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Homeless, Unemployed, and Surviving on Bitcoins

wired.com

41–50 of 134 posts

Re: Homeless, Unemployed, and Surviving on Bitcoins

#41

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 suggested Mechanical Turk to a homeless guy I had gotten to know briefly, and he seemed legitimately interested in the idea, although he said he didn't have a bank account. I'll bet lots of homeless people would use Mechanical Turk if they simply knew about it and had a way of getting paid.

Re: Homeless, Unemployed, and Surviving on Bitcoins

#42
post #32
post #29

There were a few points that the article didn't bring up. I was surprised that they didn't discuss the speculative value of bitcoins. There's no way that the value of a dollar in your pocket will suddenly double, but the value of a bitcoin has and will again. Obviously volatility isn't all fun...would you want your salary paid in bitcions? In the current market you might actually come out ahead over the next few year…

The minimum wage does a lot of good Interesting you say then when you can clearly see that actually hurts those people.

It's not the minimum wage that hurts those people, but a lack of aggregate demand.

Re: Homeless, Unemployed, and Surviving on Bitcoins

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pare…

Conservative political groups in the USA pay people to basically troll on major news sites/message boards/blogs: http://www.alternet.org/story/149197/are_right-wing_libertar...

That's a great conspiracy but I'm not sure those folks have that much market share in the grand scheme of things (and it's possible liberal groups are doing the same thing). I don't know how many news site comment sections you tend to frequent, but I feel like I've seen just as much "dumbed down" liberal "trolling" as the reverse.

Re: Homeless, Unemployed, and Surviving on Bitcoins

#44
post #17

I don't know, it just sounds a sensational story to draw readership. Yeah, maybe he did it for couple of days/weeks, but doing this in a disciplined manner for a long time to earn measly couple of dollars does not make sense all.

Yes, certainly a tech-meets-social-issues story like this is shining fodder for Wired which is certainly an occasion to ask yourself "why does someone want me to believe this"...

Meanwhile, I, too, have been considering the longer-term effects of this article. Without making judgments on anyone, it seems the larger effect of these men is to "soft-launder" bitcoins back into cash. They (aided by brokers like Gyft) are on the bitcoin -> cash side, while in parallel, there is a large world (substantially underground) of cash -> bitcoin people.

If this model is true, the sustainability of the operation will continue and vary/grow as long as the parallel, (somewhat underground) world of BTC does. If this is true, the food these gentlemen eat is the result of a mild additional transaction fee for sustaining the complementary shadow world, which shows zero signs of folding.

Re: Homeless, Unemployed, and Surviving on Bitcoins

#45
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The minimum wage does a lot of good Interesting you say then when you can clearly see that actually hurts those people.

It's not the minimum wage that hurts those people, but a lack of aggregate demand.

Exactly, basically they are being paid to be spammers...

[arguably the lowest-value task in the ecosystem]

Re: Homeless, Unemployed, and Surviving on Bitcoins

#46
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 pare…

I'm politically centrist, supporting neither the Republicans nor the Democrats. I was opposed to the recent $40B food stamp cuts that the Republicans passed in the House, until I read this article. Angie appears to be collecting food stamps, instead of trying to find a real job, which it sounds like he could get. The premise of the Food Stamp cuts were that eligibility was too broad, and people were abusing the system, which I didn't believe until just now. Now I support the cuts.

Re: Homeless, Unemployed, and Surviving on Bitcoins

#47
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.

Plus "60 cents a day" of income is going to be eaten up by transaction fees when they need actual cents to buy lunch (I don't think online delivery services or trendy cafes accepting bitcoin payments cater for the homeless end of the market; there's only so many gyft-funded $10 Papa John's pizzas one can afford) The whole thing reeks of a PR stunt to the point where I can easily see the people involved's actual "job"…

[deleted]

Re: Homeless, Unemployed, and Surviving on Bitcoins

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conservative political groups in the USA pay people to basically troll on major news sites/message boards/blogs: http://www.alternet.org/story/149197/are_right-wing_libertar...

That's a great conspiracy but I'm not sure those folks have that much market share in the grand scheme of things (and it's possible liberal groups are doing the same thing). I don't know how many news site comment sections you tend to frequent, but I feel like I've seen just as much "dumbed down" liberal "trolling" as the reverse.

heh. I bet the political leanings are simply an artifact of the Greater Internet Dickwad Theory. [1]

[1] http://cdn.inquisitr.com/wp-content/uploads/uncat/dickwad-th...

Re: Homeless, Unemployed, and Surviving on Bitcoins

#50
Love the picture of the "homeless" guy using a laptop newer than mine, with his pet, nice bike, playing a video game while he smokes a cig. He also has an energy drink... as if he needs it to get through his day of sitting around. It's people like him who are hurting the homeless people that are actually in need.
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