The annoying thing is that there will very likely be a homeless shelter in this city that he’s not allowed to sleep in because they have a zero tolerance drug policy.
Comment on A perfect visualisation of a wasteful system
Snapz@lemmy.world 11 months ago
What the fuck is with this thread being overrun with dickheads? Is this the breaking point, has Lemmy reached critical mass?
The image represents how capitalism uses the myth of scarcity. There’s a bed there, and there’s a human being sleeping on the ground. The lie is that there isn’t enough to go around; that somebody has to go without.
That’s bullshit. We have everything.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 11 months ago
TheOriginalGregToo@lemmy.world 11 months ago
[deleted]Blackmist@feddit.uk 11 months ago
Your precious taxes are still going to get spent on cleaning up their mess, regardless of you wanting them to be helped or not.
Daft_ish@lemmy.world 11 months ago
This guy’s would walk down to the a prison and give them his pay check volenteerily.
Emerald@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s annoying because people who do drugs still need homes. Also not every drug user is aggressive or disruptive or whatever other reason the shelter would have for not allowing drug users.
TheOriginalGregToo@lemmy.world 11 months ago
You might be right, but if the requirement for shelter is to not use drugs, why is it the shelter’s responsibility to alter their requirements rather than the person who’s seeking shelter’s responsibility to abide by the requirements? They aren’t owed anything, they’re being offered shelter at someone else’s cost. If I’m hungry and a restaurant offers to give me free food, I can’t then get angry that they have a “no shirt no service policy” and require me to wear a shirt to receive my free food.
fosforus@sopuli.xyz 11 months ago
In what system would the homeless people sleep their nights in bed stores?
Nalivai@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
That’s just unfaithful interpretation of the argument, and you know it. US on average has 27 empty houses per a homeless person.
Pipoca@lemmy.world 11 months ago
That’s technically true, but really not important. Houses are defined as vacant if they’re unoccupied on the day of a census. There’s many reasons a house might be technically vacant, but not currently be able to house a homeless person.
Was the house just sold, and is it unoccupied for a week or a month between owners? It’s vacant. Did the owner just move into hospice or a memory care unit and their children haven’t yet sold the house because they need to arrange an estate sale? It’s vacant. Is the house under construction but is mostly built? It’s vacant. Is it not safe to live in, but not officially condemned? It’s vacant.
Want to move to a city? Either you have to find the apartment of someone moving out, or you have to move into a vacant unit.
Having a good number of vacant homes is a good thing, actually; having low numbers of vacancies in an area leads to housing becoming more expensive because you can’t move into a unit that isn’t vacant. Increasing housing supply relative to population leads to higher vacancy rates, but decreases housing costs.
Housing-first approaches to homelessness seem to be good in practice. But those are typically done by either government-built housing or government- subsidized housing; it’s mostly orthogonal to vacancy rates.
afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Are those houses like habitable right now? I agree that there is a mismatch but 1:27 ratio seems high to me.
archomrade@midwest.social 11 months ago
You might be confused because typically that figure refers to ‘homes’, not ‘houses’. Apartments and other multi-family housing types are included in that figure.
echodot@feddit.uk 11 months ago
Right so the problem is that they don’t have money to buy those homes. It’s still not a problem with the bed store
Nalivai@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
You understand what the word “visualisation” means, right?
archomrade@midwest.social 11 months ago
The problems are:
- they don’t have money to buy homes
- they don’t have money to buy beds
- we accept their suffering as necessary so that someone can make money from selling those things
- we accept that their life is worth nothing without the value of their labor
- we abdicate our own responsibility and become complicit by refusing to acknowledge the lack of humanity in this system
Interpreting everything through individuality is a choice. Just because you refuse to acknowledge systemic injustice does not mean it does not exist.
archomrade@midwest.social 11 months ago
The scarcity isn’t primarily the beds.
Obviously not. The existence of homelessness isn’t due to scarcity at all, it’s to do with a system that tolerates (even necessitates) homelessness. The image could have just as easily been someone sleeping outside an apartment with a sign advertising available units; they sleep, freeze, and starve, because our economic model rejects their basic needs in favor of commodifying them.
It’s not that hard a concept to grasp, it just seems like people have ingrained the logic of the market in their brains and can’t conceptualize the issue of poverty beyond ‘stuff costs money’.
Acters@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Bed stores are a problem. They sit there taking up space for what? To look pretty for people to try out different brands of bed because we like to not figure out a universal solution to the problem of making a comfortable healthy platform of material that we can lay upon for long term rest. On top of that, instead of supplying our nation with affordable housing and furniture, it is laughably ignored.
All these empty locations for these corporations to advertise products and “experiences”
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 11 months ago
To look pretty for people to try out different brands of bed because we like to not figure out a universal solution to the problem of making a comfortable healthy platform of material that we can lay upon for long term rest.
We’ll do that as soon as we invent the universal spine.
PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee 11 months ago
IKEA and Costco both sell relatively affordable bedding and furniture solutions.
Also, there are some delivery only bed companies. Ie Purple Mattress.
Some people insist on actually trying out the mattress first and spending $4,000+ on a bed.
Aux@lemmy.world 11 months ago
The problem is that there are too many people.
Acters@lemmy.world 11 months ago
which one would you recommend? some kind of “culling games” or castration? Would you like to go first?
dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
Lemmy recently had a swarm of conservative sign ups and/or bot accounts in the last few days.
gmtom@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Has been for a while. During the big exodus from reddit we brought with us lots of typical redditors that think being a contrarian dickhead makes them cool.
As well as lots of the usually sad little losers from across the internet that see people enjoying themselves and get the irresistible urge to make things worse.
otter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
“irresistible urge”, sure, but I wouldn’t give them credit for making things worse. Sure, they snicker at sticking their old gum under the desk, but it’s a whole set of other issues that’re burning down the building in the meantime.
masquenox@lemmy.world 11 months ago
What the fuck is with this thread being overrun with
dickheadsliberals?Fixed.
Croquette@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
You’ll shit your pants when you will learn that liberal is center right on anywhere else but the US.
masquenox@lemmy.world 11 months ago
You’ll shit your pants when you will learn that liberal is
center rightright-wing on anywhere else but the US.There is no such thing as “center-right” - the only differentiator between one right-winger and the next is how comfortable they happen to be with the violence that maintains their precious status quo.
Liberals are just right-wingers that prefer the violence happening somewhere where they don’t have to witness it.
Croquette@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
I still think that center is useful in that context because it tells you where their policies actually lands usually. But otherwise, I agree with you.
Lianodel@ttrpg.network 11 months ago
There’s a ghastly number of people who are aggressively ignorant assholes.
The point is that we don’t have people sleeping on the street for a lack of… anything, really. Including beds. The point is that, when nearly everything is run for-profit, and it’s even slightly more profitable to let people suffer and even die, then people will suffer and die. We do a better job selling beds than we do making sure everyone has a bed to sleep in. We could make sure everyone has access to a warm bed, shelter, food, medicine, etc., but we don’t, and it’s less and less acceptable to just accept the status quo just because it’s the status quo. If someone thinks the status quo is defensible, it’s on them to defend it.
That doesn’t mean the mattress seller is evil, or (and I can’t understand the logic in one of the other comments) that wanting people to be housed makes you a hypocrite if you have your own housing. And the absolutely shameless comments that openly admit they won’t (really can’t) explain their position, but are going to condescend anyway.
TheOriginalGregToo@lemmy.world 11 months ago
So do you let homeless people sleep in your house with you? I’m sure you have plenty of extra space…
Cowbee@lemm.ee 11 months ago
We have more empty homes than homeless people.
afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I have. Also sheltered illegals before. Which at one point involved me having to stare down and bluff a process server. Not a moment I would like to revisit but proud of myself for doing.
PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee 11 months ago
I had a friend who did that too, once.
Her roommates did not approve. She became homeless too at the end of the month.
Zehzin@lemmy.world 11 months ago
👑
dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
Just because someone may or may not want homeless people sleeping in their house, doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t support social safety nets to make sure people aren’t freezing to death sleeping in indignity on the streets.
TheOriginalGregToo@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s easy to advocate for things that you bear no responsibility for. It’s no different than politicians war mongering and advocating for wars that they will send other people’s children to fight and die in.
I don’t want anyone to die on the streets, but I also recognize that at a certain point giving help is enabling, and individuals are responsible for their own well-being and decisions. The help should absolutely be offered, but society should not be required to suffer those who refuse to take it/change their lifestyle.
echodot@feddit.uk 11 months ago
I think people’s issue with it is it’s just not very well thought out.
The bed store would never under any circumstance provide the bed for homeless people to access what world would that ever happen in? The problem is the homeless person doesn’t have access to shelter but that’s not the fault of the bed store that’s the fault of the state.
The image seems to suggest that the bed store are holding all the beds for some kind of weird show of economic supremacy rather than you know the fact that it’s a display room. No one’s buying those beds they’re display models.
No one is arguing that homeless people shouldn’t be held but that particular image isn’t really anything.
PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Why don’t we just convert all the bed stores into homeless shelters?
That way you can try out a bed, get some feedback from actual users (the homeless sleeping on the bed), all the store profits can go to pay for housing the homeless, AND government won’t have to provide public housing!
It’s a win-win, kill 2 birds with 1 stone.
Aux@lemmy.world 11 months ago
We don’t have everything. But we have plenty of lazy people who don’t want to contribute to the society.
Guntrigger@feddit.ch 11 months ago
And what did this thought contribute to society?
dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
What does the society you dream of look like? Because at the moment, it’s shit.
Aux@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Meritocratic corporatism.
ASeriesOfPoorChoices@lemmy.world 11 months ago
And what do you contribute to society?
Gladaed@feddit.de 11 months ago
But there being a salespoint for bed does not take home from the homeless. The issue is them being without shelter.
This is Symbolik, but not the issue at hand. Also turning commercial buildings into flats does not seem like a good/efficient solution to a complex issue like homelessness. (Disregarding living out of a car homelessness)
Frittiert@feddit.de 11 months ago
The other guy said it perfectly:
There’s a bed there, and there’s a human being sleeping on the ground.
It really isn’t more complicated than that. Any explaination why this person is not allowed to sleep in this bed or why this person should not be able to sleep in this bed is absolute bullshit.
There’s a bed there, and there’s a human being sleeping on the ground.
WindowsEnjoyer@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Well, bed is not necessary since you can sleep anywhere as long as you can lie down. To make bed - trees were cut, the ecosystem were damaged. The birds who had their nest in those trees lost their home. Is this worth it?? /s
AnneBonny@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
The message is that you deserve nothing and must earn everything, not that there isn’t enough to go around.
Dra@lemmy.zip 11 months ago
Well you dont deserve anything that someone else has made…
Croquette@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Then go live in the fucking wood like your caveman ancestors so you can truly live of everything you made yourself.
Society is built on the shoulders of those before them, that they themselves built on the shoulders of those before them.
Stop being a dick and go help someone in your community, you will probably learn a thing or two.
Dra@lemmy.zip 11 months ago
If someone creates something to trade it for goods and services, thats fine
If someone creates something for their own reasons, you have no entitlement to it.
dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
Actually, in a socialist utopia, yes you would. And everyone else would be entitled to the thing you made too. And every pricetag would be based on the labor spent in making the item rather than inflated to satisfy the profits of some corporation that doesn’t add value to the product being sold.
ASeriesOfPoorChoices@lemmy.world 11 months ago
That sounds like a communist utopia you’re thinking of, not socialist.
And ignores that it’s not that “everything is free”, it’s that everything is owned by everyone, the same way everyone “pays” for the police - but they don’t work for you, they work for everyone / the state.
Cowbee@lemm.ee 11 months ago
You’re on Lemmy.
duffman@lemmy.world 11 months ago
That’s not the message either. There are homeless shelters, mental and health services, and affordable housing being priotized all over.
Necessities are in large free to those who need them. Nice to haves and luxury beds are not.
ASeriesOfPoorChoices@lemmy.world 11 months ago
But not in sufficient quantity to address need. Demand fsr, far outstrips supply.
“Free” is irrelevant when it’s unavailable.