Go into the wild and grow/hunt food or trade some skill - the post money society doesn’t need philosopher poets scavenging cigarettes from trash cans
The one thing you can't do without money, without an economy, is take care of anyone else. You can give them things that other people gave you - castaways of castaways. But you can't produce anything new to help anyone. So what claims to be cooperative and egalitarian is really just parasitic.
Maybe it's not surprising that the largest effort made on behalf of parasitism is its attempt to disguise itself as something moral.
Money is like a loaded gun. It doesn't have to be fired. Just walking into a room waving one around will change the nature of most interactions.
You may as well say that taking any water out of the ocean is immoral because if all water was removed, the fish would die.
Extending this logic, I would also like to posit that jumping off a cliff is flight.
People have different values. Long ago we forgot that if it's not shown on mtv as something to aspire towards it's not the best pursuit of our time.
All the best chasing that lambo you'll never afford whilst looking over your shoulder at others smart enough not to get into that game.
>I have every right
>I always worked. I didn't do drugs regularly. And I never begged. I wasn't a parasite, like so many
>Where are they now? Lying in ditches, muttering to themselves.
Dude, you're a narcissist. You're free to change your values over time but no one else is? Maybe the next person squatting in your town square is a former you.
Once again, people have different values. Maybe that leads them to your hypothetical ditch, maybe it gives them motivation to be like yourself. Or maybe they find happyness some other way.
This was exactly what was going through my head while reading their post. That, or that they are making up a BS backstory to gain some sort of credibility, but there is no point in that sort of speculating.
Maybe they are! And if they are, eventually I hope they stop listening to the romantic rubbish about what "freedom" consists of and what capitalist society owes them, as spewed by the leaders of camps and troupes who are mainly interested in keeping a parasitic lifestyle surrounded by runaway girls and boys who'll do what they say. Those visionary camp leaders are the real narcissists. This one gives his game away when he talks about how he should be the one to manage the shit show when money is abolished. It's all wankerish nihilism dressed up as Marxist dialectics, with the dialectic controlled by someone with slightly more reading than their followers.
FWIW, I upvoted this comment. I agree it's fine for people to have different values. Eventually, me-on-a-beach will hopefully find values that lead toward self-actualization and personal growth, and away from sloth and the bitterness and wasted time of jealousy towards people who have more. In the interim I don't blame them, I just think their philosophy is childish and poorly conceived. If that makes me a narcissist, so be it.
I'd venture yes.
Our society needs more people willing to take on that challenge instead of allowing their own insecurities to drive them into contempt.
While GP comment may be painting groups with an overly broad brush, I'm not sure I see any fault with the criticism of the specific type of person they describe, which does exist, even if it may not be all of that group (or even a sizable minority).
Any policy that is followed, such as "help and show empathy for those less fortunate" should be actually examined and understood, not just blindly applied. People that wish to participate in society but have fallen on hard times deserve our sympathy and help. People that have health problems that cause their situation deserve our sympathy and help. People that decide to opt out of most of our society and so remove themselves from most of the society deserve our respect, or at least our ambivalence. People that say they want to opt out of society but really just don't want to give anything to society (whether that's time, effort, restraint, whatever) but want to get some benefit of society deserve our scorn.
Far too many people get stuck following the actions of an ideology rather than the precepts. Not everyone that appears homeless is "less fortunate" in their own eyes, and giving to them is not necessarily helping in a way that the precept of helping those less fortunate espouses, but instead a way to trick yourself into thinking you are doing something good without having to put thought into whether you actually are.
In general, we could all do with a lot more introspection as to what our actions are actually doing and whether they serve the purpose we think they are. As a side benefit, a lot of bullshit from both sides of the political spectrum wouldn't survive the light of day some critical thought brings.
Critical rational thought can take you all sorts of violent and negative places if you don't make an effort to pair it with empathy and a genuine effort to understand the perspectives of those you are tempted to despise.
Giving in to "rational" dehumanization and hatred is not going to actually help anything and will probably make things worse.
I'm not sure why you think that, or even what the "sides" are in this case. I thought your response seemed a bit canned, so used it as a jumping point to talk about how I think a bit more critical thinking is good in some of these cases.
And critical it the operative word, not necessarily rational (as many seem to interpret it at least, to me rationalism without accounting for how it affects the human condition is somewhat worthless). The only reason critical thought would take you to violent and negative places is if you're doing it wrong. Lack of critical thinking leads to violence and negative places far more often from what I've seen.
> Giving in to "rational" dehumanization and hatred is not going to actually help anything and will probably make things worse.
This isn't about dehumanization. It's about not blandly lumping people together without forethought. That works for not assuming all homeless are drug addicts and criminals as well as it does for not assuming they're all completely upstanding citizens that for the quick right type of help could be your neighbor. They are an amalgamation of many people in many circumstances, and we should remember that and consider that.
Generally, anytime you find yourself looking down with scorn on something, that is a great indication that there probably is something you don't understand and an attitude of contempt certainly won't help you figure out what that is.
I thought my aside about "rationalism" did that. For some people "rational" is loaded, and since you brought it up, I wanted to address it somehow. Whether true or not, some people equate rational with rationalism, and rationalism with not accounting for feelings and how people are in reality.
> Generally, anytime you find yourself looking down with scorn on something, that is a great indication that there probably is something you don't understand and an attitude of contempt certainly won't help you figure out what that is.
I agree in the general sense. But the only way that can be true in every sense is if nobody ever deserves scorn, and I think we can agree there are plenty of people that do deserve it because of their actions, from the extreme such as rapists and murderers to the mundane such as narcissists that they deserve whatever good fortune they can find or take, regardless of impact on others.
If you agree there are people worth scorning, the question in not whether "generally" this is a time or not, but given the specific subgroup in question has been described as those that decide they don't want to contribute to society and state that as the reason to live mostly outside it, but then want to receive the benefits of society, deserve that scorn. That is, to be clear, and as has been stated previously a few times, not all homeless people, but specifically those mentioned by the original commenter.
If you want to make a case that those people are misunderstood and perhaps their reasoning is X, Y or Z, feel free to do so, and I'll consider it. If you just want to defend them because they're part of a larger group you think deserves help, or because you feel compelled to defend them on principle, I ask you what purpose that serves? Critically thinking about the subject and coming to a better understanding is laudable, and defending something to cause some critical thought is as well, but I think we're beyond the point you could say no critical thought is being given to this, so unless you have actual points to add about this subject, I'm not sure what merit is left in calling out negative assessments as inherently bad or based only on not understanding.
Another way of looking at this is that if I had said serial rapists deserve our scorn, would you say that I'm just not understanding the situation or the people in question? If not, then that's an example of when scorn is sometimes acceptable, and we're left with whether the subject in question is actually deserving of it. In this case, you aren't providing any evidence one way or the other, just making broad assertions about thinking.
In 99.99% of the cases, they weren't homeless by choice, or ideology.
But yes--most of them thought they were there by choice.
It must be some ego defense mechanism?
For some reason a disproportionate amount were former Programmers? I knew Jim Fox. He was a cocreator of Wordstar, but got zero credit. I watched him slip from employment to wearing a Penguin outfit playing a ukleee begging for change. We used to talk tech, and he would notice someone walking towards us. He would jump out, and do his dance. He was always positive. He once got a job. He went to Goodwill to buy a suit. (He thought he needed a suit for a startup.) He was fired a few days in. That whole cultural fit. He always used to tell me, I just hope I don't die of pneumonia in an alley. Well he didn't get his wish. He died homeless.
There is a saying amoung homeless, and it's this, "Homeless for a year, homeless for life."
Meaning the mind is gone after living like they do. I have watched our local police departments make there guys life more miserable for 30 years.
I'm glad you weren't an entrenched homeless person.
The homeless we have need help. Most are not their by choice if you get them to let their guard down.
I do have some hope in CA. The government might actually do something besides jaw boning about what needs to be done.
Besides long term shelter, I hear talk of safe places to park, and sleep, without getting a ticket, or worse?
Homeless in Dunphy Park, got tickets for not obeying a rule. The ticket was $500. The issuing officer told the IJ, fee is high because we know they won't ever pay it.
I just threw up my hands.
How is issuing a ticket that can eventually turn into a warrant helping out anyone?
I done. I'm starting to get angry. Homelessness has always been a sore spot for myself.
I'm just objecting to the glorification of homelessness as an ethos, and the diminution of people who work as a consequence. I'm not saying the ethos is responsible for all or even most homelessness. It can, and does, draw some intelligent people into making really bad decisions, though.
I'd also add that I've known many people living rough who were happy to have work, and worked hard when they could. And I don't include them in any of what I'm saying about the ethics of surviving on other people's charity, because they indeed did not wish to.
That’s for sure. The values of the poster you’re replying to are better than the values of a professional parasite.
It’s simply a question of leverage, even something as seemingly pleasant as Disney World causes significant direct and indirect ecological harm in ways a homeless person doesn’t. And frankly you can find plenty of far worse examples than Disney World.
Pointing out a moral standpoint is more harmful than what’s being criticized is hardly whataboutism. It’s a demonstration that taking part in the economy is not inherently superior rather than the posters personal preference. Which therefore directly counters their morality argument.
> It’s a demonstration that taking part in the economy is not inherently superior
sure, but this is a straw-man. The proposition isn't that participating in the economy is automatically of greater value, it's that not participating (other than to leech off it) produces non.
> directly counters their morality argument
It's possible to oppose this guy and Disneyland.
The GP listed doing anything productive as a moral stance, Disneyland is therefore part of that anything.
> net harm of Disneyland
Promoting millions to take longer trips and regularly visit the middle of Florida directly causes travel related pollution. Simply developing that land is harmful to the local ecosystems. Producing all the merchandising is similarly an issue.
> It’s possible to oppose this guy and Disneyland.
If you oppose Disneyland for environmental reasons you’re hard pressed to then support the most of the rest of the economy. I would welcome an argument that draws a line there without excluding say suburbs.
If Disneyland is harmful, it isn't productive
> rest of the economy
which this guy is also dependent on
Any activity that burns fossil fuels directly produces measurable harm. Feel free to think about what that means for all current economic activity.
The whole idea that CO2 is harmful, came from modern scientific knowledge - also part and product of the economy/society. The same economy could come up with solutions e.g. carbon taxes or other tech advances.
You are taking a complex issue, CO2, the economy and its planetary effects, and turning it into a simplified concept of "harm". Humans have consumed some amount of CO2 forever, it's only an issue now because there are significantly more humans (who also create more CO2, but that's beside the point of the first).
In order to survive in growing numbers, humanity will need to manage its CO2. Incidentally this isn't the first time something like this has happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event
Nothing about this the hobo lifestyle suggests it will produce a solution to this problem beyond the fact that it's unlikely to support communities of a certain size for other reasons.
If you can't take part in your children's lives as a result of your choice not to take part in the economy, then you're sort of failing at both moral standards aren't you?
That’s a question without an objective answer. For example some people are better off in the foster system. It’s an oversimplification to assume some kind of standard life for other life choices.
In my home country we actually still have people living off their land and animals, off hand dug wells and cut down trees, using no money.
That's rather extreme, though, most villages have electricity at least.
Supporting the odd philosopher poet is the exact function of society, in my opinion.
Some good things come out of having them that do not come out of having another corporate drone.
Have you considered that society should also be the natural predator of the odd philosopher poet so that their numbers do not become problematic for their environment?
If society preys on philosopher poets, we don't get philosophy or poetry, our ethics never develops, and the fundamental principles of society don't improve, limiting how much technological progress can raise the standard of living. I personally call that a bad outcome.
Social philosophy influences societal change, by providing ideas. Without philosophers, activists have to be more visionary than they already are, making them rarer.
(Moral philosophy, not really, I'll agree with you.)
Why do you say understanding isn't a driver of change? It seems to be pretty important to me.
You kind of put your foot in it with this comment. Societal change, for the most part, directly follows questioning and understanding.
I think the only acceptable number is zero. The philosopher poet clearly desires this life. The crazed homeless drug addict would much rather inject his morphine at home.
In other words, I think the fact that a drug addict is homeless is incidental. They should be treated because they’re a drug addict, not because they’re homeless.
That means things like corporations, and working hard for your money, but also means things like "meaningless art", and allowing people with permanent disabilities to still live a normal life, where the fruits of society get to be enjoyed by everyone in society, skewed towards different demographics based on your favourite -ism. And it doesn't matter which -ism you subscribe to: the whole point of society is that we don't need this ridiculous "natural" nonsense. We beat it. It can stay outside. We replaced it with society.
When the silent part is said out loud. "We" didn't beat anything, and "we" certainly aren't gods that managed to counter natural law, despite the current zeitgeist that likes to pretend it is so.
Humans are predators, and to pretend otherwise will be the folly of our species. One need not look any further than the political, corporate, or social elite to see what predators look like in so-called civilized society.
Look at our teeth. We're actually omnivorous.
Next time though, don't make the classic mistake of talking about the group by talking about individuals in the group. Society is, and this one's confusing if no one taught you this before, not the same as the sum of the behaviour of individuals in that society. They're entirely different rungs on the ladder of abstraction.
Nice job dropping 'given history' in there, you win! History shows that is a fantastic argument and adds significant value to your post.
Next time, though, try to use that big brain of yours to figure out how to address what I said instead of resorting to reddit level dialog and a straw man.
Did you genuinely believe that I was referring to every individual human? That's an awfully Machiavellian take on what I said.
Unfounded assertion: "redheaded humans aren't real"
Illustration counter to assertion (not an argument): "Of course humans have red hair, just google 'natural redhead'"
Society is, and this might be confusing if nobody's taught you this before, filled with people with disproportionate amounts of power, whether social, capital, political, corporate, legal, or other. This might be scary to your sensibilities, but predators are attracted to positions of power. I don't think anyone of consequence disagrees with this.
We obviously agree here, because you based your entire straw man on the fact that they don't represent every single human everywhere.
I would however like to understand how you think we beat 'natural law' and the predators with this mythical society when you also think that they are the richest and most powerful in said society.
Society "beat" predators? I think most people who have been victims of systemic or institutional oppression would disagree here. I know every police victim I have worked with sure would.
Or maybe I'm wrong and they are all just misunderstood when they beat, steal, lie, and kill the underclass while they destroy our planet and laugh about it.
On the other hand there is such a thing as a statist parasite (think politicians, bureaucrats, crony capitalists, etc.), and hobos with a belief they're superior to others and love to do virtue signaling as making a life decision to live until the end of their lives supported by others, directly or indirectly, is something very, very wise.
False dichotomy much?
Name one odd philosopher poet that has brought anything to the table
The various “legends” around him like meeting Alexander the Great and dying at the same time are also suspect as hell.
And for all of that, what we have is what exactly? A philosophical justification for being an asshole I guess? The world would have been pretty much the same if he had not existed.
He was wealthy, he participated in society, he even went to war.
Socrates as a citizen was likely the third of Athens' four classes: slaves, metics, citizens, nobles. Not destitute, but neither wealthy.
This guy has amused me for, say half an hour of reading the article, and for a bunch more while replying to the comments.
It’s possible I would have been as amused by a corporate drone’s story, but it’s doubtful. I read enough of those, so the marginal utility of one extra story is very low.
That said, I’ve met philosopher poets on the street before, and the encounters are always memorable.
It is easy to radically underestimate how much food a human needs every day and how hard it is to acquire, especially when living a non-sedentary life as a hunter/gatherer.
Trying to accumulate 2000+ calories per day growing food requires a rather significant farm and skill (and weather); doing so with meat requires daily hunting, or a permanent storage facility with refrigeration (unless you like salt and pickled meat).
Doing this while trying not to die from exposure or injury is even more challenging.
It is amazingly nontrivial.
Re daily hunting, meat actually keeps for quite a while when hung in cooler temps (heat is not your friend when hunting). This is routinely done with eg deer. And it is easy to dry meat of all sorts, or even smoke it as that has the same effect and also makes it even more delicious.
There's a lot of plant and mushroom-based food to be had during the end of the summer, though, and one would have to forage for plants first thing when spring came in order to get a nutritionally complete diet.
This is what I thought the article would be about. Instead it’s glorifying living on handouts and other people’s largesse.
Having addressed the question of legality of rogue individuals... And if an individual exploiting the wild is illegal, so is the group. Humans are social animals. Going it alone at length in the arboreal breast of mother nature would be extraordinarily taxing mentally for most people. That alone is a crucial disincentive, and with the legal disincentive it atomizes people and forces even the highest aspirants to dissolution of the ideal. And that's before the process is even allowed to occur. The impacts of each added person to a group of rogues would compound, and I'd posit exponentially. And with that impact the footprint naturally grows, and with the footprint the risk of detection. At the end of the day the risk assessment points to certain failure.
So the next best thing is urbanized scavenging, not because it's the idyllic means, but because it's the only certainty. If you offered these people license to fuck off, I suspect they would do just that, perhaps not all, but most. I know if I was given license, alongside my friends, to get out of dodge we might just take up that offer. But the whole concept of real liberty, real autonomy, real independence - that's an existential threat to the status quo, to the system, and to the policy makers and corporations that own them, and to the very few of those who pull the strings.
How many people have ever existed with real liberty, autonomy and independence?
Maybe the concepts simply aren't achievable for your regular human
Or among the last, being used to it by now. Beggars have existed under all regimes and all kinds of economic collapse. Cushioned middle class people however, didn't do as well under the latter...
I really doubt he'd be able to maintain that lifestyle anywhere else. Definitely wouldn.t be able to live like that in Vancouver.
You used to be able to enjoy nice parks with your kids without worrying about junkies living in nearby tents taking up what used to be sports fields throwing used needles into the playground. Now they put up warning signs for parents to sweep around to make sure that this isn't a problem.
https://vancouverisland.ctvnews.ca/victoria-posts-warning-si...
I'm never going back, it's gotten that bad. I know so many people who have died from overdoses. It would have been a nice place around 12 years ago but after around the Vancouver olympics, the region has turned into some kind of black hole of misery and misambition outside of the wealthy condo social bubble and being on the wrong end of the ensuing wealth disparity. Unchecked money laundering on the housing market was a huge problem leading to this kind of scenario as well. Almost none of my friends who stayed there are the successful and happy ones. Even if you have like two decent blue collar jobs you may still end up living on a friend's couch for long periods of time just for a lack of affordable housing where your neighbors aren't doing shit like moving a stove at 4am because they dropped their flap of fent-adulterated heroin behind it (my own experience in the last apartment I rented before it really went to shit out that way -- that still cost me like 1000/mo)
Nice weather means that the rest of frozen canada sends their local problem drunks on greyhounds to live in the only region where they don't get found frozen to death in bus stops. They do this in the USA, too, quite sadly.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvg7ba/instead-of-helping-ho...
>Nice weather means that the rest of frozen canada sends their local problem drunks on greyhounds to live
Sounds like what's happened in the town I live in over the last 2 years or so. The problem's gotten bad. Though it's not so much drunks but fentynyl and meth addicts.
Even the large monasteries over time became less favored by the populace in Europe, since they had acquired enough land through donations over the centuries that they often began to act more like landlords.
In summary, those who wish to live outside of normal society, particularly economically, should strive to avoid being parasites, and, failing that, should not move from host to host.
Jeff Bezos, the Walton family, and many peers also live off taxpayer money and impoverish poor communities by siphoning money from them, plenty of regulatory capture.
Even the landlords. I don’t know any landlords who are on the street because of the rent forbearance and eviction moratorium - and I don’t even agree with those policies.
Here is a chart: https://imgur.com/a/eOXF0UO
Note that there has been a shift in bargaining power since 1980 that is closing. That gap is not the result of inflation because inflation alone doesn't give employers bargaining power. If anything it increases bargaining power of employees vs the old job because the new job always pays more in nominal terms.
If only that option were realistically available to all, rather than just an entitled few.
A lot of the inflation I saw in the pandemic was perishable products where the supply was cut in some way or another. As long as people that want it badly can afford more they'll pay more for it. This is inflation, but it's not clear whether the money supply or the supply chains are the reason. The money supply was high in the preceding years as well, not leading to such high inflation.