You’re not using your bed right now. Are you letting a homeless person sleep in it?
That’s not a contradiction. Your, my, and everyone’s bed is for sleeping in. The beds in that store are for accumulation of wealth. This displays the harsh efficiencies of capitalism, because the people in the most need for a bed cannot afford to have one.
I belive the beds in a store that sells beds are either to be sold or to help you choose a bed. They are not “fuck you, see how many beds i have” beds
It’ll probably be sold at a discount too since it was for display
For probably still more money than street sleeping homeless guy can afford of we are being honest.
Right but equally it’s not the mattress company’s job to accommodate the homeless person. It’s not like they didn’t have to pay an inflated price from the manufacturer so if they sold it for the price of the materials they’d probably make a loss.
No of course not. I’m not saying that the homeless guy should be in the store, I’m saying it’s out of his reach even for the floor model.
100%. I have yet to see somewhere that sells display furniture/appliances at full price, usually they knock some off due to shop guests messing around with it, wear and tear
Ew, they would sell you a display bed? Seems, unhygienic.
I mean I don’t even wanna know how often the average person changes their sheets, let alone their mattress. My parents have mattresses in spare bedrooms older than me.
Honestly though, display beds aren’t as scary to me as hotel beds
SPARE BEDROOMS?!! By this you mean they have beds to spare and yet are not allowing unhoused individuals to sleep in them?? How very dare they. Guest rooms should be illegal. Everyone with a bedroom to spare gets a mini homeless shelter in their house.
I mean… that is what early Christians would do. They were radically giving and selfless. They would unironically feed and shelter the homeless.
It was as shocking then as it is now.
You have a fundamental misunderstanding of how capitalism works. It very much is a “fuck you look at our expensive shit” society.
To that homeless person, yes that’s exactly what a mattress store is.
That’s what everything everywhere is. Many folks in communist countries lack things others have too.
Only in a hypothetical utopia could all persons have all things equally.
Which things? Because all historical sources show that the bottom 10% had all the bare necessities for life. They didn’t have luxury apartments, but they had a roof. They weren’t eating steak every night, but they had more caloric input and healthier diets than US citizens.
historical sources
Hit me
How do you feel about a CIA report on behalf of the department of agriculture? https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000498133.pdf
The problem isn’t lack of shelter. There’s enough shelter available for the homeless. They just choose not to use it because it comes with rules like no drugs and (often) no pets.
No there’s not enough shelter available for the homeless. Shelters have occupancy limits and especially in the US most states do not have enough space. Some states have less than half the beds needed to shelter their states homeless population. https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homelessness-statistics/state-of-homelessness/#homeless-assistance-in-america
Especially because unless you’ve solved the limited resources problem, then even in a utopia you’re still going to have to have something like money, and therefore you will still have things that some people have that other people don’t have.
What essential resources are so limited that we can’t provide them to everyone based on need?
Define ‘limited.’ Because limits include trained manpower, right? There’s only a certain amount of that. Our ability to provide certain drugs for everyone who might need them are limited by the number of people trained to make them. This is true of virtually any industry. It is as limited as the number of people who can make it usable. And that is usually not an ‘anyone can do this’ issue.
The beds in that store are for accumulation of wealth
…selling people beds so they have beds to sleep in. Beds that aren’t riddled with bugs thanks to the store not being a homeless shelter.
You’re assuming selling beds is the only method to distribute them. That’s simply untrue.
Best method we have found so far. If you want cookie cutter efficient ass state made beds you can move off to the… Well, every state who has tried has collapsed so you’re shit out of luck.
You mean like the still-existing and highly complex gift economies of natives all across the globe that have no homelessness?
Move there then.
- the indigenous economies that I identify with and would be interested in participating in were destroyed by the British 1000 years before I was born.
- I’d rather not be a colonizer in an indigenous economy.
You mean people who sleep on mats on a dirt floor? Sure. Some of us want to lessen our back pain. You do you.
and most children in most places
Come on now, indigenous people exist in the 21st century and have modern amenities. They just also keep their indigenous economies.
So beds in the store are for accumulation of wealth but then when someone buys them they’re for sleeping in? Deep
Who are the people in most need for a bed? Isn’t that need relatively equal? I mean, I guess when I was younger I didn’t really need one, but now I’m a wreck without one. I know some guys with copd that only sleep in chairs, so maybe their need is on low end.
The people without beds, followed by the people that need to replace their beds, followed by people that want to receive a bed for any other reason.
Just because I have a bed doesn’t mean I don’t need one. If I didn’t need it I wouldn’t keep it
I’m not wanting for beds. But am in need.
Ok, how would this prioritization of resource distribution prevent you from getting the bed you need?
I do understand the sentiment but the thing is a lot of homelessness isn’t because people don’t have money not exactly. They may have support systems that they can make use of but if they have other problems they may not be inclined to use those support systems.
You can’t just blame capitalism for homelessness, not exclusively.
Which systems do you have in mind? Because homeless shelters are not a solution to homelessness.
But mattress stores are?
Where did you extrapolate that from?
You kinda can. Capitalism provides no incentive to help this man (actually, it provides a disincentive because the time and/or money needed to help this man could be spent on more profitable endeavors). The support structures that may exist are not capitalistic, are disincentived, and obviously not adequate.
Personally I blame it for the bulk of it in my country. We have a massive housing crisis caused by housing unafordability.
The middle class here mainly invest in rentals (not stockmarket) and then use them as AirBnBs that sit empty half the time.
Meanwhile whole families are living in garages or worse, cars. People who are sane and ordinary and work are living in substandard shitholes.
ROFL!
agreed, it’s pretty funny that someone thought that was a contradictory statement
So… you think they should just- give beds away? Thats hilarious!
Look kid, capitalism sucks. No one with a functioning brain is going to argue against this point. But going full bore extreme to the opposite side is just a fucking stupid.
You’ll understand this when you grow up
Infantilize me all you want, that doesn’t change the fact that I’m college educated and in my late 20s. Explain to me why we can’t distribute beds to people based on need. If we can, then please explain why we have to have homeless people.
Because beds won’t fix their problem. How do I know this? Because almost every state in the country has beds available for them. They don’t want them. Because with those beds come rules. And they don’t want to live by those rules.
Go ahead, prove me wrong. Show me homeless shelters that are overbooked and full.
And they don’t want to live by those rules.
Those rules tend to kind of suck, to be fair. Certainly, if I was homeless, and had a dog, I wouldn’t really want to stay in any homeless shelter that banned me from keeping pets, if I didn’t absolutely have to. It’s really funny to me that people try to defend policies against drug use, or against holding drugs on the basis of addiction or something. I dunno, I thought it was a pretty common opinion to just want drugs to be legal since we all drink coffee and monster energy and IPAs anyways, and at this point I’d rather have heroin, or cocaine sprinkled honey buns, if for nothing else than to spice things up a little. Withdrawal symptoms are a sometimes lethal bitch, and that’s gonna be much harder to surmount outside of a shelter, than inside one, though, would be the main point of contention. IME homeless shelters tend to be populated on the usefulness of their service relative to putting up with “actual” homelessness. If your shelter is less useful than being homeless for most people, then most people will choose being homeless over your shelter.
And that’s not even really getting into the nonprofit shelters that basically require religious indoctrination on the half of the homeless, which is super scummy, or how lots of homeless shelters are super “out of the way”, and eliminate the homeless’s ability to be self-sufficient, or to seek help from whatever meager support network they tend to have. Or how homeless shelters are full of homeless people, and thus, suck to live in for everyone involved, relative to owning your own tent, where you can just move all your shit somewhere else in the event that you don’t like someone. Or how means-tested support programs tend to usually waste a ton of their budget testing the means of their applicants.
Overall I think even probably if you lived in like a communist utopian whatever whatever society with 0.1% homelessness and 99% employment or whatever, you’d probably still have, at the very least, a warehouse where you kept some excess beds, or where people could see which bed they wanted, that sort of thing, so it’s not like this picture is really illustrative of that much beyond just the plain visual irony of it, sort of in a similar genre to other pictures of, say, homeless people camping out underneath a huge trump billboard saying he’s building a new hotel or high rise or something. I dunno, this is the sort of shit you see on tiktok side by side with memes saying that jimmy fallon looks like the pink bug from backyardigans.
Tell me you don’t know anything about the homeless situation with telling me. Homeless shelters are not a solution to homelessness.
Go ahead, prove me wrong. Show me homeless shelters that are overbooked and full.
I mean you did ask 🤷♂️
No, they do not all have beds available, the space is extremely limited. In the US some places have less then half the beds needed for their states homeless population. https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homelessness-statistics/state-of-homelessness/#homeless-assistance-in-america
If anything this guy is a lot less in need of a bed than someone who hasn’t trained themselves to be able to sleep in a doorway (to wit, me.)
Is there like an Uber for this?
Don’t give Airbnb ideas
Don’t worry, if people don’t have homes because they don’t have money, they wouldn’t have money for a bed uber either.
It’s a GrInD eCoNoMy oLd mAn.
Grindr is uber for warm, lubricated holes.
I think that’s just called splitting rent with someone who works nights
Why are you so intent on defending the ruling class? You aren’t in their group. You’re a broke ass like the rest of us and you never will achieve anywhere near enough wealth to forget that.
So just because the “ruling class” is shitty and there needs to be change, we should just be allowed to make stupid, embarrassing statements that show a complete lack of understanding of society or economics?
What the fuck is with this thread being overrun with dickheads? Is this the breaking point, has Lemmy reached critical mass?
The image represents how capitalism uses the myth of scarcity. There’s a bed there, and there’s a human being sleeping on the ground. The lie is that there isn’t enough to go around; that somebody has to go without.
That’s bullshit. We have everything.
The message is that you deserve nothing and must earn everything, not that there isn’t enough to go around.
That’s not the message either. There are homeless shelters, mental and health services, and affordable housing being priotized all over.
Necessities are in large free to those who need them. Nice to haves and luxury beds are not.
There are homeless shelters, mental and health services, and affordable housing being priotized all over.
But not in sufficient quantity to address need. Demand fsr, far outstrips supply.
“Free” is irrelevant when it’s unavailable.
Well you dont deserve anything that someone else has made…
Then go live in the fucking wood like your caveman ancestors so you can truly live of everything you made yourself.
Society is built on the shoulders of those before them, that they themselves built on the shoulders of those before them.
Stop being a dick and go help someone in your community, you will probably learn a thing or two.
If someone creates something to trade it for goods and services, thats fine, even if that means its free at the point of consumption.
If someone creates something for their own reasons, you have no entitlement to it. Please try to be less emotional with your responses, this is a discussion platform meme page after all.
“Their own reasons”
Homie, the word your looking for is “profit”. And it has nothing to do with helping society. It’s about hoarding wealth.
Found the capitalist.
People create things all the time for their own reasons that have nothing to do with profit. Some people create things for fun. For some, it’s called having a hobby.
Grandmothers knitting mittens, for example.
Re read the first line - not what i meant
Your initial point is that no one deserves what someone else did. My counter point is that since the dawn of humanity, every human has used someone’s else idea or tool to make their life better.
So yeah, you owe it to everyone around you for the lifestyle you have right now.
I think you two might be working with different definitions of deserve
Actually, in a socialist utopia, yes you would. And everyone else would be entitled to the thing you made too. And every pricetag would be based on the labor spent in making the item rather than inflated to satisfy the profits of some corporation that doesn’t add value to the product being sold.
That sounds like a communist utopia you’re thinking of, not socialist.
And ignores that it’s not that “everything is free”, it’s that everything is owned by everyone, the same way everyone “pays” for the police - but they don’t work for you, they work for everyone / the state.
You’re on Lemmy.
The annoying thing is that there will very likely be a homeless shelter in this city that he’s not allowed to sleep in because they have a zero tolerance drug policy.
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Your precious taxes are still going to get spent on cleaning up their mess, regardless of you wanting them to be helped or not.
That guy would walk down to the prison and give them his pay check volenteerily.
It’s annoying because people who do drugs still need homes. Also not every drug user is aggressive or disruptive or whatever other reason the shelter would have for not allowing drug users.
You might be right, but if the requirement for shelter is to not use drugs, why is it the shelter’s responsibility to alter their requirements rather than the person who’s seeking shelter’s responsibility to abide by the requirements? They aren’t owed anything, they’re being offered shelter at someone else’s cost. If I’m hungry and a restaurant offers to give me free food, I can’t then get angry that they have a “no shirt no service policy” and require me to wear a shirt to receive my free food.
In what system would the homeless people sleep their nights in bed stores?
The scarcity isn’t primarily the beds. The scarcity is where to put the beds, which is perhaps artificially upheld by zoning laws and other governmental shenanigans.
That’s just unfaithful interpretation of the argument, and you know it. US on average has 27 empty houses per a homeless person.
Are those houses like habitable right now? I agree that there is a mismatch but 1:27 ratio seems high to me.
You might be confused because typically that figure refers to ‘homes’, not ‘houses’. Apartments and other multi-family housing types are included in that figure.
Alright but still. There must be at least a million homeless Americans if not more. That would mean 27 million housing units sitting on the market now ready to go and not be sold or rented out? That dwarfs almost any city in the US, I can’t even picture it. My building has three units for rent all occupied so you would have my building in a line of 9 million other ones I guess it takes about 1 seconds to walk across the front of my building, a line of 9 million would take 2,500 hours just to walk past, or a bit under a third of a year if you walked non-stop 24/7.
This is very very large number.
Vacant homes are any home that’s not someone’s primary residence when they calculate vacancies.
That includes vacation homes, temporary housing for traveling workers or college students, houses that are sold or rented but haven’t been moved into yet, housing held up in divorce or estate proceedings, etc.
According to the census, last year there were 15 million vacant homes. Yes, that’s a lot, and yes, many can’t reasonably have a homeless person live there.
It is absolutely a large number.
Might also help to know that this number likely also includes AirBNB’s and timeshare rentals. 27 million, spread over 3 million square miles (size of the US) and often in high-density buildings, including units that may appear to be occupied but are transiently used for only a third of the year.
That’s technically true, but really not important. Houses are defined as vacant if they’re unoccupied on the day of a census. There’s many reasons a house might be technically vacant, but not currently be able to house a homeless person.
Was the house just sold, and is it unoccupied for a week or a month between owners? It’s vacant. Did the owner just move into hospice or a memory care unit and their children haven’t yet sold the house because they need to arrange an estate sale? It’s vacant. Is the house under construction but is mostly built? It’s vacant. Is it not safe to live in, but not officially condemned? It’s vacant.
Want to move to a city? Either you have to find the apartment of someone moving out, or you have to move into a vacant unit.
Having a good number of vacant homes is a good thing, actually; having low numbers of vacancies in an area leads to housing becoming more expensive because you can’t move into a unit that isn’t vacant. Increasing housing supply relative to population leads to higher vacancy rates, but decreases housing costs.
Housing-first approaches to homelessness seem to be good in practice. But those are typically done by either government-built housing or government- subsidized housing; it’s mostly orthogonal to vacancy rates.
Right so the problem is that they don’t have money to buy those homes. It’s still not a problem with the bed store
You understand what the word “visualisation” means, right?
The problems are:
- they don’t have money to buy homes
- they don’t have money to buy beds
- we accept their suffering as necessary so that someone can make money from selling those things
- we accept that their life is worth nothing without the value of their labor
- we abdicate our own responsibility and become complicit by refusing to acknowledge the lack of humanity in this system
Interpreting everything through individuality is a choice. Just because you refuse to acknowledge systemic injustice does not mean it does not exist.
The scarcity isn’t primarily the beds.
Obviously not. The existence of homelessness isn’t due to scarcity at all, it’s to do with a system that tolerates (even necessitates) homelessness. The image could have just as easily been someone sleeping outside an apartment with a sign advertising available units; they sleep, freeze, and starve, because our economic model rejects their basic needs in favor of commodifying them.
It’s not that hard a concept to grasp, it just seems like people have ingrained the logic of the market in their brains and can’t conceptualize the issue of poverty beyond ‘stuff costs money’.
Bed stores are a problem. They sit there taking up space for what? To look pretty for people to try out different brands of bed because we like to not figure out a universal solution to the problem of making a comfortable healthy platform of material that we can lay upon for long term rest. On top of that, instead of supplying our nation with affordable housing and furniture, it is laughably ignored.
All these empty locations for these corporations to advertise products and “experiences”
To look pretty for people to try out different brands of bed because we like to not figure out a universal solution to the problem of making a comfortable healthy platform of material that we can lay upon for long term rest.
We’ll do that as soon as we invent the universal spine.
yes health of your posture and spine is very important too
I think his point is that any universal bed will be comfortable for some people and uncomfortable for others because people are different.
I said solution, not one bed to rule them all lol
We need something that can scientifically determine a way to get people an affordable and comfortable bed that is not just go into a giant waste of space filled with random mattresses in hopes you find the right one and will likely just pick one that is “just good enough” after a minute or two from laying on it, When its use case is meant for laying on it for about 8 hours
IKEA and Costco both sell relatively affordable bedding and furniture solutions.
Also, there are some delivery only bed companies. Ie Purple Mattress.
Some people insist on actually trying out the mattress first and spending $4,000+ on a bed.
The problem is that there are too many people.
which one would you recommend? some kind of “culling games” or castration? Would you like to go first?
Bar argument. Our birth rate isn’t high enough to create this demand.
Lemmy recently had a swarm of conservative sign ups and/or bot accounts in the last few days.
Has been for a while. During the big exodus from reddit we brought with us lots of typical redditors that think being a contrarian dickhead makes them cool.
As well as lots of the usually sad little losers from across the internet that see people enjoying themselves and get the irresistible urge to make things worse.
“irresistible urge”, sure, but I wouldn’t give them credit for making things worse. Sure, they snicker at sticking their old gum under the desk, but it’s a whole set of other issues that’re burning down the building in the meantime.
There’s a ghastly number of people who are aggressively ignorant assholes.
The point is that we don’t have people sleeping on the street for a lack of… anything, really. Including beds. The point is that, when nearly everything is run for-profit, and it’s even slightly more profitable to let people suffer and even die, then people will suffer and die. We do a better job selling beds than we do making sure everyone has a bed to sleep in. We could make sure everyone has access to a warm bed, shelter, food, medicine, etc., but we don’t, and it’s less and less acceptable to just accept the status quo just because it’s the status quo. If someone thinks the status quo is defensible, it’s on them to defend it.
That doesn’t mean the mattress seller is evil, or (and I can’t understand the logic in one of the other comments) that wanting people to be housed makes you a hypocrite if you have your own housing. And the absolutely shameless comments that openly admit they won’t (really can’t) explain their position, but are going to condescend anyway.
But there being a salespoint for bed does not take home from the homeless. The issue is them being without shelter.
This is Symbolik, but not the issue at hand. Also turning commercial buildings into flats does not seem like a good/efficient solution to a complex issue like homelessness. (Disregarding living out of a car homelessness)
The other guy said it perfectly:
There’s a bed there, and there’s a human being sleeping on the ground.
It really isn’t more complicated than that. Any explaination why this person is not allowed to sleep in this bed or why this person should not be able to sleep in this bed is absolute bullshit.
There’s a bed there, and there’s a human being sleeping on the ground.
I think people’s issue with it is it’s just not very well thought out.
The bed store would never under any circumstance provide the bed for homeless people to access what world would that ever happen in? The problem is the homeless person doesn’t have access to shelter but that’s not the fault of the bed store that’s the fault of the state.
The image seems to suggest that the bed store are holding all the beds for some kind of weird show of economic supremacy rather than you know the fact that it’s a display room. No one’s buying those beds they’re display models.
No one is arguing that homeless people shouldn’t be held but that particular image isn’t really anything.
You’ve understood about 90% of the argument. That 10% is capitalism is the link between the bed store and the homeless person.
BTW, let’s all go hold a homeless person. Unintentional wholesomeness.
Why don’t we just convert all the bed stores into homeless shelters?
That way you can try out a bed, get some feedback from actual users (the homeless sleeping on the bed), all the store profits can go to pay for housing the homeless, AND government won’t have to provide public housing!
It’s a win-win, kill 2 birds with 1 stone.
Well, bed is not necessary since you can sleep anywhere as long as you can lie down. To make bed - trees were cut, the ecosystem were damaged. The birds who had their nest in those trees lost their home. Is this worth it?? /s
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We don’t have everything. But we have plenty of lazy people who don’t want to contribute to the society.
What does the society you dream of look like? Because at the moment, it’s shit.
Meritocratic corporatism.
And what do you contribute to society?
A lot.
You bought an area of empty land? That’s great.
And what did this thought contribute to society?
So do you let homeless people sleep in your house with you? I’m sure you have plenty of extra space…
We have more empty homes than homeless people.
I have. Also sheltered illegals before. Which at one point involved me having to stare down and bluff a process server. Not a moment I would like to revisit but proud of myself for doing.
👑
I had a friend who did that too, once.
Her roommates did not approve. She became homeless too at the end of the month.
Just because someone may or may not want homeless people sleeping in their house, doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t support social safety nets to make sure people aren’t freezing to death sleeping in indignity on the streets.
It’s easy to advocate for things that you bear no responsibility for. It’s no different than politicians war mongering and advocating for wars that they will send other people’s children to fight and die in.
I don’t want anyone to die on the streets, but I also recognize that at a certain point giving help is enabling, and individuals are responsible for their own well-being and decisions. The help should absolutely be offered, but society should not be required to suffer those who refuse to take it/change their lifestyle.
What the fuck is with this thread being overrun with
dickheadsliberals?Fixed.
You’ll shit your pants when you will learn that liberal is center right on anywhere else but the US.
You’ll shit your pants when you will learn that liberal is
center rightright-wing on anywhere else but the US.There is no such thing as “center-right” - the only differentiator between one right-winger and the next is how comfortable they happen to be with the violence that maintains their precious status quo.
Liberals are just right-wingers that prefer the violence happening somewhere where they don’t have to witness it.
I still think that center is useful in that context because it tells you where their policies actually lands usually. But otherwise, I agree with you.
Fair enough.
I don’t get it… is that store supposed to let people in to sleep on their beds?
Just a statement about how we have the resources readily available yet unobtainable to some.
Lemmy. Huh. It gets tiring aftet a while.
Go outside then.
It’s a critique on capitalism, where we have the technology and products to improve our quality of life but restrict access to them for a considerable percentage of humas. You’re welcome.
Even in a utopian communist society there would be showrooms for products, to help people select what best meets their sleep/medical needs. Those beds would be unused too.
It is a separate issue, that the showroom is not responsible for, that resulted in a homeless person not having a bed.
Systemic issues have systemic solutions. If you try to apply a local solution to a systemic problem, you just kicked the can. (As in, letting homeless people use the showroom beds).
No. In utopian society there wouldn’t be the person who doesn’t have a bed.
Ok? That’s not contested in my comment.
But there is the assumption that bed showrooms need to be filled with inventory so that people can decide what bed they want to buy while others don’t even have a bed.
I’m not communist because I think skill and effort should be rewarded. But I guess you could say I’m basic need communist in that I think society should do their best to ensure everyone has their basic needs met and rewards those supplying those basic needs beyond their own basic needs.
Luxury options and upgrades should be waiting until after everyone has the base version. And that base version should be efficiently and effectively designed, not designed deliberately to make the user want to upgrade.
The idea is that a socialist/communist utopia wouldn’t concern itself with the pursuit and hoarding of capital. So the “showroom” wouldn’t really be a concept. We’d have catalogues and stores, but the fancy aspirational dressing that comes with the wastes of space known as furniture stores would be less prevalent.
Then you missed the point.
There’s always going to be people who fall through the cracks in your safety net because they for some (usually mental health related) reason just can’t integrate into the framework of society. You can offer help, but even without conditions attached there’s going to be people who will refuse it.
I don’t think the issue in America is that we’ve tried the best we can but some have slipped through the cracks. More along the lines of we’ve tried nothing and we are all out of ideas.
The systemic solution is not a utopian communist society, but a system which provides beds for those who need it. The picture highlights this problem.This is not a critique on the showroom, or the store owner (which is how you interpreted it), this is a critique on society. You were the one who muddied the waters (and assumed that someone is proposing a communist society, another argument fallacy). The point is not “letting homeless people use the showroom beds” but rather “letting homeless people use beds”.
Considering we have multiple people suggesting that the homeless person should, in fact, be allowed to sleep in that bed, I think that a lot of people are interpreting it that way.
I didn’t muddy anything. I handled multiple points. The second point in my comment is the one you are discussing.
Further, it is not “another argument” fallacy when “capitalism” is written on the photo. The prominent differing economic model is communism or like systems, where needs are systemically met before profits are considered. So it is implied one can discuss other economic models by the presence of “capitalism” in the source material.
The part where you did actually muddy the waters is that you assumed that the picture depicts problems in a “showroom - homeless person” context, which is clearly not the case (as you contradictingly say yourself and even recognize when you said: “when “capitalism” is written on the photo”). The picture clearly criticizes capitalism as a economic system, but you wanted to make the showroom the focus point of the photo. That is muddying the waters. You dismiss the original critique. Or at least that’s how I read your comment. The difference between “I was talking about multiple points” and “muddying the waters” is not that big.
On the other part, yeah, fair enough. I would compare it to a “utopian socialist society” rather than communistic, but sure whatever. I mean there are countries in the world where taking this picture is very easy, and some (socialist) countries where it’s take a bit of effort to find a situation like this to photograph in the first place (most nordic european countries, for example).
The whole point of the image we are both commenting is a critique on capitalism. You are moving the point slightly towards “critique on showroom owners”.
However let’s not get sidetracked here. In a utopian society there would be showrooms, yes. But the person would not be forced to sleep outside without a bed in such a society, be there showrooms or not. That is the point. Capitalism allows this, a socialist society doesn’t (just look at the countries with least homeless people and you’ll see)
None of which I contest. I discussed 2! things.
You are fixating on the first.
I am fixating on the thing that relates to this picture. It seems to me (honestly, I don’t mean to come off as an ass) that your 2nd point of discussion is very much my “muddying the water” point. I don’t want to discuss that point, as that was totally irrelevant here. If I understood correctly, your 2 points were: (I’m paraphrasing, but) “I don’t understand, why showroom owners should let homeless people sleep inside their premises” and “every other economic system besides capitalism also has these qualities”
Right? And I think I have provided arguments against both of these. What am I missing?
According to all the kids here, yes.
“kids”
You are not superior for not having empathy for homeless people
Do you think the homeless need our empathy or do they need something else?
I certainly think they will get nothing if people don’t have empathy for them.
You’d be surprised by how far just caring can go. And by that, I mean genuinely, empathically, caring.
You’d be surprised by how far just caring can go. And by that, I mean genuinely, empathically, caring.
Depends a lot on who is doing the caring. For instance, if a homeless person has infinite empathy towards another one, not a lot will happen. If a particurarily unskilled politician has a lot of empathy, what they do with it might be a net negative.
So I kinda disagree with the sentiment here. Empathy alone does about as much as thoughts and prayers. Empathy isn’t even required in order to help a lot of people. You can be the driest, most temperature-room person on the planet and do good things.
You would still need to the wherewithal to identify that help is needed. Be it empathy from within or external, if no one cared it would never reach even the lukiest of warm persons desk.
Hey its the sole free thinker and adult on all of lemmy!!!
I’ve always pointed to the fact that over half the food in the US is left to rot until it ends up in a landfill yet food insecurity is rampant in the richest country in the world.
When they send police to arrest people, including homeless people and parents trying to feed their kids, for dumpster diving behind grocery stores and some grocery stores now literally shred or pour bleach on the packages of still sealed food that they throw away, maybe it’s a sign that society needs a pretty major paradigm change on how goods and services should be distributed.
When police arrest people for giving homeless people food, maybe we should question who they’re really here to serve and protect.
Guy can’t even take a nap without being abused by propagandists.
Yeah, we should own those dirty communist propagandists by housing every homeless person.
The commies will be sooo owned if we do that.
yes please daddy antisocialist me harder
There are some capitalist countries that have a pretty low number of homeless people. Finland, for instance: 3,686 in 2022 (0,07% of whole population). So yeah, perhaps USA could do a lot better in this, but also being capitalist doesn’t really correlate with this.
Then again, could be that the reason for the low number of homeless people in Finland is that you don’t survive the winter if you’re homeless in Finland.
Finland has a housing first policy. The homeless often have multiple problems that prevent them from getting a home the normal way (e.g. drug problems that cause them to get evicted). Instead of insisting people get better while homeless, they’re given homes first and treatment for their other problems after. This coupled with welfare transfers that ensure you never end up homeless just because of lack of money leads to low homeless numbers.
Yes, Finland does this precisely by rejecting Capitalism and giving homeless people homes. This is not a Capitalistic solution.
I get what you’re saying, you can have a majority Capitalist society and still solve homelessness, but the answer will never be Capitalism.
Finland’s version of capitalism is in another universe compared to North American capitalism. Finland had UBI, rehabilitation first prisons, housing is treated more as a human right. Socialism doesn’t mean the abolition of commerce, it just removes the predatory hoodwink from the equation.
Finland’s version of capitalism is in another universe compared to North American capitalism.
Yeah, quite a lot more capitalistic: https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking
Finland had UBI
We have never had UBI. Only some local experiments that have ended now. Other things you said are correct though.
Social democrats*
It’s like communism but it works, and you don’t even have to kill minorities like you do on communism.
Why does Communism necessitate killing minorities, and why are you assuming Social Democracies haven’t killed minorities?
Do you think tools have a mystical property that requires the owners to turn evil if they are collectively owned, rather than privately?
Why does Communism necessitate killing minorities, and why are you assuming Social Democracies haven’t killed minorities?
Good question, let’s hope you are able to have a civil conversation!
First of all, every communist regime has systemically killed off their minorities. Social democrat governments haven’t. I hope that clears it up. If you come across social democratic governments systematically killing minorities, let me know though.
Do you think tools have a mystical property that requires the owners to turn evil if they are collectively owned, rather than privately?
Like I said earlier, the underlying economic model under the fascism is irrelevant to the millions of minorities having being killed by communist regimes.
Every country has systemically killed off minorities.
Show me exactly where the mystical property of tools comes in, where collective ownership turns people evil. If you can’t, then Communism does not necessitate genocide.
It’s that simple.
Every country had systemically killed off minorities.
Did I say talk about countries or governments? Keep it on topic
If you can’t, then Communism does not necessitate genocide.
Again, I don’t support transphobia, I just so happen to support communism which is a form of fascism which historically has systematically slaughtered transgendered people :)
Fuck you fascist.
Ah, you’re a troll, checks out. For your information, the Weimar Republic was a failing Social Democracy that led to Nazi Germany, which was responsible for the Holocaust. Even Social Democracy isn’t a perfectly innocent system, nor can anyone truthfully say that unrelated systems necessitate the presence of each other.
I support collective ownership of the Means of Production, which will eventually lead to a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society. I don’t particularly subscribe to any particular flavor of leftism, as each country will get there a different way. As such, I’m simply a leftist. Decentralization, equality, and Democracy are critical to human happiness, which will necessitate trans liberation. To call me transphobic is projection.
All in all, you’re nothing more than a troll who believes tools have mystical qualities that necessitate genocide if people share them. You can’t actually logically prove this point so you dodge and resort to calling me a transphobic fascist, despite being the opposite.
There’s no use in continuing this convo, you asked me to be civil and yet you immediately out yourself as a troll and spew slander.
At what point was there a communist country on Earth and not just a fascist dictatorship calling itself communist? When did the proles have their revolution and create government?
It’s impossible to prove that somethi g doesn’t exist. Checkmate Hitler!
you don’t even have to kill minorities like you do on communism.
TIL… Derek Chauvin is really a communist.
He’s a fascist like a commie, but that’s where the similarities end
TIL… Derek Chauvin is a fascist. But also a communist. No, a fascist. But also… a communist.
Are you unaware that fascism is an umbrella term for many things such as communism and national socialism? I mean I know you’d rather suppress that fact but still, quite delusional
TIL… serving capitalism makes you communist.
Do tell… do you also apply this “logic-that-must-be-good-because-I-pulled-it-out-of-my-ass” in other parts of your life?
Wussss
I AM A COMMUNIST
pay my dues and everything
Here is some capitalism and oligarchy propagandist for you:
Wasteful is the wrong word. Waste implies this is some kind of poor planning, inefficiency or oversight.
Capitalism truly is all about efficiency, literally at the expense of basic humanity.
This isn’t unintentional waste, this is intentional separation of the poor from resources. This is intentional artificial scarcity. The fact that many are literally separated from and thus lack a bed (or a roof, or food, etc) is what makes a bed a more valuable commodity for those with enough capital to purchase one from the private owner class through vendors like this one. If basic twin beds were publically available or subsidized, it would lower the capital value and profit potential of the swankier beds. And that is something the owners won’t tolerate.
Under unrestrained market capitalism, there need to be people dying in the streets, otherwise people won’t appreciate the capital value of purchasing what they need to live.
We Americans cast our sub-optimal capital batteries out to die of exposure. This is by design. If, as an American not born into wealth, you refuse or are unable to generate value for the owners directly, you will still have an important economic function you will be forced to fulfill: a capitalism scarecrow, meant to scare the wage slaves back to work on Monday, making money for the owners in exchange for minimal subsistence.
We could house and shelter all our fellow Americans, it isn’t a matter of resources or space. We choose not to, and we also antagonize our powerless homeless as the villains selfishly lowering our property values by continuing to exist while destitute. We don’t, because market capitalism incentivises cruelty for profit, and we refuse to reign it in for fear of slowing its self serving growth/metastasis at the expense of the society it is supposed to serve.
This is an image of our economy’s and society’s
wasteintential, greed incentivised cruelty. We Americans are a cruel people far more interested in getting more than our neighbors than entertaining being part of a society.Depends on your definition of waste. Capitalism produces a lot of waste, arguably part of what has gotten us into this pickle with climate change.
Capitalism itself doesn’t define that as waste. It defines the damage it inflicts on the commons, the earth, and the poor in pursuit of profit as an externality.
Externalities of course being Orwellian double speak for “lol not my problem you fucking suckers 🤑.”
But perhaps China is indeed Capitalist.
China’s economic system is very much capitalist these days.
Why do you think that China’s per capita carbon footprint is higher? I’ll give you a hint: it rhymes with “Manufacturing all of the toys and treats that Capitalism is selling”. But also yes, China is capitalist. They weren’t really ever communist by definition. Just like how North Korea isn’t a democracy, despite calling themselves one.
Actually, that graph isn’t adjusted to per capita. If it was, the US would be on top.
I think it’s slightly insulting towards chinese people to think as you imply that they’re unthinking animals who are completely guided by what the west does. They are smart human beings just like everyone else (or smarter if you believe some IQ studies), so they should be able to make responsible decisions.
And as I point out in another reply, they seem to be in process of making good decisions right now. This has a good chance of absolving their guilt if they keep progressing like that.
Rest of the world moves their dirty manufacturing over to China
Rest of the world: “How can you pollute like this?”
That was indeed a mistake in many levels. Nevertheless, China is responsible of China’s pollution output, nobody else. Unlike you seem to imply, the chinese are not unthinking animals, but regular people – with even higher than average IQ compared to west according to some studies. They were perfectly capable of making good decisions instead of bad ones.
And in fact, they seem to be in the process of making such good decisions now. The Economist believes that their CO2 levels will peak this year and start to go down in the near future due to China’s investments in clean energy.
https://www.economist.com/china/2023/11/27/will-china-save-the-planet-or-destroy-it
China made their decision based on the rules of the game, as set by the dominating economic power of the world (i.e. the US). They could’ve turned down being the world’s manufacturer, but they wouldn’t have had a clear path to get to where they have come to this point. Now that they have economic power, they’re better able to make some changes. Like you pointed out, China is making huge investments in clean energy. Granted, a huge driving force behind that is their lack of domestic petrol production and their desire for energy dependence, but they’re still the leader when in comes to investments in clean energy. It’s embarrassing how far behind the US is and even more embarrassing when you take that graph from before and adjust it to per-capita emissions. A real letdown from the richest country in the world.
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Fair point, friend.
I upvoted you, Im sorry others didn’t.
This should have more up votes. Well said.
Would this homeless person have a home if the bed store didn’t exist? Or what is the actual alternative that you’re looking for?
If you give away the beds, the bed store does not exist, and people who can afford beds wouldn’t be buying beds. Then the people who might have worked in the bed store don’t have jobs and they perhaps are also sleeping on the street.
In case you don’t understand what “metaphor” or “visualization” means, nobody is saying that this exact store is a reason for the homelessness.
You know what’s so sad about something like this?
The conservative seeing this will opt to blame the individual. This conservative will most frequently espouse themselves to be a Christian nonetheless. “Jesus-like” in aspirations and idolatry.
And yet, they’ll have the knee-jerk reaction to this image that is saying, “Well they put themselves in that position.”
“It wasn’t the happenstance of birth locations,.”
“It wasn’t the culmination of external forces and externalities building to this moment.”
“It wasn’t the fact that their life was harder than my own.”
“Or perhaps my life was hard and I’m using the survivor-bias fallacy to justify kicking the ladder out from under me.”
The conservative believes there are lesser people who deserve what they get coming. It’s seemingly incomprehensible to them that we humans are quite literally of the same species, and that you must come to the conclusion one of two possibilities: Either (1) We are all a blank slate from the start and thus products of our environment. Nurture comprising the vast majority of what influences us. Which means those left out on the streets; those who take drugs in an ideal state of mind don’t want to be there, but are already too far broken from past experiences to reconcile their immediate choices (and need saved; protected; rehabilitated by the same outside forces that put them there in the fist place). Or (2) It is genetic, which means there is a predisposition incompatible with the inherently-flawed system we’ve built for ourselves. They’re a circle in a square system, and it’s thus just the same not their choice. And so again, the system should adapt and accommodate them just the same to promote a healthier society overall.
THAT would be more Jesus-like. Not the lazy cop-out that casts them off as degenerates. Such people lack empathy and cannot comprehend the bigger picture.
Lemmy try not to blame capitalism challenge/s
Why? I’m not going to avoid pointing to the source of a problem just because people don’t want to hear it.
It gets tiring huh.
Indeed, capitalism is tiring unless you’re part of the owner class.
Heck, did I lose?
Now is time to upgrade to linux haha
Oh shit… Where did I leave my knee socks?
You don’t benefit from it, so why are you defending it? You don’t think you’re going to be a millionaire one day, do you?
Please see image, it’s really that simple /s
Lemmy try not to give a correct answer to a problem…chalenge for some reason
Yeah you’d think most of our societies problems are a direct cause of late stage capitalism cresting a system where only profits matter and once its not profitable to feed or house someone then they are left to starve and go homeless or something. Haha I’m so glad that’s not the case, haha…
The real capitalist crime is that a mattress sells for such ridiculous prices that they charge thousands of dollars for a chunk of foam and some springs.
Most mattress stores print money, and only need to make 4 sales a month to stay in business.
They are insanely overpriced. Why doesn’t everyone just buy cheap beds from Costco and IKEA?!
Sacrificing the needs of the many for the wants of the few.
Grossly oversimplified. Dumb meme that adds nothing substantive
“You don’t like an athrocity? But what about that other athrocity on the other side of the globe? Check, mate. I am very intelligent.”
In a wasteful system there’d be some factory churning out obsolete mattresses to fill a warehouse that nobody needs because there’s a quota to be met.
Meanwhile the workers can’t eat enough because resources were allocated by a bureaucrat last year who’s got no personal incentive to see either system work smoothly.
Who tf need 8 pillows of various sizes on their bed?
2 head pillows for some people who are restless and would keep moving in the bed, so they don’t miss any pillow zone with their heads. One for hugging. One for spooning them from behind for emotional support. One for crotch support to keep male reproduction organs comfortable by giving a bit of space between legs when sleeping on the side.
Remove one spooning or hugging pillow when having 2 people sleep in the same bed, then multiply the rest. You get 21, and that is the number of pillows you shall have.
How did you get 21? 2 + 1 + 1 + 1 is 5 for one person, and even if you remove nine and multiply it by 2, I got 10
I think you took that a little too seriously.
My wife. And it annoys me because they keep getting onto my side and I need one pillow.
I have 6
Right? Those pillows could be used to feed the homeless.
Why are you calling me out like this, it’s a sensory thing 😔
“Capitalism is when stores aren’t hotels”
The point is that there are beds that nobody are using while people are forced to sleep on the ground. Because, yes, a store is unused at night.
It’s about resources not being used as efficiently as they could be, because we are looking at the situation from a capitalist ideology point of view.
I don’t think the beds are the problem. Housing a single person takes much more resources than just a single bed. Those resources are scarce.
They are not, we have everything we need for all the 8 billion people living on this rock
https://sharing.org/information-centre/articles/enough-everyone
The first problem is the word “profit”, most people who can make astronomical differences, wont move a finger if there’s no profit in It.
The second problem is logistics, it’s hard to get things around the globe in an organized fashion, and this is usually overcome with big incentives, which brings us to the first problem again.
The point is that there are beds that nobody are using while people are forced to sleep on the ground.
If you let a guy sleep on it, then you can’t sell it. Who would buy it? The bed isn’t “not being used”, it’s not being used as a bed.
It’s about resources not being used as efficiently as they could be
There’s nothing inefficient about this allocation of resources.
Showroom beds are usually not the beds that are actually sold. The beds that get sold sit in storage.
The chances that person has bedbugs is non-zero. The chances they haven’t showered are also not exactly low. Putting them in a showroom bed could ruin it.
I really want a solution to house people because it’s an untenable situation, but ‘let them sleep in a bed showroom’ is not a good solution.
100% property taxes on all properties that have sat empty for more than X% of the time the property has existed
The problem there is that sometimes ownership of a property is either lost or unclear. The woman across the street from us died. Her house has sat empty for years. No one seems to have claimed ownership of it. I doubt anyone is paying property taxes on it because whoever does own it doesn’t seem to be aware of it.
Oh I realize that proposal is unreasonable and unrealistic. I’m just sick and tired of the people who are trying to make things better for others being the only ones that are supposed to compromise and “be reasonable.” The opposition has chosen violence and intransigency.
Far as that woman’s house is concerned, sounds like a good place to put a homeless squatter, who can then gain lawful ownership since no one else wants the place
Why are you gargling capitalist balls?
Yes. There’s nothing more capitalist than wanting to house the unhoused.
Eh, bed stores are a particularly ridiculous waste of resources. The average bed store sells like 6-8 mattresses a month, which is inefficient and dumb.
Capitalism is when 27 empty houses per a homeless person, that are used as investments for the rich to play around with their imaginary numbers, while 99% of population struggle to survive.
Communism is when made-up stats
Do you think society could be better if the rich weren’t forced to invest because their money is constantly being devalued by government and bankers?
Why are you gargling ruling class cum?
Yes, society would be better if we didn’t have a ruling class period.
The society would be better if we collectively eat everyone who is hoarding money above some level. Physically, literally, eat them, with mustard and mayo.
But since that probably isn’t happening anytime soon, we have to make them stop playing their stupid fucking games with things that humans need to survive, like, for example, housing. Let them buy and sell and invest and shortly squeeze to the moon whatever bullshit people don’t use, yachts for example. But when they do it with real life stuff it’s harmful for the humanity
99%
You only prove how delusional commies are
I’m glad that the only problem with my comment you have is that number. Yeah, it might be described as slightly less than that, depending on how you define struggling, some people are perfectly fine with being one medical emergency away from a bankruptcy, and not struggling at all about it. But for the broader point it doesn’t matter, really.
Tell us what you think the definition of “communism” is.
“I interpreted the picture overly literally to the point it loses its meaning. I’m very smart”
You missed the entirety of the point.
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Is the guy in the picture employed?
many unhoused people are
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