Or, and this is crazy, provide public access to restrooms and avoid spreading E. Coli and the like.
Similar to as Millie pointed out regarding comparisons, can we just treat other humans better than dogs? Let’s show each other a little respect.
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Public defecation can be sanitary, depending upon how it is done. Have you never made a camp latrine?
Many communities used to have public toilets, but got rid of them for strategic reasons. Doing so saved money, and was interpreted as giving people an incentive to use paid services, such as a restaurant or hotel.
More recently, I have seen more communities getting rid of public trash cans. Sure, it looks cleaner - provided that trash gets properly disposed of elsewhere. It’s just that the US has gotten allergic to infrastructure, because it’s all communism.
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I’ve never seen it put that way, but I really like your conception of the social contract. I may adopt it as part of my canon. Thanks.
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Even the name of it sets my nerves on edge! I will need to read through the rest of it later.
What gets me about most programs to “help the homeless” is that they tend to be fundamentally deceptive in their goals. Consider the outrage which happens when some religions “help the homosexuals” camp is revealed to exist for the purposes of re-conditioning them for ideological reasons, to “help” them to not be homosexuals. This is precisely how nearly all programs I encounter to “help the homeless” work - not to empower them as homeless people, but to force them to not be homeless anymore. I am sure that this is welcomed by some homeless. But the entire reason why being homeless in unpleasant and alienating is because it is deliberately made so, in order to discourage it. Much of the law goes back centuries and has racist origins, giving colonials legal excuses to harass natives.
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Yeah, the name of that legislation is incredibly bad. Read (or listen) to the NPR piece though - it’s doing good things.
I think you make a good point about people who want to be homeless. There ought to be better options for those people.
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I completely agree with you. My point is that there is a middle ground between the extremes of free for all and criminalization.
I don’t think anyone is arguing for an extreme interpretation here, except for you and @kuangmk11. Straw-man argument.
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Hiya @voidptr ,
Maybe you didn’t notice but my post was in response to the extreme interpretation by @kuangmk11. But thanks for labeling a call for middle ground reasonableness a straw man. Good catch.
wait a minute - the law seems to be losing some of its majestic equality here!
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Nonsense. Why don’t they just live the American Dream and pull themselves out of poverty by their own bootstraps?
From public pooper to millionaire…
There really is no difference. The origins of money are that early primates used to smear their shit on things so that others would recognize their claims to it. Money - for all of its pretense of civilization - is essentially monkey poop. Which is why some of us don’t bother with it.
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So my used toilet paper is money then? I’ll have to try at the grocery tomorrow … it’s “Certified Organic” after all!
And yet, when you send the bank your mortgage payment…
With sophisticated, modern primates, it has to be the toilet paper of a wizard to pass as reality.
I am a squatter. I don’t believe in property.
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Indeed. Compared to Rome that had public baths, public restrooms. We need a change in a few priorities.
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If there is no other place to poop then I am going to poop wherever I am when the need arises and certainly don’t begrudge anyone else that right.
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I like me some purp, for sure, but I think you mean violate here:
“such ordinances may violet the US Constitution’s Eighth Amendment”.
<prince to-the-tune-of='Purple Rain'>8th of Purp....8th of Purp</prince>
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Maybe everyone should be able to sleep outside if they want to just because why the hell not? I guess I’m glad that homeless people are permitted to sleep outside now, but the “cruel and unusual punishment” angle seems like quite a reach.
I wonder:Can the same argument be applied towards stealing food provided there are no readily accessible soup kitchens, since eating is also necessary and all that?
