Who can those with nothing turn to for help? Many people will say the government and they would be wrong. The State hates the homeless because they have nothing to steal. Therefore it wants them to go away. While outright murdering homeless individuals would be frowned upon, making the lives of homeless individuals so miserable that they migrate elsewhere and become somebody else’s problem is perfectly acceptable to the general public.
San Diego, hoping to make the lives of homeless individuals within its borders more miserable, has installed large rocks under many roadways to prevent homeless individuals from sleeping there:
In late April, after jagged rocks were installed along a freeway underpass to drive out homeless encampments, a city spokesman told reporters the project was at the request of residents of Sherman Heights, a working-class neighborhood just east of the 5 Freeway, who felt unsafe walking down Imperial Avenue.
Turns out, it had more to do with San Diego’s upcoming time in the spotlight as the host of baseball’s All Star Game at Petco Park on July 12.
Sherman Heights is never mentioned in more than 700 pages of email documents about the rocks, obtained under the California Public Records Act
[…]
Casey included the rocks in a checklist of work to be done before the All-Star Game. Emails also show that initial plans called for rocks along the base of a wall at Tailgate Park, between 12th and 14th streets and outside the New Central Library — which overlooks the ballpark — to keep away homeless people.
[…]
In a later email, Casey emphasized that the rocks needed to be of different heights so that no one could put down a plank of wood to try to sleep.
Those homeless people are such an eyesore and they’ll make the city look bad come baseball season so we need to make their lives miserable in the hopes that they’ll go somewhere else. How the State treats the homeless may be the single most illustrative example of how the State “fixes” problems. It never actually works to address the problems it’s “fixing”, it just sweeps them under the rug and tells people everything has been taken care of.
It’s a tough problem, though. In San Francisco, apparently homeless people routinely defecate on downtown sidewalks in full view of passersby. Is this acceptable?
It really depends on where they do it. If they do it on private property and the property owner doesn’t want them to then they can be removed as trespassers.
But if they’re doing it on “public” land, that is to say anything “owned” by the State, then I have no problem. The State can’t legitimately own property since it only acquires wealth through theft. Since it can’t legitimately own property it can’t legitimately remove people as trespassers either.
I agree that the government has no legitimate right to own property, but I’m not sure it’s useful to say that, until all government land is sold, anything goes on that land. The release of anthrax spores on public land, to take an extreme example, would be unacceptable. Though I would not roust homeless people for sitting on sidewalks and panhandling (in the mid ’60’s, Telegraph Avenue was part of my walk to college at U.C. Berkeley, and there were panhandlers aplenty; it’s just part of life), I think that taking a dump crosses the line from obnoxious behavior to dangerous behavior (disease, anyone?) and should not be tolerated.