Bizzare entitlement

People wishing they had a public place they could spend time is entitlement now?

A generation ago it was extremely widespread and taken for granted, now we’ve lost our “third places”

I think it’s quite a stretch for you to interpret the parent comment like that. Surely they’re referring to people’s entitled behaviour in this private space.

They're not "wishing" they're just "taking". And yes that's kind of definitionally entitlement.

A generation ago we didn't have public third places where people could plug in a desktop computer and printer.

I did, sort of, depending on what you mean by "public". My local pub provided a free desktop computer, my local library did too (and the librarian once allowed me to set up my own desktop), my community had two regular lan parties, you could rent the local hall for a pittance, and all my friends' parents owned houses with spare rooms or garages that they'd let us set up projects in.

I get that not all of these are strictly public spaces or places where you'd do office work, but it must suck to have nowhere better to go than a Starbucks.

Edit: even today, I think I could probably ask my local library and they'd let me, although someone might steal my monitor.

wonder if you can bring a tent inside and camp

I understand it's tongue-in-cheek, but you're actually describing a real problem Starbucks and other casual-style restaurants (McDonalds) and cafes have in Seattle. The downtown business districts are almost completely overrun by homelessness and many places in the area have stopped offering seating and only offer counter pick-up and standing tables/rails.

Homeless people do it all the time in certain cities. And because judges won't jail them for crimes police have stopped trying.

Interesting. Can a tourist set up a tent in New York City in order to not pay ridiculous hotel fees or this is allowed only to citizens?

In Switzerland you can rent a tent on a balcony on airbnb

If you have anything to lose you can’t be homeless (or they’ll take it from you first).

Once you’re judgement proof do whatever you want.

judgement proof isn't freedom, it just means they can't chase you for liens.

you get your shit back together you're gonna feel that misery real fast when they start garnishing wages.

That’s the whole point - there’s an entire class of punishments that only work for people who are “playing by the rules” (e.g., have a job as a productive member of society).

How will jailing them help? Now the public is on the hook for them. Plus, more jails will be needed if you wanna move all the unhoused in there.

Maybe its easier just to build more housing.

I spent a month in China and saw one homeless person there who was disabled and panhandljng by a tourist location. The subways and trains and stations had no one pissing on the ground, no one sleeping there (except officeworkers resting their eyes on their commute). There were no human feeces on the ground.

Maybe, just maybe we dont have to throw our hands up in the air and say theres nothing to do while we allow a small group of people to make our cities unlivable.

"A small group of people [who] make our cities unlivable"... you mean, real estate developers?

The people who are regularly blocked from building housing are the ones making our cities unlivable?

Well, I was obviously kidding, developers who build overpriced housing, or unneeded office or retail are part of the problem just like developers who build homes, especially affordable ones, are part of the solution.

Developers can't build "overpriced housing". If it's overpriced, it won't sell and the developer loses money until they right-price it and it sells.

Ah, the wisdom of the market. I could rephrase that as "housing targeted for the rich" who are already pretty well-served, unlike the poor.

It's not the "wisdom of the market" it is simply that pricing isn't set by the seller, it is set by a dynamic process between seller and the buyer.

If you don't believe me, try selling a luxury good targeting a rich buyer on FB Marketplace and see if you can set the pricing arbitrarily high.

You're completely missing the point. Unless your name is Ferrari or something like that, you didn't build said luxury item.

How does a company that builds buildings make cities unlivable? Replacing some SFH with an 8 unit apartment or whatever would make the city more livable.

Be careful what you wish for. China also has the hukou system, which is sort of an internal passport that effectively prevents many people from moving into the popular tourist locations. Get out into the rural areas and you'll still see a lot of real poverty, although housing is cheap enough there that there aren't many homeless.

There's also a cultural factor at work. Allowing a relative to be homeless causes loss of face so family members feel more obligated to pitch in and help them out, sometimes to the extent of providing a free room. (I'm stereotyping a bit here but it's generally true.)

Countries generally have a immigration system that prevents people from moving there when you don't have enough money to support yourself.

In my experience most countries put barriers in place to prevent people from moving into the country, from another country, when you don't have enough money to support yourself, but I believe the parent is describing a system that puts barriers in place for internal migration of its citizens.

Russia has a similar system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resident_registration_in_Russi...

Read again. This is for Chinese citizens.

In China there might not be people peeing in the subway, but when I was there a couple years ago there were plenty of people (especially children) peeing in the streets

I've been there last month for a week and didn't see any.

They're not the kind of people that can afford housing nor the kind that are able to get a rental contract in the first place. And if they had money they'd just shoot up more. Not trying to diss them but that's just reality.

There's very few people homeless because they can't afford it even despite the insane rent prices. Usually it's a ton of untreated mental issues and/or drug addiction.

Building more houses will help regular people a ton but not the homeless. More shelters will. Good and affordable mental healthcare too. But that's "communism" so I guess that won't fly in MAGA America.

There have been a bunch of recent studies of this and yes, providing housing seems to dramatically reduce homelessness. https://endhomelessness.org/resources/sharable-graphics/data...

Like the other person said the welfare system is apparently that bad in the US.

But in Europe I've mainly seen people with mental/drug issues and those from fringe groups like gypsies. There have been plenty of projects involving giving them housing for free, but it never works. The neighborhood quickly becomes a no-go area with constant police presence. They sell all the inventory for drugs, flats become dirty and infested etc.

There's a reason these people are homeless and that has to be solved first.

But if regular people are homeless then the system is really failing them on basic welfare :(

From the data I have seen you are incorrect. Certainly the most visible and disruptive of the homeless are the meth heads and folks with serious mental health problems, but a large chunk are people who simply can't afford a place to live. Los of people living out of their cars out there.

Ok I was speaking from my knowledge of here in Europe (my ex worked with homeless and unemployed) and here it's really not the case. People here don't live on the streets unless there's something seriously wrong with them. Anyone else is well supported by the welfare system. They won't be rich and it may take a while and often not in a good area but they'll have a place to live.

If this is common for regular people in the US then the system is really letting them down and I'm starting to understand why people vote for Trump (though I'm sure this will only make things worse for them)

Ah! Yeah we are having completely different experiences, since I'm in the US.

I expect you are correct about the votes for Trump. Voting for change without understanding if that change is likely to be good or bad. Public policy issues are complex and most people probably don't have the time or energy to understand exactly what they are voting for.

>Now the public is on the hook for them.

Prisoners can pay for their share by providing their labor.

Yay neo-slavery!

yeah! and at $1.25 an hour, we can keep them working it off for life! what a great plan.

Federal minimum wage is higher than that. I'm sure ether is some kind of job that can be created that pays more than $1.25 in order to try and pay their share.

Prisoners are not subject to minimum wage laws and are routinely paid wages far below it. In fact, the average wage for prisoners seems to much lower than my generous $1.25 an hour. But then, im a benevolent-ish overlord.

"They earn, on average, between 13 cents and 52 cents per hour nationwide. " https://www.aclu.org/news/human-rights/captive-labor-exploit...

It's in the tax payers interest that prisoners make as much money as possible, while not threatening the rest of society. My point of bringing up minimum wage is that it is a reference point for the value of human labor that prisoners are competiting against others with.

It's a nice idea. Unfortunately literally nothing about the modern prison system works in the taxpayers interest.

> Now the public is on the hook for them.

Uhh as opposed to some private business that should just, what, deal with it? Who else should be responsible for solving homelessness if not the public?

The public should be responsible.

Prison is the worst way for the public to solve this problem.

It’s more expensive (incarceration is extremely expensive), eliminates the possibility of the individuals being productive, introduces them to people who will push them towards more crime (not just the apparent “crime” of not being able to afford a shelter), etc.

> Now the public is on the hook for them. Plus, more jails will be needed if you wanna move all the unhoused in there.

> Maybe its easier just to build more housing.

Maybe instead of letting a George Carlin joke from 30 years ago become reality by calling them something different, patting ourselves on the back, then delegating responsibility to whoever's not building houses and subsequently (often) protest the construction of those houses, we should accept that the public is and should be on the hook for them. If not, then we're just a bunch of pathetic individualists who haven't realized the social safety around them is about as strong as cheap wet toilet paper.

Living somewhere is not on its own a contribution to society, and building more housing is not enough to uplift people out of severe fentanyl or meth addiction; people on the street are not having conversations about esoteric zoning policies and hoping studio apartments stay at only $2500/m because supply increased marginally quicker over the next 10 years while birth rates dropped and immigration slowed.

Supply is an issue, but it's often a red herring. Homeless people are the public, we are the public, blight and suffering within society is society's issue, not just when the Olympics roll around or the leader of a major foreign nation rolls up

having the public on the "hook" for them is more responsible than forcing private establishments to pick up the tab. starbucks doesn't want to be on the hook for them either.

The public is already on the hook for them. With jails at least we get our public spaces back

how prevalent. is hate on homeless people in the usa?

Reminds me a bit of when TPUG in Toronto used to set up entire Commodore PET rigs in coffee shops.

For reference, a Commodore PET weighs about 25 pounds, and is the size of a toilet bowl.

Double all that if you want to use a floppy disk.

Having used a Commdore PET, I cannot stop laughing at this size comparison.

It reminds of the observation that some people will go to great lengths to avoid the metric system.

Imagine you can get up to the bathroom and nobody steals your monitor

The words "steal" and "bathroom" reminded me of a funny case when hand dryers started disappearing in bathrooms of several shopping malls in a large Russian city. In all cases, there was the same person with a large bag filmed nearby, but as there is no camera inside, it is difficult to understand if he did anything or not. Guess unsupervised tablet (aka "monitor") would not stay there for long.

Well, Russians stole washing machines from Ukraine, of course they also steal other smaller appliances as well.

petre, I really don't get your point. There are thieves in all nations, with the brits having been the greatest thieves of all with their colonies and naval racketeering

That must be a tablet made to look like a desktop setup right?

Could be a monitor with a mini PC on the back.

Nope. On closer inspection, it's a tablet resting on a stand; it's not mounted with a VESA clamp or arm like most monitors would be. You can see the USB charging cable is plugged into the side of the tablet as well. When you compare it to the keyboard and headphones next to it, it must be about 11-13 inches in size, so it's unlikely to hold a mini PC on the back as it wouldn't be heavy enough to prevent toppling over. The stand would be bigger too if it could hold a mini PC.

OMG someone brought in a cubicle

What the hell .. that is crazy.

And what looks like a keychron mechanical keyboard! (Loud AF)

That's absolutly crazy