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"hit a nerve among many who said that turning down-and-out people into wireless towers was exploitative and discomfiting" Ok. I think I've got Aspergers becaus

"hit a nerve among many who said that turning down-and-out people into wireless towers was exploitative and discomfiting" Ok. I think I've got Aspergers because I cannot believe I just read that. Giving homeless people a temporary job, money, hope, and making others aware of their situation is exploitative? Then why don't these warm hearted humanitarians against exploitation do something about it?! I don't see them making a difference or a change. As someone who actually donates money to homeless on streets and intersections regularly. I can't help but feel really extremely angry at that statement. I bet you the same people who find this "exploitative & discomforting" are the same people who never donate money to the homeless in the first place. Let alone actually stop to talk to them, listen to their story, and try to understand their situation. "$20/day is exploitation" THEY ARE FUCKING HOMELESS. They have no home. They live on the streets. And you're worrying about them getting minimum wage? They're worried about staying alive. These aren't people who need a union and a minimum wage law to protect their interests. These are people who are at the very end of their rope who are begging other human beings for money so they can eat. Getting $20 a day for walking around with a wireless transmitter doesn't sound discomforting. What does sound discomforting is hanging out at polluted intersections breathing carcinogenic car fumes all day while baking in the sun with a sign asking for money so you can eat a meal that day and not die. Damn absolutionists. Their problems (survival) and your problems (minimum wage) are completely different. I'd like to ask these "humanitarians against exploitation" where they were yesterday when those homeless people didn't get $20.

Inane_Chatter 15y ago
I think your self-diagnosis may have hit somewhere near the truth of the matter, as it is shockingly lacking in empathetic awareness or even common sense. Rates of serious mental illness and drug use within homeless people are vastly higher than in the general populace[1], and as such, suggesting that they become mobile transmitters is "taking the fucking piss", along the lines of eating Irish children[2]. Do you seriously think that people with already fractured notions about 'invisible forces // aliens // schizophrenic delusions' are [b]not[/b] going to see this as some kind of conspiracy and/or be terrified of it? Do you really think it would help them [b]at all[/b]? A mature discussion would revolve around the stunning statistics regarding homelessness and illness [both mental illness and chemical dependencies] within the United States, the lack of will power to solve said issues, and the quite frankly barbaric state of health care in general. But no: Charity works so wonderfully well, let's stick with that model. You know, like Dickens suggested[3]. [1]e.g. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/02/050201101738.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/02/050201101738.ht... [2] Swift [3] Hint: Dickens was satirising the Charity racket in books such as Oliver Twist in many ways ~ the Victorian model of charity is nothing more than ethical tourism, and solves nothing.
- enjo 15y ago
  What 75% or so (according to your article) who aren't mentally ill? Also, how many of those mentally ill suffer from paranoia in the first place. After all, mental illness takes many forms. Is this different from hiring someone to spin a sign (which I've heard nary a peep about)? I don't think so.
- moonchrome 15y ago
  http://homelesshotspots.org/ http://homelesshotspots.org/ Please do share, which one of those people do you feel is incapable of making decisions because of mental illness/drugs ? Did you talk to one of them about invisible forces and aliens ? Don't you think that people doing this might realize it's not in their interest to put a logo on a schizophrenic person ? Or are you just uncomfortable with what these people are doing and have no problem shitting on a option that was given to them. I'm sure if you send them job offers they will drop the wifi thing in a second - and it should be really easy to find them. Or are you going to shit over people doing this so they lose this opportunity, along with anyone in the future, because of the public backlash. God I hate internet people.
- derleth 15y ago
  So we should deny these people (and never forget they are people) a relatively safe way to make more money than they otherwise would simply because it makes you feel ooky inside?
pessimizer 15y ago
As somebody who was homeless (not the couchsurfing type, but the sleeping under bridges type), I think it could very well be exploitative depending on how much labor is involved and what profit is made from them. I'm not sure what you think minimum wage is for, but I think that keeping poverty from becoming a profit center is one of those things. If people weren't available to work for less than minimum wage "willingly" there wouldn't be a need for it. If they retain all of the profit, then I'm all for it. Have you lost your bet? edit: what if they were being paid $20 a day for being tables, or coatracks? Would it be exploitative yet?
- ChrisNorstrom 15y ago
  You're right. I'm sorry. It IS exploitative. We should take away their wireless transmitters and all the money they made from donations and services, stop paying them $20/day and go back to not giving a fuck about them like we did before we read the article. Just saying: If I was homeless, and someone paid me $20/day + all tips and donations to hold onto a wireless transmitter. I would be ecstatic.
  - pessimizer 15y ago
    A lot of people give a fuck about the homeless, you're just projecting. They are human beings with lives, friends, and families. I'm pretty sure that they say that they would feel a certain way if they were in your position too, and it would be just as speculative.
    - derleth 15y ago
      > They are human beings with lives, friends, and families. Which means they deserve a job that makes them feel good about themselves and nurtures them as humans beings. A lot of people with homes don't have that.
      - pessimizer 15y ago
        I'm not sure if sub-minimum wage wandering appliance is that job.
potatolicious 15y ago
> "These are people who are at the very end of their rope who are begging other human beings for money so they can eat" This is the standard liberal refrain when it comes to homelessness. As compared to "These are people too lazy to work for themselves and sustain themselves on the handouts of others" argument we hear constantly from conservative camps. Neither argument hold a lot of water, and in the end the homeless are considerably more complicated than either simplistic argument would suggest. Both arguments are deeply unfair to our society and the homeless, as it ignores the primary issues surrounding homelessness in exchange for simplistic feel-good fuzzies. You've conveniently ignored the big, giant, planet-sized elephant in the room: substance abuse and mental health in regards to homelessness. Without addressing this it is impossible to know what side of the line this homesless-wireless-tower thing finds itself. There is a large (I'd argue vast majority) of the homeless demographic where this would be absolutely exploitative, and there is a much smaller demographic where this may actually be helpful. Without knowing more details about how this was executed, it's impossible to say what's what. > "where they were yesterday when those homeless people didn't get $20." Perhaps, giving $20 to an aid organization. Directly funding the homeless is an issue that we can argue about till the cows come home and never come remotely close to consensus. Suffice it to say, there are many, many, legitimate concerns about its efficacy, and the money can be just as destructive as it can be rehabilitative. There is also the notion of whether or not rehabilitation should be a goal when it comes to homelessness. ... All in all, incredibly complicated and without easy answers.
- vardyr 15y ago
  Fun fact: Texas spends the least money on mental health funding of all 50 states. I live in Austin. We see these people every day on the streets, and some have actually become local celebrities--Leslie, for instance, who just passed away http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Cochran http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Cochran . SXSW visitors should face these people, too, in my opinion, because these homeless folks are as much a part of the city as anyone/anything else is. I would venture to say these homeless folks are much more a part of the city than many of the privileged people who work here and choose to commute from the 'burbs, then whine about the homeless population and traffic in the city. Yes, the wording is bad, these people are not literally hotspots. However, in a state that believes so strongly in "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" which, taken in the literal sense, is physically impossible and thus a terrible metaphor, these people could use any help they can get.
wisty 15y ago
If Google makes $500,000 per engineer, it's arguably exploitive for them to pay their engineers $50,000. They can pay a lot more, but don't because they are stingy. On the other hand, if the Wi-fi operator is making $25 per employee, they just can't pay much more. Even if you think "exploitation" is bad, it's simply not "exploitation" to offer a reasonable cut of your revenue to an employee. This also applies to low-cost accommodation. A slum lord renting out crappy rooms for $100 a week is being exploitive if it costs them $10 a week. A Tokyo or Hong Kong style "coffin hotel" offering tiny $100 / week rooms which costs $50 a week is not being "exploitive", it's just servicing people who couldn't otherwise afford accommodation.
temphn 15y ago
1000 upvotes for this man. All these idiots at SXSW and the New York Times would quite literally rather have these people be homeless and invisible than have someone dream up a job where they could get paid for providing value. This blows my mind, it's utterly insane. As for the "exploitation" of paying them $20 a day rather than minimum wage times 8 hours or whatever, this might be the cleanest example ever of why minimum wage laws cause unemployment. The job might pay for itself at $20, and might not at $8.50 * 8 = $70. As always happens, person A is providing person B with money in exchange for a service. And person C is standing on the sidelines screaming that A is "exploiting" B by not paying them enough money. But person C is doing nothing for person B, and will do nothing for them, and wants nothing more than for person A to go out of business and person B to go back to being invisible.
- pessimizer 15y ago
  You've convinced me. I'm going to pay a few homeless people $2 an hour to be my coffee grinders and charge hipsters $20/lb to get their beans ground by a real live failure of the social safety net. And I'm never going to reflect on that, and I'm going to get enraged at people who ask me to. You're really assuming that you know a lot about person C without ever meeting him/her. It's really easy to do that when you're just making it up.
  - noonespecial 15y ago
    That's kind of the point. You really have to ask Mr. C what he thinks. It might not be that hard(1) to carry a wifi in your pocket and a nice deal to get an extra $20 for doing it. Even still, lots of people choose freely to work for less than the minimum wage. They work on startups. (1) Not as hard as one of these job things anyway.
  - temphn 15y ago
    I know you intend this to somehow be a cutting remark, but you've just described the business model of every hipster feel good activity, from "fair trade" coffee to Project Red. The bottom line is that the hipster (aka Person C) is not going to employ the homeless. They are not going to fork over money out of their pocket, or create a positive sum job. Because it's hard. Instead they carp on the sidelines about "exploitation" (what does that even mean?) rather than stepping up and doing something themselves. I really don't get the use of "exploitation" here. I guess the unarticulated concept is that these people are poor, and have no skills, and thus no leverage with which to negotiate for high pay...so it's "exploitative" to pay them anything, or anything below minimum wage, or anything below a software engineer's per diem? This concept refuses to engage the fact that for a business to stay afloat, one's pay is upper bounded by the profit produced. There is no obvious business model by which a homeless guy with no skills is going to produce $80k/year of value. But there is some possibility that they can produce $20/day, or $7k/year of value. The hipster will attack a hotspot job as exploitative, they will attack a minimum-wage "McJob" as exploitative, they will even attack the conditions that software engineers at EA voluntarily tolerate as exploitative. In fact, they will do everything other than step up to personally show just how it is possible to profitably employ someone at B's skill level without being "exploitative".
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
statictype 15y ago
As a single data point to counter your own: I donate monthly and even physically take part in helping feeding of the needy and this makes me feel a little uncomfortable. I can kind of understand your position but I don't share it.
wakeup 15y ago
You are fucking retarded. Just fuck off you cunt. 20$ a day! Why don't you get yourself a BJ from a homeless bitch for a tenner?

Inane_Chatter 15y ago

I think your self-diagnosis may have hit somewhere near the truth of the matter, as it is shockingly lacking in empathetic awareness or even common sense. Rates of serious mental illness and drug use within homeless people are vastly higher than in the general populace[1], and as such, suggesting that they become mobile transmitters is "taking the fucking piss", along the lines of eating Irish children[2]. Do you seriously think that people with already fractured notions about 'invisible forces // aliens // schizophrenic delusions' are [b]not[/b] going to see this as some kind of conspiracy and/or be terrified of it? Do you really think it would help them [b]at all[/b]? A mature discussion would revolve around the stunning statistics regarding homelessness and illness [both mental illness and chemical dependencies] within the United States, the lack of will power to solve said issues, and the quite frankly barbaric state of health care in general. But no: Charity works so wonderfully well, let's stick with that model. You know, like Dickens suggested[3]. [1]e.g. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/02/050201101738.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/02/050201101738.ht... [2] Swift [3] Hint: Dickens was satirising the Charity racket in books such as Oliver Twist in many ways ~ the Victorian model of charity is nothing more than ethical tourism, and solves nothing.

enjo 15y ago
What 75% or so (according to your article) who aren't mentally ill? Also, how many of those mentally ill suffer from paranoia in the first place. After all, mental illness takes many forms. Is this different from hiring someone to spin a sign (which I've heard nary a peep about)? I don't think so.
moonchrome 15y ago
http://homelesshotspots.org/ http://homelesshotspots.org/ Please do share, which one of those people do you feel is incapable of making decisions because of mental illness/drugs ? Did you talk to one of them about invisible forces and aliens ? Don't you think that people doing this might realize it's not in their interest to put a logo on a schizophrenic person ? Or are you just uncomfortable with what these people are doing and have no problem shitting on a option that was given to them. I'm sure if you send them job offers they will drop the wifi thing in a second - and it should be really easy to find them. Or are you going to shit over people doing this so they lose this opportunity, along with anyone in the future, because of the public backlash. God I hate internet people.
derleth 15y ago
So we should deny these people (and never forget they are people) a relatively safe way to make more money than they otherwise would simply because it makes you feel ooky inside?

pessimizer 15y ago

As somebody who was homeless (not the couchsurfing type, but the sleeping under bridges type), I think it could very well be exploitative depending on how much labor is involved and what profit is made from them. I'm not sure what you think minimum wage is for, but I think that keeping poverty from becoming a profit center is one of those things. If people weren't available to work for less than minimum wage "willingly" there wouldn't be a need for it. If they retain all of the profit, then I'm all for it. Have you lost your bet? edit: what if they were being paid $20 a day for being tables, or coatracks? Would it be exploitative yet?

ChrisNorstrom 15y ago
You're right. I'm sorry. It IS exploitative. We should take away their wireless transmitters and all the money they made from donations and services, stop paying them $20/day and go back to not giving a fuck about them like we did before we read the article. Just saying: If I was homeless, and someone paid me $20/day + all tips and donations to hold onto a wireless transmitter. I would be ecstatic.
- pessimizer 15y ago
  A lot of people give a fuck about the homeless, you're just projecting. They are human beings with lives, friends, and families. I'm pretty sure that they say that they would feel a certain way if they were in your position too, and it would be just as speculative.
  - derleth 15y ago
    > They are human beings with lives, friends, and families. Which means they deserve a job that makes them feel good about themselves and nurtures them as humans beings. A lot of people with homes don't have that.
    - pessimizer 15y ago
      I'm not sure if sub-minimum wage wandering appliance is that job.

potatolicious 15y ago

> "These are people who are at the very end of their rope who are begging other human beings for money so they can eat" This is the standard liberal refrain when it comes to homelessness. As compared to "These are people too lazy to work for themselves and sustain themselves on the handouts of others" argument we hear constantly from conservative camps. Neither argument hold a lot of water, and in the end the homeless are considerably more complicated than either simplistic argument would suggest. Both arguments are deeply unfair to our society and the homeless, as it ignores the primary issues surrounding homelessness in exchange for simplistic feel-good fuzzies. You've conveniently ignored the big, giant, planet-sized elephant in the room: substance abuse and mental health in regards to homelessness. Without addressing this it is impossible to know what side of the line this homesless-wireless-tower thing finds itself. There is a large (I'd argue vast majority) of the homeless demographic where this would be absolutely exploitative, and there is a much smaller demographic where this may actually be helpful. Without knowing more details about how this was executed, it's impossible to say what's what. > "where they were yesterday when those homeless people didn't get $20." Perhaps, giving $20 to an aid organization. Directly funding the homeless is an issue that we can argue about till the cows come home and never come remotely close to consensus. Suffice it to say, there are many, many, legitimate concerns about its efficacy, and the money can be just as destructive as it can be rehabilitative. There is also the notion of whether or not rehabilitation should be a goal when it comes to homelessness. ... All in all, incredibly complicated and without easy answers.

vardyr 15y ago
Fun fact: Texas spends the least money on mental health funding of all 50 states. I live in Austin. We see these people every day on the streets, and some have actually become local celebrities--Leslie, for instance, who just passed away http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Cochran http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Cochran . SXSW visitors should face these people, too, in my opinion, because these homeless folks are as much a part of the city as anyone/anything else is. I would venture to say these homeless folks are much more a part of the city than many of the privileged people who work here and choose to commute from the 'burbs, then whine about the homeless population and traffic in the city. Yes, the wording is bad, these people are not literally hotspots. However, in a state that believes so strongly in "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" which, taken in the literal sense, is physically impossible and thus a terrible metaphor, these people could use any help they can get.

wisty 15y ago

If Google makes $500,000 per engineer, it's arguably exploitive for them to pay their engineers $50,000. They can pay a lot more, but don't because they are stingy. On the other hand, if the Wi-fi operator is making $25 per employee, they just can't pay much more. Even if you think "exploitation" is bad, it's simply not "exploitation" to offer a reasonable cut of your revenue to an employee. This also applies to low-cost accommodation. A slum lord renting out crappy rooms for $100 a week is being exploitive if it costs them $10 a week. A Tokyo or Hong Kong style "coffin hotel" offering tiny $100 / week rooms which costs $50 a week is not being "exploitive", it's just servicing people who couldn't otherwise afford accommodation.

temphn 15y ago

1000 upvotes for this man. All these idiots at SXSW and the New York Times would quite literally rather have these people be homeless and invisible than have someone dream up a job where they could get paid for providing value. This blows my mind, it's utterly insane. As for the "exploitation" of paying them $20 a day rather than minimum wage times 8 hours or whatever, this might be the cleanest example ever of why minimum wage laws cause unemployment. The job might pay for itself at $20, and might not at $8.50 * 8 = $70. As always happens, person A is providing person B with money in exchange for a service. And person C is standing on the sidelines screaming that A is "exploiting" B by not paying them enough money. But person C is doing nothing for person B, and will do nothing for them, and wants nothing more than for person A to go out of business and person B to go back to being invisible.

pessimizer 15y ago
You've convinced me. I'm going to pay a few homeless people $2 an hour to be my coffee grinders and charge hipsters $20/lb to get their beans ground by a real live failure of the social safety net. And I'm never going to reflect on that, and I'm going to get enraged at people who ask me to. You're really assuming that you know a lot about person C without ever meeting him/her. It's really easy to do that when you're just making it up.
- noonespecial 15y ago
  That's kind of the point. You really have to ask Mr. C what he thinks. It might not be that hard(1) to carry a wifi in your pocket and a nice deal to get an extra $20 for doing it. Even still, lots of people choose freely to work for less than the minimum wage. They work on startups. (1) Not as hard as one of these job things anyway.
- temphn 15y ago
  I know you intend this to somehow be a cutting remark, but you've just described the business model of every hipster feel good activity, from "fair trade" coffee to Project Red. The bottom line is that the hipster (aka Person C) is not going to employ the homeless. They are not going to fork over money out of their pocket, or create a positive sum job. Because it's hard. Instead they carp on the sidelines about "exploitation" (what does that even mean?) rather than stepping up and doing something themselves. I really don't get the use of "exploitation" here. I guess the unarticulated concept is that these people are poor, and have no skills, and thus no leverage with which to negotiate for high pay...so it's "exploitative" to pay them anything, or anything below minimum wage, or anything below a software engineer's per diem? This concept refuses to engage the fact that for a business to stay afloat, one's pay is upper bounded by the profit produced. There is no obvious business model by which a homeless guy with no skills is going to produce $80k/year of value. But there is some possibility that they can produce $20/day, or $7k/year of value. The hipster will attack a hotspot job as exploitative, they will attack a minimum-wage "McJob" as exploitative, they will even attack the conditions that software engineers at EA voluntarily tolerate as exploitative. In fact, they will do everything other than step up to personally show just how it is possible to profitably employ someone at B's skill level without being "exploitative".

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

statictype 15y ago

As a single data point to counter your own: I donate monthly and even physically take part in helping feeding of the needy and this makes me feel a little uncomfortable. I can kind of understand your position but I don't share it.

wakeup 15y ago

You are fucking retarded. Just fuck off you cunt. 20$ a day! Why don't you get yourself a BJ from a homeless bitch for a tenner?