Is the military becoming obsolete?

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Unseen and Robert,

I think it says a lot that the homeless in the U.S. have modern smartphones, which they use to get coupons for fast-food meals, the latest rucksacks with weatherproofing, pockets and compartments, and some even unpretentiously hold out signs begging for beer money. When people like that come soliciting in the parking lot or even inside the store, and customers tell me about them, I tell the customers to alert management or security so we can shoo the riff-raff away.

Yes, there are involuntary homeless in the U.S. and those homeless are ill-served by bureaucrats who place zoning restrictions and building codes against innovations like homes constructed out of shipping containers or even more conventional “Tiny Houses.”. Judging from the magazines devoted to “Tiny Houses,” they are not “all made out of ticky-tacky” and don’t “all look just the same.”. (Quoting from the lyrics to Commie Pete Seegar’s “Little Boxes”, which much more applied to the nation of his beau Joe Stalin.)

Laws like this, combined rent control, the COVID 19 eviction moratoriums, and overall inflation brought by the “Stimulus,” all came together to make housing and apartments in the U.S. cities much more scarce and less affordable.

The best way to benefit the involuntary homeless as well as nudge the voluntary homeless to change their ways is to get back to a fully Free Market Capitalist economy that frees up and encouraged productive work and frees everyone to keep and invest the fruits of their labor.

[UnseenParticipant]

@ Enco and Robert

How about stopping slamming the homeless with broad strokes based on some cases, some things one has seen, some things one’s preferred sources have told them. That’s all irrelevant and a good way to reach a wrong broad strokes opinion. Opinions aren’t facts. Each homeless person’s situation is.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Unseen,

Neither Robert nor myself did any such thing as you allege. I just said that there were both involuntary and voluntary homeless, which is not opinion but fact. And I proposed evidence-based Free-Market Capitalist solutions to homelessness that are better than just making street life easier at best and at worse enabling addictions, parasitic con-artistry, and other shitty behavior

So I am now asking what anyone should ask when faced by accusations like yours:

Where am I wrong?

[jakelafortParticipant]

Enco,

What is the role of government for those who are incapable, unsupported, without family or friends and will starve or freeze without help?

[_Robert_Participant]

Jake, the govt can’t do anything for those who prefer to be homeless. People who demonstrate that they have no desire to stop drugging themselves into being zombies for years on end are in the same camp. You can’t do your drugs or give out blowjobs for a fiver in the shelters. This “addiction is a disease” is complete bullshit. Telling addicts that they have a disease (and thus no choice, no personal responsibility) like someone with muscular dystrophy is fucking stupid. Too get high or not; it’s just another of life’s many tradeoffs like playing video games all day.

Those who truly want help can get into shelters and get back on track.  Of course, the honestly mentally or physically disabled should always qualify for aid.

 

[jakelafortParticipant]

Robert we are in agreement as to those who want help. The issue becomes what sort of assistance is or ought to be available.

As to whether addiction is a disease i think that is a misnomer. On other hand addiction alters chemistry and causes those who are hooked to do shit they’d never do in the absence of the addiction. I have known some addicts. And they are not gutter snipe derelicts. But once hooked holy fucking cow. Stealing. Acting like assholes. And one in particular who was a judge just had to have it to avoid the horrible withdrawals. So it ultimately gets so bad that i don’t think it is about rekindling a high.

But i was thinking of the person who is truly alone and not necessarily hooked on anything and physically or mentally crippled so that without help they’d die. Is a shelter and soup enough of a help to wash our hands of such an unfortunate person?

[_Robert_Participant]

You have to get addicts out of the environment that triggers them for a good while. It is true that most will just revert right back (it is the life they want), but some will wise up. I don’t mind spending public money to give every addict one real chance. You could say the same thing about cult members. Some will wise up, others will vote Trump, LOL. It is the same thing.

[UnseenParticipant]

@ Robert

We’re back to, belileve it or not, the free will issue. People do what they do because they have to, due to the causal chains that led up to their current situation. As I’ve pointed out, the reason for wanting to believe in free will has to do with wanting to engage in the game (and it is a game) of praise and blame.

You clearly are wallowing in the belief that the people on the streets who seemingly don’t want help are just bad people beyond redemption and worthy of our disgust and rejection because they deserve their situation. They’re just worthless people. Fuck ’em, basically.

The belief in free will is a vestige of our religious heritage and it’s one of the hardest parts of the religious worldview to finally walk away from. Even lifelong atheists buy into it.

Of course, you’re behavior is just as irresistible as theirs is. Whatever you do, say, believe is what you have to do, say, or believe.  The same goes for Enco, Jake, and me.

Let’s see if you can bring yourself to giving up the belief that somehow you’re better than they are.

[_Robert_Participant]

Free will is irrelevant and unproven. The behavior of apes is under scrutiny by the tribe and how non-contributing members are dealt with is relevant to survival of the tribe at large. Someone shooting up a Superbowl party is going to be removed from the tribe. Apes that will only pleasure themselves even though they are capable of helping the tribe will be dealt with too.  Let’s see if you can bring yourself to giving up the belief that somehow you’re not an ape.

[UnseenParticipant]

@ Robert

If you live in a world where everything has a cause, then we’re all in the same boat and are doing whatever antecedent events cause us to do. I know it’s hard to give up the idea that both the hero and the drug addict have no real control over what they do, but it’s the truth.

Free will isn’t proven? Case closed. It can’t be proven because it’s nonsense to start with. It’s virtually impossible to even define what “We all have free will” might mean. There is no gun at the drug addict’s head telling him to inject that heroin, BUT there is one inside his head. We all respond in ways reflecting how our brains are wired and addictive drugs have a way of rewiring one’s brain.

We need to ask ourselves why the homeless person is homeless. Why don’t they want to sleep in a shelter and prefer a tent on the sidewalk? For some, they can’t shoot up in a shelter where they have to give up their privacy to get a bed. Maybe they did spend a night in a shelter and it turned into a harrowing experience or something they cherished from their former life was stolen or taken by force. Shelters shelter one from the weather outside, but not from the other people one is forced to share space with.

But even the person who steals to support a drug habit isn’t a “bad person” in the moral sense. Sure, there’s a sense in which they are in terms of their toxic effect on others, but they are responding to a gun in their head not at their head.

But, for me to be consistent, I have to admit that you are who you are and you can’t help being you.

[_Robert_Participant]

Your argument is basically that no one is accountable. For anything. Brilliant bumpkin of an argument. Let’s rearrange society. Someone rapes and murders your sweet 70-year-old mother. It’s all good, he had an internal gun held to his brain. The murderer is the real victim here.

Conversely, so you worked very hard today?  Great, but you had no choice. There is no way you could have just stayed in bed today. So, I’ll take your wages because you don’t really deserve them.

You have the best solutions. You and Kim Jung Un have it figured out, LOL.  And still, you have no answer to counter my evolutionary justification for eliminating and punishing anti-social behavior. A single naked human in a primeval jungle has a zero-chance surviving the year. The need to cooperate is where expectations of behavior come from.

BTW, someone who steals to pleasure themselves with drugs is in fact a bad person, FFS, LOL. If someone hijacks your Social Security payment for their drugs it’s not a crime, right?

[_Robert_Participant]

I think much of the homeless problem for people willing and able to work is because of market affordability mismatches. West Viginia is poor as fuck but with low homeless rates. Housing is cheap there. Help willing workers, down in their luck get to affordable places.

I was watching a video on the homeless. In every case the homeless person has a dubious explanation (excuse) why they can’t stay in a shelter. Some are covered in multi-colored tattoos that probably cost 6 months of rent. However, those who sought help, got it and are recovering.

I am not going to defend the horrible wealth divide that the country faces. This sucks away the resources that could be used to help those who have had misfortune. But we voted that way. We put millionaires and billionaires in charge of the tax system. Morons living in trailers voting against their own well-being.  So yeah, some are truly phucked because of it. And now we are getting older on average. A mass geriatric society not focused on folks with chronic health issues. Just like Italy and Japan. And yet we still want to block young immigrants willing to work from entering the country.

 

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Jake,

What is the role of government for those who are incapable, unsupported, without family or friends and will starve or freeze without help?

Before Welfare States took up to 40 percent of some nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), there were mutual aid societies that took care of various needs of people. Members would contribute money or services in good times to help other members in bad times. Government should stop consuming resources for welfare bureaucracy as well as stop restricting peaceful, honest commerce, and let mutual aid societies make a comeback.

While many of the old mutual aid societies were religious, ethnic, gender, or union-oriented, there’s no reason that mutual aid societies of today couldn’t be Secular and Equal Opportunity.

To this day, there are thrift stores that hire people in poverty or with special needs and devote all profits to a favored charitable cause. Although The Salvation Army, GoodWill, and St. Vincent De Paul are the big Christian religious thrift stores, there are Secular and Medical-oriented ones also.

My favorite and for now only thrift is Value Thrift, which supports National Kidney Services. It not only has great, lightly-used, neatly-displayed clothes, books, toys, tools, kitchenware, appliances, and merchandise, but also bent-and-dent salvage dry groceries!

Mutual aid societies and thrift stores are in perfect keeping with Christopher Hitchens’ tenet that there’s no good thing that a believer can do that an unbeliever cannot.

And there’s more that could be done for all kinds of human needs…if only Governments kept to their legitimate role of protecting Individual Rights and otherwise got out of the way.

[jakelafortParticipant]

Enco, Translation. Let em starve.

We have seen in USA how it works out in a free market for the neerdowells, hobos, gutter snipe, down and outs and untermensch. And when business is not burdened with laborers rights. Even during the depression were it not for the government stepping in with programs…

There are instances in which government is an impediment to human flourishing and instances where it is needed. That government is best that governs least? yea kind of.. But your idea of largesse that naturally emerges in a free market is just chimerical to use a kind word.

[jakelafortParticipant]

Robert sharp take.

BUT it has no bearing on reality. It is like saying…brilliant, the universe is without an architect or someone to give us an afterlife and punish us for being bad and lick out nice parts when we are good.

On the other hand free will or its permutations are kind of irrelevant. We always live our lives in a way that feels like free will. And we respond for the most part to others as though they are responsible and accountable for their behavior. So it is really insignificant in an issue like homelessness.

[Author]

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