Fat, Homelessness and Climate Change

Inspired by George Carlin's Save The Planet stand up bit:

youtu.be...

"Save the Planet? We don't even know how to take care of ourselves."

I propose that obesity and homelessness are going to be the main indicators of whether or not humanity can curb climate change.

Obesity on a level of individual responsibility.
36.5% of Americans are obese. If we incentivized victory gardens, that would help out with the demands of the food industry, gas prices, food prices, health taxes, as well as remove co2 from the atmosphere.

Homelessness on a level of resources as well as a litmus test of our society's effectiveness.

If I ever won the lottery I would buy up farmlands and recruit the homeless to work the crops.

In conclusion, our efforts to fight climate change will be reflections of our society's health and ability to get people on their feet.

a reply to: CloneFarm1000

I partially agree, because it doesn't matter what illness or imbalance you have to blame for being fat. You cannot get fat without taking in more calories than you need. People lack discipline. Consuming way more resources than you need contributes more to CO2 than anything else on the planet due to the supply chain issues of getting shrimp to someone in Kansas, and a steak that took a year to grow in Kansas to someone in Baltimore.

As for getting the homeless to farm. I live in Philly and there are a lot of homeless in center city and other places. The harsh truth is that unless they have people to beg, rob, and steal from close to this farm, and a way to get to the drug dealer, they arent going to work. They will rob you if you are alone in the wrong area. If you paid them with drugs they will do anything you want, anything. But if you pay them with money it would have to be a good sum to support their habits, and then they just get a higher tolerance and need more money than you can pay them anyway. Thats why 2/3 are homeless, because all success they see while doing drugs is consumed by the cost of drugs, no matter how you measure it. I know this because I was once homeless 15+ years ago while saving money. That was because I lost my job 1000 miles away from where I grew up and refused to ask anyone for help or go back home. I saw that even back then, all the homeless people had cell phones, money, and drugs. Many are dealers who do the drugs they get for free for selling them to other homeless people. Almost all homeless stay homeless because they cannot live with people, hold a job, be reliable, be left around things of value. Some of them will kill you. Thats why so many cant even stay in shelters. I think I had to rough it out with a tent while saving to get an apartment for a month. Biggest thing you have to do is hide. They are that way because thats where they want to be.

There are crazy people too, about 1/3 of the homeless. Like full on schizophrenic's who scream at people that aren't there and think conspiracies are happening around them all the time with the people they know. If they are bugging out and know where you are, it may not be safe to go to sleep. Thats why they arent with their families, because their families are scared of them. I have seen this multiple times first hand. I have donated to homeless, helped homeless people personally, had friends try to help mentally ill family who would be homeless otherwise, given clothes to them, its a bottomless pit you cannot fill.

The only way I could imagine ending homelessness would be with extremely cheap housing options like arent offered anywhere to do housing codes, and legal cheap drugs like heroin available at pharmacies, with employers that dont mind hiring addicts. If they can get their fix they are fine, but otherwise cannot be trusted.

The mentally ill need people to watch over them, or nothing will ever change. Society is failing them. If you give them money most of them cannot manage it. The need specialized group homes that do not exist.

The majority of the population is in Imaginationland on homelessness. Its like everyone has a Disney image in their mind of why they are there, but all that crap is lies and propaganda. Truth hurts. Giving them free money is the stupidest thing possible. So is letting them be homeless with kids and raising another generation to live that way.

Rant over

a reply to: TrollMagnet

Roof, food, water and access to medical help should still be universal. Especially if they are schizophrenic, or addicts they need help and shouldn't roam the streets.
They don't want to be that way, that's the dumbest thing anyone ever said. They have deep psychological issues.
Also in cities like Paris, London, LA etc a lot of homeless people have jobs but simply can't afford the rent, or have a problem with credit record etc.
That doesn't make them bad people.
The problem is the lack of dignity translating into lack of self worth and the spiral gets out of control. If you're treated like a dog you start to behave like one ...

In Finnland(? I believe ) there are great concept houses with appartments, social workers, pedagogues etc where people are responsible for their own stuff and behaviour but with always someone there, not as authority but for support and as kind of mediator.

Because help with an attitude of 'do as I say' is not helping. People need to figure their stuff out on their own. Even if that's maybe painful for those who want to help sometimes all you can do is just treat them like every other human being.
But still: the basic needs should be available for everybody no matter what.

a reply to: Peeple

Roof, food, water and access to medical help should still be universal.

And who provides this and at what standard? That's the problem. It costs way more than you think and it comes out of all our pockets in ways many cannot afford.

And once you start setting standards for who qualifies for the universal free ride because they just can't ... then at what bar do you stop? What's the next poor person who just can't and should really qualify for the universal free ride? And when do we get to the point where the rest of us left over just can't afford to feed, clothe and house everyone who just can't? At what happens at that point ... because we *will* get there.

Don't mistake me. It's a nice sentiment, and I wish we could, but it's also grossly unworkable and that's even if you assume you won't create a vast parasite class of people making their own living off administering your care those who just can't.

Give them their dream job,
working at licensed marijuana grow ops.
Payment is room, board, and in-house
medical, social and physiological treatment.
Happy, happy, happy . . .

a reply to: ketsuko

Universal means it's there for everybody. What standard you can afford is up to you, I'm not talking about luxuary accommodation. Just a space big enough for a bed and a closet where you can lock the door and be warm.
Food that gets thrown away every day but that's still technically good can be redistributed.
Stuff that gets now shredded because people ordered it online and send it back can be redistributed.
Closing the gap between income in every industry. If you're making 60 000 per month your lowest earner has to make 5%. Like a relative minimum wage.
I mean how we do things now is unsustainable anyways. So why not rethink the whole thing?

a reply to: Peeple

Watch some more Disney movies.

The people on the bottom are the ones we look at to know we dont want to be there. According to you, the bottom should be impossible to hit. Well sorry, a lot of people do not want to live under rules and they have a bad attitude and do not get along with others. Thats why they are alone, and its usually tied to their drug abuse.

Thats reality, not the BS the tv tells you is true. I suggest you go find yourself a homeless camp. You will see the sob story interviews you see on TV are hard to find. Thats why when they find one they make them famous.

You want a giant safety net where the net is just people who dont feel like trying get to leach off those who try. That would be the best way to increase all kinds of dependent situations. Its a bad idea that would harm society more than it would help it.

originally posted by: Peeple
a reply to: ketsuko

Universal means it's there for everybody. What standard you can afford is up to you, I'm not talking about luxuary accommodation. Just a space big enough for a bed and a closet where you can lock the door and be warm.
Food that gets thrown away every day but that's still technically good can be redistributed.
Stuff that gets now shredded because people ordered it online and send it back can be redistributed.
Closing the gap between income in every industry. If you're making 60 000 per month your lowest earner has to make 5%. Like a relative minimum wage.
I mean how we do things now is unsustainable anyways. So why not rethink the whole thing?

All that would do is UNIVERSALLY drive up the cost of everything. All of a sudden landlords realize people have an extra $800 per month for example, so do food retailers, Uber. Next thing you know, everything costs that much more.

That's how a free market works. If you dont like it, you dont like being able to start your own business and put a value YOU think is fair on the goods you create. The available cash of the prospective customer will always be taken into consideration when setting prices, so will the consideration of if the item is needed or not.

a reply to: TrollMagnet

I made a personal experiment living with homeless people in London for almost a month.
So I do know what I am talking about. Maybe it's more harmless than Skid Row but people are kind of the same everywhere.
Drug abuse is more often than not an escape a few moments to feel good at the beginning and a few moments to feel kind of normal later on.
That's a symptom not the cause.

Also free market is a myth, allegedly thanks to capitalism there should be no poverty, because of the trickle down effect, alas that's not happening, because with no regulation people start hoarding.
For it to work there must be regulations to keep the money moving.
I sincerely doubt that suddenly everybody will stop striving for a better living quality, just because *Basic survival is guaranteed, that's the core of being human. Without fear of survival I would guess that in fact more people would dare to start fun little companies.
But we definitely can do better than we do now.

*I honestly doubt that getting 86sqf and food that's otherwise trash would be an incentive to abandon your suburbia dream house and Sushi dinner, so your argument is silly anyways.
But it would be huge for those who need it.

originally posted by: Peeple
a reply to: TrollMagnet

I made a personal experiment living with homeless people in London for almost a month.
So I do know what I am talking about. Maybe it's more harmless than Skid Row but people are kind of the same everywhere.
Drug abuse is more often than not an escape a few moments to feel good at the beginning and a few moments to feel kind of normal later on.
That's a symptom not the cause.

Also free market is a myth, allegedly thanks to capitalism there should be no poverty, because of the trickle down effect, alas that's not happening, because with no regulation people start hoarding.
For it to work there must be regulations to keep the money moving.
I sincerely doubt that suddenly everybody will stop striving for a better living quality, just because *Basic survival is guaranteed, that's the core of being human. Without fear of survival I would guess that in fact more people would dare to start fun little companies.
But we definitely can do better than we do now.

*I honestly doubt that getting 86sqf and food that's otherwise trash would be an incentive to abandon your suburbia dream house and Sushi dinner, so your argument is silly anyways.
But it would be huge for those who need it.

Thats is NOT what the free market means. You need to educate yourself. The problem here is your perception and poor understanding of the systems we live in.

People who take drugs for that harmless "escape" you claim to know so much about rob, lie, and steal to support those habits. Thats why no one who actually know them or grew up with them trusts them. Thats why most of them live on the street and were abandoned by their families. They all have a nice smile on their face and are so so nice when they arent fiending. Then watch them hit withdrawl and start looking for money or where they can get something of value to get money or trade to the dealer. Dealers near the homeless double as fences for a reason, supply/demand.

You are naïve and should also take an economics class, or you would not have such a huge misunderstanding with what a free market is or means. That's not what regulations are for unless your gov has failed you. Keeping money moving is a stagnant economy concept for countries with little to no GDP trying to milk their constituents for tax dollars by trying to force them into taxable transactions while their nation creates nothing of value to create more wealth. Thats what happens when your politicians are robbing the nation you live in. Its symptom #1, they come up with bad ideas that create nothing, with the sole purpose of taxing you. Thats how nations go broke. Its like standing in a bucket and trying to pick yourself up. If you think that leads to solving problems or some kind of economic prosperity, you are wrong. It leads to the gov thinking of more creative ways to tax the people who aren't smart enough to figure out whats going on.

I am unsubscribing from this imagintionland thread now.

a reply to: TrollMagnet

Thats is NOT what the free market means. You need to educate yourself. The problem here is your perception and poor understanding of the systems we live in.

I wasn't giving an explanation of what free market means I was pointing out why it's not working.

People who take drugs for that harmless "escape" you claim to know so much about rob, lie, and steal to support those habits. Thats why no one who actually know them or grew up with them trusts them. Thats why most of them live on the street and were abandoned by their families.

And what's your solution? To let them suffer and die?


...and the rest is just whiny bitching without anything coherent.
Maybe TikTok would be more suitable for you if you can't handle discussions?
I hear fart videos are quite the hype you could be huge there