It is depressing easy to have this happen and even worse how many people are convinced it could never be them.
What happened to the author's equity?
It would seem like it is some kind of felony charges that are the cause. Whatever they were.
But all in all - the downside risk is huge in the US.
I guess this is the only way people with high salaries or wealth in the US can find peace with themselves - maybe that's the mental illness?
> My public defender reminded me of a woman I did ayahuasca with in upstate New York.
Well...
What are you talking about? He specifically mentions drinking beer and doing ayahuasca in the past.
Also, can we stop stigmatizing "drug" use? Most of humanity uses "drugs" regularly for various reasons. Just because a specific "drug" which someone enjoys using recreationally is on a government list doesn't mean that they can't be a productive member of society. Live and let live.
Dignity and personal space is something the richest country in the world can afford for all of its citizens. Yet chooses not to.
People committing petty theft are largely forced to do so due to the circumstances they live in. Your judgment is better aimed at people committing white-collar crime with far worse consequences in the same city the author is located in.
> The end of March happened and so did the temporary shelter. I needed to find a new place.
> I remembered a place in San Mateo I rejected back in February. It hadn’t crossed my mind when I first arrived back in San Francisco. When I had been offered it in February, I rejected the offer because I thought it was ludicrous to think I was homeless. I come from a relatively privileged upbringing, and the idea of homelessness was a distant concept to my naive brain.
Even people who are self or outwardly destructive, do not deserve the outcome the author got.
I think a harder to answer question is, assuming there are not enough resources to help everyone in need (in a practical sense) should we prioritise the “more deserving” over the less.
Every human who is suffering deserves compassion, but should we deprioritise those who are suffering partially because of their own choices?
This post reads to me like someone suffering from mental illness and/or personality disorder.
Obviously more to this story when someones support network has collapsed to this degree, but at the same time people don't have great support networks anymore =/
There's something deeply disturbing about a society that allows this to happen, and yet it's something we've learned to accept and largely ignore for centuries. The promise of technology bringing forth universal prosperity is a lie promoted by those who have something to gain from that narrative. Yet we keep believing these people to this day.
Where in the world is the answer no? Maybe if you’ve freshly immigrated to a new country or something?
That is a very scary thought, but it’s also scary for me to think that so many people live such isolated lives, it’s such a foreign concept to me culturally.
To the point where you have no friends. To the point where even your own parents have given up.
> Where in the world
Everywhere. You can’t comprehend it because you don’t know anyone like that, likely because the government you live in takes care of that problem for you.
> isolated lives
And by the way, the people in your culture in this situation are isolated too, from you. And that’s okay, and maybe good even. But you don’t know about them.
I don’t know what the right answer is. America is definitely not the right answer.
Technically a satire quote criticizing the robber Baron it's credited for, but the sentiment is the same. Pay off a bourgeois and they'll fight against the the sympathetic bourgeois and proletariat happily. The elite don't even need to lift a finger.
It’s so gross contrasted with the theme. The very first paragraphs start with a poor attempt to humble brag his”credentials” as not just a “normal” homeless person.
The self mythologising, the framing of negative things more like the weather than consequences of his choices.
The fact that despite privileged upbringing and working in tech in the valley he has no one willing to offer him a couch.
The most striking for me is the framing of his own grandmothers death as exceptional, proving his lineage is special.
Calling others NPCs, framing of stealing from stores as being the heroic action, even with approval from grandmother.
I feel this is getting redundant. I’d love to hear if anyone disagrees and what their thoughts are.
Don't get me wrong, I do not want to play clever here, it's just a honest question.
Also, by the time he is already homeless homeless, he is likely no longer able to afford the fixed costs of a move. He is not getting an apartment even in small town USA if he can't put down a deposit. He is not even getting there without money to pay for the trip. He'll also likely need a car to hold any job which is another major cost.
I'm not sure what your qualifications for 'reasonable' and 'capable' are, but without a support system those things are difficult to prove such that you can utilize them properly.
Let's do a thought experiment. Imagine have been evicted from your home and have no job. You have no car, no phone, no ID, no money, no credit or bank account. All of the people you know who would give you money or a place to stay or a reference have disappeared and cannot be reached. What do you do?
You could find a cash job as a dishwasher or something similar. If you work nights you can sleep in the library on in other public places. But where do you put your things? Spare clothes, toiletries, books, everything you might need to feel comfortable or to look decent has to be carried on your person, and even then is liable to become lost or stolen. How do you shower? Every restroom experience is using a public one. You can't cook meals, so you have to find free ones or buy them.
Hopefully what you got out of that is that access to things that you and I take for granted is a really big deal to someone without a home, and cities like San Francisco make many of those things difficult instead of impossible.
But the US is a f*cking dystopia at this point.
How come the richest country of the world - the model of capitalism - allows so many of their citizens go homeless?
It's mindblowing.
They've got capital, but I'd argue that they're long way from model capitalism since some time. There's both over- (regulatory capture) and under regulation (consumer and environment protection) that goes against this and companies have enough sway to influence the law and consequently the market. Free market in the original sense of "free from all forms of economic privilege, monopolies and artificial scarcities" is not even a goal anymore.
For those older folks, an NPC is a character in an adventure that is scripted or run by the Dungeon Master.
OsrsNeedsf2P•1h ago