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Moving away from physical currency has been very detrimental to the homeless industry (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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[–] 22 points 1 year ago (8 children)

So apparently around Los Angeles there's a supposed begging "cartel", wherein some of the folks who beg at stoplights and freeway off ramps are actually working for an organized ring. The way it was explained was that this group takes the lionshare of their donations and offer protection, food, and safe sleeping areas. I don't know how true this is, but I've heard it from quite a few unrelated people, one of which being a cop, so either there's some truth to it or it's a very elaborate hoax to get people to stop giving beggars money.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    That sounds like an urban legend. The Sherlock Holmes story “The Man With the Twisted Lip” includes a wealthy man who had made his money by begging. The “beggar king” trope goes back further than that, and as far as I can tell it’s just a comfortable fiction to excuse society’s failure to care for its most vulnerable members.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago*

    This is insane peak capitalism at work. Paying "donations" to an organized group to provide food and shelter is literally just recreating what the government should be doing with taxes. If this cartel is real, it's just criminalized socialism.

    As long as they're not hurting anyone, I'm not against it, but that's just such a batshit crazy concept that that's where we're at with the world.

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