I stand by my term. With serfdom, you can walk away - you just have to leave all the fruits of your labor with the landowner. With slavery, you can't. This is serfdom.
Shouldn't be too long, though, until the organization starts charging the homeless more for food and shelter than what they "make" with their labor.
The relationship between the unhoused and this church housing program is an economic transaction. Both parties agree on terms of exchange. The unhoused can decline their offer or simply quit the program at will. The housing program can reject or eject a person who is not a good fit or does not hold up their end of this devils bargain respectively. You are right in that a serf will lose all if he moves from the land and no other lord is likely to take them in since the "free" serf is perceived to be defective in some way. A serf is not owned, but comes damn close to it via their existential dependence on their lord.
Judicially, sure it wasn't. In reality, in France, we saw a decline in the use of slaves au fur et Γ mesure serfdom was spreading and slavery rose again with the end of serfdom and the colonisation of the American comtinent and various islands. Though on continental France it never reached the level reached under the Roman Empire and the 2 first Frank dynasties (Merovingian and Carolingian).
I cannot find words to express the contempt I have for anyone who would criminalize homelessness. That this group would see conversion as a solution shows they either know nothing about the horrors perpetrated in the name of religion through out history, or they don't care. There is no situation so bad it cannot be made worse by religion.
They're evangelicals. They can't be bothered to learn the history of their own religion, because that would be acknowledging the catholic church, and they hate the catholic church worse than they do celebrating Halloween.
That is exactly their plan, read project 2025, substacker Andra Watkins. She grew up in the fundy environment, she got away..... she decodes the Christian nationalist project 2025, a 1,000 page Taliban document.
Where they get things tragically wrong, is believing the American people will passively submit to being ruled by the preachers. I have no idea how it would all play out, but it would not be the right wing fantasy they're dreaming of. This country enjoys as much religious freedom as can be found on planet earth, and I don't know why that isn't good enough for the evangelicals.
Nothing will ever be good enough, nothing will ever be enough control for them..... they are Dominionists. The Christian Taliban extremist fundamentalist that used to be fringe 40 years ago are somewhat mainstream now even though they represent a small minority of US citizens..... and we can blame President Reagan for beginning the "normalization" of them when he got election help from crazy Jerry Falwell.. It wouldn't take but a handful of these types in the next Republican president's cabinet to start rolling out project 2025 which is a Cristo fascist government, we will be no different than Iran except Christian.
Reagan made my skin crawl. He, or more likely his handlers, invited in the preachers as a short term expedient to win an election by making promises they never kept or intended to. Unfortunately they liked their little taste of power and hung around to co-opt the Republican party. Mike Pence and Sarah Palin are part of that Dominionist movement. They are so compromised by religion as to relegate their opinions on all things to the lunatic fringe.
Yes, there is considerable truth in what you say about the Reagan gang and their intentional courting and manipulation of fundamentalist who clearly lack discernment and love being associated with power. What also was intentional was this 'gangs' demonizing of trade unions and undermining of public institutions and utilities that employed millions of citizens. Even 'non-religious' people willingly took this bait and abandoned union membership and accepted privatization - the channeling of profits for privileged minorities - because it was portrayed as the 'American Way'.
During this period credible Christian leaders challenged the ethics of this intentional strategy, and like many competent sociologists, predicted negative outcome such as generational poverty and homelessness.
βGRM is a Christian ministry that requires all residents to work for them without pay for βsix hours a day, six days a week in exchange for a bunk for 30 days.β They also cannot look for outside work during that month. Thatβs not all though. They must also attend church every Sunday (from a pre-approved list); Unitarian services are not acceptable. And they have to attend a chapel service twice a day. And they canβt smoke or drink. And they canβt have sex during their stay.β
So, essentially to get a bed for a month the homeless must give up in trying to improve their situation. But then also face criminal charges for being homeless if the refuse. This is a no-win for folks down on their luck.
The shelter isnβt a charity, itβs a racket, more like a crime family mob than anything else.
"Please outlaw homelessness so people will be forced to work for us for free for a month while we control every aspect of their lives and prevent them from doing anything to escape their situation."
Christopher Hitchens once said that it was astonishing what anyone could get away with, simply by putting the title, "Reverend" in front of their name. By the same token, associating one's business or service with the word "Christian" appears to have a similar effect. Trying to criminalize the homeless, as the Gospel Rescue Mission is doing, seems to fly in the face of the teachings of their putative savior. I mean, didn't he say something about: βWhen you did it for one of these, the least of my brethren, you did it for me.β What GRM is doing for the homeless here sure doesn't smell like help or service.
Not me. But I have to tell you that I would be surprised if it was a Norwegian religious group, behaving like that. They are in no way perfect, but they usually are not cruel. Except for the JW and 7th days saints.
Until this country is willing to address the root causes of homelessness, it's not going to get better. And forcing people to attend your church just because they need your help to get back on their feet doesn't sound like something Jesus would do.
It has gotten to the point where what Jesus would do (had he actually been a real person) and what Christian organizations want to do in his name have next to no intersection set, presuming there is any commonality at all.
Well, as I said above, the root causes are the system working as itβs intended to, so we are not going to address them. As a society we need to tear the system down and start over. But that will make too many folks uncomfortable.
Forced labor for thirty days, during which they can't look for a job, and at the end of the thirty days, they are kicked out. Putting them back in the same situation after thirty days is not helping them get back on their feet.
βFoxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.β - Jesus, if he existed, was a wandering rabbi and magician. Gotta move around to keep the grift going.
Criminalize homelessness!?? Why didnβt I think of that? What a great idea. Setup a system where the slightest inconvenience turns into a years long struggle to get back on your feet on a greased incline until you have nothing left, then when folks are in the dire-est of straights, fine them money they donβt have, will never have because you have also become an obstacle in obtaining the necessary things (food, water, shelter, hygiene, skills, an address, transportation, technology, etc.) to find gainful employment, and finally you can criminalize the homeless out of existence.
Poverty and homelessness is not a personal failure of the poverty stricken homeless person, it is a failure of society to address the systemic machinations that create a population of homeless that rivals several states. I would say a problem with the system, but anyone with eyes can see the system is working as designed. Criminalizing the homeless only serves to fill prisons. So, I have to wonder if the city has a prison and if that prison is privately run and therefore incentivizes the city to keep it full.
Well, saying they care solves the issue without any other effort at all. Thoughts and prayers have saved millions of people from mass shootings. Thanks Reagan.
I know. It's quite inexplicable how drug addiction, mental health issues, and unemployment can persist, given all the Republican thoughts and prayers put into solving these problems.
And yet I would be surprised if GRM accepted people with mental health issues nor someone with a sever addiction to drugs and alcohol. I suspect GRM is very picky regarding who the accept into their program.
From the majority opinions written by Justice Roberts. -
"If the poor, or so called poor people, because who can really be poor with the blessing of Christ in their life, had really had proven they had no alternative, which they didn't since a universal negative is impossible to prove, it still would not have made these laws unconstitutional. Nowhere in any of the founding documents, did the founders ever hint or let alone mention the right not to freeze to death on the city streets. As at the time, the founding fathers knew of both hypothermia and streets within cities, we must assume that the founding fathers knew of the potential right of not freezing to death on the city streets, but in their silence must have consider it and rejected it as an undeniable right. "
In a concurring opinion of Justice Alito, "I agree with the above, but also we should burn witches. Burn!!!1!!. "
In a concurring opinion of Justice Thomas. "If the bitches wanted me to care, they should have given me a Caddy. They didn't, so I don't. Bitches can freeze to death."
Justice Thomas continued, "Besides, if they don't have a place to stay, they should just ask their billionaire friend for a luxury motorhome. Problem solved."
There are many things that would help to resolve the homelessness crisis: universal basic income, universal healthcare, better mass transportation, public housing (and π΄π±π¦π€πͺπ§πͺπ€π’πππΊ public housing with good access to public transportation, stores, and services)... the solution that does π―π°π΅ work is making it a crime to be homeless. We, as a society, have been doing our dead level best to make life more difficult for homeless people for pretty much all of our history, with everything from vagrancy laws to hostile architecture, and yet here we still are.
"Sweep 'em under the rug so we don't have to see 'em" is not a solution. That is, at best, willful neglect... if not active malice. We know that some percentage of homeless people will die from excessive cold or heat; we know some will starve, that their likelihood of being the victims of violent crime is much higher, their vulnerability to all manner of health risks increased- and, knowing these things, could these sorts of policies not be considered murderous, if we're being brutally honest with ourselves?
But if we had universal basic income and universal healthcare, people would be able to quit abusive jobs, and big business (and all those abusive managers) can't have that, why they might actually have to be decent to their employees and treat them as valuable to the company.
The U.S. of A. capitalism is malignant. The rules of commerce heavily favor capital and pay lip service to proletarian class. UBI was utilized during the COVID-19 pandemic and oh how capital moaned that people receiving it were not exited about working for them because they had other options.
Where would we get our volunteer military force from then? Hmmm? If everyone had a livable income and home, not to mention healthcare, why would anyone become a soldier?
To get to shoot people without running afoul of the law. So, basically the worst kind of soldier would become the bulk of our military force. U.S. War Crimes would likely skyrocket. But at the rate we're going by the time we have UBI, Skynet will be fighting our wars.
Well at least the needs of violent sociopaths are being met. The average person tends to experience all kinds of traumatic illnesses after they shoot a person.
I agree. The conflict between nomads and settled civilization has been going on since humans created beer and liked it so much they agreed to settle and do that agriculture thing to make plentiful beer and enjoy it year round. Nomads like beer too, but prefer to imbibe as they trade with a settlement. If SCOTUS decides that the unhoused can be criminally charged for sleeping/existing in certain public spaces then I think we, as a culture, are headed toward bifurcating into two cultures. The housed with their farm to table sustenance and the unhoused who will view themselves as the real people (we were hunters and gatherers for most of our species existence) and define the housed as βthe edibleβ.
I read most of it, I was pulled away and never got back to it. It is an interesting and compassionate look at many of the drivers to homelessness. An attempt to address the situation and relieve it, but this shelter wouldnβt know anything about why their clients are there, nor do they care, itβs just a way to find new marks for their conversion attempts and free labor.
If a person (in a stable situation) finds themselves being pitched to by a religious, then this story is important to bear in mind. If you were a couple steps further down the socioeconomic ladder and didn't have that stability, they wouldn't pitch to you, they would force you and they are willing to get the laws changed so that not joining them is a crime. And should they gain more power, that line at which "pitch" turns into "force" would travel up the socioeconomic chain. This is disgusting and an affront to the dignity of the victims. If you own the property, you can set rules related to the property, like regarding curfew, noise, etc. They don't freaking own those people and you don't get to treat them as lower because they had some bad breaks in their life. They are every bit as worthy as if they had a million bucks in their 401K and a nice house in the suburbs. It's time that every sane person start treating these monsters with the same distaste as you would treat an open white supremacist or nazi. As something disgusting and worthy of contempt.
In the Christian afterlife, Jesus had harsh words for believers who did not show compassion for others by feeding, clothing and sheltering the poor and needy while they were alive; said if they treated the most vulnerable that way, then they treated HIM that way.
Those believers reward for such callous treatment of the destitute? Eternity in hell.
But Jesus didn't mean it like that. And anyway, the most vulnerable are the rich of course. After all anyone can rob them so they have to sack the housekeeper if they want to go to Paris next Xmas.
I've heard some apologist claim eye of the needle was the name of a low clearance gate into Jerusalem and while difficult, it wasn't impossible to get a camel through it.
Iβve been reading about this case. While itβs good that religious organizations have filed amicus briefs, itβs still an issue that GRM is the only game in town, hence a monopoly - perhaps an antitrust violation? They want people to work for only a bed 6 days a week, which means thereβs zero time to look for meaningful employment elsewhere, hence basically free labor which has been outlawed for years, itβs called the 13th amendment.
They actually deny them services if they look elsewhere for work while staying there. Itβs worse than just not having the time, itβs an intentional hurdle.
There are bodies under GRM's floorboards- whether metaphorical or literal. We've seen shit like this play out too many times before, and it always ends up the same... that organization is hiding criminal conduct, somewhere, somehow. Maybe they're cooking the books; maybe they're human traffickers; maybe they just get off on making their victims suffer... but you don't get to the point of using slave labor without crossing a whole bunch of other lines, too. There is more to this story, guaranteed.
πΊπ π ππ π πΆβπππ π‘πππ πππππ π‘ππ¦ π‘βππ‘ ππππ’ππππ πππ πππ πππππ‘π π‘π π€πππ πππ π‘βππ π€ππ‘βππ’π‘ πππ¦ πππ βπ ππ₯ βππ’ππ π πππ¦, π ππ₯ πππ¦π π π€πππ ππ ππ₯πβππππ πππ π ππ’ππ πππ 30 πππ¦π .β πβππ¦ πππ π ππππππ‘ ππππ πππ ππ’π‘π πππ π€πππ ππ’ππππ π‘βππ‘ ππππ‘β.
FINALLY, Alito gets a case that lets him rule that serfdom is constitutionally protected due to it's historical practice.
"Serfdom," nuts. That's SLAVERY we're talking about. Maybe Alito would like to nullify the 13, 14, and 15 Amendments, too!
If God wanted us to have the anything above the 12th amendment, he would have giving us more fingers.
You know not the holy counting methods of the Sumerians using 12 as the base.
I stand by my term. With serfdom, you can walk away - you just have to leave all the fruits of your labor with the landowner. With slavery, you can't. This is serfdom.
Shouldn't be too long, though, until the organization starts charging the homeless more for food and shelter than what they "make" with their labor.
god LOVES slavery. It is enshrined in its book of holy horrors.
Nope, serfdom is a kind of slavery, the difference is that you and your family belong with a piece of land and both can't be sold separately.
So this would be...indentured servitude?
More accurate than serfdom, since it's a contract with a limited duration.
The relationship between the unhoused and this church housing program is an economic transaction. Both parties agree on terms of exchange. The unhoused can decline their offer or simply quit the program at will. The housing program can reject or eject a person who is not a good fit or does not hold up their end of this devils bargain respectively. You are right in that a serf will lose all if he moves from the land and no other lord is likely to take them in since the "free" serf is perceived to be defective in some way. A serf is not owned, but comes damn close to it via their existential dependence on their lord.
Judicially, sure it wasn't. In reality, in France, we saw a decline in the use of slaves au fur et Γ mesure serfdom was spreading and slavery rose again with the end of serfdom and the colonisation of the American comtinent and various islands. Though on continental France it never reached the level reached under the Roman Empire and the 2 first Frank dynasties (Merovingian and Carolingian).
LibertΓ©, Γ©galitΓ©, fraternitΓ©, esclavage.
Owe their soul to the church store.
Well, the Bible is pretty pro-slavery, so β¦
I'm sure he would!
Is that a trick question?
All things considered ... no, not at all.
He said we as a country went wrong in the 60s, and he has never accepted the result and plans to undo those changes.
Which 60's ? The 1800's ?
1760 I guess, or maybe 1660.
Bien dit! je pense le dernier.
And as a bonus convert or die as well.
I have it on good authority the Anti-Christ lives there duping church members to follow the teachings of the Trump-Satan.
I cannot find words to express the contempt I have for anyone who would criminalize homelessness. That this group would see conversion as a solution shows they either know nothing about the horrors perpetrated in the name of religion through out history, or they don't care. There is no situation so bad it cannot be made worse by religion.
They're evangelicals. They can't be bothered to learn the history of their own religion, because that would be acknowledging the catholic church, and they hate the catholic church worse than they do celebrating Halloween.
From what I've seen, they hate pretty much everyone who is not one of them. Worst of all, they would set themselves up as masters of us all.
That is exactly their plan, read project 2025, substacker Andra Watkins. She grew up in the fundy environment, she got away..... she decodes the Christian nationalist project 2025, a 1,000 page Taliban document.
Where they get things tragically wrong, is believing the American people will passively submit to being ruled by the preachers. I have no idea how it would all play out, but it would not be the right wing fantasy they're dreaming of. This country enjoys as much religious freedom as can be found on planet earth, and I don't know why that isn't good enough for the evangelicals.
Nothing will ever be good enough, nothing will ever be enough control for them..... they are Dominionists. The Christian Taliban extremist fundamentalist that used to be fringe 40 years ago are somewhat mainstream now even though they represent a small minority of US citizens..... and we can blame President Reagan for beginning the "normalization" of them when he got election help from crazy Jerry Falwell.. It wouldn't take but a handful of these types in the next Republican president's cabinet to start rolling out project 2025 which is a Cristo fascist government, we will be no different than Iran except Christian.
Damn scary!
Reagan made my skin crawl. He, or more likely his handlers, invited in the preachers as a short term expedient to win an election by making promises they never kept or intended to. Unfortunately they liked their little taste of power and hung around to co-opt the Republican party. Mike Pence and Sarah Palin are part of that Dominionist movement. They are so compromised by religion as to relegate their opinions on all things to the lunatic fringe.
Yes, there is considerable truth in what you say about the Reagan gang and their intentional courting and manipulation of fundamentalist who clearly lack discernment and love being associated with power. What also was intentional was this 'gangs' demonizing of trade unions and undermining of public institutions and utilities that employed millions of citizens. Even 'non-religious' people willingly took this bait and abandoned union membership and accepted privatization - the channeling of profits for privileged minorities - because it was portrayed as the 'American Way'.
During this period credible Christian leaders challenged the ethics of this intentional strategy, and like many competent sociologists, predicted negative outcome such as generational poverty and homelessness.
Happy Halloween! - https://youtu.be/iH-Q59geylw?si=iSbjfB0o2TeGkanZ
π―
βGRM is a Christian ministry that requires all residents to work for them without pay for βsix hours a day, six days a week in exchange for a bunk for 30 days.β They also cannot look for outside work during that month. Thatβs not all though. They must also attend church every Sunday (from a pre-approved list); Unitarian services are not acceptable. And they have to attend a chapel service twice a day. And they canβt smoke or drink. And they canβt have sex during their stay.β
So, essentially to get a bed for a month the homeless must give up in trying to improve their situation. But then also face criminal charges for being homeless if the refuse. This is a no-win for folks down on their luck.
The shelter isnβt a charity, itβs a racket, more like a crime family mob than anything else.
100%
"Please outlaw homelessness so people will be forced to work for us for free for a month while we control every aspect of their lives and prevent them from doing anything to escape their situation."
That isn't charity or help. It's exploitation.
That isn't love, it's abuse.
But that is the point, I'm sure.
Christopher Hitchens once said that it was astonishing what anyone could get away with, simply by putting the title, "Reverend" in front of their name. By the same token, associating one's business or service with the word "Christian" appears to have a similar effect. Trying to criminalize the homeless, as the Gospel Rescue Mission is doing, seems to fly in the face of the teachings of their putative savior. I mean, didn't he say something about: βWhen you did it for one of these, the least of my brethren, you did it for me.β What GRM is doing for the homeless here sure doesn't smell like help or service.
Mostly, it just SMELLS.
The cruelty is the core principle.
It damned near always is.
"You've gotta be cruel to be kind, in the right measure
Cruel to be kind, it's a very good sign
Cruel to be kind, means that I love you, baby
(You've gotta be cruel)
You gotta be cruel to be kind
Well I do my best to understand dear
But you still mystify and I want to know why
I pick myself up off the ground
To have you knock me back down, again and again
And when I ask you to explain, you say" - Nick Lowe/Ian Gomm, 'Cruel To Be Kind'
Religious folks choosing the heartless option, again. Is anyone surprised?
Not me. But I have to tell you that I would be surprised if it was a Norwegian religious group, behaving like that. They are in no way perfect, but they usually are not cruel. Except for the JW and 7th days saints.
It has the opposite effect on me
Same here, it is telling you they will rip you off. Nice that they warn sensible people.
" religion poisons everything"........ that's my favorite from Hitchens.
Until this country is willing to address the root causes of homelessness, it's not going to get better. And forcing people to attend your church just because they need your help to get back on their feet doesn't sound like something Jesus would do.
It has gotten to the point where what Jesus would do (had he actually been a real person) and what Christian organizations want to do in his name have next to no intersection set, presuming there is any commonality at all.
No arguments here. The hypocrisy is glaring.
Well, as I said above, the root causes are the system working as itβs intended to, so we are not going to address them. As a society we need to tear the system down and start over. But that will make too many folks uncomfortable.
Forced labor for thirty days, during which they can't look for a job, and at the end of the thirty days, they are kicked out. Putting them back in the same situation after thirty days is not helping them get back on their feet.
βFoxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.β - Jesus, if he existed, was a wandering rabbi and magician. Gotta move around to keep the grift going.
That may have worked when we were nomadic hunter/gatherers, but that doesn't work out for 80-95% of the population now.
Criminalize homelessness!?? Why didnβt I think of that? What a great idea. Setup a system where the slightest inconvenience turns into a years long struggle to get back on your feet on a greased incline until you have nothing left, then when folks are in the dire-est of straights, fine them money they donβt have, will never have because you have also become an obstacle in obtaining the necessary things (food, water, shelter, hygiene, skills, an address, transportation, technology, etc.) to find gainful employment, and finally you can criminalize the homeless out of existence.
Poverty and homelessness is not a personal failure of the poverty stricken homeless person, it is a failure of society to address the systemic machinations that create a population of homeless that rivals several states. I would say a problem with the system, but anyone with eyes can see the system is working as designed. Criminalizing the homeless only serves to fill prisons. So, I have to wonder if the city has a prison and if that prison is privately run and therefore incentivizes the city to keep it full.
That last sentence says it all; no wondering needed.
Well, saying they care solves the issue without any other effort at all. Thoughts and prayers have saved millions of people from mass shootings. Thanks Reagan.
Thanking nra, remington, colt glock, smith & wesson et al.
Weβll all get by with a boom stick and a prayer. Oh Lord wonβt you buy me an AR-15. My friends all have AK-7s I must make amends.
https://www.zentaur.org/memes/taylor_swift_ar_15.jpg
She dropped a new double LP called "The Tortured Poets Department" this past Friday.
I know. It's quite inexplicable how drug addiction, mental health issues, and unemployment can persist, given all the Republican thoughts and prayers put into solving these problems.
Especially in gqp states.
And yet I would be surprised if GRM accepted people with mental health issues nor someone with a sever addiction to drugs and alcohol. I suspect GRM is very picky regarding who the accept into their program.
From the majority opinions written by Justice Roberts. -
"If the poor, or so called poor people, because who can really be poor with the blessing of Christ in their life, had really had proven they had no alternative, which they didn't since a universal negative is impossible to prove, it still would not have made these laws unconstitutional. Nowhere in any of the founding documents, did the founders ever hint or let alone mention the right not to freeze to death on the city streets. As at the time, the founding fathers knew of both hypothermia and streets within cities, we must assume that the founding fathers knew of the potential right of not freezing to death on the city streets, but in their silence must have consider it and rejected it as an undeniable right. "
In a concurring opinion of Justice Alito, "I agree with the above, but also we should burn witches. Burn!!!1!!. "
In a concurring opinion of Justice Thomas. "If the bitches wanted me to care, they should have given me a Caddy. They didn't, so I don't. Bitches can freeze to death."
Justice Thomas continued, "Besides, if they don't have a place to stay, they should just ask their billionaire friend for a luxury motorhome. Problem solved."
Lol. Too funny
That the $CROTUS exists in its current form is an affront to decent people everywhere.
There are many things that would help to resolve the homelessness crisis: universal basic income, universal healthcare, better mass transportation, public housing (and π΄π±π¦π€πͺπ§πͺπ€π’πππΊ public housing with good access to public transportation, stores, and services)... the solution that does π―π°π΅ work is making it a crime to be homeless. We, as a society, have been doing our dead level best to make life more difficult for homeless people for pretty much all of our history, with everything from vagrancy laws to hostile architecture, and yet here we still are.
"Sweep 'em under the rug so we don't have to see 'em" is not a solution. That is, at best, willful neglect... if not active malice. We know that some percentage of homeless people will die from excessive cold or heat; we know some will starve, that their likelihood of being the victims of violent crime is much higher, their vulnerability to all manner of health risks increased- and, knowing these things, could these sorts of policies not be considered murderous, if we're being brutally honest with ourselves?
At the end of the day, homeless people are, in fact, people. No matter what else is going on in their lives, they do not deserve to be bulldozed off the edge of the map. Having a shitty go of it should not merit a fucking death sentence, but that's effectively what these policies do- knock down all the ladders, bar all the doors, and leave them out in the cold to die. Just as long as, y'know, they do it π°πΆπ΅ π°π§ π΄πͺπ¨π©π΅.
But if we had universal basic income and universal healthcare, people would be able to quit abusive jobs, and big business (and all those abusive managers) can't have that, why they might actually have to be decent to their employees and treat them as valuable to the company.
The U.S. of A. capitalism is malignant. The rules of commerce heavily favor capital and pay lip service to proletarian class. UBI was utilized during the COVID-19 pandemic and oh how capital moaned that people receiving it were not exited about working for them because they had other options.
Like all the socialist Nordic countries.
What Trump unwittingly called "the nice countries."
He, of course, was referring to how white they are without knowing that they're all socialist.
Where would we get our volunteer military force from then? Hmmm? If everyone had a livable income and home, not to mention healthcare, why would anyone become a soldier?
To get to shoot people without running afoul of the law. So, basically the worst kind of soldier would become the bulk of our military force. U.S. War Crimes would likely skyrocket. But at the rate we're going by the time we have UBI, Skynet will be fighting our wars.
Well at least the needs of violent sociopaths are being met. The average person tends to experience all kinds of traumatic illnesses after they shoot a person.
I agree. The conflict between nomads and settled civilization has been going on since humans created beer and liked it so much they agreed to settle and do that agriculture thing to make plentiful beer and enjoy it year round. Nomads like beer too, but prefer to imbibe as they trade with a settlement. If SCOTUS decides that the unhoused can be criminally charged for sleeping/existing in certain public spaces then I think we, as a culture, are headed toward bifurcating into two cultures. The housed with their farm to table sustenance and the unhoused who will view themselves as the real people (we were hunters and gatherers for most of our species existence) and define the housed as βthe edibleβ.
THIS
A few years ago my friend lent me her copy of Evicted
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evicted:_Poverty_and_Profit_in_the_American_City
I read most of it, I was pulled away and never got back to it. It is an interesting and compassionate look at many of the drivers to homelessness. An attempt to address the situation and relieve it, but this shelter wouldnβt know anything about why their clients are there, nor do they care, itβs just a way to find new marks for their conversion attempts and free labor.
βThe law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.β
β Anatole France
If a person (in a stable situation) finds themselves being pitched to by a religious, then this story is important to bear in mind. If you were a couple steps further down the socioeconomic ladder and didn't have that stability, they wouldn't pitch to you, they would force you and they are willing to get the laws changed so that not joining them is a crime. And should they gain more power, that line at which "pitch" turns into "force" would travel up the socioeconomic chain. This is disgusting and an affront to the dignity of the victims. If you own the property, you can set rules related to the property, like regarding curfew, noise, etc. They don't freaking own those people and you don't get to treat them as lower because they had some bad breaks in their life. They are every bit as worthy as if they had a million bucks in their 401K and a nice house in the suburbs. It's time that every sane person start treating these monsters with the same distaste as you would treat an open white supremacist or nazi. As something disgusting and worthy of contempt.
In the Christian afterlife, Jesus had harsh words for believers who did not show compassion for others by feeding, clothing and sheltering the poor and needy while they were alive; said if they treated the most vulnerable that way, then they treated HIM that way.
Those believers reward for such callous treatment of the destitute? Eternity in hell.
But Jesus didn't mean it like that. And anyway, the most vulnerable are the rich of course. After all anyone can rob them so they have to sack the housekeeper if they want to go to Paris next Xmas.
Didn't Jeebus say it was almost impossible for rich people to get into heaven? I believe camels and eyes of needles were involved.
I've heard some apologist claim eye of the needle was the name of a low clearance gate into Jerusalem and while difficult, it wasn't impossible to get a camel through it.
They have to twist themselves like Rubik's Cubes to make everything fit together. They never can.
Jesus said nothing about such a gate. The apologist is making shit up and misquoting his own messiah.
Lazarus at the gate and he rich manβs fate.
Iβve been reading about this case. While itβs good that religious organizations have filed amicus briefs, itβs still an issue that GRM is the only game in town, hence a monopoly - perhaps an antitrust violation? They want people to work for only a bed 6 days a week, which means thereβs zero time to look for meaningful employment elsewhere, hence basically free labor which has been outlawed for years, itβs called the 13th amendment.
They actually deny them services if they look elsewhere for work while staying there. Itβs worse than just not having the time, itβs an intentional hurdle.
There are bodies under GRM's floorboards- whether metaphorical or literal. We've seen shit like this play out too many times before, and it always ends up the same... that organization is hiding criminal conduct, somewhere, somehow. Maybe they're cooking the books; maybe they're human traffickers; maybe they just get off on making their victims suffer... but you don't get to the point of using slave labor without crossing a whole bunch of other lines, too. There is more to this story, guaranteed.