There were a few points that the article didn't bring up. I was surprised that they didn't discuss the speculative value of bitcoins. There's no way that the value of a dollar in your pocket will suddenly double, but the value of a bitcoin has and will again. Obviously volatility isn't all fun...would you want your salary paid in bitcions? In the current market you might actually come out ahead over the next few years.
The second thing is that these bitcoin payment systems only work because they dodge the minimum wage. There are a lot of things that homeless people could do if it was legal to pay $.60/day. The minimum wage does a lot of good, but the people in this article didn't seem to mind the situation. I think it's because a lot of people don't think of working online as "real work" and are ok with low paying tasks.
All in all this article was a feel good hit. Bitcoin allows homeless people to avoid the shame of begging and the risk of robbery. They receive support from their community to earn legitimate money by doing real work. Of course fake youtube views and button pushing aren't very beneficial to society, but I think there will be more useful work for them and others in the near future.
A functioning human brain is a very rare thing in the universe. The way we get ahead is by utilizing everyone of them that we can find. We often write homeless people off as a drain on society, but there's something to be said for everybody pitching in, even if just a little bit.
>> "Bitcoin allows homeless people to avoid the shame of begging"
With a choice between pride + 60¢ per day or $10-20 per day from begging why wouldn't you choose the latter?
To be able to afford laptops, smartphones, cigarettes etc. these men must be getting money from somewhere other than bitcoin.
Also: "he decided to live on the street for a while" makes me think he probably has some money in savings that he is able to make use of. That would explain why he has a smartphone (and presumably cell plan if he's able to use the phone).
This is a feel good article but lets be honest: The vast majority of homeless people don't have laptops or smartphones. They don't choose to be homeless like this man did. The article is examining a few of outliers. Bitcoin isn't going to help most homeless people.
>> With a choice between pride + 60¢ per day or $10-20 per day from begging why wouldn't you choose the latter?
The article mentioned that it reduces the likelihood of robbery, but to put it more simply, they have less of a chance of being mugged. Panning for donations is quite obviously easier, but makes you fall victim as a potential mark, labeling yourself homeless is like shouting, "I have no dedicated protection I can rely on, won't be taken seriously by police, and likely don't have anyone who worries about me."
>> To be able to afford laptops, smartphones, cigarettes etc. these men must be getting money from somewhere other than bitcoin.
The subject of the article lost his jobs and subsequently his housing, the laptop and smartphone are most likely relics from before he was homeless. The cigarettes are a common theme I have seen among homeless, not just these guys; sometimes they don't even buy them, but nab a still lit cigarette a passerby tossed on the ground.
>> Also: "he decided to live on the street for a while" makes me think he probably has some money in savings that he is able to make use of
The article reads exactly as this: "After a few months, he got back under a roof, but that didn’t last, so he decided to live on the street for a while, rather than yo-yoing between home and homelessness." The last part of the segment where he says we wishes to avoid yo-yoing between homes is because he does not want the stress of having a place to stay, and then finding himself without, occurring over and over. It is possible he has a savings account that he is storing cash in to get off the streets, but your comment is not based on fact so that may not be true.
>> This is a feel good article but lets be honest: The vast majority of homeless people don't have laptops or smartphones. [...] Bitcoin isn't going to help most homeless people.
You're right, the majority don't, but it's purpose wasn't as a solution to the problem of homelessness, but instead an exposition, a case study if you will, where Bitcoins have proven to be beneficial.
>there's something to be said for everybody pitching in, even if just a little bit.
I'm not sure how clicking links on youtube could ever, in any reality or worldview, be considered "pitching in" in any significant way.
Bitcoin may be a great way for homeless people to make money, and it may have many benefits over carrying cash or having to wait on a pay check. All of that is good. But to say that clicking youtube links contributes any value to society (or really anything except youtube's advertising revenue) is outright ridiculous.
The volatility of bitcoin isn't a big problem for these homeless guys because they probably spend it the same day when they receive it, it's more of a problem for the hoarders. And if the price of bitcoin changes too much then probably the "money making" services adjust they prices accordingly so the next day the homeless receives the same dollar value (in bitcoins) than before.
I wonder if Amazon's Mechanical Turk pays in Bitcoins? That seems like a better choice than watching YouTube vids. You could earn much more than 60 cents a day.
I love the idea behind Mechanical Turk, but last time I tried to use it I found the barriers too high to make it worthwhile (considering the pay). The good tasks had long qualifying tests, and the market was absolutely flooded with low quality tasks so picking a task became a chore in itself.
Love the picture of the "homeless" guy using a laptop newer than mine, with his pet, nice bike, playing a video game while he smokes a cig. He also has an energy drink... as if he needs it to get through his day of sitting around. It's people like him who are hurting the homeless people that are actually in need.
That's a $319 laptop (http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-G505-15-6-Inch-Laptop-Black/dp/...) and, while I can see the brand of the bike, that's likely a less than $150 bike when it was brand new. Pit bulls/boxers are basically free at any dog shelter. The average rent price of apartments in Pensacola Fl (where he lives) is $819/month, and the cheapest apartment I could find was $600/month, with proof of income and first and last month's rent paid in advance ($1200.) I bet they probably won't take his bitcoin blockchain as proof of income for that apartment.
So, he has spent less than 1/3rd of what he'd need for an apartment on 2 items that provide him income, entertainment and transportation and you're complaining that he doesn't "look homeless enough."
EDIT: the "energy drink" in one picture is a monster branded water bottle, but in another picture there are clearly cans of Monster on the bench.
You don't have to feed them society-approved dog food. Some people live on dumpster-diving; it's much easier to imagine a dog owner helping the dog do that. In an area with the right kind of restaurants, this would take about ten minutes of effort once a day.
You do not know the backstory here. The laptop and bike may have been purchased when he still had housing. Ending up homeless does not mean you are automatically stripped of all worldly possessions. A laptop and bike are very valuable to have on the street. In a digital world, being able to stay connected can help you do things like job hunt so you can get off the street again. And playing a video game so you don't fucking lose your mind can be time very well spent.
I find such remarks incredibly annoying given the importance of the "digital divide" in separating rich from poor. Criticizing a homeless person for hanging onto a laptop as their only path out of poverty amounts to hatred and a desire to keep them a permanent member of the underclass with no way out. I value my computer far more than I valued the crappy apartment I was evicted from. I always have.
I made this comment out of irritation at the suggestion that this guy is doing this because he needs food. It's a load of shit. It's impossible for a mentally sound person to starve to death in this country, homeless or not. Just because there are homeless people who are homeless because they lost their job and now cant afford food/shelter, doesn't mean that there aren't homeless people who prefer that lifestyle. If you are in a nice climate (like SF) and you are given food, shelter, and basic necessities plus some luxuries (bike laptop etc.) then the idea of working extra hard to land a crappy job where you can still only survive with subsidized everything and you don't have any spare money, doesn't sound so appealing. People on here infer that the average homeless person had some great job, a house, car, etc. and they just need some help to regain that. I'm sure there are people like that who exist, but I would warrant a great deal of the homeless (those who aren't addicts or mental)wouldn't have a much better lifestyle if they got a job, because the job would likely be minimum wage. You cannot live independently on minimum wage in this country. So why even bother working?
Really? Sell a laptop and bike and you might have a couple of weeks rent at best. Stop buying cigarettes and dog food and you aren't going to magically save enough for a one-bed apartment on an ongoing basis.
Not really. In order to get in most places you need first/last/cleaning deposit and good credit. For that you need a job. But to get a job you need a permanent address, a place to get clean everyday, and fresh clothes everyday. But to have those you need a place to live. While it's true that "digital nomads" choose to be homeless, that is more often not the case. I went the digital nomad route and found myself in a hole that was hard to get out of. At least I still had a car to sleep in and a laptop. Showers were a big problem. The best solution is to join a 24 hour gym.
Not a chance in hell -- a laptop that will last at last two years goes for what, $300-400 ?A used bike goes for way less than a hundred. That would cover at most one month of rent, and then what?
Rent for how long though? One month? With no security deposit and no documented income? If you wanted to rent an apartment for one year it would cost $500/month x 12 months + security deposit == $6500. This does not include food, utilities or heat.
So no a $400 laptop does not approach the cost of rent.
300 dollar laptop =! Fancy laptop. There's 0 chance of the added cost of all these products being equal to rent. Even assuming its a fancy laptop, are you suggesting he sell his only means of income to MAYBE afford a month of rent? How bout the next month? Judging a homeless person based on their small amount of possessions in a single picture shows a complete ignorance to the situation most homeless people are in...
That's a ridiculously myopic application of the concept (which is flawed to begin with). Even if some needs are more important, that doesn't mean we can't make plans to better fulfill those needs in the future.
"'Poor' in America - A Heritage Foundation report proves that as long as 'poor' Americans have refrigerators and the strength to brush flies off their eyeballs, they're not really poor."
Wow, you guys talking about how this guy should have an apartment or something because he has a laptop are lacking in empathy.
When was the last time you met the eyes of one of these good-for-nothing, lazy, bad-smelling, disgusting … things?
If you can't even meet eyes with a homeless person, let alone really observing the person, you can't even put yourself into their shoes, feel what they feel, and see the world from their eyes. If you can't do that, then you lack empathy.
And when you lack empathy, that's the seed of prejudice.
Those are startup founders that live in RVs … because rent is too high in the Bay Area.
There are indeed homeless people who are mentally or emotional unstable. Not all homeless people are like that. And there are mentally and emotionally unstable people who live in homes. And then, there are systemic problems where rent prices have driven people out of affordable homes.
As to the point about how having laptops point to a confusion in Maslow's Hierarchy, I think that demonstrates more of the commenter's lack of understanding of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
It is true that shelter is at the bottom of the Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. It is part of the human need to seek physical security, and is the foundation for the higher level needs. However, "shelter" is so much more than an apartment or a house. An apartment and a house are socially approved shelter. Shelter is anything that will help you maintain homeostasis. It can be a cave. It can be survival shelter in the woods. It can be under a freeway bridge. It can be in a cardboard box. It includes clothing.
When you are in survival mode, you are not thinking about socially-approved shelter. You are seeking any shelter. People who go out into the woods without a lot of training in wilderness survival tends to flounder around when things go bad. Their minds, being unable to accept the situation as-is, keep thinking that civilization will save them somehow, and cling to that. "If only I can get out of these woods or find a ranger, I would be safe." Instead of "Oh shit, a bad storm is coming, I need to get under covers NOW."
Likewise, having talked to some of the homeless, I was told how you can pick out the newly homeless. They have so much pride (and shame), it kept them from receiving help -- food, or shelter, or whatever. They are clinging to behaviors that are socially-approved. Social approval is higher up on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
Believe me, if you were somewhere public and you hear gunshots, and you felt your life threatened, you will probably run. And you won't be thinking that the place you are running to is private property or not.
Finally, comments like these suggest that the commenters have not examined their concepts thoroughly or looked into their own feelings about this.
People who live outside the socially-approved box are threatening to people living inside the box. This threat goes beyond the surface, "oh, he is going to mug me." The aversion and disgust that keeps people from empathizing with the homeless comes from pack behavior. Humans tend to aggregate in groups, reject outsiders, and severely punish anyone who betray the pack.
This punishment is exactly the kind of reflexive emotional response risk-averse people have when you tell them about startup idea. "What's wrong with these people? They must be crazy!"
It is also the emotional reaction that leads to comments like, "If he can afford a better laptop than I, he can afford an rent. There must be something wrong about him."
I've watched people and how they actually react to people on the streets. I've watched myself. When aversion arises, I have seen this reaction.
Does everyone on HN have this aversion? No. I can't even see your faces, hear your voice. But everyone has some kind of aversion. There is often something vile lurking within the depths of people's hearts. It's ugly. I wrote that to give you the reader, a sense of empathy for the people who turn away in disgust from another human being, and believe me, I've seen that kind of reaction in person.
I've seen it in people walking down the street being solicited by the homeless. I've seen it in mothers and fathers turning away from their children. I've seen it in politicians, and activists. I've seen it all sorts of ordinary people.
I don't know if you react that way. You might. You might not. You might even react this way, and don't even know it.
The only way to be truly respectful is not to hide this, but to bring this ugliness out into the open, to really look at it, and to accept that you have these feelings -- whatever those feelings are -- arising from you. Who knows? You might find the deeper root causes for those feelings.
I've watched and engaged here where I live. Reaction depends on whom you are engaging with. Crazy guy hopped up on something and not sure how he is going to react is a lot different then the guy trying to get by/improve himself and not wanting to be a burden on society.
For the most part, the able bodied young "travelers" that seem to infest this town from time to time are generally met with scorn. The mother with two kids living out of an RV and wanting to avoid the crazy / disturbed street people - met with compassion and care.
> "Some kind of aversion" is a long, long way from seeing other human beings as "things".
Every moment you to avert your attention, you are treating a person as a thing. You stop seeing the person and react to the aversion instead.
This is something that happens with pretty much everyone.
The difference here is for me, I am seeing people who, from time to time, will have aversions, and will in that moment treat that person as a thing. For you, it seems to be an unforgivable act that once committed, can never, ever be redeemed. I think that latter is another form of typecasting, don't you think?
I think it is useful to recognize that each of us have done this in the past, as a way of being aware of what is happening in the present moment. So that, when you do find yourself walking down the street, and you are busy, rushing to somewhere else, and someone asks you for change: do you at least stop, look at that person in the eyes, and sincerely tell that person, "No, I don't have change for you. Sorry."?
The question is, is by watching the youtube videos or clicking on the apps for bitcoins, giving enough return? Or is it really a case of being inside a "tunnel" and there are more effective means?
If there are more effective means, does this person necessarily want to live better? We can't assume that someone who is homeless "wants" to be homeless (not unless you talk to that person and observe that person), though we can say that the choices he is make is likely to keep him in a scarcity trap that results in being homeless.
If you can't even meet eyes with a homeless person... you lack empathy.
I don't cast my eyes aside because I am disgusted. I cast my eyes aside because I see myself through his eyes- just another selfish anglo that won't show charity- and I am too ashamed to look him in the eye.
I don't know, it just sounds a sensational story to draw readership. Yeah, maybe he did it for couple of days/weeks, but doing this in a disciplined manner for a long time to earn measly couple of dollars does not make sense all.
Yes, certainly a tech-meets-social-issues story like this is shining fodder for Wired which is certainly an occasion to ask yourself "why does someone want me to believe this"...
Meanwhile, I, too, have been considering the longer-term effects of this article. Without making judgments on anyone, it seems the larger effect of these men is to "soft-launder" bitcoins back into cash. They (aided by brokers like Gyft) are on the bitcoin -> cash side, while in parallel, there is a large world (substantially underground) of cash -> bitcoin people.
If this model is true, the sustainability of the operation will continue and vary/grow as long as the parallel, (somewhat underground) world of BTC does. If this is true, the food these gentlemen eat is the result of a mild additional transaction fee for sustaining the complementary shadow world, which shows zero signs of folding.
I agree you can make more. But, one thing to consider is, you have to have a bank account to deposit turk money into or buy things from Amazon. Neither of those has the immediacy of Bitcoin.
Also, a lot of homeless have issues getting a bank account. We have millions of "unbanked" people in the US alone.
You can withdraw the Amazon Payments balance in the form of $5 Amazon gift cards. Then you can sell those to people for $5. A homeless person will have trouble with that, but people with homes and no bank account seem to be more common.
I suggested Mechanical Turk to a homeless guy I had gotten to know briefly, and he seemed legitimately interested in the idea, although he said he didn't have a bank account. I'll bet lots of homeless people would use Mechanical Turk if they simply knew about it and had a way of getting paid.
This used to be true, but a huge proportion of Mechanical Turk jobs these days are scams, which either don't pay out at all, or end up paying less than $1/hr. Amazon has completely neglected the platform and it's rotted.
How do you make 10 cents a minute? Have you ever tried?
When I needed money I tried... I made $2-$3 per hour writing articles. Transcribing audio, doing surveys and small 5 cent tasks all paid less per hour.
From some of these comments, it amazes me that people want to dictate how others should live their lives while doing nothing to improve the situation or to solve the systemic forces that faces the individuals mentioned… unless some of you happen to be on the Federal Reserve board or a CEO at a TBTF bank that owns shares in it, because obviously they are very, very good at allocating capital and resources to us all, while we tell more people to participate the in bread and circuses in order to be useful in this society…
"What you eat don't make me shit, and who you fuck don't make me come"
It seems to me that it is not a property of bitcoin or cryptocurrency itself that is allowing these folks to supplement their income with "manual" labor. Instead it feels like the fact that it's a new, relatively unexploited market that is enabling these ventures to scrape together the people and resources necessary by using extremely thin margins. I can't imagine this will be viable for long as more people get into it.
Sure, you can provide clicks in exchange for bitcoin, and that might help some homeless people right now. But what happens when that becomes over-saturated and/or youtube et. al. get better at preventing that? Amazon Turk + BTC could be viable.
> This is the only property for which Dale is currently accepting digital currency, but so far, he says, “it’s been a good experience because bitcoins have gone up in value, so it’s more than I would have gotten in regular dollars.”
I bet he won't be so happy when the price swings in the other direction. Therein lies the eternal problem with BTC for trade on a scale even beginning to approach that of what goes on in the world today.
Crackheads trying to get their next fix just take any sort of electronics and get $10-20 for it. It doesn't generally matter what it is - they'll take it if they can get their hands on it & want to unload it ASAP. If they've been strung out & off the grid long enough, they might not know the difference between a walkman and a iPhone.
A professional thief, OTOH, probably does know what's worth taking and what's worth keeping. The problem is that, while committing a robbery, you don't exactly have the time or resources to go on eBay and price check everything you see. It's more practical to take everything that might be valuable & then figure out what's worth trying to sell after the fact.
Just so everyone knows, the calculation with watching videos at BitcoinGet is wrong. They would be making 6 cents for watching 12 videos and not 60 cents. This makes it even less of an incentive to go there. I am surprised they do.
The site pays 40uBTC/video, which converts to
40*10^-6BTC = 0.00004BTC = $0.005(assuming 125USD/BTC) = 0.5 cents/video = 6 cents/12 videos.
Also, it is a Silicon Valley startup Virool that offers these videos, not BitcoinGet per se.
If true, seems like a pretty big oversight by the author and editor. They claim 0.0004 BTC per view, when in reality it's 0.00004? Your math checks out, but I'm not familiar with what the site actually pays.
While it was a good read about the other merits of bitcoin, there's a pretty huge difference between earning 60 cents a day vs 6 cents a day...
I am pretty sure that the payout per video is 40 micro bitcoin (it was recently dropped from 50 micro bitcoin). Unfortunately to see this number, you need to register. It's a common amount for watching one Virool video (e.g. another site ABitBack pays only 30 micro Bitcoin per Virool video).
I am surprised too that the error hasn't been corrected yet. The difference is 10 times, which isn't insignificant.
Comments on general news sites tend to be cesspools in general. Oddly, the same people posting weird vitriol about how America is being ruined by freeloading parasites seem to be: 1) not highly educated; and 2) able to spend hours and hours a day posting angry comments on news websites. I wonder where they're getting their own income from. Are they all retirees and students? People on SS disability? Stay-at-home parents whose spouse works? Survivalists in an internet-equipped cabin in Montana?
That's a great conspiracy but I'm not sure those folks have that much market share in the grand scheme of things (and it's possible liberal groups are doing the same thing). I don't know how many news site comment sections you tend to frequent, but I feel like I've seen just as much "dumbed down" liberal "trolling" as the reverse.
Obviously both sides will do it! I'm trying to offer an explanation as to why such nasty stuff will show up on news sites - political actors are paid to promote their viewpoints.
"This story is a great demonstration of my maxim that any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no.' The reason why journalists use that style of headline is that they know the story is probably bullshit, and don’t actually have the sources and facts to back it up, but still want to run it."
I'm politically centrist, supporting neither the Republicans nor the Democrats. I was opposed to the recent $40B food stamp cuts that the Republicans passed in the House, until I read this article. Angie appears to be collecting food stamps, instead of trying to find a real job, which it sounds like he could get. The premise of the Food Stamp cuts were that eligibility was too broad, and people were abusing the system, which I didn't believe until just now. Now I support the cuts.
The number of people on food stamps went from around 15M in 2001 to about 45M in 2013. I think many people need good stamps but the point of eligibility of food stamps is a good point, in that there are probably a lot of able-bodied people like Angie who are living on food stamps that shouldn't be. I'm all for the food stamp program but I do believe we need to tighten eligibility requirements.
I know several people who lost their jobs from the 2008 financial crisis. But instead of trying to find a job, they spent 2 years on fun-employment where they didn't need to work because of the generous unemployment benefits. If they found jobs that money could have gone to truly needy people in the mid-west. I now believe the same thing is happening with the food stamp program.
At "0.000133 bitcoins a day" it would take 7518 days (more than 20 years) to make one bitcoin.
At "0.0004 bitcoins" per video it would take 2500 videos to watch to make one bitcoin.
The amount of wasted human capital is insane. Why don't these people get jobs? There are tons of posts on Craigslist for jobs that don't require any education - delivery, waiters, busboys, cleaning, etc.
* The economy crashed a while ago. We still haven't recovered all the jobs we lost, by either absolute or percentage.
* Increased automation and efficiency is slowly removing those jobs you just described. Exec, a YCombinator app, makes a more efficient and automated solution to craigslist cleaning jobs. This is happening in every sector in this country. These changes ELIMINATE JOBS, these jobs will never come back. And the jobs they create do not replace the ones they removed, not in quantity, or in aggregate tax quality (i.e. one well paid programmer does not replace the amount of tax revenue from 4 people splitting the same salary. Let alone the fact that executives often take a cut of that increased productivity for themselves. Let alone the fact that it puts more load on welfare for the 3 lost jobs).
* Every single one of those jobs you just listed likely requires a number of things in today's saturated jobs market: High-school or college education (too many people, not enough jobs, means overqualified hiring requirements), a permanent address (hard when you are homeless), a certain appearance (hard when you are poor, without a place to live or bathe), some sort of experience (hard to get in this job market, especially when under educated, in poor health [mental or physical], and every other reason here), transport to and from work (or even for the work), ect.
I think you need to take a step back and look at the whole picture, it's a dire one.
There are always enough jobs.
There aren't enough jobs that people are willing to do for the money others are willing to pay.
If I knew someone near me was living on <$1/day, I would raise their pay to $5 to do something mundane. If that person could find 15-20 of me, they are above the poverty line. My standard of living has gone up and so has theirs AND they now can circulate that money to others in their service - and so it goes on.
The problem isn't a lack of jobs, it's the draining of capital flow that happen when the monetary system dries up. Whether you believe that to be unfairness or just some players being so adept at the game... that doesn't matter.
The ball needs to move or people who want to play the game will be sitting out. If the ball is kept moving, even artificially, anyone who wants to play will get to play. The only ones left out would be willingly out or mentally/physically unable to play at all.
Right now, we let the game rules be such that some smart shits helped some lucky shits collect the ball and now the dumbshits think the pile of "money" is worth something when not in circulation. Look at all my symbols of currency! Doesn't matter if it's dollars, metals/commodities, or the butcoin... without a functioning-thriving ebb and flow of currency, everyone is poorer.
Spend like death with 0 is the goal. Don't take on debt or get greedy. We'll all live better.
"There are always enough jobs." That's patently rubbish as can be seen all around the (1st) world at the moment.
However, I don't agree with the parent's comment that technology causes a lack of jobs - also obviously untrue if you look around you.
Currently we're on the tail-end of a recession, thus money isn't moving around, thus it's harder to insert one's self into the money stream.
As people start spending, jobs pick up. This is already happening in most of the richer parts of the recession hit world. Here in the UK, unemployment has been dropping steadily. New small businesses are appearing fast. Manufacturing's on the way up.
FWIW, I agree with everything after your very first sentence.
> The problem isn't a lack of jobs, it's the draining of capital flow that happen when the monetary system dries up. Whether you believe that to be unfairness or just some players being so adept at the game... that doesn't matter.
> The ball needs to move or people who want to play the game will be sitting out. If the ball is kept moving, even artificially, anyone who wants to play will get to play. The only ones left out would be willingly out or mentally/physically unable to play at all.
What you're saying may be true now, but surely it won't always be true? Who's to say that every mundane task won't (relatively soon) be automated? We need to start thinking about how we should deal with this.
>There are always enough jobs. There aren't enough jobs that people are willing to do for the money others are willing to pay.
Nice. "Work willing to be done for others willing to pay" is what defines a job. It only took you two sentences to make the rest of your post into rubbish capitalist handwaving.
>If I knew someone near me was living on <$1/day, I would raise their pay to $5 to do something mundane.
Please do this actually. Someone near you is living on <$1/day.
"It's not practical!" you'll say. That's because nothing you're saying is actually practical enough to be realistic.
Oh yeah? Running $0 worth of income through a SNAP benefits calculator tells me that an individual with no job is entitled to $200/month. That's one anti-poverty program that blows past your <$1/day by almost an order of magnitude.
Generally ABAWDS between 18 and 50 who do not have any dependent children can get SNAP benefits only for 3 months in a 36-month period if they do not work or participate in a workfare or employment and training program other than job search. This requirement is waived in some locations.
With some exceptions, able-bodied adults between 16 and 60 must register for work, accept suitable employment, and take part in an employment and training program to which they are referred by the local office. Failure to comply with these requirements can result in disqualification from the Program.
For people without kids or other family responsibilities who can't even be bothered to show up for free, government-funded work-training?
That doesn't sound like being forced to live on $1/day to me. Yes, of course I can voluntarily not accept the money and goods being offered to me, but that's not really the point.
My point was simply that it's a wild exaggeration to assume there are more than a handful of people in the United States who are involuntarily living on <$1/day. Whether it's "arbitrary" or not, it's not even close to reality.
It's been my experience the jobs are there. They aren't necessarily falling out of the sky, but just two and a half years ago I worked on projects for a man who payed $10/hr and couldn't find enough (good) help. He told me workers were not hard to find (as he really only needed unskilled labor), but people with a good work ethic were.
I am currently homeless. I am not looking for a job because I am medically handicapped. I walked away from a job with a Fortune 500 company that was helping to keep me ill. My condition is very expensive, thus my job amounted to a net loss in income. Since quitting and sleeping in a tent, I have paid down thousands of dollars in debt incurred during the years I had that job. I am currently trying to declare bankruptcy, but being homeless and having chronic health issues means everything is frustratingly slow.
I have alimony, I do a little freelance work online and I have websites I am trying to develop. As a homeless woman, I have damn little credibility and cannot get people to take me very seriously. If you would like to see me stop being a total fucking loser, I could use help developing and promoting my web projects.
A lot of people on the street are medically or mentally ill. Most of them are less well educated than I am. I have made substantial progress towards resolving my underlying problems which are the root cause of my homelessness. Many others do not know how to do that. I need an income that does not keep me sick. That's quite a tall order to engineer while recovering physically and living on the street, but it is my only hope of ever making my life work.
But for the tons of unskilled craigslist jobs, in these depressed areas, they will get hundreds of resumes. In most places around the US, the reality is multipointed:
* Nobody who would want to hire someone has the capital to do so, or the resources to handle the absurd regulation surrounding hiring an employee.
* The economic cycles in a lot of these areas are not producer ones, so they don't see job growth even when people need basic necessities. The kinds of work in most areas of the US is dwindling, and often specialized and requiring either a degree, or no need to be self sustaining (ie, walmart clerks or mcdonalds staff, because you don't earn a living wage on minimum wage).
* Anyone with money has better, less risky options (usually created through law and false economics) that investing in small town startups that would hire the millions of unemployed as service workers. Because we already know they will never be hired as producers, because we already optimized production into factory farms and automated warehouses. The capital holders get plenty of returns on their investments by operating in an economic cycle outside most of the US, and they do so not for missed opportunity - everyone understands not utilizing the human capital of some 60 million people is wasteful - but because it is much safer to keep playing wal-street with federal bailouts than to try entrepreneurship.
I can't help but feel sorry for all these chaps that are arguing. Do you all live in a fantasy land? I feel like almost nobody here has truly started from the bottom, but rather like to observe from the tower they were born in.
Why is it that I was able to live on part-time minimum wage ($10/hr) that covered rent (rented a room for $500), food ($100 a month and I ate like a king, never ate outside, always home cooked), and my drinking? I was living fine. If you can't manage your money, that's your problem. Sure I couldn't buy the latest boots or iphone, but who gives a fuck? Buy a book, it'll cost ya $5 and last you for far longer than that stupid phone you slaved a month away working for.
If you manage your money well you will save little, by little, and you will invest that capital into bettering yourself and moving up. I saved money for online courses.
If you don't get out into the real world and hustle, you will get nowhere. Reading a lot of HN I can't help but feel that most HN'ers want their computer to be their absolute portal into real life.
It isn't. It's like, 1% of real life. Real life is face to face. Real life is personal relationships with people, it's respect, it's keeping your word, it's keeping calm, it's keeping your mind in a good state, it's building relationships that benefit both people, it's not being a bitch. It's not about you. It's about them, and when you enforce that attitude, that attitude spreads and starts to work in your favour. You start meeting people, and keeping those people. Nothing has ever changed anything for me than buckling down, making myself presentable, and being confident. It's hard, but it needs to get done.
I invested PURELY IN KNOWLEDGE. I then sold that knowledge. That's how you make money. You trade knowledge, for cash. I buy gourmet food now, because I can't cook it myself. I pay for university, because it's far easier to learn something from a professional in 4 years than ripping through books my entire life. This entire world is built upon this foundation.
I fucking hate seeing people argue this shit like it's black and white. The problem isn't the money, it's the people and the decisions they make. If you play your cards right you'll get to where you want to be.
I could have acted like a cynical poor ass like the world was working against me, and it was, but you need to rise above the victim mentality.
> Why is it that I was able to live on part-time minimum wage ($10/hr) that covered rent (rented a room for $500), food ($100 a month and I ate like a king, never ate outside, always home cooked), and my drinking? I was living fine.
Were you supporting a family at the time? If not, you might consider the possibility that what was a living income for you might not be sufficient for everyone else.
But then that brings me to the question, why are you packing on more than you can handle.
Disclaimer: I'm not talking about people who developed their lives in a different class, then lost everything. I'm talking about people that time and time again make dumb decisions, don't realize it, then blame their problems on either the system, or some other scapegoat when 90% of the time it's you that screws you.
Poor people want to have kids just like most of the rest of us. The idea that only people with means have the right to have kids goes beyond unreasonable and is actually inhumane.
And women often make decisions without realizing that the men in their lives are going to run away from responsibility, get arrested, develop a drinking or drug problem, crumble under the stress of trying to raise a family, or any number of other things. So they end up getting stuck with the necessity of raising their kids on their own in poverty.
Except in the case of medical problems and disabilities, poor two-parent families are typically the working poor, and they tend to have houses and such, and work multiple jobs if those jobs are available, since the jobs available to the working poor typically cap out at 30-35 hours a week with no benefits. And if they're not working, it's generally because they, just like middle class families, made decisions when they expected there would be jobs, and lost those jobs.
Yeah, the notion of personal responsibility in the current form has to go. Genetics and environment is absolutely huge influence and I cant blame a person for poor money management skills if he or she was in a toxic environment all his life.
Plus "60 cents a day" of income is going to be eaten up by transaction fees when they need actual cents to buy lunch (I don't think online delivery services or trendy cafes accepting bitcoin payments cater for the homeless end of the market; there's only so many gyft-funded $10 Papa John's pizzas one can afford)
The whole thing reeks of a PR stunt to the point where I can easily see the people involved's actual "job" - whether genuinely homeless or not - was to sit outside a library waiting for the tipped-off journalist to turn up and interview them.
Yeah, I'd be pretty unsurprised if this story turned out to be a hoax. Making 60 cents a day then spending that on pizza delivery? They get paid to do odd jobs in Bitcoin because they worry about carrying actual money (while they somehow sleep in the rough without their new-looking laptops or bikes getting stolen)? Doesn't add up.
When I hear about "wasted capital" I imagine some central planner in a uniform from 1950s. Or North Korea.
These guys do have jobs: they are doing work for money. Even if the work is to sit on a street panhandling. Those who donate buy themselves some good feelings. If you don't like that trade, don't do it or pay for it. Simple.
Why don't you get up at 5 AM and work till midnight like Tim Cook? What a waste of resources.
I had read that Tim Cook is an early riser, but didn't know about being up that late regularly. I think the super early riser is a cultural in south Alabama. My mother's parents grew up within an hour of Robertsdale, Alabama. My grandfather, in particular, was always up at 4:30 AM. Even into his older years when he had not lived on a farm for decades.
Charging their laptop at a library intended for use by the public (which they are a part of) burns less energy than someone who leaves their air conditioner running while they go get groceries.
Most homeless people go out of their way to not waste public resources and services because they are used to criticisms like this, usually issued from a vantage point of indifference and ignorance.
I believe the actual resource being referred to is the aforementioned human capital. The article mentioned that he was a network engineer, a career path that can easily command $60K/year on the low end.
Network engineers that show up to work and crank out widgets don't get to stay in that position. Those that seek to learn and grow, while reliably performing there jobs are typically the last on the chopping block and if they do get RIF-ed, have a strong market to fall back on. This is a good use of his time. Figuring out ways to mindlessly click/watch garbage resources on the Internet to scrape up an occasional pizza is laughable, when compared to his potential. Based on the information presented in the form it was, this looks more like a failure of the person than the system.
Speaking of information presented, I see no reason to think you have any more insight into a homeless person's motivation than you do for passive-aggressively insinuating the poster you are responding to is indifferent and ignorant.
You're asking a rational question of irrational people. When someone has a fundamental problem - depression, addiction, anxiety, etc. they often don't make rational decisions.
"At 0.0004 bitcoins per video it would take 2500 videos to watch to make one bitcoin."
You seem confused by the divisibility of bitcoin.
His goal is not to make one whole bitcoin, but probably to watch ~100 videos (3-4 hours total?) which is 0.04 bitcoins which is enough to buy a meal (~$5).
Also the article is poorly worded but it sounds like the homeless guy is not taking advantage of the 0.000133 btc per day offer (it says "he can beef up..." but should be "he could beef up...")
I just glanced at the FAQ on the services website, and it sounds like the offers pop up from time to time, so you might not be able to watch one video after the other, you have to wait for them to come in. My guess is that the $0.60 day that they quoted is an average of sorts, with some days a bit higher and some lower. Regardless, that is not a lot of money, could take you two weeks of work to buy one pizza.
Ok, so I am paying around 30k of my hard earned money as taxes from working 10+ hours every day, just so this guy can do nothing all day long and get free food stamps...I would rather spend this money on my kids and family...
I know, right? Let's take back all these entitlements from these lazy poors. If they really want to eat they should get a job like the rest of us.
And let's have a word with the inefficient government bureaucrats. How do they start with your hard-earned 30k and end up with just enough to give this guy food stamps? Totally inefficient if you ask me.
>> How do they start with your hard-earned 30k and end up with just enough to give this guy food stamps? Totally inefficient if you ask me.
They started it with the welfare system, good idea but then let the majority of its users abuse it rather than finding work. They started it, they keep it going because their users vote for them which keeps them in power.
The second thing is that these bitcoin payment systems only work because they dodge the minimum wage. There are a lot of things that homeless people could do if it was legal to pay $.60/day. The minimum wage does a lot of good, but the people in this article didn't seem to mind the situation. I think it's because a lot of people don't think of working online as "real work" and are ok with low paying tasks.
All in all this article was a feel good hit. Bitcoin allows homeless people to avoid the shame of begging and the risk of robbery. They receive support from their community to earn legitimate money by doing real work. Of course fake youtube views and button pushing aren't very beneficial to society, but I think there will be more useful work for them and others in the near future.
A functioning human brain is a very rare thing in the universe. The way we get ahead is by utilizing everyone of them that we can find. We often write homeless people off as a drain on society, but there's something to be said for everybody pitching in, even if just a little bit.