COMMENT OF THE DAY: PLEASE HELP THE HOMELESS — TO BUY WHAT I’M SELLING “. . . I characterize the problem as a social blight and attribute my interest, concern, and thought toward it primarily because the long-term homeless are not engaging in society as consumers. They are a dead weight. I cannot sell them things, and the people that give them things are made less able to afford to buy my things. Homelessness is a problem because it interferes with the fulfillment of my greed.” [TheNiche, commenting on The Secret Homeless Caves Under Downtown]
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God ble$$ America.
Well said, TheNiche.
http://cdn.head-fi.org/2/2c/2cda10c2_slow-clap.gif
What the homeless need are some authentic gyros ;p
But seriously, I hope that statement was tongue in cheek. If not, wow.
To put this in context, Mel accused certain people (not myself, strangely) of lacking an understanding of the circumstances of the long-term homeless due to their greed.
I retorted that it probably has more to do with those individuals’ upbringing and lack of life experience.
Then, I went on to defend greed as a virtue by making this statement. The meaning of the statement can be broadly construed, but obviously it is preferable to have more participants in the economy than non-participants.
Not me, you are thinking of some other do-gooder poster. I critized you in another post for criticizing home gardens.
The reasons for homelessness are many, lack of education, mental illness, drugs, bad luck, booze, no love as a child, and other issues. It is often hard for worker/alpha types to relate because, “we are all who we are because of where we have been”.. Translation- we have all failed, learned from it, and moved forward with lessons learned. God knows I have failed many times, doubted myself, but come back trying again and again. This is where the views differ. Productive people see the homeless as those who have “given up” at life, they failed and quit, then fallen behind. I know we are all compassionate humans, want to see everyone fed and cleaned up but it is unrealistic. Life is tough, no doubt about it and we all have to persever to some level of success motivated by making family proud, completing a task, or just good ol feeding the ego. There will always be overacheivers and slackers so we need to deal with each other in an amicable way. What gets people fired up are the maximum tattooed aggressive beggers with attitude that sabotages themselves into eternal homelessness and crime.
I smell a marketer not trying hard enough!Homelessness is merely branding fail. Niche, have you thought to reconsider your product? If this country can put cigarettes and coke in the hands of dirt farmers around the globe, we can damn sure market something American homeless will buy! It’s so, so sad that Steve Jobs didn’t live to lift our brothers and sisters off the street with sexy tech.
Apple Wine!
Even in that context, if any homeless people are to be brought closer into the fold of capitalism, it will surely be done as debtors not necessarily “consumers.”
Although, if you build houses there would therefore be an overlap…but until there is more money available for these people to borrow, capitalism will pass them by and any coincidental consumerism will as well
If they are able to responsibly consume financial services in order to consume other goods and services sooner than later, then that’s a win-win-win. The financial services industry and labor force is far from full employment; I need that labor market to get tighter so that there’s less competition and I can get a better job and make more money.