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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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[–] 156 points 1 year ago (34 children)

"The homeless industry"?

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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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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    homeless fight clubs.

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  • [+] -7 points 1 year ago (17 children)

    I know in my city I've seen a "homeless" guy beg for money, with a cardboard sign. Then goes and gets into his sports car and drives off.

    And that got me thinking. Most people who give, don't give a dollar. They give a few dollars. So lets just say they get about $40 in an hour.

    That's $40 untaxed. And there's nothing stopping them from just doing this all day. Remember, I'm not talking about actual homeless people. I'm talking about scam beggers.

    Imagine doing $40 an hour average, for 10 hours, every day, for doing nothing. Set your own schedule. Never gotta worry about being late. Can't get fired. Practically zero costs to start this business. You need a piece of cardboard, a marker, and MAYBE a folding chair.

    So yeah. I'd say it's an industry. An unregulated, scam, borderline illegal industry.

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  • [–] 27 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Studies suggest this is an extreme minority, and stories like yours - while yours might be true (and be fair to me here, we're just two usernames, we don't know each other's motives and biases), it's often used to push reasons to defund homeless shelters and criminalize being poor.

    Even if you have seen a homeless person (or imposter) do something wrong, it might be worth considering that being homeless is very difficult and often caused by pre-existing medical conditions or institutionalized discrimination.

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

    This is quite a take.

    The weather, constant UV exposure, car fumes and tire particles, people shouting abuse and throwing shit sounds like awesome self-employment. Remember, if you look at all comfortable you don't fit the narrative.

    That isn't even worth $40 an hour and I seriously doubt that figure, people don't even like making eye contact with folks standing on roadsides and they don't carry cash.

    Do you have anything supporting this?

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    I know in my city I’ve seen a “homeless” guy beg for money, with a cardboard sign. Then goes and gets into his sports car and drives off.

    Yeah? You've seen it? You saw him begging and saw him get in a luxury car and drive away? He parked right beside where he was begging?

    I call bullshit.

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  • [–] -2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Yeah. I saw him begging for 3 weeks. Then one day he walked across the street to the parking lot, and got in a red sports car.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Well, it's impossible for anyone who owns a red sports car to become homeless, so he must have been lying.

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

    Well, these sports cars usually sell for $100,000+. If he was homeless, he could sell the car, buy a house, and still have anywhere from 5k to 40k leftover depending on the house.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Would like to see some evidence supporting that beggars get an average close to $40 an hour. Searched for papers about the topic and haven't found anything being remotely close to what you suggest.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago

    I’ve known a number of homeless folks, and not a single one has made anywhere near that flying a sign, but plenty of them have had everything they owned trashed by the cops, who also confiscated any cash because the homeless folks “couldn’t explain where they got it.”

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  • [–] -2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    You ever stand at a bus stop for 20 minutes across the street from a highway with an exit ramp that has a light at the street?

    They walk up and down the exit ramp as it has a red light. Walking car to car. Roughly 1 in 5 give money. The light lasts about 2 minutes. Which means every 4 minutes he has a new set of cars exiting the highway. That means there's 15 light cycles in a 60 minute time period, assuming the city doesn't have automated changes at set intervals (some lights do).

    So lets say he gets 1 in 5. And lets set the number real low. Lets say he only gets $3 on average every light change.

    That's $45 dollars an hour. Which is actually shooting low when you consider people like my aunt. Who gave the guy $20. Those people aren't the norm. But they exist, and would bring up the average easily.

    Then there's other times I'd see several light changes where nobody gave him anything.

    Point is, $40 for that type of a scam, with no overhead, no expenses, no payroll, nothing, is pretty low. It's probably more, but I don't have exact numbers. I just see him whenever I catch a certain bus.

    The fact that he has a nice car makes me think he either has a second passive income, or I'm WAY undershooting it.

    Because I'm pretty sure those nice sports cars are like 100k. Even $40/hr I don't think would cover that.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    seen a "homeless" guy beg for money, with a cardboard sign. Then goes and gets into his sports car and drives off.

    This isn't new: 20-20 used to do exposés on this kind of thing, and profiled (tailed) a beggar on the tonnele off-ramp and circle as he walked to his car, put his over-costume in his trunk, and drove off. This was in like 1999. On interviewing him, he admitted he made decent coin.

    Support your food banks. They need cash.

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    • [–] 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    In China where digital payments are done mostly via apps like Venmo, there are beggars with QR codes in front of them. However they're mostly being used by organized crime rings

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Can you tell more about beggers in China? Like real stats or ground anecdotes.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    I don't have any stats or anything, but I lived in China in 2018 and would see them on my way to work. Usually amputees dressed in very sad attire with a QR code on the ground in front of them. My coworkers told me not to give them money because all the money is going to organized crime groups that manage all the beggars in town. I have no idea if this is true, but I heard it multiple times

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    • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    The homeless people in my area accept venmo and square cash. They put their details on their signs, which is pretty smart.

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    [+] -19 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Giving cash to "homeless" could be a death sentence when they use the $$ to buy their next fix and OD on a stash that's laced with fentanyl.

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