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Can't argue! So, America is becoming more disorderly. The 2nd Law in a societal setting. Are the conditions from which tyranny emerges being created?
Whose cause is being advanced? Those who believe the worse, the better. Anything that contributes to worse contributes to the Revolution. And disorder clearly contributes to worse.
This is why the vagrancy and loitering laws were done away with in the first place. They were sacrificed to serve the Revolution. Sometimes knowingly but usually by useful idiots.
It's part of the long game and we're in the 4th quarter.
One of the points I want to emphasize here is that the basic nature of the casual labor market is changing constantly, and will continue to. The emancipation of women, and their full assimilation into the labor force, is the single greatest driving factor.
The best source of material on the transient labor force of which I'm aware is Mark Wyman's Hoboes; prior to World War II, the general opposition to employing women, coupled with the death or disability of women due to childbirth and poor medical resources, created a pool of unattached men, and the emergence of better preservation methods and a network of railroads to carry the product led to the centralization of agriculture in much of the American West. These men lived a threadbare existence, but it was all a not-yet-industrialized economy could offer at the time.
But continued progress has not only led to a society in which women live longer and outnumber men; it has altered the job market to such an extent that occupations primarily requiring physical strength are disappearing, replaced by soft skills and a less-questioning attitude toward authority; this trend, coupled with a growing acceptance of non-traditional forms of sexual partnership, has made the aging, uncommitted, low-educated and less-disciplined male the new societal pariah.
In fairness, I doubt that most men seek a life of idleness, but the organization of the societal safety net, coupled with the continued toward dull, repetitive labor at the bottom of the pyramid makes a substantial disincentive against playing by the rules, and the underlying factors seem likely to intensify as globalization proceeds. Unemployed (and sometimes unemployable) males, most of them white, are behind the intensifying burden on Social Security's Disability funds, and civil authority might eventually have to adopt a more forceful stance.
Moderator cut: Off Topic Given the increasing concern over terrorism, and the proven fact that the gang and drug cultures share a common contempt for the trappings of a responsible lifestyle, might it not be time for civil authority to institute a carefully-worded and monitored crackdown on the small, perpetually-undisciplined percentage of the population who seem to institute a disproportionate share of the petty crime and mayhem on our streets?
Every community has its share of idlers, loafers and parasites, not to mention those who sustain themselves via illegal enterprise; when the average citizen seldom traveled far from his/her home community, their names were common knowledge. But an increase in individual mobility, via both the personal vehicle and the expansion and overall reduction in costs of the air transport network, has made it far easier for the shiftless and the irresponsible to expand their "lifestyle", and the burden created by it, among more than one community.
That burden continues to increase -- thanks in no small part to the incentive given to the administrators of the societal safety net to expand their influence (and payroll) rather than to increase efficiency (and better serve the truly-deserving) by weeding out the "professionally indolent", and making it easier to identify them via a central database.
The basic entitlement reforms of the 1990's bought some time, but the burden is again increasing, and the abusers are harder to identify -- that minority is quite capable of frustrating the current laws by any number of tactics, as any police officer who deals with the gangsta element can substantiate, and refines their strategy at every available opportunity. Perhaps it's time to reinstitute one of the more broad-based measures against a demonstrated pattern of unproductive behavior. No telling what might "turn up in the net".
You might end up there if the new law is worded improperly. It's foolish to ask the government to try to regulate this problem. The only people who know enough about the problem are the locals; decisions on what to do should rest with their individual city governments.
You might end up there if the new law is worded improperly. It's foolish to ask the government to try to regulate this problem. The only people who know enough about the problem are the locals; decisions on what to do should rest with their individual city governments.
I would agree completely .... if the mechanisms controlling access to the societal safety net were locally administered; it's the locals who often know the abusive minority personally, and can "weed them out".
Prior to the development of state-administered public assistance and Unemployment Compensation mechanisms, welfare measures in the Northeast and Upper Midwest were usually administered by a "Poor District" headed by an "Overseer of the Poor" His principal responsibility was to differentiate between those truly incapable of helping themselves, and those whose idle time could be put to better use, (and in the days when a substantial part of the population still lived on the farm, finding some not-too-desirable, but necessary chore usually wasn't difficult).
My grandfather, who was to live, and retain most of his faculties until the age of ninety, was one such individual; and he could attest to the fact that partisan politics and resentments from previous conflicts were a major sore point when cash assistance replaced the previous system in the late Thirties.
My sole contention in raising this point is that each change within the framework of the safety net brings on a different set of pressures, and the current emergence of a globalized economy focused more upon a combination of a fast pace and "soft skills" is going to displace a lot of older males who are not going to be enthusiastic about the options to which that new economy has limited them. Increased mobility, coupled with a bureaucratic mentality which has an interest in merely expanding the system, rather than penalizing deliberate indolence, will greatly increase the potential for its abuse. Sooner than we imagine, we might have to develop a "national vagrancy database" to aid local officials in identifying habitual offenders (such as the one cited in Post #8) who overburden the system by crossing state boundaries.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 11-26-2015 at 11:21 PM..
First of all, homelessness is an extremely serious social problem that affects all of us (not just the homeless themselves), and is just getting worse. I feel a lot of homeless are just lazy and/or drug addicts. And, some of them are also dangerous & should not be out wandering the streets where they pose a danger to others.
That being said, I don't think that punishing someone for not having any cash on them (i.e., the vagrancy laws) is the answer. If someone is homeless & isn't bothering anyone (a strong emphasis on not bothering anyone), I don't think they should be punished just because they don't have money.
Plus, this type of law could also negatively affect the non-homeless as well. For example, I myself don't always carry that much cash these days (if any). Most people are like me and primarily pay for things using credits cards. So, if you're going to punish someone for not having $, where do you draw the line?!...
Last edited by The Big Lebowski Dude; 12-06-2015 at 11:14 AM..
Let me elaborate a little further by saying that while I view much of the "homeless" issue as the result of mental problems and irrational behavior by people "on the fringes of sanity" who might have gotten better care (but lost their freedom) in an earlier day, they aren't the biggest problem.
Also, that I live in a small community of perhaps 3000 people, on the outskirts of one with 20,000, in a county with 70,000; those numbers are still small enough that each small town or neighborhood can identify its chronic misfits, and sometimes nip the problem of, for example, an aging eccentric, in the bud.
The problem I'm concerned with is embodied in the individual below, whom I've written about in an earlier thread:
I've been acquainted with the individual cited above for almost 25 years. Some friends and I tried to get him pointed in the right direction on several occasions, and were left sadder, wiser, and poorer because of it. This individual has never continuously held a job for more than a few months, has had brushes with law enforcement in at least eight states, and served "county time" on several occasions which included both Unemployment Compensation fraud and attempts at identity theft -- including my identity -- his deviant lifestyle encouraged and dependent upon greater mobility he clearly does not deserve.
He's still out there -- easily identifiable by the rotten teeth he's turned down chances to fix (at state expense) due to his fear of dentists. By some strange miracle, he doesn't do drugs, and though he forfeited over $1000 on his person when arrested a few years ago, time and nature will likely ensure that he'll spend his last years in some publicly-funded hovel. And ironically, bills from credit cards, even for the lease of a car, still turn up occasionally at addresses he provided during the years we tried getting him off the street.
I'm sure there are examples like this embarrassment everywhere in the nation, and likely many more of them in larger cities. A few years ago, while visiting the West Coast, I had the experience of dealing with a derelict -- a disfigured woman -- whose body odor was so strong that it emptied a city bus.
The problem seems likely to worsen as the American economic recovery stalls; an inescapable by-product of globalization and the end of our dominance, plus the good intentions of people who turned our weaklings loose into a society with which they can't cope.
Wow, why not just shoot malingering, ungrateful Justin in the back of the head, if he's such an embarrassment or threat to you? Cut out that pesky due process sock puppet show.
There is a reason why vagrancy laws have existed for centuries. Of course before written history if you were in a place where you weren't an established community member and not providing anything to the common good you were just usually done away with immediately. So we have come a long way socially if not in a self-preservative manner.
The reason for vagrancy laws is that there is a statistically significant relationship between high residential mobility and crime. Most of us recognize that from experience and massive effort has been made in the U.S. to resolve issues of homelessness. (Let's also recognize that not everyone who loiters is homeless.)
The reasons for why the problem persists are as varied as the "offenders" themselves. Not all of them are because people are helpless victims so, in the interest of the largely law-abiding public, I think it's a good idea to identify who's who, sort them out and apply the appropriate social response.
In his book, Down and Out in London and Paris, the writer George Orwell gives a good description of what the hobo's life in the twenties and thirties was like in these large European cities. The last section of the book deals with the life of the destitute and often hungry wanderers and the way in which society dealt with them. For the most part is is a harrowing tale of hopelessness and despair and ends with Orwell offering his own views as those of a changed man, he later confided to a friend that (in his opinion) we as humans were most often the savage beast, worse in our relations with each other than that of the lowest animals.
The vitriolic responses to homelessness hasn't really changed from those times, we have thought poorly of our lesser well off citizens for ages, most likely a throwback to earlier times in our history when the unproductive were killed in order that the productive majority be ensured of a meal. I've managed to live well throughout my life, but in my own history there has been enough brushes with hard times that I don't judge others too harshly. Looking back I know that my upbringing and personal compass was such that I was able to not only live, but live well. To those that find fault with so many of their fellow human beings I say be happy for your own good life, and be sharing of some of that fortune.
Viriolic?
Savage beasts?
Harrowing tales of hopelessness and despair?
Let me guess - you work for a non-profit.
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