The problem with your "resident of Boise" theory is that it costs an ungodly amount of money to move, all of which must be paid upfront. Moving out of state is even worse, because it often means transferring jobs. This is a huge barrier for a lot of people, and for many its utterly prohibitive.

Then there's the fact that homelessness generally feels like a weird transitional phase, and you bear it with as much grace as possible and hope you have kind friends.

My father is a very soft-hearted person, and ever since I was a child he has let people stay with him who are down on their luck for whatever reason. There have been times where we had like 6 or 7 extra people staying out at my dad's house at once, sharing bedrooms or sleeping on the couches or the living room floor.

I can tell you that most of these people are unable to generate much money at all in spite of their best daily efforts. They simply cannot do it. It's not that they are mentally ill or grossly incompetent. Many of them demonstrate at least a base level of competency in many different directions. The problem seems to be that they quite simply are not needed. There just ends up being no place for them anywhere. They get outcompeted in the workforce as available positions shrink away, rising above their level of proficiency, becoming increasingly niche and specialized or automated, leaving them behind. Many are older adults without living relatives who are established and willing to help them out, and no one else really cares very much what kind of trauma a relatively uneducated 43-year-old man is suffering either, especially if he has a spotty criminal background.

Compounding these troubles is the fact that these people are poor and look poor. They don't use correct grammar (not because they're stupid per se; in fact, this usually comes down to the local culture and the communication styles they're exposed to). They often don't meet the minimum requirements listed on most job applications: smart phone with stable internet connection, professional appearance, reliable transportation, home address, etc.

So you see how people end up getting stuck in a downward spiral. Then they fall out onto the streets and get treated like a nuisance for it - because they more or less are a nuisance. A homeless person is a living, breathing allegory of want.

On the other hand, I have an old friend who got out of prison (drug charges) a few years ago and was placed in a 1-br apartment paid for by the city. He has never struggled with housing since then, since he doesn't have to pay for it. I find that the problem is pretty much invariably financial when it comes right down to it.

On the other hand, I have friends hitting their 30s who very much are in the work force and who are nevertheless struggling to accept the fact that they will probably always be stuck living with no fewer than 9 roommates, come hell or high water.

Tons of people are hanging on by their fingernails or just aren't able to hack it at all and will probably end up sooner or later on the streets of San Francisco or at my dad's house or similar.

It's hard out here.

Bureaucracy exists in the public sector because the government has certain duties to the public which must be fulfilled, and the process of fulfilling them is inherently complex, difficult, and expensive.

It is also quite labor-intensive. Many people are required to facilitate the government's administrative efforts. From court clerks to prison guards to the person who snaps your driver's license photo, public service requires a lot of grunt work, and the direct impact of their performance upon everyone's individual lives necessitates constant meta level analysis. This is further complicated by conflicting interests, disagreements over priorities, the prevalence of logistical errors, funding and informational deficiencies, social fads, internal ambivalence about the institutional mission, efforts to eliminate corruption and waste, corruption and waste period, and many other variables. Managing all of this at the federal, state, and local levels is mind-bogglingly convoluted and inconvenient, and I think necessarily bureaucratic.

In other words, the enormous difficulty of sustaining a functional society more or less justifies the existence of bureaucracy. The point of having a society is to increase the collective fitness of its members in the interest of improving their overall quality of life. Of course, sustaining a somewhat coordinated social framework is not a perfect solution to the problem of trying to be alive correctly, but it's probably better than not doing it.

So you might say that bureaucracy in the public sector is, broadly speaking, an "efficiency-maximizer" with regard to public administration (at least in theory, although in practice bureaucracy is widely associated with inefficiency, which indicates that it's simply failing to achieve its goal); or, even more broadly speaking, a "fitness-maximizer" that doesn't happen to work very well, yet persists in the absence of anything better that could reasonably be expected to overcome entrenched resistance to reform efforts.

Whatever variable bureaucracy exists to maximize, its failures to do so are obviously not a reflection of its goals. All corporations are profit-maximizers, including those that eventually file bankruptcy.

Everything would be easy if only it weren't so damn hard, etc.

I'm not sure this is true. I don't think people have children out of a conscious desire to "pass on their genes." I am a parent and have never experienced this, nor have I ever heard of anyone framing their desire to become a parent in this way.

This may be what Nature has hard-wired us to do, but I don't think "passing on one's genes" is necessarily the end-goal in that regard, either. I think the objective is to produce offspring, and then see to it that those offspring survive. In which case dying would be absurdly counterproductive.

I think, first of all, people are intrinsically motivated to have sex, which naturally results in children at least historically, prior to the invention of birth control -- which, it's worth noting, humans tried unsuccessfully to invent for thousands of years before we finally got it right, if that tells you anything.

I do think there is a genuine desire to procreate and raise children, but interestingly, now that we have come up with a way to avoid parenting without having to avoid sex, we have found that the desire to procreate is completely absent in many people -- a surprising number of people, even.

Perhaps the expectation that most adults will eventually become parents is merely reflective of the situation pre-birth control, which in relative terms is still a brand new medical innovation, and not something which our social norms have completely adjusted around yet. This makes me wonder, tangentially, if one's desire to parent children may be socially imposed to a significant degree. By contrast, very few people intentionally avoid sex all their lives.

Bottom line: it seems obviously false to me to claim that "the propensity to sacrifice one's self would normally kick in only after becoming a parent." I think the opposite is actually true. Barring situations where someone is actively trying to harm one's child, where self sacrifice may be necessary in order to preserve the child's life, I think you'll find that most people would consider having children for whom they are responsible a very strong reason against ending one's life in a politically motivated murder/suicide situation.

Thanks. I was hoping to enter into this by a different door, but this seems to be the most realistic/least devastatingly risky option for someone in my position.

I don't think there is an individualistic component to shame at all. I think it's a purely social phenomenon. More specifically, I think shame is a feeling that arises from the understanding or perception that one has been assigned low social status by one's own peers or community.

I think in order to experience shame, one must internalize negative social feedback, such as ridicule, scorn, or rejection. I don't believe we experience shame privately. It hinges upon the disapproval of others.

As an example, sometimes people coming to the West as tourists from one of the Eastern "honor-shame" cultures will indulge in behaviors here that would be considered shameful back home, and they do not feel the least bit ashamed of themselves for it while they're here. This is because the greater community here in the West has normalized the behavior (such as, for instance, drinking, gambling, immodest dress, etc.) to the point that it no longer confers shame upon the participant.

Remove us from the context within which our inclinations, if carried out, would harm our social status and we will indulge those inclinations from here to kingdom come with nary a second thought.

Thanks for your response. As it happens, this bears some resemblance to my casino policy, except that obviously there's nothing long-term about that. :) 

Thanks for the resources. I'll check them out. I really appreciate it. 

I have some small money in a Coinbase account and it's tied up in MANA and SHIBA INU. I can't gauge whether or not this was a mistake at this point, as both are fluctuating by the second as expected, and it seems when one plummets, the other rises and vice versa. But it's not enough money to hurt anyway. 

I've been considering Ether. How confident are you that it isn't already too late to invest in it? Or do you think it is, at this point, too late? 

What is scalp trading? 

Thank you very much for taking the time to respond. I appreciate it greatly. Your assessment (that I'm not well-connected or well-resourced) is correct. I am also, as you can see, not well-informed.

It would appear that trading in altcoin is essentially like glorified, overly-hyped-up casino gambling. There are ways to get an edge on it, but I suspect that also comes down to who you know, not what. Alas.