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I currently live in a petty remote area and we have literarily zero homeless folks in our hamlet area. (We actually have a fairly robust program that provides h
by unsnap_biceps 1y ago
I currently live in a petty remote area and we have literarily zero homeless folks in our hamlet area. (We actually have a fairly robust program that provides housing for folks in need). We have one fast food restaurant in the area and it's a McDonalds. It was one of the main hangouts for folks in the area. We would have weekly meetups there. After Covid, they closed the seating area and installed the touch screens. They went from employing around 7 to 9 folks down to only 3 and talking with the franchise owner, they're not planning to ever hire back up and re-open seating. He did mention that the gross revenue is way down, but net revenue is about the same and his stress in managing the location is way reduced with the headcount reduction and simplification of the business.
- lotsofpulp 1y agoNever having to deal with a member of the public inside your property is a huge liability and hence stress reducer.
- spaceguillotine 1y agoso is not opening a service based business
- bawolff 1y agoSounds like that is the path this business owner took. One macdonalds deciding they dont want to be a sit-down resturant anymore doesn't prevent anyone else from opening a competing resturant.
- XorNot 1y agoSure but it's also a scaling factor. People are going to choose the tradeoff that's right for them or their insurance costs.
- exe34 1y agoCapitalism working as intended. Wealth extraction without having to give back to the community.
- bawolff 1y agoThey give back by paying taxes. Like i think the intended path here is that taxes pay for a library, a park, or a community center. Having random businesses create hang out spots out of the goodness of their heart is not the intended path. They can if it makes sense for their business, but community needs should be primarily funded through taxes not business charity.
- exe34 1y agoOnly yesterday some people on here were trying to convince me that taxes were literally like slavery for rich people!
- mathgeek 1y agoIf it’s that bad for wealthy folks, imagine the impact on everyone else.
- andrepd 1y agoWould make sense, your reasoning, if they actually paid taxes. Unfortunately everything is very broken on that front, labor pays much higher taxes than corporations, the richest don't pay taxes at all, and the shortfall is plugged by cutting public services and issuing debt on what remains.
- lIl-IIIl 1y agoBut on the other hand... Some people open cafes specifically because they dream of creating a place for the community to hang out. At least that's what they say. I often see McDonald's fill that niche for older folks.
- Yeul 1y agoHaha yeah there are people like that in the Netherlands. And then everyone comes with their laptop to work and it becomes an open office.
- ykonstant 1y agoIs that a bad thing?
- silvestrov 1y agoit is if you want the place to be financially viable.
- bombcar 1y agoI’m going to build a cafe inside a faraday cage someday. Just to see what happens. Maybe I’ll not serve alcohol and call it Zero Bars.
- dpb001 1y agoBetter yet, serve alcohol and call it Bar/No Bars.
- mananaysiempre 1y agoThe common non-tourist behaviour in a café in Vienna is to sit there talking for hours, buying a few cups of coffee total. It has been like that since before laptops were a thing. Yet the cafés remain viable.
- UltraSane 1y agoYeh having to deal with actual customers is such a pain.
- Der_Einzige 1y agoThis but unironically
- TheOtherHobbes 1y agoThe platonic ideal is no customers, no employees, no management, and no government. Just AIs trading Bitcoin with each other.
- HPsquared 1y agoThe platonic ideal is doing only your preferred form of work, and getting paid universally usable currency.
- msgodel 1y agoTouch screens have been around for a long time. Just like the situation on the upper end with AI: I don't think it's the technology, people are actually getting worse at socializing (creating stress for the people responsible) and so socialization is becoming more expensive and opportunities for it are becoming more rare. This could get a lot worse before it gets better.
- mathgeek 1y agoMcDonalds broadly rolled out touchscreen ordering after covid became a thing. That’s why it gets called out in these discussions.
- HPsquared 1y agoIronic because it involves hundreds of people touching the same object. Not the best for infection control!
- lotsofpulp 1y agoI am under the impression most infections from infectious disease is from airborne particles.
- bombcar 1y agoThey existed before Covid but many franchisees didn’t want to bother with the expense (or saw relatively bad uptake). Now they’re ubiquitous but mainly for people who don’t use the app, it seems.
- ghaff 1y agoMy general observation is that a lot of self-service wasn't super-popular pre-COVID. But, now, it's become more entrenched and a lot of people just grumble and deal with it while a lot of stores made the investment and accept the (probably overall) reduced cost even if customers don't love it. My local DIY home store doesn't even really have regularly-staffed full checkout lanes any longer.
- estearum 1y ago> I currently live in a petty remote area and we have literarily zero homeless folks in our hamlet area This is a common observation and should make more people ponder: why is it that higher local wealth/economic productivity increases homelessness (especially if you control for public services to counteract the effect)?
- cheschire 1y agoCorrelation is not causation. One does not increase the other, rather the rise in one is correlated with the other.
- estearum 1y agoI disagree. As the comments point out, there is an extremely clear mechanistic explanation as to how these are causal.
- aldonius 1y agoI'd suggest high local wealth and economic productivity tend to correlate strongly with increased housing costs. People move there for the jobs, and the ones who do have jobs tend to have relatively well paying ones, so can pay more for housing. But the ones who don't have a well paying job are in trouble... https://worksinprogress.co/issue/why-housing-shortages-cause-homelessness/ https://worksinprogress.co/issue/why-housing-shortages-cause...
- IncreasePosts 1y agoSo these people decide to become homeless instead of moving to a nearby area with a lower cost of living?
- estearum 1y agoLike everyone else, homeless people tend to have ties to specific areas, and by the time you're homeless you tend not to have the capital required to move and restart someplace else. Basically at what point do you decide you're "failing" (no moral valence intended) in one area in which you have a support network that you're willing to risk moving to a totally new area and starting over? At that point, do you have the resources required to do so successfully?
- fullstick 1y agoHow do you know there are "literally zero homeless folks" in your area?
- K0balt 1y ago(Deleted because misplaced)
- p_ing 1y agoOften advocacy groups or municipalities will perform counts on specific days each year. So while one does not need to say "literally" in that sentence (it wasn't figurative, after all), it is possible to say "zero homeless folks" as there may be data backing the statement up.
- mcbobgorge 1y agoYes- I live in a pretty affluent Los Angeles suburb and we recently just hit "functional zero" street homelessness. "To achieve Functional Zero, the number of individuals placed in interim or permanent housing must be greater than the number of individuals who become homeless over a six-month period, and the homeless population, as a whole, must have a median duration on the streets of less than 90 days." The data is gathered by the city as well as local nonprofits.