I will be writing this without references or aids, this isn’t a paper, its an open letter. I was recently disheartened while trying to begin a deeper discussion about homelessness online. This isn’t new to me because it has been the case since I have been writing these same thoughts for decades.
I discovered a local Facebook group serving the unhoused. There is no denying the group is successful and do great work.
I need more than a few words to describe my thoughts on the subject and I find the effort required to understand my points is seldom granted to me. It is upsetting and even seems futile over the years. I would like to think that I am combining economic theory alongside guerrilla tactics, as I am in many ways an outcast.
During this process of writing I can challenge myself as to what the outcome of my program would look like. I shouldn’t have to state this but we may act without certainty of the outcome, thus challenging the validity of the question itself. Anyway we should have a goal or a vision piloting our efforts. I will return to this.
As I said, 20 years ago I wrote a lengthy diatribe about injustice and economics of which my uncle replied “do something about it”. His answer is useful but maybe not in the sense that he meant it. Above all else I view the issue of poverty as a mindset. I do not mean in any way to diminish the suffering of the poor or victimized and exploited nor do I subscribe to new age ideology which alleges our thoughts create reality (anti-christianity masked as philosophy and “quantum”-physics is prevalent today).
What I do mean is that we have to rightly organize our minds so that we can find peace even during times of trouble. We have to believe in immutable eternal laws such as justice so that during times of intense pressure we do not waver from our values. We must understand our role as duty bound citizens under law and our responsibilities to our families and community. We must understand the nature and history of work and money, and the value of education, knowledge, and wisdom. How to spend, how to save, and more importantly what to save for, what to save, and how to steer toward financial independence. I might even challenge the “virtues” of self-interest, retirement, and independence.
Should you save money buying low quality “food”? Sadly for most Americans the answer is Yes, funding Nestle and Cargil and in turn their own oppression instead of supporting local organic farmers.
There are few genuine “punks” who refuse to sell out. It takes additional effort to reject conveniences. Most instead play the role as mindless consumer, they brand themselves with mulit-national logos. Alternative media, my playground, is just as infested with these sponsorships, buy gold from here, buy this $2000 (slave labor battery/ made in china) solar generator, buy this Kelly Kettle that hides the fact that it’s made China. It’s called selling out. Like a starving artist who views themselves as better than everyone else, these personalities are chasing easy money instead of finding opportunities to create value with their labor. Uploading another choppy video talking in circles about conspiracies and how Rothbard economics is the only solution, is not creating value... you amateur. Even worse is when they try to sell you on crypto, move into web 3 and DeFi, but grow your own food and remove your consent. These are my intellectual peers! Shallow.
I mention this because it is paramount to the homeless industrial complex. Feeding America and even local charities do not even consider going out of their way to support local farming and manufacturing. Instead they distribute poison covered in heart healthy stickers, essentially they embezzle donations through General Mills. True to capitalism, charity is just as much a race to the bottom.. There is no integrity in leveraging the dollar, it is solely an exercise in exploitation.
And sadly the mature mind must know some of the history of struggle, unjust rulers and governments, wars, and suffering in all its forms and the recourse victims have found throughout history, culture, religion, Western thought, and how to defend truth and morality, and Jesus Christ.
Do you understand that I still have not put anything tangible on the table. I didn’t say socks or cars or sheds, trailers, or apartments. I haven’t proposed any action other than individual responsibility and self education; I’ve simply re-framed the problem and the solution.
Personally I do not trust RFK, I think he is telling us what we want to hear, but in this instance he is correct.
RFK just recently echoed the same sentiment regarding our despondency, Chris Hedges has spoken of it for years. But the issue isn’t just a lack of hope it is also a lack of Truth. The resources and opportunities that the truth seeker must uncover will become more obscured as books become digital and censored and children lose the ability to read. As more children get pushed psyche drugs in school they will lose the ability to ask questions. Like the homeless who lives hand to mouth the addicts time is measured between doses, leaving no time for introspection.
I can tell you my influences, the researches who gave me the best references and viewpoints but I still can’t tell you why I care enough to exercise my mind. It might be how I was raised; since I was a child I yearned for knowledge and I’ve put some effort in over the years. I think that is what separates some of us from others, dare I say that effort defines success. It is not only our investment in ourselves but also the initial desire. I’m afraid that fewer possess this drive to better themselves as we move ahead. One glaring reason is a lack of hope in our future. I empathize, I don’t deny it but navigate beyond it. It is useful to revisit my previous statement that we should act toward goals even if we can’t imagine a way around the obstacles ahead.
Now, I got upset because I was canceled by a Facebook group. I am never a troll but I am coarse about these topics; these issues involve human suffering and cost lives. I have every right to speak freely no matter how stern if I am on point. My comment was deleted so let me paraphrase what was said.
The original post began stating that they are responsible and still can’t get a job or a place to live and that they don’t need socks or hats or food but a place to live and a job. They were actually a bit rude, seemingly ungrateful because the help they receive is not enough. This went on for paragraphs.
A lot of comments were like “thanks for sharing”, “we don’t know how we can help yet”, “we are doing what we can”.
My message, which I don’t have a copy of, was something like:
Economics, self-interest, law, the enclosure movement, privatizing the commons, materialism, man as a machine input, GK Chesterton popularized Christian Socialism, today you must pay to sleep on the land, Americans don’t educate themselves about the issues until they are homeless, they burn bridges and waste their money, charity is not an entitlement. Free trade and AI destroy jobs. Meritocracy still exists you can still work more hours or invent something and make more money. Money is freedom. Create value for your community. Drug use is a choice.
Of course it was fluid but you get the point. This is the kind of stuff I bring to the table and I think it is most useful. Do people want to hear things that require them to accept responsibility for themselves, to acknowledge that they in fact have neglected to educate themselves? Are we supposed to coddle peoples feelings? They are freezing outside right now, their emotions are the least of their concerns. They deserve the truth! Harm- reduction does this same nonsense to coddle addicts; de-stigmatize drug abuse. This is now the ingrained unquestionable sentiment of our time; we cannot speak truth if it offends someone somewhere.
The whole comment along with my post was then deleted. The original whining and accusations were acceptable until I posted. Another lady got platformed and her post opens with “only the homeless can tell the homeless what they need”, then her post goes into a different direction entirely that has nothing to do with her initial sentence. I take her statement as directed to me. I know from experience that when I write my hard line statements that I more often get canceled than attacked. I don’t need validation, I did the work, I know the subject, and I have integrity and confidence; I think that’s why I get canceled instead of debated. I don’t say these things to start fights I say them because they’re useful. I want to talk about it, I want someone to respectfully reply to me, I want to meet them for breakfast. That is why I bother. I wrote it for the original poster who instigated the conversation with angry thoughts and I replied respectfully. But I didn’t coddle him and I didn’t pacify my voice in case someone might take offense.
I’m beyond that though. I don’t care, my friends know I will criticize them harshly because I love them. I am not overly impressed by another local charity here. The platform entails collecting donated goods and they resell them and spend some of the money on helping others. I don’t do the finances for them but I know they make lots and lots of money. Restaurants have fundraisers regularly and people donate cars to them. They get boatloads of donations and charge some decent prices for nicer things. They don’t have too many employees and also benefit from volunteer labor. They do great things, don’t get me wrong, but for the amount of money they take in, I don’t see it. I benefit, the poor in the community benefit, the workers get paid, they create some jobs. That’s all great but I have higher expectations. This organization is only rich and getting richer. I worry about those who accumulate money in the name of charity. That is when a duty arises and when an entitlement is created.
They are whatever, it’s not my business but I mention it for a reason. I’ve hit the same dead end trying to talk to them. People in this scene are smart, they have experience and wisdom but regarding my line of reasoning addressing homelessness and poverty, people find little to discuss. Materialist Americans, despite any valid charitable endeavors, can’t see beyond the tangible. Money, more money, maybe even money enough to quit their job and organize charity instead.
The Facebook group rallies against laws criminalizing homelessness. At the last step they now perceive an interest in the law. What about the laws that allow 30% interest rates, or legal gambling and marijuana or schools that corrupt the minds of children? The schools that don’t teach how to start a business or legal defense or civic action or farming. At what point did they shift the scope onto the law, only when it specifically targeted the homeless? But not when code enforcers put stickers on our homes and cars in our driveways? I have written over time the conflict of the homeless is not man vs. nature but instead man vs. man. The State prevents us from collecting pallets and building a shelter. How many of us would have multiple 20’ foot sheds in our yards for our friends and family if not for the legal restrictions. I myself own land I cannot even add another storage shed or car port onto because of the law. The local thrift-store charity only cared about the law when they received the orange stickers on their property. Then and only then the law mattered. When it happens to you. That’s when you start caring about poverty and homelessness, that’s when you care about fentanyl, when it happens to you and your family. Not before. Then you ask yourself why nobody else cares, why nobody else did anything. Instead ask yourself why you didn’t do anything? Because you only ever cared about yourself!
And what if you jump aboard a popular activist platform, as in the case of harm-reduction which amounts to free crack pipes, without understanding the issue fully? Certain of your own position without considering the opposition. This Facebook group admin has done just that; by opposing legislation which criminalizes homelessness. Personally I am against any state action, except protecting private citizens from corporate interests. This group admin in the same breath undoubtedly promotes some versions of welfare, healthcare, shelters, and state funded mental health services. But what if jail is the most effective way to treat a fentanyl addict? These nuances are only available to those who study these issues fully. We will find Trump and RFK promoting these exact health-care sectors but sadly their solutions will involve private oligarch’s surveillance capitalism.
Homelessness Data Suggests Economic Factors Not a Main Driver, Discovery Institute, 2/18/2025
I have spent 20 years thinking and studying this issue while still working and building a life outside of welfare, I doubt many homeless people can explain to me how to end homelessness.
I bring up the local charity because of their business model. Its the same as Goodwill or Salvation Army and it’s not too dissimilar from directly exploiting the poor. They collect nice things for free in the name of charity then sell them to poor people. It does benefit the poor at times, I won’t deny that it increases their access to products, the bigger the market, the more the competition, the better the deal for the consumer. Of course, back-door deals are common for insiders as it should be. But just as in the case of a casino, the house always wins. At the end of the day the money is from their customers which is undeniably the lower-middle class and poor. People who have time to loiter at these places and pick through scraps are most often poor. Thrift stores are today the standard model to fund charities.
I might as well mention coffee and sugar because some charities also use these. Coffee, especially commercial quality, is cheap. Coffee and chocolate production are often exploited labor. The markup can be 900%, and it requires little labor once its imported, add some local labor and machinery and the markup goes up to 9000%. from 10 cents in coffee grounds to $9.00 a cup.
Sugar and caffeine is legal drug dealing, capital by way of exploiting an addiction. Both have a long list of negative health effects (although viewed by addicts as a benefit) they are also a very poor financial purchase. Should the service you provide have some element of health, justice, and value, or is profit by any legal means justifiable? It’s a race to the bottom, the quest for easy money, but of course YOU will want to leverage YOUR own money. The homeless are no different than Americans as a whole, many are more superficial, materialistic, and willfully ignorant. Drug use is a choice. They may become sympathetic to the plights of universal poverty but only because they are forced to now. Many would take their lottery earnings and happily become the same oppressors they rally against today. Examining solutions first requires accepting the facts as they are, even if they do not coddle everyone’s emotions.
I bring together my life experience with research. I forgot to mention the lady who posted that first sentence, of which I reject her statement of fact, she does not realize I have been homeless for years and addicted. Her assertion is that “only the homeless can help the homeless” as if you must understand something (to the point of internalizing the pain) in order to solve it, this is a logical fallacy. I have combated this previously in my writings on fentanyl. My educated opinion is that relapse is so likely that recovering addicts should stay as far away from the scene as possible instead of loitering as “counselors”. Only someone with a broken leg can fix someone with a broken leg, what is wrong with peoples heads today! Contrarily, only the industrialist can provide a job and the landlord can provide a home.
Dr. E. Michael Jones wrote a tome (Barren Metal) on economics.
He subscribes to Heinrich Pesch’s Solidarism. I won’t claim to understand things I don’t know but I will stand behind what I do know. At this time I promote distributivism and the work of GK Chesteron and Hilaire Belloc. Dr. Jones promotes local industry. His example is local cotton makes local clothing by local labor, and this formula has started economies for all of history. Just recently I listened to economist Michael Hudson discuss how Trump doesn’t understand how to use tariffs correctly in that he is taxing raw materials while he should be limiting the tariffs exclusively as a value-added tax. I am giving you the tools to educate yourself; you can read Gerrard Winstanley. I am reading the work of Elizabeth A. Fones-Wolf.
This is my first passion, I write about other things and study other things and do many other things. I created Matts Artbill, an alternative currency/conceptual art project, and I aim to give speeches on value creation. I am full of tangible ideas but those come after what I am discussing here. The next step would be something like local savings clubs, the precursor to credit unions. Microloans were another useful movement. I’ve made efforts to start a local savings club with friends but with no trust left in our self-interested individualistic society we cannot co-create anything.
As I said I am disheartened by the lack of interest from my neighbors on these issues. And I don’t care if they don’t like it, I don’t like it. I won’t lie, I am looking for friends but not at the cost of censoring myself.
I didn’t even bring up the intentional destruction of private homes (you don’t even know the planned energy efficiency regulations which aim to demolish our older houses), over-regulation of new buildings, the movement putting buildable land into public conservation trusts so that it can never be built upon (until a multinational wants to exploit its resources).
Now there are natural disasters destroying homes followed by enforcement banning camper trailers and sheds on private property. We can’t solve homeless simply because there are no homes. It will get worse, like fentanyl displaced our understanding of heroin and addiction, their will no longer be simple causes we can point to; a poor childhood, no opportunity, mental illness. Homelessness will happen to anyone and in huge numbers as we move forward, it’s just math; No homes. So before you look at me with contempt and ask me “what am I doing about it?”. Ask yourself: How are you thinking about it?
There is a need for people to hand out socks and hats and organize to fix cars and provide shower trailers and even temporary beds. Those people are hero’s; they found something that is Good and it works and they relieve suffering. But those don’t SOLVE homelessness. This is where I start my conversation.
You want a random easy answer besides making moccasins locally? host classes and workshops from various experts, we can’t rely on the failing for-profit educational system. Computers, machining, sewing, geology, foreign languages; these provide education and opportunity and even the most evasive of them all; community.