"The two big mistakes were: the belief in a sky god -- that there's a man in the sky with 10 things he doesn't want you to do and you'll burn for a long time if you do them -- and private property, which I think is at the core of our failure as a species." George Carlin

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[–]EndlessSunflowers[S] 1 insightful - 3 fun1 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 3 fun -  (6 children)

Thinking this morning about the millions of homeless and hurting humans,
and the millions of empty houses - with locks and fences and gates and Do Not Enter signs

[–]Chipit 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

This is such surface-level thinking. You can't just take the homeless and put them in these houses. They'd trash them. Piss on the carpets, take a sledgehammer to the porcelain commodes, kick holes in the walls. Then where would we be?

You want the whole country to be like San Francisco? Shit on the streets, needles everywhere, honest citizens can't walk down the street without crazy people screaming at them. Wait, don't answer this one.

[–]AnarchySpeach 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

You can't help people who won't help themselves. A lot of mental illness, despite all of our medicine, can't be cured. Pills mask the symptoms, bring most to a baseline reality, but at the end of the day we can't force those pills down their throats.

Some of those people don't wanna be saved. Is it cruel to let them spazz out on the streets? Sure. Sure it is. Where the hell are we supposed to put them? Even if we lock all of them up, in their own special little rooms, and you magically find all the free money to pay for this, who gets to decide who gets in? Who chooses who gets the "luxury" of getting locked up? The average shrink can't tell the difference between a crazy person and a politician.

Despite all of that... what stops someone, taking their pills, from asking to leave? Do we just keep them there when they show improvement? There's no way to prevent them from stopping their medication once they leave this utopian prison cell. If they're non-violent there's really nothing we can legally do to hold them there against their will.

The hard truth is that half of those people on the streets are there because they chose to be.

The other half lack the education to pull themselves out of the gutter and into a decent job. I've known people who've lived paycheck to paycheck living in their car. None of them are there because they want to be. They're there because there's nowhere left for them to go.

It's not like the golden days where you'd get a job and you'd work there for 40 years. Those days are over.

Todays generation needs easier access to education. Needs less forced debt. Needs a military that isn't preying on the desperate.

Before we can dream of any of that we have to understand not all of those people can be saved. Mistakes were made. We have to accept that. Own up to it. Move on to fixing the problem instead of randomly accusing lucky people of the crime of being successful.

[–]EndlessSunflowers[S] 1 insightful - 3 fun1 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 3 fun -  (3 children)

We're so cruel. and careless.

[–]Chipit 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Things are better for the entire human race than they've been ever in human history. Yes, even the homeless.

Wait, I've got something for you to read. It's about a group of people just like you, who went and formed a society in which they lived the values that you preach. They welcomed anyone who needed a home, and didn't handle money for years at a time. It's totally worth the read. http://pastebin.com/F0WGGewg

[–]uiop 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

That's a really interesting article, thanks for sharing. I'm confused though, did they just accept and care for everybody who wanted a home, without making them contribute in any way? That's how it sounds, but it seems like a pretty obvious design flaw. It's one thing for society at large to support the few people who legitimately can't hold a job, but supporting anyone who asks without question is just begging to be taken advantage of.

As far as your post, though... Yes, things are better for humanity than they've ever been, but that doesn't mean humans aren't cruel (on the other hand, we're more or less the only species with a sense of morality in the first place, but that's beside the point). And it sounds like the Farm failed because it didn't account for the resources it would take to support all those people, not because it tried to support them at all. Theoretically the money should come from the people who have way more than they need, not the people who can only afford noodles and oranges on Christmas.

[–]Chipit 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The point is that they tried to take care of the world before they took care of themselves.

We can't take care of everyone. Take care of those we know, at home. That's the lesson of the socialist collective.