Moving away from physical currency has been very detrimental to the homeless industry
Moving away from physical currency has been very detrimental to the homeless industry
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In China where digital payments are done mostly via apps like Venmo, there are beggars with QR codes in front of them. However they're mostly being used by organized crime rings
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Can you tell more about beggers in China? Like real stats or ground anecdotes.
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I don't have any stats or anything, but I lived in China in 2018 and would see them on my way to work. Usually amputees dressed in very sad attire with a QR code on the ground in front of them. My coworkers told me not to give them money because all the money is going to organized crime groups that manage all the beggars in town. I have no idea if this is true, but I heard it multiple times
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The homeless people in my area accept venmo and square cash. They put their details on their signs, which is pretty smart.
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Giving cash to "homeless" could be a death sentence when they use the $$ to buy their next fix and OD on a stash that's laced with fentanyl.
39 comments
"The homeless industry"?
Big Homeless
Didn't you know? They're assembled in factories.
Yeah the industry has been in the shit since credit and debit cards. A homeless guy with a chip and pin device to get donations is completely off-message for the brand
homeless fight clubs.
Go on...
So apparently around Los Angeles there's a supposed begging "cartel", wherein some of the folks who beg at stoplights and freeway off ramps are actually working for an organized ring. The way it was explained was that this group takes the lionshare of their donations and offer protection, food, and safe sleeping areas. I don't know how true this is, but I've heard it from quite a few unrelated people, one of which being a cop, so either there's some truth to it or it's a very elaborate hoax to get people to stop giving beggars money.
This is insane peak capitalism at work. Paying "donations" to an organized group to provide food and shelter is literally just recreating what the government should be doing with taxes. If this cartel is real, it's just criminalized socialism.
As long as they're not hurting anyone, I'm not against it, but that's just such a batshit crazy concept that that's where we're at with the world.
Not even homeless people can escape landlords
That sounds like an urban legend. The Sherlock Holmes story “The Man With the Twisted Lip” includes a wealthy man who had made his money by begging. The “beggar king” trope goes back further than that, and as far as I can tell it’s just a comfortable fiction to excuse society’s failure to care for its most vulnerable members.
In India, this kind of thing is common, especially when the beggars are children.
Pretty sure that it is one of those things that does happen rarely, but people tend to assume everyone is doing it as an excuse to dismiss the homeless problem.
Lion's hare? That's weird.
Did you mean "lion's share", but couldn't write?
The homeless-industrial complex. Which, having thought that out, sounds awful.
I know in my city I've seen a "homeless" guy beg for money, with a cardboard sign. Then goes and gets into his sports car and drives off.
And that got me thinking. Most people who give, don't give a dollar. They give a few dollars. So lets just say they get about $40 in an hour.
That's $40 untaxed. And there's nothing stopping them from just doing this all day. Remember, I'm not talking about actual homeless people. I'm talking about scam beggers.
Imagine doing $40 an hour average, for 10 hours, every day, for doing nothing. Set your own schedule. Never gotta worry about being late. Can't get fired. Practically zero costs to start this business. You need a piece of cardboard, a marker, and MAYBE a folding chair.
So yeah. I'd say it's an industry. An unregulated, scam, borderline illegal industry.
Add the cop's take as an overhead.
Studies suggest this is an extreme minority, and stories like yours - while yours might be true (and be fair to me here, we're just two usernames, we don't know each other's motives and biases), it's often used to push reasons to defund homeless shelters and criminalize being poor.
Even if you have seen a homeless person (or imposter) do something wrong, it might be worth considering that being homeless is very difficult and often caused by pre-existing medical conditions or institutionalized discrimination.
This is quite a take.
The weather, constant UV exposure, car fumes and tire particles, people shouting abuse and throwing shit sounds like awesome self-employment. Remember, if you look at all comfortable you don't fit the narrative.
That isn't even worth $40 an hour and I seriously doubt that figure, people don't even like making eye contact with folks standing on roadsides and they don't carry cash.
Do you have anything supporting this?
Yeah? You've seen it? You saw him begging and saw him get in a luxury car and drive away? He parked right beside where he was begging?
I call bullshit.
Would like to see some evidence supporting that beggars get an average close to $40 an hour. Searched for papers about the topic and haven't found anything being remotely close to what you suggest.
In some sketchy areas of the world, the local gangs use the disabled/amputees to beg all day and collect a portion of their donations
This isn't new: 20-20 used to do exposés on this kind of thing, and profiled (tailed) a beggar on the tonnele off-ramp and circle as he walked to his car, put his over-costume in his trunk, and drove off. This was in like 1999. On interviewing him, he admitted he made decent coin.
Support your food banks. They need cash.