I agree with the first two sentences of your post, but I am left to wonder where the places for these kinds of articles are. I have little reason to believe that these problems are going to get more public attention in the future than they are getting now, which is to say that I have little hope of fixing these issues.
> I am left to wonder where the places for these kinds of articles are
Sites that are not specifically about other topics? How about places that are primarally focused on the US, because as discussed, it really is a US only problem.
Should every site everywhere only be posting about social problems? Can no other topic ever be discussed until every socail problem is solved?
HN is actually pretty broad given its topic of things that are of interest to 'hackers' which is why articles like this will be posted and discussed but there are other things that are also of interest to 'hackers.' Those will also be posted and discussed.
But then we'd lose what we came here for in the first place.
There are other places for these kinds of articles.