Homeless, Unemployed, and Surviving on Bitcoins
wired.com
wired.com
The second thing is that these bitcoin payment systems only work because they dodge the minimum wage. There are a lot of things that homeless people could do if it was legal to pay $.60/day. The minimum wage does a lot of good, but the people in this article didn't seem to mind the situation. I think it's because a lot of people don't think of working online as "real work" and are ok with low paying tasks.
All in all this article was a feel good hit. Bitcoin allows homeless people to avoid the shame of begging and the risk of robbery. They receive support from their community to earn legitimate money by doing real work. Of course fake youtube views and button pushing aren't very beneficial to society, but I think there will be more useful work for them and others in the near future.
A functioning human brain is a very rare thing in the universe. The way we get ahead is by utilizing everyone of them that we can find. We often write homeless people off as a drain on society, but there's something to be said for everybody pitching in, even if just a little bit.
Interesting you say then when you can clearly see that actually hurts those people.
[arguably the lowest-value task in the ecosystem]
I'm not sure how clicking links on youtube could ever, in any reality or worldview, be considered "pitching in" in any significant way.
Bitcoin may be a great way for homeless people to make money, and it may have many benefits over carrying cash or having to wait on a pay check. All of that is good. But to say that clicking youtube links contributes any value to society (or really anything except youtube's advertising revenue) is outright ridiculous.
It might again.
With a choice between pride + 60¢ per day or $10-20 per day from begging why wouldn't you choose the latter?
To be able to afford laptops, smartphones, cigarettes etc. these men must be getting money from somewhere other than bitcoin.
Also: "he decided to live on the street for a while" makes me think he probably has some money in savings that he is able to make use of. That would explain why he has a smartphone (and presumably cell plan if he's able to use the phone).
This is a feel good article but lets be honest: The vast majority of homeless people don't have laptops or smartphones. They don't choose to be homeless like this man did. The article is examining a few of outliers. Bitcoin isn't going to help most homeless people.
The article mentioned that it reduces the likelihood of robbery, but to put it more simply, they have less of a chance of being mugged. Panning for donations is quite obviously easier, but makes you fall victim as a potential mark, labeling yourself homeless is like shouting, "I have no dedicated protection I can rely on, won't be taken seriously by police, and likely don't have anyone who worries about me."
>> To be able to afford laptops, smartphones, cigarettes etc. these men must be getting money from somewhere other than bitcoin.
The subject of the article lost his jobs and subsequently his housing, the laptop and smartphone are most likely relics from before he was homeless. The cigarettes are a common theme I have seen among homeless, not just these guys; sometimes they don't even buy them, but nab a still lit cigarette a passerby tossed on the ground.
>> Also: "he decided to live on the street for a while" makes me think he probably has some money in savings that he is able to make use of
The article reads exactly as this: "After a few months, he got back under a roof, but that didn’t last, so he decided to live on the street for a while, rather than yo-yoing between home and homelessness." The last part of the segment where he says we wishes to avoid yo-yoing between homes is because he does not want the stress of having a place to stay, and then finding himself without, occurring over and over. It is possible he has a savings account that he is storing cash in to get off the streets, but your comment is not based on fact so that may not be true.
>> This is a feel good article but lets be honest: The vast majority of homeless people don't have laptops or smartphones. [...] Bitcoin isn't going to help most homeless people.
You're right, the majority don't, but it's purpose wasn't as a solution to the problem of homelessness, but instead an exposition, a case study if you will, where Bitcoins have proven to be beneficial.
value of a bitcoin has and will [double] again
So no a $400 laptop does not approach the cost of rent.
I find such remarks incredibly annoying given the importance of the "digital divide" in separating rich from poor. Criticizing a homeless person for hanging onto a laptop as their only path out of poverty amounts to hatred and a desire to keep them a permanent member of the underclass with no way out. I value my computer far more than I valued the crappy apartment I was evicted from. I always have.
So, he has spent less than 1/3rd of what he'd need for an apartment on 2 items that provide him income, entertainment and transportation and you're complaining that he doesn't "look homeless enough."
EDIT: the "energy drink" in one picture is a monster branded water bottle, but in another picture there are clearly cans of Monster on the bench.
True but you have to feed them.
When was the last time you met the eyes of one of these good-for-nothing, lazy, bad-smelling, disgusting … things?
If you can't even meet eyes with a homeless person, let alone really observing the person, you can't even put yourself into their shoes, feel what they feel, and see the world from their eyes. If you can't do that, then you lack empathy.
And when you lack empathy, that's the seed of prejudice.
Or how about this article, posted here on Hacker News: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/These-young-SF-profess...
Those are startup founders that live in RVs … because rent is too high in the Bay Area.
There are indeed homeless people who are mentally or emotional unstable. Not all homeless people are like that. And there are mentally and emotionally unstable people who live in homes. And then, there are systemic problems where rent prices have driven people out of affordable homes.
As to the point about how having laptops point to a confusion in Maslow's Hierarchy, I think that demonstrates more of the commenter's lack of understanding of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
It is true that shelter is at the bottom of the Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. It is part of the human need to seek physical security, and is the foundation for the higher level needs. However, "shelter" is so much more than an apartment or a house. An apartment and a house are socially approved shelter. Shelter is anything that will help you maintain homeostasis. It can be a cave. It can be survival shelter in the woods. It can be under a freeway bridge. It can be in a cardboard box. It includes clothing.
When you are in survival mode, you are not thinking about socially-approved shelter. You are seeking any shelter. People who go out into the woods without a lot of training in wilderness survival tends to flounder around when things go bad. Their minds, being unable to accept the situation as-is, keep thinking that civilization will save them somehow, and cling to that. "If only I can get out of these woods or find a ranger, I would be safe." Instead of "Oh shit, a bad storm is coming, I need to get under covers NOW."
Likewise, having talked to some of the homeless, I was told how you can pick out the newly homeless. They have so much pride (and shame), it kept them from receiving help -- food, or shelter, or whatever. They are clinging to behaviors that are socially-approved. Social approval is higher up on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
Believe me, if you were somewhere public and you hear gunshots, and you felt your life threatened, you will probably run. And you won't be thinking that the place you are running to is private property or not.
Finally, comments like these suggest that the commenters have not examined their concepts thoroughly or looked into their own feelings about this.
People who live outside the socially-approved box are threatening to people living inside the box. This threat goes beyond the surface, "oh, he is going to mug me." The aversion and disgust that keeps people from empathizing with the homeless comes from pack behavior. Humans tend to aggregate in groups, reject outsiders, and severely punish anyone who betray the pack.
This punishment is exactly the kind of reflexive emotional response risk-averse people have when you tell them about startup idea. "What's wrong with these people? They must be crazy!"
It is also the emotional reaction that leads to comments like, "If he can afford a better laptop than I, he can afford an rent. There must be something wrong about him."
That's bullshit.
The question is, is by watching the youtube videos or clicking on the apps for bitcoins, giving enough return? Or is it really a case of being inside a "tunnel" and there are more effective means?
If there are more effective means, does this person necessarily want to live better? We can't assume that someone who is homeless "wants" to be homeless (not unless you talk to that person and observe that person), though we can say that the choices he is make is likely to keep him in a scarcity trap that results in being homeless.
That's a fairly vile perspective to project onto someone you're trying to have a productive conversation with.
Please treat folks on hn with a bit more respect.
Does everyone on HN have this aversion? No. I can't even see your faces, hear your voice. But everyone has some kind of aversion. There is often something vile lurking within the depths of people's hearts. It's ugly. I wrote that to give you the reader, a sense of empathy for the people who turn away in disgust from another human being, and believe me, I've seen that kind of reaction in person.
I've seen it in people walking down the street being solicited by the homeless. I've seen it in mothers and fathers turning away from their children. I've seen it in politicians, and activists. I've seen it all sorts of ordinary people.
I don't know if you react that way. You might. You might not. You might even react this way, and don't even know it.
The only way to be truly respectful is not to hide this, but to bring this ugliness out into the open, to really look at it, and to accept that you have these feelings -- whatever those feelings are -- arising from you. Who knows? You might find the deeper root causes for those feelings.
I think it would be better if we all acted as if hn were populated by people much closer to the former end of that spectrum.
Every moment you to avert your attention, you are treating a person as a thing. You stop seeing the person and react to the aversion instead.
This is something that happens with pretty much everyone.
The difference here is for me, I am seeing people who, from time to time, will have aversions, and will in that moment treat that person as a thing. For you, it seems to be an unforgivable act that once committed, can never, ever be redeemed. I think that latter is another form of typecasting, don't you think?
I think it is useful to recognize that each of us have done this in the past, as a way of being aware of what is happening in the present moment. So that, when you do find yourself walking down the street, and you are busy, rushing to somewhere else, and someone asks you for change: do you at least stop, look at that person in the eyes, and sincerely tell that person, "No, I don't have change for you. Sorry."?
For the most part, the able bodied young "travelers" that seem to infest this town from time to time are generally met with scorn. The mother with two kids living out of an RV and wanting to avoid the crazy / disturbed street people - met with compassion and care.
I don't cast my eyes aside because I am disgusted. I cast my eyes aside because I see myself through his eyes- just another selfish anglo that won't show charity- and I am too ashamed to look him in the eye.
"'Poor' in America - A Heritage Foundation report proves that as long as 'poor' Americans have refrigerators and the strength to brush flies off their eyeballs, they're not really poor."
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.
Also, a lot of homeless have issues getting a bank account. We have millions of "unbanked" people in the US alone.
Since it's relevant: scam requesters are abundant on Mechanical Turk, and they can kill your earning potential if you don't avoid them. I wrote a thing on how to do that: http://mkronline.com/2013/09/17/how-to-make-money-with-mecha...
I don't think the YouTube clips that he watches are commercials. From TFA:
thanks to a service, called BitcoinGet, that shamelessly drives artificial traffic to certain online clips
Seems more like aspiring YouTube stars paying for traffic to their videos so that they rank higher on YouTube's site.
The other app he uses - Bitcoin Tapper - does seem like straight up being paid to click on ads though.
Oh, there you are.
Exactly. You can easily make ~10cents a minute, that's 6 dollars an hour. It's probably pretty hard work but the premise of this is just so...
If you're homeless in america, sign up for mechanical turk. You'll make more than enough for food.
How do you receive money?
When I needed money I tried... I made $2-$3 per hour writing articles. Transcribing audio, doing surveys and small 5 cent tasks all paid less per hour.
"What you eat don't make me shit, and who you fuck don't make me come"
Sure, you can provide clicks in exchange for bitcoin, and that might help some homeless people right now. But what happens when that becomes over-saturated and/or youtube et. al. get better at preventing that? Amazon Turk + BTC could be viable.
> This is the only property for which Dale is currently accepting digital currency, but so far, he says, “it’s been a good experience because bitcoins have gone up in value, so it’s more than I would have gotten in regular dollars.”
I bet he won't be so happy when the price swings in the other direction. Therein lies the eternal problem with BTC for trade on a scale even beginning to approach that of what goes on in the world today.
Er, laptop?
They are often worth a bit of money. But I bet there is a performance/age/fencing/cost point where it isn't worth it to rob someone for it.
A professional thief, OTOH, probably does know what's worth taking and what's worth keeping. The problem is that, while committing a robbery, you don't exactly have the time or resources to go on eBay and price check everything you see. It's more practical to take everything that might be valuable & then figure out what's worth trying to sell after the fact.
The site pays 40uBTC/video, which converts to 40*10^-6BTC = 0.00004BTC = $0.005(assuming 125USD/BTC) = 0.5 cents/video = 6 cents/12 videos.
Also, it is a Silicon Valley startup Virool that offers these videos, not BitcoinGet per se.
While it was a good read about the other merits of bitcoin, there's a pretty huge difference between earning 60 cents a day vs 6 cents a day...
I am surprised too that the error hasn't been corrected yet. The difference is 10 times, which isn't insignificant.
http://www.alternet.org/story/149197/are_right-wing_libertar...
"This story is a great demonstration of my maxim that any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no.' The reason why journalists use that style of headline is that they know the story is probably bullshit, and don’t actually have the sources and facts to back it up, but still want to run it."
[1] http://cdn.inquisitr.com/wp-content/uploads/uncat/dickwad-th...
If one instance of something happening is enough to sway your world-view, you're in for a rough ride.
I know several people who lost their jobs from the 2008 financial crisis. But instead of trying to find a job, they spent 2 years on fun-employment where they didn't need to work because of the generous unemployment benefits. If they found jobs that money could have gone to truly needy people in the mid-west. I now believe the same thing is happening with the food stamp program.
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.
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.
learned about your project on reddit and was very impressed. Keep up the good work :)
I would imagine they pay less (in bitcoins) now than they did, say, a year ago.
* 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.
Are you saying minimum wage is not already high enough to live on?
Why is it that I was able to live on part-time minimum wage ($10/hr) that covered rent (rented a room for $500), food ($100 a month and I ate like a king, never ate outside, always home cooked), and my drinking? I was living fine. If you can't manage your money, that's your problem. Sure I couldn't buy the latest boots or iphone, but who gives a fuck? Buy a book, it'll cost ya $5 and last you for far longer than that stupid phone you slaved a month away working for.
If you manage your money well you will save little, by little, and you will invest that capital into bettering yourself and moving up. I saved money for online courses.
If you don't get out into the real world and hustle, you will get nowhere. Reading a lot of HN I can't help but feel that most HN'ers want their computer to be their absolute portal into real life.
It isn't. It's like, 1% of real life. Real life is face to face. Real life is personal relationships with people, it's respect, it's keeping your word, it's keeping calm, it's keeping your mind in a good state, it's building relationships that benefit both people, it's not being a bitch. It's not about you. It's about them, and when you enforce that attitude, that attitude spreads and starts to work in your favour. You start meeting people, and keeping those people. Nothing has ever changed anything for me than buckling down, making myself presentable, and being confident. It's hard, but it needs to get done.
I invested PURELY IN KNOWLEDGE. I then sold that knowledge. That's how you make money. You trade knowledge, for cash. I buy gourmet food now, because I can't cook it myself. I pay for university, because it's far easier to learn something from a professional in 4 years than ripping through books my entire life. This entire world is built upon this foundation.
I fucking hate seeing people argue this shit like it's black and white. The problem isn't the money, it's the people and the decisions they make. If you play your cards right you'll get to where you want to be.
I could have acted like a cynical poor ass like the world was working against me, and it was, but you need to rise above the victim mentality.
Were you supporting a family at the time? If not, you might consider the possibility that what was a living income for you might not be sufficient for everyone else.
Disclaimer: I'm not talking about people who developed their lives in a different class, then lost everything. I'm talking about people that time and time again make dumb decisions, don't realize it, then blame their problems on either the system, or some other scapegoat when 90% of the time it's you that screws you.
And women often make decisions without realizing that the men in their lives are going to run away from responsibility, get arrested, develop a drinking or drug problem, crumble under the stress of trying to raise a family, or any number of other things. So they end up getting stuck with the necessity of raising their kids on their own in poverty.
Except in the case of medical problems and disabilities, poor two-parent families are typically the working poor, and they tend to have houses and such, and work multiple jobs if those jobs are available, since the jobs available to the working poor typically cap out at 30-35 hours a week with no benefits. And if they're not working, it's generally because they, just like middle class families, made decisions when they expected there would be jobs, and lost those jobs.
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.
They are doing one of the least productive things I can imagine. They are actually wasting public electricity and services.
It's fine if they are mentally ill, or disabled, but I doubt that's the case.
Most homeless people go out of their way to not waste public resources and services because they are used to criticisms like this, usually issued from a vantage point of indifference and ignorance.
Network engineers that show up to work and crank out widgets don't get to stay in that position. Those that seek to learn and grow, while reliably performing there jobs are typically the last on the chopping block and if they do get RIF-ed, have a strong market to fall back on. This is a good use of his time. Figuring out ways to mindlessly click/watch garbage resources on the Internet to scrape up an occasional pizza is laughable, when compared to his potential. Based on the information presented in the form it was, this looks more like a failure of the person than the system.
Speaking of information presented, I see no reason to think you have any more insight into a homeless person's motivation than you do for passive-aggressively insinuating the poster you are responding to is indifferent and ignorant.
The whole thing reeks of a PR stunt to the point where I can easily see the people involved's actual "job" - whether genuinely homeless or not - was to sit outside a library waiting for the tipped-off journalist to turn up and interview them.
Some even have negative bitcoin transaction fees- kind of like a cash discount.
The minimum order for some places is as low as $3.
Because: THERE. ARE. NOT. ENOUGH. JOBS.
* The economy crashed a while ago. We still haven't recovered all the jobs we lost, by either absolute or percentage.
* Increased automation and efficiency is slowly removing those jobs you just described. Exec, a YCombinator app, makes a more efficient and automated solution to craigslist cleaning jobs. This is happening in every sector in this country. These changes ELIMINATE JOBS, these jobs will never come back. And the jobs they create do not replace the ones they removed, not in quantity, or in aggregate tax quality (i.e. one well paid programmer does not replace the amount of tax revenue from 4 people splitting the same salary. Let alone the fact that executives often take a cut of that increased productivity for themselves. Let alone the fact that it puts more load on welfare for the 3 lost jobs).
* Every single one of those jobs you just listed likely requires a number of things in today's saturated jobs market: High-school or college education (too many people, not enough jobs, means overqualified hiring requirements), a permanent address (hard when you are homeless), a certain appearance (hard when you are poor, without a place to live or bathe), some sort of experience (hard to get in this job market, especially when under educated, in poor health [mental or physical], and every other reason here), transport to and from work (or even for the work), ect.
I think you need to take a step back and look at the whole picture, it's a dire one.
The problem isn't a lack of jobs, it's the draining of capital flow that happen when the monetary system dries up. Whether you believe that to be unfairness or just some players being so adept at the game... that doesn't matter.
The ball needs to move or people who want to play the game will be sitting out. If the ball is kept moving, even artificially, anyone who wants to play will get to play. The only ones left out would be willingly out or mentally/physically unable to play at all.
Right now, we let the game rules be such that some smart shits helped some lucky shits collect the ball and now the dumbshits think the pile of "money" is worth something when not in circulation. Look at all my symbols of currency! Doesn't matter if it's dollars, metals/commodities, or the butcoin... without a functioning-thriving ebb and flow of currency, everyone is poorer.
Spend like death with 0 is the goal. Don't take on debt or get greedy. We'll all live better.
However, I don't agree with the parent's comment that technology causes a lack of jobs - also obviously untrue if you look around you.
Currently we're on the tail-end of a recession, thus money isn't moving around, thus it's harder to insert one's self into the money stream.
As people start spending, jobs pick up. This is already happening in most of the richer parts of the recession hit world. Here in the UK, unemployment has been dropping steadily. New small businesses are appearing fast. Manufacturing's on the way up.
FWIW, I agree with everything after your very first sentence.
> The ball needs to move or people who want to play the game will be sitting out. If the ball is kept moving, even artificially, anyone who wants to play will get to play. The only ones left out would be willingly out or mentally/physically unable to play at all.
What you're saying may be true now, but surely it won't always be true? Who's to say that every mundane task won't (relatively soon) be automated? We need to start thinking about how we should deal with this.
Nice. "Work willing to be done for others willing to pay" is what defines a job. It only took you two sentences to make the rest of your post into rubbish capitalist handwaving.
>If I knew someone near me was living on <$1/day, I would raise their pay to $5 to do something mundane.
Please do this actually. Someone near you is living on <$1/day.
"It's not practical!" you'll say. That's because nothing you're saying is actually practical enough to be realistic.
Oh yeah? Running $0 worth of income through a SNAP benefits calculator tells me that an individual with no job is entitled to $200/month. That's one anti-poverty program that blows past your <$1/day by almost an order of magnitude.
Anyone with <$1/day of income would be eligible, unless they have >$2000 in a bank account or other "countable" resources.
Generally ABAWDS between 18 and 50 who do not have any dependent children can get SNAP benefits only for 3 months in a 36-month period if they do not work or participate in a workfare or employment and training program other than job search. This requirement is waived in some locations.
With some exceptions, able-bodied adults between 16 and 60 must register for work, accept suitable employment, and take part in an employment and training program to which they are referred by the local office. Failure to comply with these requirements can result in disqualification from the Program.
That doesn't sound like being forced to live on $1/day to me. Yes, of course I can voluntarily not accept the money and goods being offered to me, but that's not really the point.
Anti-poverty programs don't automagically give $200 to everyone with no job. And (I assume) the $1/day was a somewhat arbitrary value anyway.
* Lack of access to capital. I look around my neighborhood, city, state, country. There is no shortage of useful work to be done.
He was a great guy.
You seem confused by the divisibility of bitcoin. His goal is not to make one whole bitcoin, but probably to watch ~100 videos (3-4 hours total?) which is 0.04 bitcoins which is enough to buy a meal (~$5).
Also the article is poorly worded but it sounds like the homeless guy is not taking advantage of the 0.000133 btc per day offer (it says "he can beef up..." but should be "he could beef up...")
I am currently homeless. I am not looking for a job because I am medically handicapped. I walked away from a job with a Fortune 500 company that was helping to keep me ill. My condition is very expensive, thus my job amounted to a net loss in income. Since quitting and sleeping in a tent, I have paid down thousands of dollars in debt incurred during the years I had that job. I am currently trying to declare bankruptcy, but being homeless and having chronic health issues means everything is frustratingly slow.
I have alimony, I do a little freelance work online and I have websites I am trying to develop. As a homeless woman, I have damn little credibility and cannot get people to take me very seriously. If you would like to see me stop being a total fucking loser, I could use help developing and promoting my web projects.
A lot of people on the street are medically or mentally ill. Most of them are less well educated than I am. I have made substantial progress towards resolving my underlying problems which are the root cause of my homelessness. Many others do not know how to do that. I need an income that does not keep me sick. That's quite a tall order to engineer while recovering physically and living on the street, but it is my only hope of ever making my life work.
edit: How would we proceed?
Thank you.
And let's have a word with the inefficient government bureaucrats. How do they start with your hard-earned 30k and end up with just enough to give this guy food stamps? Totally inefficient if you ask me.
They started it with the welfare system, good idea but then let the majority of its users abuse it rather than finding work. They started it, they keep it going because their users vote for them which keeps them in power.