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The Street Kids of San Francisco

blog.priceonomics.com

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Re: The Street Kids of San Francisco

#201

Post by specialist »

dewitt wrote: post #40

Like another commenter on this thread, I've lived in the Haight for the past nine years. And while the article is interesting and informative, it doesn't quite paint a full picture (literally—the pictures aren't representative, that girl is not a typical street kid by a long shot, she hasn't slept a day outside in her life. Think camo and combat boots and pit bulls, not peace signs and hacky sacks) of the underside o…

From the OP:

"But they all stayed for the same reason: They found a community..."

Ridiculous.

As a youth, I had a lot of contact with homeless teens. (I was bounced around a lot, but not quite homeless.) Many were kicked out (homosexual), many more were escaping (domestic violence, pedophilia, rape), a few were "free spirits" (or merely didn't feel the need to share their stories).

My SO volunteers at a local homeless teen shelter. The kids she encounters have had terrible lives thus far. Not many happy stories there.

My city tries to do more than the norm for homeless people. Women, children, teens, vets, mentally ill. It's an uphill battle. The ones that are just down on their luck have the tools and resources to bounce back. The rest aren't so fortunate.

In addition to your suggestion, the author should volunteer at a shelter or mission. As a rule, the people we see are just a fraction of the homeless, the panhandlers an even smaller percentage.

Re: The Street Kids of San Francisco

#203

Post by jes5199 »

creamyhorror wrote: post #162
jes5199 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the bay area, there's a constant stream of events that are in the spirit of the Cacophony Society - for example, http://allworldsfair.com/ , or the Lost Horizon Night Market ( http://blog.sfgate.com/inthemission/2010/12/13/guerrilla-nig... ) - and these things are put on by a community of people that's actually fairly small - I'm not sure they'd all self-identify as "Discordian" but, as a Discordian myself, I'll c…

This is seriously making me want to move to SF, because events as artfully crazy as these simply can't happen with any regularity in Singapore. There's just no cultural history for them to - no support or interest from the very pragmatic, have-to-be-up-early-tomorrow society over here. Sames goes for the very chill party mentioned by angersock: it just couldn't happen. When I lived in Philadelphia I don't think there…

To varying degrees you get this stuff in Austin, Portland, Seattle, Brooklyn... And actually I've seen parties like the one angersock describes in places like Bloomington, Indiana and Huntsville, Alabama - it's a matter of knowing the right people, there's a network of social connections. I don't know if it reaches to Singapore, but it doesn't sound impossible to me.

Re: The Street Kids of San Francisco

#204

Post by Locke1689 »

_delirium wrote: post #137
Locke1689 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a pragmatist. I find the philosophical 'discussion' on the metaphysical "purpose" of private property to be uninteresting and mostly worthless. I am, however, perfectly willing to entertain many possible critiques, if they are shown to be practical and better than the alternatives. Feudal property law, for example, I don't find to be nearly as flexible or efficient (which was around for quite a while, as well). I…

Graham's critique is remarkably like the one Karl Marx had of "metaphysical" philosophy, in favor of praxis-oriented philosophy. ;-) From the end of his Theses on Feuerbach : "Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it".

I never said I disagreed with Marx's critique! However, I would note that goal and result are not necessarily the same.

I would say Marx succeeded in producing a lot of interesting practical results which could actually be implemented. On the other hand, some of his stuff smacks more of religion than it does of praxis. His "law of value," for example, seems very unfalsifiable, in a sense. He speaks of the approach to true value when supply and demand equilibriate, but his conditions of equilibrium are often either poorly defined or simply tautological (e.g., the true value of a good is when it meshes with the law of value, thus the law of value is the true value of commodities).

Indeed, many of Marx's ideas have been through the crucible. Some, like a command economy, have mostly been burned to disintegration. Others, like the provision of health care to anyone who needs it, financed by the people according to their ability, seems to have had huge success among most of the civilized world.

All in all, I don't have problems with Marx's approach, just the idea that rehashing ideas from a century ago in pretty much identical ways counts as innovation.

Re: The Street Kids of San Francisco

#205

Post by [deleted] »

vacri wrote: post #176
Locke1689 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the hell? I hope you're not an American -- if civics and government class has so failed our students i would be extremely disappointed. The government of the united States is exactly that, ranging from the lowest town council member to the President. You do understand the concept of sets and subsets, right? The federal government is a subset of the government. That's why it has that additional qualifier.

Yeah, I don't buy your attempt at a 'save'.

[deleted]

Re: The Street Kids of San Francisco

#206

Post by Locke1689 »

vacri wrote: post #176
Locke1689 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the hell? I hope you're not an American -- if civics and government class has so failed our students i would be extremely disappointed. The government of the united States is exactly that, ranging from the lowest town council member to the President. You do understand the concept of sets and subsets, right? The federal government is a subset of the government. That's why it has that additional qualifier.

Yeah, I don't buy your attempt at a 'save'.

That's OK, I don't buy your attempt to be seen as educated on the topic.

Your post is basically, "I don't really know anything, but I sure do read a lot of blogs." If you're actually interested in US govt. & politics open a first year textbook. The Constitution (and amendments) quite clearly describe the subdivision of governmental powers into 4 different areas: the legislative, the executive, the judicial, and the states.

Re: The Street Kids of San Francisco

#207

Post by vacri »

Locke1689 wrote: post #206
vacri wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I don't buy your attempt at a 'save'.

That's OK, I don't buy your attempt to be seen as educated on the topic. Your post is basically, "I don't really know anything, but I sure do read a lot of blogs." If you're actually interested in US govt. & politics open a first year textbook. The Constitution (and amendments) quite clearly describe the subdivision of governmental powers into 4 different areas: the legislative, the executive, the judicial, and the s…

Nice rebuttal: "Oh, it'll say it in this physical resource that you won't have access to".

Looking through google for 'the United States Government', most of the results refer to the three branches, but describe other powers as falling to the states as a different entity, if they're described at all. Certainly if you look at news sources for terms like "called on the United States government", they're all federal-style issues, not state - state issues tend to be specified as such.

You may also want to change the leading paragraph of the Wikipedia article, since it's peddling the "I don't really know anything" viewpoint, given how powerful WP is as a source.

So, as I asked, do you have any reliable, definitive resources I can actually access, or are you content to just call me uneducated with a lazy, hand-wavy dismissal? I'm happy to be proven wrong, but not in the lazy way you're going about it.

Re: The Street Kids of San Francisco

#208

Post by cmccabe »

steveklabnik wrote: post #171
cmccabe wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you think private property was invented in 1813? I guess the War of 1812 was more important than anyone could have dreamed at the time? You really need to read more. Like... a lot more.

... yes, I meant exactly 200 years, to the letter. Obviously. The tilde, which is generally taken to mean 'approximate', was absolutely superflous. In a thread about John Locke's conception of property and its effects on modern day states, I plant the turning point at 1813. You got me. (the ~200 figure comes from the Inclosure acts, which, as Wikipedia says, "the majority were passed between 1750 and 1860". Even that…

Property isn't a philosophical or legal concept. It's a practical aspect of human psychology that has always existed. If you've ever watched two kids fight over an ice cream cone you've witnessed private property in action. People aren't emotionless robots or hyper-rational homo economi. If you can't be bothered to learn even a little bit about humanity, your political philosophies will be every bit as disastrous as Bolshevism (and Castroism, and whatever the hell North Korea does).

Even if we just want to talk about private property as a legal institution, we can go back at least to the code of Hammurabi, and probably further if I could be bothered to do the research, which I can't. Even during the middle ages there was an active merchant class. And arguably feudalism is just the extension of the property concept to encompass ownership of people.

Re: The Street Kids of San Francisco

#209

Post by Locke1689 »

vacri wrote: post #207
Locke1689 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's OK, I don't buy your attempt to be seen as educated on the topic. Your post is basically, "I don't really know anything, but I sure do read a lot of blogs." If you're actually interested in US govt. & politics open a first year textbook. The Constitution (and amendments) quite clearly describe the subdivision of governmental powers into 4 different areas: the legislative, the executive, the judicial, and the s…

Nice rebuttal: "Oh, it'll say it in this physical resource that you won't have access to". Looking through google for 'the United States Government', most of the results refer to the three branches, but describe other powers as falling to the states as a different entity, if they're described at all. Certainly if you look at news sources for terms like "called on the United States government", they're all federal-sty…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalism#United_States

'James Madison asserted that the states and national government "are in fact but different agents and trustees of the people, constituted with different powers."'

Re: The Street Kids of San Francisco

#210

Post by kropotkin »

cmccabe wrote: post #208
steveklabnik wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... yes, I meant exactly 200 years, to the letter. Obviously. The tilde, which is generally taken to mean 'approximate', was absolutely superflous. In a thread about John Locke's conception of property and its effects on modern day states, I plant the turning point at 1813. You got me. (the ~200 figure comes from the Inclosure acts, which, as Wikipedia says, "the majority were passed between 1750 and 1860". Even that…

Property isn't a philosophical or legal concept. It's a practical aspect of human psychology that has always existed. If you've ever watched two kids fight over an ice cream cone you've witnessed private property in action. People aren't emotionless robots or hyper-rational homo economi. If you can't be bothered to learn even a little bit about humanity, your political philosophies will be every bit as disastrous as…

Property has not always existed and it's not a fundamental "aspect of human psychology". If you said possession, I'd probably agree with you but you could say the same thing about sharing and cooperation.
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