Oral Roberts of ORU is dead

[Darth Wong]

Question: If people are generally satisfied by a system, then isn't it working for them? How would one objectively measure the benefit derived from a particular welfare system, anyway?

From its stated goals, and from goals which we imprint onto any social welfare system. Some of the goals that we tend to attribute in principle to charity, ie- reliability and universality and accessibility, are not priorities at all for someone who has successfully accessed the system, so his responses will not take any of it into account. And if he could not access the system, then he doesn't even get surveyed.

[Wicked Pilot]

Nah [prison is] to easy especially since people like him would most likely get a nice cushy jail.

Just responding in general, but being stripped of one's freedom and locked up, even in the cushiest of jails, is no walk in the park. People take for granted the most basic freedoms of life, like going outside when you want, deciding what to eat, etc. Even the most non violent, lax prisons will wear on you psychologically after time. It's certainly a greater punishment than empty threats of an afterlife whose existence isn't supported with evidence and whose details can only be guessed at.

[Lusankya]

Question: If people are generally satisfied by a system, then isn't it working for them?

It would be more accurate to say that if people are satisfied by a system, then they think that it's working for them. To make the leap from "people are satisfied" to "system is working", you have to take on the assumption that people have an adequate knowledge of their situation and the alternatives.

We actually saw Serafine666 make the same arguments in the healthcare hijack of this thread: saying that if he didn't feel inconvenienced, then he wasn't inconvenienced - even though from the point of view of people with better healthcare systems, he was. All that had happened was that he had developed a decent enough coping mechanism to deal with the day to day stuff, and hadn't been in any serious situation where he'd had to test the system.

How would one objectively measure the benefit derived from a particular welfare system, anyway?

As Wong said: one can judge by how it lives up to certain goals, such as quality of care, access, reliability, etc.

Looking at the chart posted earlier, one thing I noted was that the number of people who had accessed Congregationally-based charity is much lower than the number of people who used other kinds of organisations. I don't know how he chose respondents, but if he chose a random sample of people who needed welfare, then it would indicate that they were less accessible than other kinds of charities.

[Darth Wong]

Just to elaborate on the above points, suppose I build two homeless shelters of identical size. One of them has 500 beds, and the other costs twice as much and has half as many beds, but each resident lives in greater comfort and has more amenities, such as Internet access. The second shelter deals with its limited capacity by turning people away at the door in a supposedly random pattern which happens to show a statistical racial bias, according to numerous watchdogs.

Which one is more "effective"? If we go by objective measures such as accessibility and universality, the second one is completely unacceptable. It costs more, provides services to fewer people, and is most likely racist. But if we go by a user satisfaction survey, the second one wins hands down. The people who successfully get into the shelter are probably going to be quite happy with it, and the people turned away at the door won't get surveyed because they're not considered users of the service.

[Surlethe]

How do we know that if the system meets its goals, then people are better off? I mean, measuring the goals as a proxy for being better-off is reasonable under that condition, but how does one demonstrate it in the first place?

By the way, IIRC the survey posted measured people who had tried to get assistance, not just those who had actually received care.

[Darth Wong]

How do we know that if the system meets its goals, then people are better off? I mean, measuring the goals as a proxy for being better-off is reasonable under that condition, but how does one demonstrate it in the first place?

Please clarify this question. By definition, the effectiveness of any kind of system is always based on performance measured against set goals. It seems almost absurd to question this. What does it mean to "demonstrate" that goals are worthwhile? Obviously, one has to design a set of goals which make sense.

By the way, IIRC the survey posted measured people who had tried to get assistance, not just those who had actually received care.

How? How do they know how many people would like to use a service but are either turned away, discouraged for some reason, or have trouble gaining access?

[Surlethe]

How do we know that if the system meets its goals, then people are better off? I mean, measuring the goals as a proxy for being better-off is reasonable under that condition, but how does one demonstrate it in the first place?

Please clarify this question. By definition, the effectiveness of any kind of system is always based on performance measured against set goals. It seems almost absurd to question this. What does it mean to "demonstrate" that goals are worthwhile? Obviously, one has to design a set of goals which make sense.

When you design a system, it has to meet certain goals. In this case, the goals are presumably chosen to further some higher utilitarian objective. How can you tell whether a particular selection of goals is furthering the objective?

By the way, IIRC the survey posted measured people who had tried to get assistance, not just those who had actually received care.

How? How do they know how many people would like to use a service but are either turned away, discouraged for some reason, or have trouble gaining access?

I'd assume the population is a random sample of the population in general; here's a transcript of the book cited earlier, p. 207:

Table 6.16 [the chart posted earlier] shows how people who had contacted the various kinds of service organizations rated them in terms of perceived effectiveness. This information was obtained in the survey by asking any respondent who indicated having contacted a particular organization for assistance to rate that organization "in terms of its effectiveness in meeting your need." Respondents were asked to provide a grade ranging from A to F. The virtue of this approach, besides the fact that it registers clients' perceptions, is that anyone who contacted a particular organization was given an opportunity to provide a grade, rather than only those who had actually received assistance. Thus, if a potential recipient was turned away, that person could still register his or her opinion of the organization.

It's a secondary source, but a reliable one.

[Darth Wong]

When you design a system, it has to meet certain goals. In this case, the goals are presumably chosen to further some higher utilitarian objective. How can you tell whether a particular selection of goals is furthering the objective?

You seem to be questioning the entire concept of utilitarianism. Obviously, if you subscribe to utilitarianism, it is assumed that you are capable of deciding what constitutes benefit or harm.

I'd assume the population is a random sample of the population in general ...

Sounds like they just do a general survey. How are homeless people contacted using this method? (that's a rhetorical question: they probably aren't). And in the case of churches and other community-centric organizations, is it not obvious that people who are hostile to the religion or who are geographically isolated from them would not even try to use their services, hence one of their greatest limitations is not accounted for at all when determining their "effectiveness"?

It's like Federal Express vs the Post Office. If you live a tiny community which has no FedEx office, you would not rate that you had a bad experience with FedEx. You simply never tried to use them at all. And yet, that is one of the weaknesses of a service like FedEx relative to the postal mail system: a survey would not reveal this.

[Surlethe]

You seem to be questioning the entire concept of utilitarianism. Obviously, if you subscribe to utilitarianism, it is assumed that you are capable of deciding what constitutes benefit or harm.

I guess that is what I'm doing. That's a topic for another thread, though.

Sounds like they just do a general survey. How are homeless people contacted using this method? (that's a rhetorical question: they probably aren't). And in the case of churches and other community-centric organizations, is it not obvious that people who are hostile to the religion or who are geographically isolated from them would not even try to use their services, hence one of their greatest limitations is not accounted for at all when determining their "effectiveness"?

It's like Federal Express vs the Post Office. If you live a tiny community which has no FedEx office, you would not rate that you had a bad experience with FedEx. You simply never tried to use them at all. And yet, that is one of the weaknesses of a service like FedEx relative to the postal mail system: a survey would not reveal this.

A fair point.