“Camping”

12 Comments

TCK · July 20, 2024 at 4:00 am

Theft, vandalism, and violent assault are not “just existing.”

D · July 20, 2024 at 9:55 am

Ok TCK.

Where did I say it was totally fine to steal, break shit, and rape people?

Sure–arrest those who are trespassing, stealing, breaking shit, trashing the place, and raping people.

But don’t criminalize bodily functions like needing to sleep, needing to stay warm and get out of the rain, or urinating.

Ask yourself what you would do if you were fired, had no money in the bank, no one would hire you, and the government evicted you and sold all your stuff for not paying taxes. Or maybe the next Great Depression sets in.

Sure, it’s probably a bit far fetched for most people…but that’s why there isn’t 50% homelessness or 100% homelessness. It’s allegedly under 1%.

If all you had was a backpack with some clothes, a tent and some food to get you started, what would you be able to do to survive?

Sure, everyone talks a good game about being able to hunt and fish and their wilderness game is unmatched…but hunting and fishing without government permission can get you locked up. Sleeping on public property that you were forced to pay for (and lost your house for in this scenario) can get you jailed–be it sleeping in the city hall parking lot or on public forest lands. Having to take a leak when you don’t have a toilet can get you locked up too.

Have kids? As a father, are you going to sit there and watch them starve to death or will your morals about stealing a loaf of bread from the store become a bit more flexible as you watch them waste away because the government (at least in my state) has made it illegal to hand out food to the homeless..

Hopefully none of us will find ourselves in that situation, but plenty of people do.

Sure, sometimes it’s your own damned fault for doing drugs. Sometimes it’s out of your control due to genetics and mental health. Sometimes it’s not even remotely your fault–like with the great depression.

TCK · July 20, 2024 at 2:53 pm

Seems to me you need to spend some time actually experiencing the cultural enrichment of having such camps in YOUR backyard, instead of telling people it’s fine that they have to deal with it in theirs.

D · July 21, 2024 at 9:42 am

If you mean “your back yard” as in “my private property” verses public property that everyone was forced to pay for or be locked in a cage like a dog, yeah–trespassing is wrong, immoral, and illegal.

If you mean “your back yard” as in “not on my property but near by”, yeah…I live in Washington State. There are plenty of homeless camps. Fortunately my private property is approximately 9 acres…so there’s plenty of distance between me and any public land where people are camping.

Anyways, what’s your solution? Force me to pay more taxes to lock them in cages at the risk of being locked in a cage myself when the taxes become affordable? Force me to pay more taxes to build nicer homes than mine (again at the risk of being locked in a cage like a dog and *my* house stolen from me) so they aren’t on the street? Or how about forcing people to pay more taxes so we can build a nice set of showers and “deal with the problem” permanently? Oh–I know…I’m a small business owner….you could vote to force me (and other businesses) to hire some of them and give them money directly. That would save you money and cripple a bunch of businesses…but they’d all have jobs….even the ones that do drugs and steal shit.

Seriously. What’s your solution to force people to get jobs and houses so they aren’t on the street?

TCK · July 22, 2024 at 3:42 am

Well, over the last few years I’ve become one of those wise, enlightened souls who knows in his heart that the proper way to clean up those kinds of encampments is with truck-mounted potato diggers, but if you want a broadly applicable action plan it’s actually quite simple.

Step 1) End ALL money to the Homeless Industrial Complex, every last fucking cent.
Step 2) Just a fraction of that money could fund enough asylums to house those mentally ill who literally can’t function in society (as opposed to career criminals who simply don’t want to).
Step 3) Use those potato diggers I mentioned earler to deal with the kleptocratic grifter scumbags who made the HIC a thing in the first place as they deserve.
Step 4) Mandate a nation-wide “one and you’re done” policy for Narcan. No more sending EMTs to go give another dose to the same career junkie criminal for the third time that weekend.
Step 5) There is no step 5, the first 4 are literally all you need to do to end this manufactured crisis.

D · July 22, 2024 at 1:57 pm

So we pretty much agree that taxes shouldn’t be funding their lifestyle.

I’m not interested in adding new taxes to fund asylums though. Just stop people for defending their lives and/or property.

The ones who steal and kill for drugs will be eliminated pretty quickly.

Trying to track who got their “one free dose” of Narcan basically would make EMTs play God…and would require tracking these people like cattle. I don’t think that would be easy. It’s not like crabbing where you give them their free dose and then notch their ear as a sign for future EMTs.

But if you’re into using taxes to solve the problem, just start providing “Drug ID” cards. You get to go to government and get your ID card. It’s free. That ID card can be used to get any drug you want from any pharmacy or street corner vending machine. The doses aren’t enough to kill you….but you can totally get up to 5 free doses per day.

Let nature take it’s course over 90 days. Scoop up the bodies, discotinue the problem, and you’re basically left with a small number of people who are homeless due to a drug problem they can mostly manage, no drug problem at all, or a mental illness that is mild enough that hasn’t gotten them shot yet.