🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <xzqu313pwwc.fsf@uni-paderborn.de>,
	Axel Boldt <axel@uni-paderborn.de> writes:
> darrow@oneillaw.com (O'Neill) writes:
 
>> On 16 Oct 1998 04:32:58 +0200, Axel Boldt <axel@uni-paderborn.de>
>> wrote:
 
>> >If you are poor in the US, you live in a little self-built card board
>> >home in the streets of Los Angeles. The police will come by regularly
>> >and destroy the card board home. You are not allowed to beg for money
>> >(recent city ordinance). As a single unemployed male you don't receive
>> >any welfare payments. You don't starve because there are private soup
>> >kitchens.
 
>> Hmm, I wonder where you get this information.
 
> New York Times, Public radio, some of it I've seen myself.
You can see hobos in most train and subway station in European
countries too. Some areas of Belgium, where the staunchly reactionary
politics of each and every Belgian government have preserved 
unviable companies at the expense of viable ones, have in excess of
30% unemployment. People live in squalid houses. They all look
to the state to do something about their situation; when interviewed,
the stock phrase is: 'This (whatever they're asked about) is
unacceptable, *someone* should do something about it'. The idea
that *they* can do something about their own situation has 
all but disappeared.
 
>> It strikes me as something you might see on TV.  
 
> I don't know, I don't watch TV.
Many newspapers aren't much better :-) I don't know the situation
in Germany, but most Belgian newspapers would disappear if they
lost their subsidies. 
 
>> 95 percent of the homeless are not homeless because they're poor, but
>> because they're insane.  Under our constitution, we cannot
>> institutionalize them against their will, because that's a deprivation
>> of their liberty.

> And so, honoring their liberties, you proceed to treat them in the
> most degrading way possible. Does it also violate their constitutional
> rights to offer them a place in a sheltered group home or sanatorium
> for the mentally ill and to give them the medical drugs they need?
My sister spend time in a sanatorium, where the doctors gave her
debilitating drugs *against her will*, because they had decided she
needed them. It's fairly easy to have a someone commited, and once
you're in, you've got a hard time getting out (refusing drugs is
proof that you're mentally ill). Don't forget doctors make a fat 
living out of psychiatric hospitals. 

> The fact is that society does not offer the poor mentally ill any
> place attractive enough so that they would stay there out of their
> free will. That is a problem of the society, not of the mentally ill.

> And poverty is the root of the problem: if you developped severe
> schizophrenia tomorrow, you would be treated properly and housed in
> some institution till the end of your life, because your health
> insurance or your family would pay for it. A poor guy with exactly the
> same condition would end up in the streets, looking forward to daily
> abuse by the police.
> 
> And as we are talking about constitutional liberties, what about the
> right to free speech? Why are they not even allowed to beg for money?
> Face it, the public generally hates the homeless. It sees them as
> people too lazy to work.
Some beggars are professionals. You're giving too much credit to
'poor' people. Being rich doesn't make one a 'good' person in the
moral sense, and being poor doesn't do that either. Many people
are poor through their own stupidity, or greed. I worked with a guy
who wanted to change jobs so he could cash his pension fund
contributions and buy a new car. He wasn't mentally incompetent
(he could write COBOL), and if he ends his life in misery, he
(IMHO) doesn't deserve any special consideration. 

I am willing to help my less fortunate fellow man, but do not
want to be told he's got a *right* to be helped (by having the
state confiscate some of my earnings) and that he's somehow
morally superior to me because of his 'poverty'. 

>> For the most part, your scenario is not true.  To the extent anybody
>> lives in cardboard boxes, it is for reasons other than the absence of
>> governmental assistance.  Shelter is always available to families, and
>> in most cities even to a single unemployed male.
> 
> Shelter of a quality which makes people prefer cardboard boxes. Go figure.
The quality's OK, but most shelters insist you don't drink yourself
unconscious, don't fight, and shower. Many street people resent this
interference in their private life, and prefer to stay on the street.
I know a guy who flipped out, left his wife, kids, job, nice suburban
house, and went to live on the streets. I've known people who've
committed suicide - for no apparent reason. Not all hobos are 
'victims of society'. 
 
>> Singe unemployed males can and do receive welfare payments as well.
> 
> This is false. They can get Social Security if they are disabled, but
> welfare is for families only.
> 
>> The rules on this vary from state to state, and most states now have
>> some limitations.  But food and shelter are always available, no
>> questions asked.
> 
> Provided by private charities, not by the state.
Forced charity is better than voluntary charity? Getting a handout from
a civil servant is less demeaning than getting a handout from a well-off
individual? Unemployed people are very aware of the fact that they
get charity. It's not enough to make something a right (in law) to 
convince people that it's not a handout.

-- 
Stefaan
-- 

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