Startup aims to create mobile showers for homeless

It's really nice when people want to do good. They deserve our full respect.

Having said that, we, as a society, need to understand that we must correct the sick systems we've built and have come to accept as "the new normal".

In other words: Homeless people don't need showers. They need to receive a system which prevents them from ending up as homeless people. Homeless people are homeless because we, as a society, have accepted that we create homeless people. Other countries have successfully avoided this (take a very close look at how Switzerland works), why can't we?

To correct that, we need a social security net:

- Mental health care for everybody who needs it

- Sound financial aid for the unemployed

- Put minimum wage above slavery levels: $20/hr AT LEAST

Absolutely, the "band-aid"/short term help IS needed and the people behind it should get support.

As to why we still haven't eliminated the tragedy/ies at the root:

-> A few rich people control the media

-> control our vision of our nation's priorities (financially profitable wars VS taking care of our own brothers and sisters)

-> control of our votes

-> control of our nation's policies

-> REPEAT CYCLE

>- Put minimum wage above slavery levels: $20/hr AT LEAST

And put a bunch of people out of work, exclusively lower and lower-middle class folk.

Minimum wage is one of the worst and most counter-productive mechanisms for social welfare. Citizen's salary is better as it doesn't create adverse employment incentives and ensures basic survival/shelter/etc for all without agency or commodity-trade problems.

Empowers the worker class to negotiate knowing their rent is paid regardless too. Not to mention the labor mobility and liquidity it could induce.

If you're going to advocate for social services, you should at least know which programs are known to perform poorly. (There are tons of economic/socio-political reports on this stuff all over the internet. If you care - read.)

Cf. Rent control

> And put a bunch of people out of work

You can always create more jobs by lowering the salary/job.

And this is by the way what has been happening: minimum wage was not even adjusted for inflation, which means it was effectively lowered.

But obviously the people who depend on minimum wage have no clue about how the economy works because they never had access to a good education, which is why they won't speak up, which is why so many rich folks advertize lies like "don't get an education, you can get rich by dropping out of college, just like Zuckerberg".

Now the question is: How often does a society really want to lower minimum wage (in order to boost the number of jobs created)?

The lower you go, the more problems you see "in the streets".

San Francisco has placed quite a few public restrooms on city streets in the past - I believe as part of a partnership with an outdoor advertising company. For the most part, they became disgusting centers for drug use and prostitution. I didn't know they'd closed, but I'm not surprised they did.

Until San Francisco is willing to aggressively crack down on illegal behavior, which it's not, it can't have nice public facilities, for homeless people or otherwise. This includes things like the entrepreneur's well-intentioned mobile showers - criminals will destroy them, too.