Liberal “democracy” requires a constant forgetfulness and inability to maintain and collect data in order to portray itself as “effective”. From the nonsense “lifted out of poverty” myth, to nonsense measures such as the dollar-based poverty line, one is often restrained from wondering why isn’t the data better, like how many people have access to food, shelter and work.

How many homeless people are there in the city? The competent authorities certainly have enough of a budget to identify and catalogue almost every person living on the street. And it’s clearly in the best interests of all (except landlords) that every homeless person is known, their conditions understood. Yet that data is unknowable because, as Mao once put it, to investigate a problem is to solve it.