The Street Kids of San Francisco
blog.priceonomics.com
blog.priceonomics.com
I see the street kids as guests in our extended home. When everyone is peaceful and respectful I don't really have an issue. But when they are violent, or a health risk (defecation on the sidewalk and on the stoops is a real concern, and it happens all day every day), or harass my family or my neighbors, I do take issue, and believe we need to set and enforce limits for the safety of everyone.
As far as it being a lifestyle _choice_ for some. Indeed it is. But not for all. It's a spectrum. Overall it's a good article, but it's not the whole story.
Edit: And to the author, try walking around and doing those interviews after dark some night. The perspective would be ... different.
You don't have to go more than 50 yards. I guarantee you take back many of the things you've said on this thread.
I was once similarly enamored with the hippy scene and dated a flower child for quite some time, even visited the commune in Lake county that she grew up in, etc. There is a distinctly darker side of the whole experience whose surface is not even scratched by this article.
It's pretty cool you got to check out a commune in Lake county.
It was a little creepy, to be honest. They have pictorial banners up in the woods, without any words. I was only allowed into the bookshop, and every single book and CD was by the commune leader. Every single one.
Edit: I'll add some detail here since people seem to be interested. Lake County is a very, very remote area a few hours north of San Francisco. The commune has been functional since the 60s, sucking up its members' wealth in exchange for living under the direction of a charismatic leader. While a generation lived under this leader's direction, their children suffered the brunt of the eccentricity and thoughtlessness that the era inculcated. The one incident that I recall hearing about is when several children (including the person I was dating) in the 8-12 age range were randomly ordered to live with different parents on a whim, and the families complied. A significant fraction of the kids of that generation are somewhat screwed up, with causes ranging from heroin addiction to the effects of sexual abuse as children. It put a very dark tint on the rainbow of the 60s for me.
I'll answer sincerely if you don't understand.
I presume Moxie's genuine. I'm not quite sure how to interpret his question, but I'd like to hear more of your thoughts.
--nate
The way I see it is that we're all guests in any new environment when we first get there. Over time, after investing love blood sweat energy tears, these places gradually become our homes. Sometimes it feels like it happens fast, sometimes it feels like it takes forever. Sometimes we are embraced by whomever is there before. Sometimes we're not and we displace (ask me how I felt moving to Avenue D back in the day). Sometimes we're not and we're the ones displaced.
For me personally, the Haight didn't start feeling at all like home for quite a long time. Years. But over time I started recognizing the shopowners. Getting to know them, their names, where they lived, what was on their mind. And my neighbors (those that stay long enough to get to know). And the cops (on the rare occasion you saw one). And the postal carrier. And the street cleaning crew. Etc.
And, especially relevant to this thread, I began to recognize the local transients. I might see a handful guys over and over again who have been walking the streets of our neighborhood for a decade or more. (Which I guess technically makes them in-transient, but they're likely not under the same roof every night like I am.) This is their home, too.
But what I don't see is the same faces among the street kids. I see new kids every day. They're here one day, gone the next. It's rare that I'd see a kid last a week. Maybe a handful I've seen come back after a year or two. But that's the exception, not the norm.
So my point about it being "our extended home" is that, after these many years, love or hate the Haight, it has become my home, and it is the home for the others that have invested something of their lives in our neighborhood.
For most of these street kids, the ones the author is writing about, the ones that I see every day, they don't consider it home. They don't treat it as their home. But I do. And so do my neighbors.
Does that explain it a bit better?
Edit: Moxie in another comment mentions the (true) squatter scene, which is a very important (and itself diverse) subculture to recognize. I agree completely. I'd suggest that the Haight is also their home as much as it is mine. Hell, a million times moreso if we're talking actual blood sweat and tears.
Fundamentally, one can see people living on the street as belonging to a complex subgroup in our society: one which can be both symbiotic and parasitical.
It is symbiotic in the sense that it provides a culture with which many can identify, especially those who have experienced hardship or difficult home lives as children. In this way street communities can provide a sense of catharsis -- almost a group therapy session. Belonging to a community can provide mental comfort which can seem even more important than physical comfort. In other words, street communities can take our tired, our poor, our huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
However, in many cases they can also be parasitical. Consuming societies' group benefits, in a way similar to herd immunity, while also spreading danger in the community, either through violence or excessive drug use.
I think what many people, both in the street communities and not, may fail to realize is that it is entirely possible that a street community can represent a local optimum, but not a global one. There may be a way to provide people both the sense of community they desire and a way to integrate them into the larger community so that they can contribute in more impactful ways.
After a couple of miles, the road passed by an apple orchard. The wobbly hopped over the fence, and sat down to rest under the shade of a big apple tree.
The wobbly sat there enjoying the shade for 20 minutes, until a farmer came across him. "You can't be here!" exclaimed the farmer, "This is my land!"
The wobbly looked up at the farmer and asked "Really? What makes it your land?"
"What are you talking about you dirty tramp, I inherited it from my father!" replied the farmer, almost bewildered at such an indignant question.
"Hmm, and what made it his land?" asked the wobbly.
"Why, he inherited it from his father!" replied the farmer, now really angry. "It's been in my family for three generations!"
"And what made it your grandfather's land?" asked the wobbly.
The farmer, now barely able to contain himself, yelled proudly "Why! My grandpappy fought the indians for it!"
The wobbly nodded, stood up, pulled back his sleeves, and replied "Uh huh. Then I'll fight you for it, right now."
The point being that a lot of these conceptions about who belongs and who doesn't are based on private property, but that there fundamentally isn't any real justification for private property. Even John Locke's attempts to justify it break down.
I can understand two groups being in conflict with each-other, but I can't understand conceptualizing one as the "guests" of the other group simply because they don't own property.
Its negation breaks down too, computer-hoarder.
So I guess my answer to the story would be: fine, you can fight the owner for it, but the real owner isn't me, it's the United States government. If you are so inclined to fight the government, fine, but don't be surprised when people who find the abstraction useful and productive, or even simply find the other mechanisms of the government productive, decide to fight back.
I'm not sure if you have a point.
I mean, if we're talking about absurdity of points, you are saying that a single travelling poor man sitting in the shade is something that is worthy of invoking the power of the federal government to combat.
The concept of private property is useful enough on the whole that governments are willing to enforce it, and leave discretion for right-of-access to the owner of said property. This allows the property owner to assess people in terms of risk they pose to said property and either grant or deny access.
If said farmer has had problems with transients damaging his property in the past, he will certainly appreciate the right to deny access, with the power of the government backing the decision.
I am not an American, but I've been online for nearly 20 years now, and I've seen a lot of US politics pass under the bridge. I've never seen anything that goes contrary to the notion that 'the United States government' is 'the federal government [of the US]'. The two terms are used interchangably in online discourse in my experience.
If I am wrong in this, can you please provide me with some links to explain how 'the federal government' of the US is a different entity to the 'the United States government'. I'd be very interested to read them, because it would be a very curious oddity in the way politics are described over there. Does 'the federal government' operate at a higher or lower level than 'the United States government', or do they operate in parallel? It's an intriguing concept.
If you're talking about the parent of my last comment, it should be abundantly clear that I'm saying 'no, you did', which is directly refuting his point, with a quote, no less. The rest was a bit of poetic license called 'taking the piss'.
The government of the united States is exactly that, ranging from the lowest town council member to the President. You do understand the concept of sets and subsets, right? The federal government is a subset of the government. That's why it has that additional qualifier.
Your post is basically, "I don't really know anything, but I sure do read a lot of blogs." If you're actually interested in US govt. & politics open a first year textbook. The Constitution (and amendments) quite clearly describe the subdivision of governmental powers into 4 different areas: the legislative, the executive, the judicial, and the states.
Looking through google for 'the United States Government', most of the results refer to the three branches, but describe other powers as falling to the states as a different entity, if they're described at all. Certainly if you look at news sources for terms like "called on the United States government", they're all federal-style issues, not state - state issues tend to be specified as such.
You may also want to change the leading paragraph of the Wikipedia article, since it's peddling the "I don't really know anything" viewpoint, given how powerful WP is as a source.
So, as I asked, do you have any reliable, definitive resources I can actually access, or are you content to just call me uneducated with a lazy, hand-wavy dismissal? I'm happy to be proven wrong, but not in the lazy way you're going about it.
'James Madison asserted that the states and national government "are in fact but different agents and trustees of the people, constituted with different powers."'
This is where that 'broad intellectual foundation' comes in. You may think that it is, sure, but why? Not everyone does, and there's a whole lot of philosophical discussion on this very topic. Our conception of 'private property' has only been around ~200 years, and humanity's been around just a bit more than that.
I am, however, perfectly willing to entertain many possible critiques, if they are shown to be practical and better than the alternatives. Feudal property law, for example, I don't find to be nearly as flexible or efficient (which was around for quite a while, as well). It's no accident that our notions of property came into greater strength with the industrial revolution. If you look at the states with both strong public and private property systems, like the Scandinavians, you'll find that our system has also been far from static.
Speaking as someone with a minor in philosophy, I have to agree with Paul Graham[1] that unfocused philosophy based on general principles (like "what is 'property?'") is terribly useless. If you want to make a difference, innovate.
From the end of his Theses on Feuerbach: "Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it".
I would say Marx succeeded in producing a lot of interesting practical results which could actually be implemented. On the other hand, some of his stuff smacks more of religion than it does of praxis. His "law of value," for example, seems very unfalsifiable, in a sense. He speaks of the approach to true value when supply and demand equilibriate, but his conditions of equilibrium are often either poorly defined or simply tautological (e.g., the true value of a good is when it meshes with the law of value, thus the law of value is the true value of commodities).
Indeed, many of Marx's ideas have been through the crucible. Some, like a command economy, have mostly been burned to disintegration. Others, like the provision of health care to anyone who needs it, financed by the people according to their ability, seems to have had huge success among most of the civilized world.
All in all, I don't have problems with Marx's approach, just the idea that rehashing ideas from a century ago in pretty much identical ways counts as innovation.
I guess the War of 1812 was more important than anyone could have dreamed at the time?
You really need to read more. Like... a lot more.
(the ~200 figure comes from the Inclosure acts, which, as Wikipedia says, "the majority were passed between 1750 and 1860". Even that is obviously a rough time period, and only one of many significant historical events. Even if we take Locke's birthday, 29 August 1632, as the birth of private property in the current sense, that's still roughly 380 years ago, which is still pretty new as far as human history goes.)
Even if we just want to talk about private property as a legal institution, we can go back at least to the code of Hammurabi, and probably further if I could be bothered to do the research, which I can't. Even during the middle ages there was an active merchant class. And arguably feudalism is just the extension of the property concept to encompass ownership of people.
If you find that you have the ability to defend your exclusive use of something, you're either appealing to a sovereign, or you have become a sovereign. To be a sovereign, you need a very large stick.
Imagine that no one 'fought the natives for it'. Instead the land was a vacant waste with no one living there and nothing growing there. Over the years through hard work, dedication and sacrifice the land was amended and the trees grew creating the orchard. The only thing the farmer asked for in return was to sell his surplus. Lowering the cost of apples to all.
Then some jackass jumps off a train and expects it all handed to him for free or he'll attack the farmer.
I can understand the idea of not wanting to participate in a capitalist system, but I can't understand what makes someone 'evil' just because they've created something that you haven't.
Similarly, the wobbly wasn't demanding an apple, but enjoying the shade. Was the farmer selling shade? Lowering the cost of shade to all?
The idea of a one-sided "fuck off, this is MY land" seems to be a new-world Anglo thing - back in Europe a lot of countries have a form of right to roam that sits in conflict with property rights. While there is certainly a 'my land!' aspect, there's also the competing philosophical idea that people are free to travel over it or use it recreationally
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam#Right_to_roam_i...
Either way, you disprove your own point. The farmer has a more legitimate claim because he worked for it, he didn't attack someone for it like the guy who showed up wants to.
Dear Randian, These statements imply that you consider the native people "no one" and native vegetation rather than industrial crops "a vacant waste". I think those are rude presumptions.
> Any white person who brings the element of civilization has the right
> to take over this continent.
>
> http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand
In the less artificial world (where orchards are not usually created out of barren moonscapes)- it's always a little odd - and self-serving - the degree to which people think improving land magically cancels all previous taint of expropriation.
Funny that is the childish misconception I had as a child about America before settlers came here. Just an empty lush land, as gift of God, waiting to embrace its new owners.
I think that things don't have to stop at the orchard. Years ago, there used to be a big flophouse on Columbus Ave, full of trash and indigents. Transients. Beat "poets", the sort of people glorified by City Lights books.
And then they tore it down and built the TransAmerica pyramid! Now that's progress.
How so? It's a perfectly reasonable explanation of how to avoid an Hobbesian free-for-all.
And unlike in your Wobbly story, they wouldn't be able to produce that same value "if only" the greedy OP quit hogging that land he lives and works on.
You ever wonder why the street kids don't exercise their freedom to roam in less wealthy areas? Food for thought.
Tonight.
|face-palm|
The Mission comes a close third to the Haight and the Tenderloin.
Perhaps Mr. Dorsey is attending to the wrong neighborhoods.
"But they all stayed for the same reason: They found a community..."
Ridiculous.
As a youth, I had a lot of contact with homeless teens. (I was bounced around a lot, but not quite homeless.) Many were kicked out (homosexual), many more were escaping (domestic violence, pedophilia, rape), a few were "free spirits" (or merely didn't feel the need to share their stories).
My SO volunteers at a local homeless teen shelter. The kids she encounters have had terrible lives thus far. Not many happy stories there.
My city tries to do more than the norm for homeless people. Women, children, teens, vets, mentally ill. It's an uphill battle. The ones that are just down on their luck have the tools and resources to bounce back. The rest aren't so fortunate.
In addition to your suggestion, the author should volunteer at a shelter or mission. As a rule, the people we see are just a fraction of the homeless, the panhandlers an even smaller percentage.
I fell out of touch with the anarchopunkier half of my friends when I got serious about artificial intelligence and computer science - I love these things and they're very important to me, and in the coffeeshops we always talked about how to get rid of tyrants and inequality. I have always believed in technology. OLPC, Ubuntu, Khan Academy, Coursera, solar panels, cell networks - the list goes on.
Startup folks and street punks have a lot of similar ideas about what we want, but really different aesthetics. The punks I've known are much more well-read and just as bright as the grad students I spend time with now. On the other hand, they're in denial about capitalism. Both groups have a lot to learn from each other, if only they can look over the other's smarminess/smelliness.
I did observe that despite having fairly good classical training and historical knowledge--more than I had, certainly!--there did not seem to be a lot of self-educated people who knew physics and hard-sciences beyond a somewhat populist level. I suggest that this may be due theoretical physics and whatnot requiring a sounder grounding in mathematics than is easy to pick up on your own.
I saw something similar at my local Occupy protests--once we'd put in a somewhat more concrete intellectual framework for discussing grievances, things became a lot more productive.
Hit me up on email if you'd like to chat more about these things.
When I lived in Philadelphia I don't think there were regular events of that nature, so I guess it's mostly a Bay Area/SF thing? Manhattan certainly seemed more lively in that regard.
If you're serious, I should tell you that SF is by some estimates the most expensive city in the world:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/22/most-expensive-city...
Also, having lived there myself for years, it's cold most of the year except in August and September, and because of its setting it's difficult to get to or from anywhere else (bridges and crowded freeways). And finally, it's very pretty and it has enormous charm.
Was drinking one night hanging out with some hippy friends (who I'd met in some computer science courses back at university, doing a software rasterization project). They mentioned a great place with a bunch of different folks, and said I should go. A few nights later I showed up with another friend, and that was that.
It was an amazingly chill party--young folks up through old hippies, people smoking out in the garage at the back of the lot, tech folks chatting about different projects in a kitchen, some other really far out stuff happening elsewhere.
I'd suggest that the big thing to do is to be relaxed, chill, and ask a lot of questions. Don't bore people with your own life if it doesn't enhance what they're talking about or if they don't ask, and keep your mind open to the idea that there is not one fixed path to happiness in life.
Don't brag or be condescending, do be friendly, and be helpful--basically, just be a decent person and doors will open.
EDIT: Addendum. I saw a few things happening that were probably not legal, and I certainly was a bit out of my element. That said, being okay with politely refusing offers that weren't my thing and not making trouble for other folks helped me fit in.
Have you seen The Net? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doQAwLb-DEE
Could you expand on the flaws in their disdain of capitalism? Or, if that's too broad a question, perhaps direct us to some reading material on the subject?
I don't mean this in a snarky or side-taking manner... in fact I'm struggling with my own views on capitalism and would love to expand my knowledge on the issue.
My perspective is that appropriate solutions to this problem involve taxing externalities (pollution, murderous working conditions that cost society), and reducing the cronyism and corruption that breaks capitalism. Also deciding as a society that we are better off if people are not involuntarily homeless or hungry or dying and agreeing on a social contract to provide welfare.
I want to make the world a better place, so I choose to work on making more, better, cheaper, smarter education available to everyone everywhere. And from society's perspective, this is actually a good investment because it increases human capital and also reduces future costs (as educated folks have fewer kids).
I love communist farms and kibbutzim and I can absolutely imagine living on one and participating in one of those societies. And if you hate capitalism, that's a good way to protect yourself from it. But the farms and kibbutzim themselves are still participants in a larger capitalist system.
> But ultimately, seven billion people are never going to form some totally sweet Zapatista-style worldwide commune.
Most serious communists would agree, at least for the near-term: you'd need a few generations of socialism before that'd even be remotely possible.
> At that scale, the markets are going to be at work. Capitalism is inevitable.
Note that 'capitalism' != 'markets,' or even 'free markets.' Mutualism, for example, is market socialism.
> But the farms and kibbutzim themselves are still participants in a larger capitalist system.
Totally, 100% agree.
This should not be confused with Soviet-style centrally planned, state-capitalist, 'Communism' if that's what your acquaintances called it. It should also not be confused with actual communism, i.e. a classless, moneyless, stateless social order.
>Capitalism is inevitable.
Spoken like a true capitalist. Fukuyama would be so proud.
>the farms and kibbutzim themselves are still participants in a larger capitalist system
If the revolutionaries had their way, they wouldn't have to be.
I thought The Dispossessed did a very good job of showing the problems with centralization of planning - it's an attempt at an anarcho-syndicalist commune that self-defeats through strict social mores. I do think that syndicalism is probably the best vision I've seen for an anarchist future - but ultimately, either those syndicates would have to participate in capitalist trade, or they would have to be controlled by some governing body, or they would have to be totally self-sustaining. Just think about how difficult-to-produce drugs would be distributed between communities. There can't be a producer in each one. So are the producers of that drug going to just gift it? How can they sustain themselves if they are making something difficult to produce that they are only consuming a tiny portion of? Well maybe because they are so generous they will get many gifts. This is starting to sound a lot like something that either has to be a market or centrally planned to me.
I see the aesthetics of the hacker and punk scenes as being extremely similar, where as the underlying motives are currently lightyears apart.
For instance, "hacker houses" and "collective houses" have a similar aesthetic. Both are about people living together, and sometimes the actual form even looks the same. But "hacker houses" fundamentally seem to be about "networking" and "making connections" to other entrepreneurs. Collective houses, on the other hand, are about building relationships -- precisely because it's so difficult to find meaningful connection in a world based on exchange. These two things look similar, but (having experienced both) I believe are radically different.
Another clear example is "hacker spaces" vs "social spaces." Again, the aesthetic is similar -- both are supposed to be "creative" spaces that have a similar logistical form. But what actually happens in both places is radically different. Anarchist "social spaces" are built on a social narrative for what people do there, where as "hacker space" activity (in the US, at least) is largely absent any kind of narrative. "Maker culture" in the US is based mostly on doing things that are "neat," and that's really the end of it. There are obvious exceptions, and the EU hacker culture has more of a narrative to it, but this is has been my experience on the whole.
The motives of hackers I've known usually have to do with impacting the world and making it better for more people. I've been in punk houses with hackers, but we mostly had parties with art people, and collaborated with anarchists. I'm not talking about the Silicon Valley startup scene, which I know nothing about. I'm moving to MV in a month (to intern with an educational nonprofit), so I guess I'll find out.
I think I was probably wrong when I said 'startup folks', and I meant some other demographic - but it's a demographic of hackers that I've actually met in various places - Baltimore, Seattle, rural Washington state and Austin. And I (perhaps naively) thought that my various and scattered friends with a common ideological thread were representative of the makers of interesting things.
My sense is that when tech people talk about changing the world, they generally mean keeping the form of the world basically the same, but making it more efficient.
Here's an example from HN and YC, 42floors: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4500176
They use the language you're talking about -- they want to "change the world" ...with a commercial real-estate search engine! I'm sure that these folks are doing fine work, but really, the world is going to be fundamentally the same, it just might be a little easier to find commercial real-estate in it.
On the other hand, the anarchist basis is that fundamental aspects of society (police, prisons, judges, rulers, laws, taxes) were all the inventions of kings, which were later appropriated rather than destroyed. That it was a mistake to think it was possible to "change the world" simply by putting these same structures in the hands of different people, and that what's actually required is to eliminate them completely.
These, I think, are pretty different ways of conceptualizing that phrase.
I will agree that there are sometimes unusual intersections (the history of twitter, for instance).
But even this vision has so many things that other hackers are working on. Just making the net more efficient, or creating better wireless systems, or cheaper technology (or even better, technology that people can make themselves). Or empowering people to use Arduinos and to hack their own open source stuff. Or producing pedagogical content and translating it into other languages. I feel like a world in which everyone has total access to an amazing education is a world-changing proposition, and lots of hackers are working on things that really bring us closer to that.
Also I personally think that the thing that is wrong with the government is unequal application of laws and illegal hiding of government activity. I'm not convinced that there's not a place for laws, police, and taxes in a totally just society. I think that anyone who is working to destroy the (really widespread) lies and spying and unequal treatment and unjust policies and sociopathic violence of the government is doing something that, if it succeeds, will result in a truly different world. One where the laws aren't different for people depending on their class, and violence by the state is not tolerated.
I'm not claiming that working for education, diy technology, government accountability or a total overhaul of the legal system is more revolutionary than being an insurrectionist or running a totally awesome Food Not Bombs. I'm just saying that there's this idea of a better world, a fundamentally different world where things make sense and capricious cruelty is gone and everyone is essentially free to pursue the future they want and self-actualize instead of worrying about where the day's calories will come from or if it's safe to go outside. If we can have that world, I don't care if it's in an anarcho-syndicalist form, a set of independent microcountries, or just a very very reformed version of the constitutional democracies we have now. I see cheap, open source 3D printers and Food Not Bombs as having a similar mission.
I'll sum this up with a quote from an Evan Greer song "I want something that's better than this, and I'm not sure exactly what it is, but I think that we could build it if we try together."
What you're describing is more akin to (classical) liberalism. For instance, here you draw on a couple of the core tenants of liberalism:
1) Equality. In the Jeffersonian sense (ie, under the law). This is really the cornerstone of liberalism. The classic structuralist response would be something like "Yes, yes... all men will be tried equally for the crime of stealing bread crumbs to feed their starving children."
2) Freedom of information. Also at the heart of liberalism is the idea that in a world where anyone can participate, speak, and think freely, we'll be able to select from a marketplace of ideas for how the world should look. The classic anarchist response is that we live in a specific political and economic reality that wasn't of our choosing, but which influences our desires, the way we think, how we think, and what we conceptualize as possible. Simply talking about other social or economic possibilities does not have the same effect, so just being able to speak freely is not necessarily meaningful in that context.
3) Transparency and accountability. A typical anarchist response to projects like wikileaks is something like "What is the value of truth in a world where we have no agency?" The insurrectionist, for example, doesn't attempt to shame, expose, or reform institutions of power, but rather expects their injustices as their fundamental nature. You can't blame a tiger for being a tiger.
It's true that it is possible to draw similarities in the sense that hackers and anarchists on the whole probably want "good things and not bad things." But to the extent that we're never fully going to get there, it's the tension that really matters, and that's where I believe the differences are currently quite deep between these two groups.
The full picture is much more varied. Traveler kids who go to hobo gatherings would never be caught dead at a rainbow gathering. Rainbow family kids don't drink, and alcohol is even forbidden at gatherings (where nothing else is forbidden). Gutter punks live to spange for 40s. Anarcho punks would rather starve than fly a sign.
Each has its own music scene, its own values, its own social norms. For this article to suggest that most street kids don't have a political analysis might be true for hippy hill, but isn't true at all for the squatter scene (see 'homes not jails' and 'food not bombs' for instance).
IMO, learning about the sub-groups of the "street person" culture isn't going to net you much useful knowledge. A lot of the differences between people here are political, ethical or social (anarchists, hippies, gangs). At some point you realize everyone's just living out a script.
They are able to exist because of people who are willing to work to support them. Even the communes rely on fertilizer, fuels, metals, foodstuffs from 2000+ years of increasingly efficient capitalists economies.
Don't get me wrong - I love spending a week to ten days out on the playa, and have never had such a wonder experience of "community" anywhere else - but I never, ever kid myself into believing that such a lifestyle is sustainable.
I don't like to use the word, "parasite", but I can't really think of a better word to describe the Haight street pan-handlers/garbage divers. They can't survive without people providing for them.
And, unless you can photosynthesize, you're a parasite too.
I would never besmirch the good name of the sun, nor suggest that we don't all depend on it. I think we can all agree that we've greatly benefited from living within the sun's ecosystem.
Efficient is a tricky word. Burning through non-renevable fossil, freshwater, (arable) land and mineral resources at an accelerating pace, with no regard for the environment or future generations has allowed the world to reach levels the overpopulation that China spent thousands of years reaching -- in less than 200 years. But without any structure, government or system that has any hope (or indeed even any goal) of breaking the pace of expansion in a way suitable to avoid massive disasters and system failure.
As for the US, given the wast resources left, and the (comparatively) sparse population -- it appears to me to be one of the few countries that actually could become more efficient (resources spent per capita) -- without forcing particularly bad consequences on in its citizens.
But yes, a group producing no, or little value, paying none, or little in tax could indeed be seen as parasites. I can think of a few group that I'd consider harmful parasites, though.
First, the 2000+ years of capitalism assertion is fairly flawed, consider feudalism, but for the sake of argument lets say capitalism goes hand in hand with industrial revolution era.
Then when you say 'massively efficient capitalist system' it seems like you're referring to a "net efficiency" in terms of production of wealth, and that allows a community of grifters to benefit from that as a kind of downstream recipient.
You are touching upon a valid point, this lifestyle is a function of current society and it appears to be parasitic rather than self-sustaining. However, I would argue that this demonstrates that current capitalism is actually pretty inefficient to allow this.
It's refreshing to read, because I'm tired of the two extremes usually presented, either that the street kids are people to be pitied or trash to be thrown out. The street kids are more just a fixture. Like the trees in Buena Vista, they were not here originally, but they're a fixture now, and they'll be here for quite some time to come.
Tacked on the wall where you give your order is an "86" list. These are the homeless that are asked to leave the instant they appear. All others are allowed to stay as long as they don't disrupt the business.
I saw that list and laughed, but 10 minutes later a homeless man stood outside the window and screamed obscenities at me as I worked. He was on the list, so 911 was called.
A little while later a "street kid" walked in and asked if we had spare slices. I was about to say no, when the manager said sure, and handed over a slice. When I asked I was told that when they made mistakes, put onions on a pizze that called for no onions, they saved them and handed out slices to those that asked nicely.
I guess it all depends on who and how you act.
If I knew I just gave five bucks to someone whose familial net worth trumps mine 100 fold, I'd be irate.
Just to play the devil's advocate, given a spoiled kid of wealthy parents on the threshold of adulthood, would you prefer he stay in the ivory tower, or experience the raw life of the street, even if only as a lifestyle tourist?
As it happens, there is a long tradition among the wealthy (not all the wealthy, but some) of making their kids experience ordinary life in advance of making important decisions about the direction of their own life.
Yes, there are. But one advantage of "playing homeless" is that you might run into actual homeless people and find out about their lives.
Sure, living on the streets for 2 days isn't the same as living there for 2 years but there are ways to get perspective without being an unnecessary drain on a system already spread thin.
I second Dewitt's comments btw -- we know each other both from the 'hood and from work.
Does anyone have any better, more specific information about the distribution chains for marijuana or LSD?
EDIT: clarifying first sentence
In SF, $50 will get you an eighth of pot, whereas LSD is like $5/hit (so a twenty is enough to meet God)
Several factors favor a small source of distributors. Ergot is dangerous to work with, it's a difficult synthesis, and the overhead costs of making 1,000 hits and 1,000,000,000 is essentially the same.
Not to mention the guys selling it for $20/sheet every 4/20 on Hippie Hill -- there's your year's supply right there.
We had to interview homeless people in DC as part of a college project, and found something similar. I think the common perception is that homeless people are just people like you and I who hit hard times, but almost everyone we talked to was homeless by choice (and some probably had mental illness). Talk to homeless people sometime, it may change your ideas.
The article was a neat little look into a single park's homeless culture, but it can be really rough if you wander into the wrong park or alley. Or just taking a bus.
I lived right next to the park for the better part of a year. I feel like there are two more aspects to the street kids lives that deserve more attention:
(1) Their pets: Most of these kids have a dog (or sometimes a cat), love their pets and for the most part seem to treat them well. One night, after finding a dog with a collar roaming alone in the park, I helped her find a temporary home. The next day I saw some really worried street kids posting hand written signs with a photo of the dog and reunited them. It was a sight to behold. Homeless with pets are controversial but at least amongst the street kids, the pets seem to have a net positive effect on them.
(2) Mental illness: OP alluded to this, but mentally ill homeless who live in the same area are a huge issue for people who associate them with the street kids. There is no easy fix for this problem and I have always wondered what the street kids think about the mentally ill amongst them and what should be done to help them.
There still are. For many years I have done active outreach work to the homeless youth there as well as risk reduction community mediation meetings between homeless kids, their outreach service workers, and local residents (some of these meetings have taken place at The Booksmith).
I am currently very successful in the tech arena, despite never having returned to school after having to find a place to live and food to eat when I was halfway through ninth grade; I never graduated and have no formal education. I am a very lucky exception.
Why do I tell you this? So you can begin to understand why I have to tell you that if this article is claiming to be about life for, or about, homeless youth in the Haight, the article is so inaccurate it ought to be considered harmful.
This article is the biggest lie and mischaracterization of homeless youth in the Haight I have ever read. I'm too astonished at the moment to be outraged.
What needs to be done is fairly obvious, since it was already done successfully by Giuliani in NYC - strict enforcement of laws plus draconian penalties for violating those laws, applied over a sustained period of time.
Like it or not (and I'm certainly not suggesting everything about it was likeable), it worked wonders for Manhattan.
But what's far more appalling is that straight people in SF put up with it as part of the cost of doing business.
"When work crews pulled open a broken BART escalator ... they found so much human excrement in its works they had to call a hazardous-materials team."
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Human-waste-shuts-down...
I don't mind sellers of various good (incl. drugs) so long as they are peaceable and not... in your face.
This. In an isolated society of highways and McMansions where it's taboo to converse with random strangers, what the world needs now is not the next big social iPhone app, but a stronger sense of community, which we could learn a thing or two from these 'kids'.
And how a lot of people were like "Hey, well, it's putting wealth into helping San Francisco!".
Well, how's this fit into that calculus?
The general consensus in most parts of the Bay Area is that people want things to stay the same as it was the day they arrived.
Rents here are now incredibly high. If you talk to residents who got here decades ago, people like this wouldn't have been sleeping on the streets back in the day. They would have clubbed together to get a crash pad. But that's implausible now.
Those high rents are being driven by the tech boom. There are a lot of startups in SF, and the various peninsula buses have made it much more plausible to live in SF but work in Mountain View. Building managers near GBus stops have flat-out told me that Google buses are a big driver in rising rents.
I propose that there is a much more important reading:
Youth unemployment is extraordinarily high (effecting minorities even worse than these mostly-white kids, of course). Youth incarceration rate / engagement with the justice system is very high.
The numbers of people "dropping out" of legitimate society altogether look to be high and growing.
People's personal feelings about all this aside, it pays to notice when society starts to fray so badly as this.
Most of them are choosing one (purportedly, although I think I'm right that neither of us has tried it) brain-dead lifestyle over another one.
That's why I get irked when people talk about housewives becoming "braindead" from being outside of the economy. What makes the typical mind-numbing office life superior to a (supposedly) mind-numbing domestic existence?
Every housewife I know has some kind of mentally stimulating hobby, and most of them make some amount of income from it (photography, crafts etc...). In fact most of them shouldn't really be called "housewives" any more than male remote programmers should be called "househusbands".
Obviously children are not in control of who takes care of them, but that would be true whether the parents worked or not; parents decide how their children will be cared for in any case. Also, I'm not sure if you've ever tried to browse reddit and watch a toddler at the same time, but I can say from experience it's not as easy as you might imagine. Children, especially when they are younger than school-age, demand a lot of attention just to keep them safe and healthy let alone educated and civilized.
Mental stimulation wouldn't be the issue. Risk of violence or disease, however...
Its sad because peace, love & family is not the way things are handled down there and a lot of them dont make it very long once they graduate.
That's what would sour me. Guess I am showing my age... I like hot showers, clean clothes, and warm beds too much.
This is key.
I liked one of the signs. "You don't have to fuck people over to survive." That's what our positive-sum technocracy is supposed to represent: a world in which you can focus on getting work done and making society better. That's what it actually is if you have a degree of freedom, autonomy, and comfort that is (alas) very rare. Yet most of these "street kids" face a world of soulless, zero-sum, corporate status-grubbing where they do have to make that choice, and they're making the less approved but perhaps morally nicer one.
it's not the world's fault there exists free-will.
The perception that embarking on a career that you think will make the world a better place is selling out or becoming a drone is really harmful. Being a professional member of a hippy/punk community or an avowed member of the CrimethInc Ex-Worker's Collective or a Slingshot producer or a freegan is a valid choice, but it is hardly more pure than anything else.