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Homeless, Unemployed, and Surviving on Bitcoins

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Re: Homeless, Unemployed, and Surviving on Bitcoins

#11

Post by seansoutpost »

300bps wrote: post #8
rorrr2 wrote: post #6

The math doesn't add up. At "0.000133 bitcoins a day" it would take 7518 days (more than 20 years) to make one bitcoin. At "0.0004 bitcoins" per video it would take 2500 videos to watch to make one bitcoin. The amount of wasted human capital is insane. Why don't these people get jobs? There are tons of posts on Craigslist for jobs that don't require any education - delivery, waiters, busboys, cleaning, etc.

Why don't these people get jobs? You're asking a rational question of irrational people. When someone has a fundamental problem - depression, addiction, anxiety, etc. they often don't make rational decisions.

Being in an extremely economically depressed area of the country doesn't help either.

Re: Homeless, Unemployed, and Surviving on Bitcoins

#12

Post by ctrl_freak »

rorrr2 wrote: post #6

The math doesn't add up. At "0.000133 bitcoins a day" it would take 7518 days (more than 20 years) to make one bitcoin. At "0.0004 bitcoins" per video it would take 2500 videos to watch to make one bitcoin. The amount of wasted human capital is insane. Why don't these people get jobs? There are tons of posts on Craigslist for jobs that don't require any education - delivery, waiters, busboys, cleaning, etc.

> The math doesn't add up.

I would imagine they pay less (in bitcoins) now than they did, say, a year ago.

Re: Homeless, Unemployed, and Surviving on Bitcoins

#13

Post by seansoutpost »

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #10

It seems to me that it is not a property of bitcoin or cryptocurrency itself that is allowing these folks to supplement their income with "manual" labor. Instead it feels like the fact that it's a new, relatively unexploited market that is enabling these ventures to scrape together the people and resources necessary by using extremely thin margins. I can't imagine this will be viable for long as more people get into…

Im really surprised that doesn't exist yet. YC applications still open? :)

Re: Homeless, Unemployed, and Surviving on Bitcoins

#14

Post by a3_nm »

seansoutpost wrote: post #4
techtalsky wrote: post #2

Seems like you could make more than .60 a day doing Mechanical Turk jobs. It'd be a little less mind numbing than watching commercials every day.

I agree you can make more. But, one thing to consider is, you have to have a bank account to deposit turk money into or buy things from Amazon. Neither of those has the immediacy of Bitcoin. Also, a lot of homeless have issues getting a bank account. We have millions of "unbanked" people in the US alone.

Eventually, you would expect that a Bitcoin-based crowdsourcing platform should come into being.

Re: Homeless, Unemployed, and Surviving on Bitcoins

#15

Post by jupiterjaz »

rorrr2 wrote: post #6

The math doesn't add up. At "0.000133 bitcoins a day" it would take 7518 days (more than 20 years) to make one bitcoin. At "0.0004 bitcoins" per video it would take 2500 videos to watch to make one bitcoin. The amount of wasted human capital is insane. Why don't these people get jobs? There are tons of posts on Craigslist for jobs that don't require any education - delivery, waiters, busboys, cleaning, etc.

Often those jobs require a physical address.

Re: Homeless, Unemployed, and Surviving on Bitcoins

#16

Post by _delirium »

Lewton wrote: post #9

Some of the comments on that article are surprisingly nasty

Comments on general news sites tend to be cesspools in general. Oddly, the same people posting weird vitriol about how America is being ruined by freeloading parasites seem to be: 1) not highly educated; and 2) able to spend hours and hours a day posting angry comments on news websites. I wonder where they're getting their own income from. Are they all retirees and students? People on SS disability? Stay-at-home parents whose spouse works? Survivalists in an internet-equipped cabin in Montana?

Re: Homeless, Unemployed, and Surviving on Bitcoins

#19

Post by zanny »

rorrr2 wrote: post #6

The math doesn't add up. At "0.000133 bitcoins a day" it would take 7518 days (more than 20 years) to make one bitcoin. At "0.0004 bitcoins" per video it would take 2500 videos to watch to make one bitcoin. The amount of wasted human capital is insane. Why don't these people get jobs? There are tons of posts on Craigslist for jobs that don't require any education - delivery, waiters, busboys, cleaning, etc.

But for the tons of unskilled craigslist jobs, in these depressed areas, they will get hundreds of resumes. In most places around the US, the reality is multipointed:

* Nobody who would want to hire someone has the capital to do so, or the resources to handle the absurd regulation surrounding hiring an employee.

* The economic cycles in a lot of these areas are not producer ones, so they don't see job growth even when people need basic necessities. The kinds of work in most areas of the US is dwindling, and often specialized and requiring either a degree, or no need to be self sustaining (ie, walmart clerks or mcdonalds staff, because you don't earn a living wage on minimum wage).

* Anyone with money has better, less risky options (usually created through law and false economics) that investing in small town startups that would hire the millions of unemployed as service workers. Because we already know they will never be hired as producers, because we already optimized production into factory farms and automated warehouses. The capital holders get plenty of returns on their investments by operating in an economic cycle outside most of the US, and they do so not for missed opportunity - everyone understands not utilizing the human capital of some 60 million people is wasteful - but because it is much safer to keep playing wal-street with federal bailouts than to try entrepreneurship.

Re: Homeless, Unemployed, and Surviving on Bitcoins

#20

Post by oleganza »

rorrr2 wrote: post #6

The math doesn't add up. At "0.000133 bitcoins a day" it would take 7518 days (more than 20 years) to make one bitcoin. At "0.0004 bitcoins" per video it would take 2500 videos to watch to make one bitcoin. The amount of wasted human capital is insane. Why don't these people get jobs? There are tons of posts on Craigslist for jobs that don't require any education - delivery, waiters, busboys, cleaning, etc.

When I hear about "wasted capital" I imagine some central planner in a uniform from 1950s. Or North Korea.

These guys do have jobs: they are doing work for money. Even if the work is to sit on a street panhandling. Those who donate buy themselves some good feelings. If you don't like that trade, don't do it or pay for it. Simple.

Why don't you get up at 5 AM and work till midnight like Tim Cook? What a waste of resources.

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