GM’s Autonomous Cruise Origin Shuttle Is Still All Dressed Up With Nowhere To Go

The numbers of homeless people, drug users, and mentally ill are only increasing because society itself is becoming increasingly inhospitable to the needs of the humans that compose it. An average home used to cost 8x a year’s labor at Federal minimum wage, and now it costs 24x a year’s labor at Federal minimum wage. Rent has increased in cost by a similar proportion.

It’s gotten to the point that roughly half of homeless people are employed, yet priced out of shelter and other hallmarks of a basic existence, so it’s little wonder that they turn to drugs or become mentally ill along that journey. When I worked crappy low wage jobs, some of my coworkers confided to me that they were homeless. One of them worked TWO jobs.

Among those who don’t find themselves homeless, a majority have gone into 6-figure debt, and generally just want to avoid seeing those who are homeless so that they aren’t made uncomfortable by the fact that they themselves are two or three paychecks, or a medical event, or an arrest, away from ending up homeless themselves. Seeing homeless people is a reminder of their vulnerability and it makes them deeply uncomfortable on a visceral level.

There is no local solution that will actually work for a local area. Removing homeless encampments and giving them one-way bus tickets to another city doesn’t do anything to change their status. Throwing them in jail only costs the taxpayers money. Throwing taxpayer money at the problem to institutions that help the homeless is going to fail as well. More taxpayer money thrown at it will just be grifted away by a homeless industrial complex that does not want to solve the problem because they too will lose their 6-figure jobs. Meanwhile, middle class NIMBYs demand that no affordable homes are built in THEIR suburban neighborhood because they went into six-figure debt to avoid THOSE people, and many places have zoning laws that prevent cheaper housing from being built, as well as mixed use neighborhoods from forming(forcing Americans into automobile dependency). In most of the U.S., there are even minimum square footage requirements on the size of a home the local government will allow you to build, because the government wants more property tax revenue. More “law and order” to deal with the drugs is going to do more to impact otherwise responsible people and get them further entrenched into the increasingly rapacious, corrupt, and authoritarian criminal “justice” system that wants to extract as much money as possible from them, than it will actually help those who are homeless and drug addled, the homeless and drug addicted who will become increasingly enslaved by this system as well because they cannot pay the imposed fines and in turn end up in jail/prison where they will be forced to do jobs for greatly less than minimum wage, jobs that decades ago used to pay Americans a living wage. And the mental illness that pervades this society is a reaction to the consequences of this society’s policies and the fact that this society is becoming increasingly unlivable, greatly moreso than it is an inherent feature of the person afflicted with the mental illness, because living in this country has become extremely stressful and demanding. Various statistics on happiness around nations of the world confirm this. Lots of demand from the left for a Universal Basic Income did not occur in a vacuum. People are sick of working all the damned time and having nothing to show for it.

This is all a direct result of the economic system we are living under and the increasing complexity of the so-called “society” we are living in, where endless money keeps being printed up by the Federal Reserve and handed out first to the wealthiest institutions in society, who get to spend it on accumulating hard assets(such as real estate, and even collectable cars), driving the prices up, while ordinary working people are driven into debt to accommodate those increased costs. If these institution fail, they are bailed out at taxpayer expense. The rich keep getting richer, and will continue supporting the current paradigm of endless growth that is making them richer, without concern for resource constraints or the people who are extracted from via their labor. The consequence is that it has gotten to the point that a shack in Seattle that was once used as a garage, now turned into a “home”, is over $300k, which a minimum or even a median wage earner will be completely and utterly priced out of affording without a second income to make payments on it, and even then, will spend the majority of their life in debt.

This problem is systemic and this country needs some fundamental changes in big ways at the very top of the hierarchy for this problem to be addressed. Anything less is a bandaid on a gaping wound. Neither political party will do a thing to address this, as both are captured by a ruling class.

There are no easy solutions. You’re 100% right about that. But getting rid of the aristocracy that is deciding humanity’s collective future while it is gaslighting everyone into believing we all live in a “democracy” wouldn’t merely be a good start, but a prerequisite, to begin addressing these problems. People have no real control over their futures, but are instead being led around by the hoops they are forced to jump through to “make it” in life, like trained animals, as their autonomy is increasingly legislated out of existence and suppressed using all of the advancements which technology has offered coupled with increasing debt burdens to keep them in line so that they don’t end up like the homeless that they are uncomfortable seeing. Everyone that has been using debt to pretend their way to prosperity, has far fewer options than those who live within their means. And the means of the average working person are NOT what they used to be here in the U.S., in spite of all of the manipulated statistics using various “adjustments” to say otherwise(Consumer Price Index using hedonic adjustments to understate real-world price increases, for instance, or the BLS Unemployment Rate not accounting for all sorts of people who are unemployed and as a result very likely understating the actual number of jobless people by a factor of 4-5x).

It doesn’t have to be this way, but that is currently how it is. If nothing is done, some sort of collapse will be the inevitable result, because the current course is not sustainable. This is especially true of the modern auto industry. $30k for a decent running used car is the average now paid, when most people don’t even have $1,000 in their savings account. The $500 clunker has become the $5,000 clunker, and I know people who have gone into debt just to have that, something they used to be able to pay cash for. They certainly are hoping it doesn’t break down or else they can’t get to work to make payments on the clunker they went into debt for, and then won’t be able to make the next month’s rent. Without alternative means to get to work, people are being forced into debt, while being told that it is their fault/responsibility if they fail, basically forcing them to arrange their entire lives to every whim of their employer and whatever tyrants keep imposing new laws onto them. Need your job but are reluctant to take a mandatory experimental vaccine to keep it? You’re told no one is forcing you to do so. It’s a giant gaslight. Your money then dictates what tastes and “freedoms” you’re allowed to have, and if you’re at the bottom of the socioeconomic hierarchy, you functionally have no freedom. American “individualism” at its finest. A lot of people who are homeless have come to this realization and said “fuck it”, but are often simply dismissed as “mentally ill”.

IMO, the best solution to these problems is to stop throwing money at them, stop trying to tell people what to do, stop trying to control people, and instead, break down institutions and corporations and remove as many rules as possible, have a massive debt jubilee for all and wipe it all away letting the rich creditors take the losses, burn the entire credit system to the ground, then let the cards fall where they may.

If some junky wants to shoot up on the sidewalk, more power to them. But the moment they try to break into my home and steal from me, guess what? They leave or they get shot. There shouldn’t be anyone telling me I can’t have a gun to defend myself or what gun I’m allowed to have. When the auto industry inevitably goes tits-up during the next economic crash, this also means NO BAILOUTS. Let smaller, more adaptable enterprises gain a foothold and take their place, and on top of that, get rid of various regulations and barriers to entry to accommodate that.

Large, moneyed institutions, and all of the rules and regulations they bring, are a collective albatross around the neck of humanity that are a driving source for most of its woes, and are concurrently the source of increasing instability and precarity. If you have money, things seem to be getting better. But not everyone has money, nor is it easy for them to obtain it.