enough money to make up for the loss. You can invent an infinite number of such scenarios.
What I can observe, however, is that stores don’t gather together to promote an area of town as the shoplifting district, and nobody’s trying to legalize shoplifting. The people who would best know about the consequences seem to think the bad outcomes are the realistic scenario. Likewise, Taiwan doesn’t take out ads saying “come to Taiwan and experience being homeless” or even have designated homeless encampment areas, shopping malls don’t compete on how good their homeless person amenities are, and I really doubt that being homeless gives you high status among your colleagues at work, if you even told them.
“You didn’t commit extra crimes, but it requires more resources to protect you from crimes. (And again, since you are a single person, the extra resources get lost in the noise. But if many people did this, there would be more crime.)”
Is me creating an opportunity for someone to commit a crime constitute my doing something bad to the commons or is it on the actual criminals? It seems you are quite literally blaming (potential) victims for their drag on society. Doesn’t 100% of the responsibility for that, and whatever costs are incurred lie with those who would do the crimes?
The rest of it, about shoplifting, seems hard to connect, as no one is advocating doing something illegal. I think what I said above about creating slack is less speculative than you are making it out to be (especially given many of the real conditions, as I pointed out above).
To try and do justice to the rest of your post… are you saying that people would just see someone riding around the island, camping outside as a public nuisance, basically, and dislike it, so therefore it shouldn’t be done?
(A) What would balance the “dislike” concern? I give you credit that you do not believe we should infinitely defer to the possibility that society would find a set of actions distasteful. I guess it is correct that a few frowns if someone found out I was sleeping in a Hammock in the woods might matter, though we don’t also know who would think it was cool. FWIW, old people walking on the mountain trails some mornings who saw me camping out usually smiled and said “Oh, ni li hai!” (“You are very capable” which is normally a compliment). So how much deference do we owe to what amounts to speculations of distaste?
(B) A lot of the objection also seems to revolve around speculation that “if more people did this, a cascade of bad outcomes would happen.” I think this is resolvable to (1) apparently there is systemic equilibrium in that most other people empirically do not choose to do this (and those who have no choice are a separate problem where everything we are saying is basically moot, the discussion would be a completely different one) and (2) your speculations that outcomes should be bad still seems to have at most equal footing to my speculations that it should be good or neutral.
So what level of deference do we owe to speculations of bad outcomes in the contra-factual case if my behavior somehow caught on with more people and they did what I am doing?
(C) Normal cases of destroying the commons usually require that the equilibrium of people choosing to do something tends towards overwhelming the common resource. In the USA, you see signs and ordinances trying to stop people from sleeping outside, so that equilibrium is currently out of balance (and most of those people do not have a choice). Without evidence, is there even any reason for me not to assume the system in Taiwan is currently in a functional and fine equilibrium at whatever number of people do what I was doing?
(TL;DR: D) I still think there may be something inside what you are saying that “Systems are designed on a set of assumptions, and this constitutes the social contract. Violating those assumptions always produces an unexpected systemic draw.” As a systems engineer, I find this line of thinking intriguing. What I would guess is actually happening is there are many different forms of such draws. Most look different to mine, and look different to each other, but indeed, each stepping out of bounds of systemic assumptions and legibility does create a draw on the system. I am not quite sure how to address this, as it is extremely difficult to know if and what damage is being done, as it all amounts to noise.
It seems like there is some argument to be made that we should try to operate within all established social systems. However, I don’t think it’s infinitely true. The question then, like all my other points above, how much? If I guess I am contributing more than I am taking by my level of noise then is this okay? Moreover, am I even being accurate in understanding my own level of systemic draining noise? How much can I actually go around knowing if a particular action is producing a drain at all (I’m still not convinced being voluntarily unhoused did that in Taiwan)? Should I run it like GARP accounting standards where I always rule against myself, and if there is any question I am creating noise which increases systemic burdens, I should not do the action?
Honestly, maybe as a default that is okay. However, at some point, if I did it all the time, then the lack of slack may create enough drains on the user that their reduced mental health or capacity ends up creating a bigger drain. In other words, I am willing to take that position and I think you are correct about it if that’s the crux of your argument—but I think that would need to be held very loosely, otherwise we would do more damage handcuffing ourselves than the system noise of our lives.
It’s on both.
The shoplifting comparison has nothing to do with whether shoplifting is illegal. The point of the comparison is that you can endlessly speculate that something really has a positive effect by imagining some scenario where it does. I am able to imagine such a positive effect for shoplifting, but it would not convince you that shoplifting is positive. I’m not going to be convinced that homelessness is positive by you imagining some scenario where it is.
My answer to this is the same as for the similar question about shoplifting: I would expect that if homelessness or shoplifting had a positive effect, stores and governments would act as though it does. You personally cannot become “okay” on your own—you don’t get to decide that your shoplifting is actually contributing more to tourist publicity than it harms the stores, and you don’t get to decide that your homelessness creates a positive contribution.
“Is me creating an opportunity for someone to commit a crime constitute my doing something bad to the commons or is it on the actual criminals?”
“It’s on both”
These situations seem to be very extreme, but I have this less dark example: Say I go swimming in a place where the lifeguard can’t see me. Is it my fault I drowned or the lifeguards? The lifeguard is supposed to watch everyone… but I put myself in that situation in the first place. (After typing this out I realized it’s still pretty dark, oh well)
“Of course, you can argue “if they didn’t want homeless people using them, they shouldn’t provide them for free to homeless people”. The consequence of this attitude, at large, is why we can’t have nice things.”
- (This was in the second-from-the-top comment in this chain)
Another extreme situation. Here’s a similar but softer one which seems positive...
Airplane tickets to Las Vegas are often much cheaper than tickets to literally anywhere else. That’s because Las Vegas bets that people will be attracted to the cheap tickets and go to Las Vegas, then proceed to spend tons of money at the casinos. My family doesn’t go to these casinos, we just travel to Vegas because we have friends nearby. We’re benefiting but not contributing.
My point is that I noticed that some of the situations Jiao Bu’s been in can be rewritten to get the other person to react differently. Maybe that’s just me, though.
The issue is not whose fault it is for the crime, but whose fault it is for the using up the extra resources to prevent the crime, which is not an issue in the lifeguard example. And that itself is a specific case of “how much more than average do you have to use the commons before you can be blamed for overusing the commons”. Which is partly a matter of degree and depends on things like how much you use it, what people’s expectations are, what reasonable expectations are, and what the intentions are of the people providing the resources.
I’ve done that myself (for busses to Atlantic City). Since the owner can change the price freely, and can change it incrementally or for specific customers, I’d generally not consider it to be overusing the commons if there is a price. In the case of loss-leader trips, it’s also very hard to overuse the trips anyway, as opposed to just using them more than average—you probably couldn’t use more than one trip every couple of days.
If stores in Taiwan charged for use of bathrooms, and the government rented out spaces for homeless on the ground, and charged a “homeless stay tax” which covers the costs of police and such, I would agree that it would be okay to go homeless and use them at the given prices. (If there is a two tier price where the homeless are charged more, the homeless tourist would have to pay the homeless tier price, and not cheat even if it isn’t enforced well.)