3 ms·
> the whole reason the West Oakland homeless encampment has such an enormous garbage pile problem I lived in West Oakland for several years during the first .c
by aerostable_slug 1y ago
> the whole reason the West Oakland homeless encampment has such an enormous garbage pile problem
I lived in West Oakland for several years during the first .com bubble. People with houses there often didn't sign up for garbage service (or if they had, they didn't pay). I had to put a damned padlock on my garbage can just so I didn't have my own garbage dumped out and replaced by the freeloaders living next to me. They eventually notched my garbage cans with a saw so I couldn't lock them anymore. By the time I moved it was dueling piles of garbage, and it wasn't like I was the only one with the problem.
I find online commenters consistently underestimate the level of antisocial behavior that accompanies much of the squalor we see, and the fact that many people simply have no interest in playing by the rules of society regardless of how many handouts you give them.
- morkalork 1y agoThat kind of looks like a capitalism and privatization problem from here where trash is a municipal service and paid for by taxes?
- aerostable_slug 1y agoThe problem at hand is antisocial behavior, not how garbage service is handled in Oakland. Giving my neighbors effectively free garbage service wouldn't meaningfully address it. You can't just keep giving them free things and hope they'll magically turn into productive citizens, especially when 'free' really means "paid for with someone else's money." They just laugh at you and take the handouts, just like they laughed at me for being such a sucker that I paid my bills every month. This is the reality of dealing with antisocial behavior, and it would behoove more commentators (and policymakers) to familiarize themselves with it.