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Well, a homeless person with a smartphone has a hell of a lot better chance of getting a job than they did pre-smartphone, right? Maybe this can count as more

by mrlala 7y ago

Well, a homeless person with a smartphone has a hell of a lot better chance of getting a job than they did pre-smartphone, right? Maybe this can count as more of a smartphone thing an internet thing.. but it's still largely an internet thing that would allow someone in a rough spot to still be able to connect with people online and look/apply for jobs.

kohanz 7y ago
> Well, a homeless person with a smartphone has a hell of a lot better chance of getting a job than they did pre-smartphone, right? Not that I know the answer, but I would have to see a source on this. Why would a device that may increase access to job postings, but a non-homeless job candidate is much more likely to have than a homeless person, increase the chances of said homeless person in getting a job? I'm not even sure that the ability to access job postings is the main problem there.
- SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
  I’ve worked with and volunteered with an org who among other things got smart phones to our local homeless. Yes, it does help quite a bit. It’s a $50-100 setup and even without data they can go to any million places with free WiFi and get emails, call job listings, keep in touch with family members. It’s a pretty big deal to them.
  - lucideer 7y ago
    I think you're comparing different things here. 1. Comparing the chances of a homeless person in the modern world with a smartphone, to a homeless person in the modern world without a smartphone. 2. Comparing the chances of a homeless person in the modern world with a smartphone, to a homeless person in a hypothetical internetless world (where noone can have a smartphone). The org you volunteered with dealt with comparison #1 above. We're discussing comparison #2.
    - SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
      >>>> Well, a homeless person with a smartphone has a hell of a lot better chance of getting a job than they did pre-smartphone, right? >>>Not that I know the answer, but I would have to see a source on this. Why would a device that may increase access to job postings, but a non-homeless job candidate is much more likely to have than a homeless person, increase the chances of said homeless person in getting a job? I'm not even sure that the ability to access job postings is the main problem there. >> [My reply about first hand seeing it] >We're discussing comparison #2. I think whatever meaning you had in another thread hasn't been in the one I replied to.
      - kohanz 7y ago
        I think both you and @lucideer are right at a certain level. I did mean in the absence of cellphones altogether, since I'm referring to the fact that the non-homeless population almost all have cell-phones now, so that's really just "table-stakes" in the job hunt market. That said, your experience provides an important data point too. I would be curious to know whether it's the phone access or the "among other things" that you refer to, which I assume means other kinds of aid, training, and support, that provides most of the value in them finding a job.
        SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
        The among other things is haircut, shave, cloths, boots, shower, shelter, sleeping bags, getting touch with family, basic medical, training, mental health evals, etc. stuff that actually helps today as opposed to the feel good “just build more housing and give it to people for “free”” ideas. Is the phone worth more than the sleeping bag? Depends on the temperature. But, yes for the most part the phone is helpful. I would guess a lot get sold, but in those cases they are typically going to someone that does actually want it. Let’s be honest, a Samsung whatever 5 isn’t going to be traded for a 5th of whiskey and sold eventually to some highschooler, they wouldn’t be caught dead with that phone. People have this impression that homeless are all 60-80 year old bums harassing you for change, there are a lot that have jobs, live in their cars, and could really use a phone, even with their families, or live in other people’s houses. The invisible homeless.
lucideer 7y ago
> Well, a homeless person with a smartphone has a hell of a lot better chance of getting a job than they did pre-smartphone, right? Do they? How? Are you suggesting that online jobs website make it easier to find a job? A homeless person with a smartphone isn't the only one with access to the jobs website. Nor does the existence of such a website intrinsically create the jobs behind the ads on it. A sibling commenter talks about the existence of the internet facilitating job creation through other means, but I don't think homeless people having smartphones has much bearing on this. It's worth noting that income inequality has steadily increased in the last ~40 years at leastm (in the US), so talk of the internet lifting people out of poverty has to be considered in that context.
- generalpass 7y ago
  A homeless person desiring to gain some employable skills has an easier time doing such with the Internet and an access device, such as a phone - even if the phone has no cell service but can use free WiFi- than prior to the existence of the Internet and those devices. There is a silent class of homeless people whom I am not clear you are including when you state "homeless", and that is people living on cars and/or "couch-surfing". On the occasion I've seen it mentioned in articles, it seems that it is nearly impossible to come up with reliable numbers on the actual population of homeless people living under such conditions due to their transitory nature. It is likely true that the genuinely destitute homeless people, which is comprised in large part of people who suffer severe psychological and mental disorders, are only minimally aided by cell phones. I suspect the way they actually benefit is they carry on their persons a means for those trying aid them to find them as well as a life line they can tug, should they so choose. "Inequality" is a divisive term with no genuine academic definition. Another correlation is that as "inequality" has risen, so has the greatest reduction in people living in subsistence farming and abject poverty in history of mankind, a conclusion that would suggest that "inequality" positively correlates with greater human flourishing, but the real purpose of my mentioning this is to demonstrate that "inequality" is a largely meaningless metric, by itself, used for manipulating people not familiar with broader understanding of what has occurred for so many billions of people on the planet.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
salawat 7y ago
Not really? Yes they could contact an employer, but Can they show up reliably on-time? Public transit costs money -> Homeless -> no address, so can't use a bank, cashing of checks can be done, but only if there is credit offered by an employer, or through charity of others. So from the get go, there's a geographic limitation w.r.t body-here types of work. What about mental/computer work? Assume a smartphone. Still homeless, so no address means no bank. Could send a check to a P.O. Box maybe; but if there is company hardware you need to be vested with, that may not work out well. BYOD is a thing, and can work out, this is truly a success in that regard, but again, lack of address complicates things. I mean, you aren't totally wrong, but I'm just not convinced that the homeless jobless experience has been revolutionized to the point people in poverty have been uplifted by the billions. If anything, infrastructure automation has allowed more to be done with less in terms of previously manual jobs, and enabled more efficient fund extraction from the average consumer through economies of scale. Especially in terms of rent seeking. If you look at the number of contracts entered into over a lifetime as a metric, software/the Internet has allowed an explosion in terms of the "one-sided contract" and has led to a social tilt away from the original purpose of the construct which was to serve as a meeting of the minds between equals. Essentially, it's allowed for the carve out of unethical contracts at massive scale, and consolidation of capital intensive workflows through automation and standardization. Can people learn and share? Yes. Are people all uplifted equally? I'd say no, and certain populations in particular are likely worse off. I'm thinking Kenya's predatory debt crisis, China's maturing surveillance state, and even the United States and U.K. are getting uncomfortably close to that event horizon. Marketers ruined everything. We just wanted to be able to learn stuff. They had to turn that around and take it to the unhealthy extreme in the name of targeted advertising.
ArtDev 7y ago
I don't see a lot of homeless people with cellphones. How would they even charge them? Library Internet seems like a better solution.
- Frondo 7y ago
  Where there are public spaces that aren't actively policed, with public outlets, that's where they hang out. I used to live in a neighborhood next to a public library with a sheltered area and an outlet, and every night there'd be a couple of homeless people camping out there. They plugged their devices, had a smoke, and had shelter for the night. Thankfully, the neighborhood itself was tolerant enough to let them be -- I never saw them being kicked out, and why should they be? They're not making trouble, and life's hard enough if you don't have an address to your name. Give them the small, quiet dignity of a place to stay dry from the rain and browse reddit.

by mrlala 7y ago

kohanz 7y ago

> Well, a homeless person with a smartphone has a hell of a lot better chance of getting a job than they did pre-smartphone, right? Not that I know the answer, but I would have to see a source on this. Why would a device that may increase access to job postings, but a non-homeless job candidate is much more likely to have than a homeless person, increase the chances of said homeless person in getting a job? I'm not even sure that the ability to access job postings is the main problem there.

SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
I’ve worked with and volunteered with an org who among other things got smart phones to our local homeless. Yes, it does help quite a bit. It’s a $50-100 setup and even without data they can go to any million places with free WiFi and get emails, call job listings, keep in touch with family members. It’s a pretty big deal to them.
- lucideer 7y ago
  I think you're comparing different things here. 1. Comparing the chances of a homeless person in the modern world with a smartphone, to a homeless person in the modern world without a smartphone. 2. Comparing the chances of a homeless person in the modern world with a smartphone, to a homeless person in a hypothetical internetless world (where noone can have a smartphone). The org you volunteered with dealt with comparison #1 above. We're discussing comparison #2.
  - SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
    >>>> Well, a homeless person with a smartphone has a hell of a lot better chance of getting a job than they did pre-smartphone, right? >>>Not that I know the answer, but I would have to see a source on this. Why would a device that may increase access to job postings, but a non-homeless job candidate is much more likely to have than a homeless person, increase the chances of said homeless person in getting a job? I'm not even sure that the ability to access job postings is the main problem there. >> [My reply about first hand seeing it] >We're discussing comparison #2. I think whatever meaning you had in another thread hasn't been in the one I replied to.
    - kohanz 7y ago
      I think both you and @lucideer are right at a certain level. I did mean in the absence of cellphones altogether, since I'm referring to the fact that the non-homeless population almost all have cell-phones now, so that's really just "table-stakes" in the job hunt market. That said, your experience provides an important data point too. I would be curious to know whether it's the phone access or the "among other things" that you refer to, which I assume means other kinds of aid, training, and support, that provides most of the value in them finding a job.
      - SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
        The among other things is haircut, shave, cloths, boots, shower, shelter, sleeping bags, getting touch with family, basic medical, training, mental health evals, etc. stuff that actually helps today as opposed to the feel good “just build more housing and give it to people for “free”” ideas. Is the phone worth more than the sleeping bag? Depends on the temperature. But, yes for the most part the phone is helpful. I would guess a lot get sold, but in those cases they are typically going to someone that does actually want it. Let’s be honest, a Samsung whatever 5 isn’t going to be traded for a 5th of whiskey and sold eventually to some highschooler, they wouldn’t be caught dead with that phone. People have this impression that homeless are all 60-80 year old bums harassing you for change, there are a lot that have jobs, live in their cars, and could really use a phone, even with their families, or live in other people’s houses. The invisible homeless.

lucideer 7y ago

> Well, a homeless person with a smartphone has a hell of a lot better chance of getting a job than they did pre-smartphone, right? Do they? How? Are you suggesting that online jobs website make it easier to find a job? A homeless person with a smartphone isn't the only one with access to the jobs website. Nor does the existence of such a website intrinsically create the jobs behind the ads on it. A sibling commenter talks about the existence of the internet facilitating job creation through other means, but I don't think homeless people having smartphones has much bearing on this. It's worth noting that income inequality has steadily increased in the last ~40 years at leastm (in the US), so talk of the internet lifting people out of poverty has to be considered in that context.

generalpass 7y ago
A homeless person desiring to gain some employable skills has an easier time doing such with the Internet and an access device, such as a phone - even if the phone has no cell service but can use free WiFi- than prior to the existence of the Internet and those devices. There is a silent class of homeless people whom I am not clear you are including when you state "homeless", and that is people living on cars and/or "couch-surfing". On the occasion I've seen it mentioned in articles, it seems that it is nearly impossible to come up with reliable numbers on the actual population of homeless people living under such conditions due to their transitory nature. It is likely true that the genuinely destitute homeless people, which is comprised in large part of people who suffer severe psychological and mental disorders, are only minimally aided by cell phones. I suspect the way they actually benefit is they carry on their persons a means for those trying aid them to find them as well as a life line they can tug, should they so choose. "Inequality" is a divisive term with no genuine academic definition. Another correlation is that as "inequality" has risen, so has the greatest reduction in people living in subsistence farming and abject poverty in history of mankind, a conclusion that would suggest that "inequality" positively correlates with greater human flourishing, but the real purpose of my mentioning this is to demonstrate that "inequality" is a largely meaningless metric, by itself, used for manipulating people not familiar with broader understanding of what has occurred for so many billions of people on the planet.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

salawat 7y ago

Not really? Yes they could contact an employer, but Can they show up reliably on-time? Public transit costs money -> Homeless -> no address, so can't use a bank, cashing of checks can be done, but only if there is credit offered by an employer, or through charity of others. So from the get go, there's a geographic limitation w.r.t body-here types of work. What about mental/computer work? Assume a smartphone. Still homeless, so no address means no bank. Could send a check to a P.O. Box maybe; but if there is company hardware you need to be vested with, that may not work out well. BYOD is a thing, and can work out, this is truly a success in that regard, but again, lack of address complicates things. I mean, you aren't totally wrong, but I'm just not convinced that the homeless jobless experience has been revolutionized to the point people in poverty have been uplifted by the billions. If anything, infrastructure automation has allowed more to be done with less in terms of previously manual jobs, and enabled more efficient fund extraction from the average consumer through economies of scale. Especially in terms of rent seeking. If you look at the number of contracts entered into over a lifetime as a metric, software/the Internet has allowed an explosion in terms of the "one-sided contract" and has led to a social tilt away from the original purpose of the construct which was to serve as a meeting of the minds between equals. Essentially, it's allowed for the carve out of unethical contracts at massive scale, and consolidation of capital intensive workflows through automation and standardization. Can people learn and share? Yes. Are people all uplifted equally? I'd say no, and certain populations in particular are likely worse off. I'm thinking Kenya's predatory debt crisis, China's maturing surveillance state, and even the United States and U.K. are getting uncomfortably close to that event horizon. Marketers ruined everything. We just wanted to be able to learn stuff. They had to turn that around and take it to the unhealthy extreme in the name of targeted advertising.

ArtDev 7y ago

I don't see a lot of homeless people with cellphones. How would they even charge them? Library Internet seems like a better solution.

Frondo 7y ago
Where there are public spaces that aren't actively policed, with public outlets, that's where they hang out. I used to live in a neighborhood next to a public library with a sheltered area and an outlet, and every night there'd be a couple of homeless people camping out there. They plugged their devices, had a smoke, and had shelter for the night. Thankfully, the neighborhood itself was tolerant enough to let them be -- I never saw them being kicked out, and why should they be? They're not making trouble, and life's hard enough if you don't have an address to your name. Give them the small, quiet dignity of a place to stay dry from the rain and browse reddit.