I hear this argument a lot when it comes to discussion about the homelessness crisis. Every time housing is brought up people flood in claiming “most homeless people don’t even want a home or shelter. They prefer the streets!”
The only time I’ve heard someone say they would rather not stay at a shelter was because the homeless shelters were arguably worse than sleeping in an alley. Shelters aren’t permanent and tend to be severely underfunded which means they are not in good shape. We haven’t given people a reason to choose a roof over pavement because every “safety net” is taken away instantly.
Position of every neoliberal ever to every social service ever was “defund, point out it don’t work, destroy”
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people say they saw a homeless guy begging for money and then he got in a new BMW to drive off. Like 50% of Americans believe that.
I remember reading some article in boredpanda about some lady would beg with her children and then get picked up by her boyfriend in a nice car.
Funny how there are so many of those…
Kind of funny (and also sad) that Americans have nightmares about armed forces coming and giving them food and shelter.
Its not even their fault in this case, they all know what American soldiers do to civilians overseas, and I would never trust the US military to provide me with bare necessities. It either means that I’ll be a propaganda photo op, or they’re about to release Sarin gas on me for a different type of photo op.
Pure neoliberal idiocy! They are so delusional they think being homeless is a fucking lifestyle!
It gives me hope for humanity that capitalist govts feel a need to train people into these clown opinions in order to protect landlords’ profits…
They do seem to sing another song when you ask them about Carmela Batista.
In a country like (real) Korea, which has guaranteed employment and housing, being homeless and jobless generally means that you are leeching off the system.
This guy is basically arguing for his right to be a freeloader.
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People should be able to have a good standard of living for free.
This is true, but that good standard of living should come along with an obligation to work, if you are an able-bodied adult. Parasitism has always been a crime in socialist countries. The problem with the “no work, no food” mechanism under capitalism is that it makes unemployment the norm, and employment the exception; i.e., the number of jobs available is always less than the labor pool, and if you don’t happen to get one of those jobs – well, tough kidney beans, citizen, and welcome to the streets. Socialism by contrast makes employment the normal state, and unemployment the exception. You might not have your apartment taken away for not working, but you will certainly be considered lax in fulfilling your official duties, and disciplinary action will be taken.
I completely agree, I just find it a bit uneasy when the line of questioning starts to veer into the gray area of what could be considered “valid employment”. For example, the arts or intellectual pursuits; is being a musician a valid form of employment? What about a freelance artist? Or a writer? Do they provide a necessary service to their country and deserve to be respected and treated the same as a teacher, doctor, or postman? Or are they hedonistic leeches that do nothing all day while pursuing their “hobby” and feeding off of the work of their fellow countryman?
Its these gray areas where the question of “leeches” become tenuous and subjective, and is very easily influenced by reactionary, anti-intellectual, and capitalist mindsets and institutional frameworks. We must strive to avoid these pitfalls with a materialist worldview.
Fair enough. We should remember, though, that most actually existing socialist countries have promoted artists and intellectuals in a big way; the USSR in particular was a cultural titan. I think that in many ways, the cult of “productivity” one sees in capitalist society is a form of propaganda and overcompensation, a way in which we convince ourselves that our basically inefficient and unproductive mode of social organization is in fact on the cutting edge of economic progress.
Not if it’s on the backs of the imperial perifery
Not if it’s on the backs of the imperial periphery
Even if this actually the thought process of these people, which I think are in an extremely marginal minority, such thinking can only be the product of their material conditions, namely the necessity to adjust to exploitative and wasteful nature of capitalism. Since the eight-hour day was established in Germany in 1918, there have been groundbreaking advances in technology and specifically automation, filtering through every field of business, which mean that there simply is not enough demand for work within the private sector for everyone to take up full-time jobs. But instead of splitting the work up so that everybody would work for, say, 5 hours a week, or take up investments so that some of their workers can pursue nobler callings, it is much more profitable for the capitalists to simply lay off large parts of the workforce instead, which then have to join the “army of unemployed”, to use a well-known metaphor. Because destitution begets rebellion, however, the welfare state then has to provide them with amenities such as government money to keep the system in place. Like libertarian societies, social democracies are also ultimately fashioned for the benefit of the capitalists, with the difference that cash must accomplish in the latter what ideological delusion does in the former.
This has got to be a troll.
I think the first one was a joke, but the third seems real (or at least asablackman)
There is no fucking way that man was homeless.
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(It’s on a tiktok video about Guaranteed housing in the DPRK)
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Wow. Dat freedom pill is a helluva drug.
What the actual fuck lmao
sometimes you have to wonder how much freedom is enough. Look at the dug epidemic Western countries are suffering from now. relying on addicts to make the correct decision
