We are all indebted to Isaiah Berlin for the concept of negative freedom. He raised the issue that the most desired freedom was freedom from coercion, whether a neighbor’s threat or government power. Such freedom comes from neither natural law nor goodwill.
I want to call attention to negative kindness. Negative kindness is the unintended consequence of positive kindness. We need to be protected from certain kinds of kindness.
Negative kindness is most visible to me in San Francisco because we have an excessively kind population. After twenty years, with one of the highest street people and beggar populations in the U.S., the San Francisco citizens voted twice at 2 to 1 levels to solve the problem (“Solve it any way you can!”). The homeless advocates continue to resist a change.
This positive kindness, which is directed at three thousand street people and beggars, has negative consequences for the nine million tourists who come to the City annually, the two hundred thousand seniors who live here and the 400,000 women in the city every day. These tourists, seniors and women are the ones who can’t use the 26 public French toilets because the street people have moved into them and made them filthy. Tourists and seniors can’t sit on a bench because the city doesn’t provide benches in order to keep the street population from being comfortable. Tourists, seniors and women have to cope with aggressive beggars. Weak and gentle beggars have been driven out of the best begging locations by the meanest toughest beggars (always big black men).
The kindness of homeless friends and advocates also means that much of San Francisco has pee on the streets and shit in the alleys, with men peeing openly while crowds ignore them. There are many more negative consequences of kindness to this tiny, but obnoxious population. There are few obvious benefits of the positive kindness.