Originally Posted by theclencher (Post 44579)

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Also just last night I came across what appeared to be the discarded contents of a breakroom: unopened loaf of bread, unopened Oreos, tray of cinnamon rolls with only two gone. MMMM. As long as the person(s) that took the two rolls out don't have AIDS or something, I should be alright!

Originally Posted by Peakster (Post 44593)

I actually pay hard-earned money for my trash: Value Village is one of my favorite "stores" :D. People in my dorm building were a little freaked out when I bought boxer shorts from there though. Won't be doing that anymore.

Originally Posted by The Toecutter (Post 44673)

The fact that there has not yet been a large scale rebellion of the world's 2 billion poorest people astounds me, let alone a rebellion of America's hundreds of thousands(more likely even millions) of homeless.

Originally Posted by The Toecutter (Post 44705)

That's more than I've ever done to help the homeless. That took balls dude. I've always loved the idea of having a huge homeless parade so that normal people could see just how bad the problem is, but it would be difficult to organize it given that I have not experienced what these people have nor will ever pretend to, and difficult to prevent anyone from getting hurt by the police in the process.

I've heard of a sociologist who did an experiment. He lived homeless for a month, like these people do. The difference is, he knew he had a nice warm home to come back to when it was all over. For perhaps millions of Americans, they don't have that to look forward to. Worse yet, he discovered that about 1/3 of them had full time jobs, but couldn't afford a place to live because wages are too low and housing costs too inflated. :(

Originally Posted by The Toecutter (Post 44705)

he discovered that about 1/3 of them had full time jobs, but couldn't afford a place to live because wages are too low and housing costs too inflated. :(

Originally Posted by The Toecutter (Post 44673)

The food you can't get for free is food you end up having to buy. The stores obviously know this. Their reasoning is that if you can't afford it, do without. They only want to maximize their profits.

Nevermind all of the perfectly good food that will go to waste. The reason so many people on this planet are starving is not because there isn't enough food. There's plenty, enough for perhaps 12 billion people(albeit, this is propped up by unsustainable consumption of fossil fuels). The vast majority of it is wasted. The real problem is that those living in absolute poverty simply cannot afford it. Large companies that own the land the food is produced on artificially drive the price up to fatten their margins, because they know the wealthy first world countries will still pay it.

The fact that there has not yet been a large scale rebellion of the world's 2 billion poorest people astounds me, let alone a rebellion of America's hundreds of thousands(more likely even millions) of homeless.

Originally Posted by The Toecutter (Post 44962)

Location is everything. Here in St. Louis, many of these places exist, are operating at(and often over) capacity, and it still isn't enough. A homeless shelter near my university often has to turn away people because it doesn't have enough room. I've done volunteer work for a meal delivery service to the poor, and there simply wasn't enough funding available to meet the needs of everyone who wanted these services.

Those who received these services were mostly incapable of working. Extremely old, disabled, mentally-impaired, terminally ill, ect. One specific case that stuck in my head very well was a U.S. Veteran; he passed away in July 2005, living alone and in poverty.



I once spent 2 years looking for a job in order to raise money for my EV conversion, including the lowest position minimum wage jobs. Anything. There simply wasn't enough jobs to go around, at least where I live. Unlike most people, I had the luxury of being a college student living under my parents' roof, and was able to get temporary jobs around my university(were I not a student, I wouldn't have gotten these jobs). I'm not surprised that there are so many homeless people where I live given this experience. At least there is a demand for engineers and I won't wind up in that position WITHOUT a parents roof to live under.

Imagine that you are homeless, without the luxury of being able to clean yourself up whenever you need to, having to keep all your belongings in trash bags and hide them behind dumpsters to reduce the liklihood of them getting stolen, and constantly having to stay on foot because of anti loitering laws. You have no permanent address to use when you apply for a job(many employers in urban areas will ignore applications that use PO boxes for addresses), and if you are interviewed, you certainly won't get hired looking like a bum. If you're mentally impaired or have a mental disorder, it's even worse, as you probably don't even have a high school diploma next to your name. Even the Dollar Generals and grocery stores in my area are asking for that now!

There are of course a lot of homeless who got that way because of drug abuse, a very significant portion even, but those certainly are not the majority.

And then there are homeless who are working, and still need to rely on the services of others so that they have a place to live or food to eat. Minimum wage just isn't enough.

Maybe they could just move out of the city? Sounds easy enough, until you find that outside there is far less help available in the more middle class areas, that most homeless don't have a car(almost a necessity to get around in areas that lack mass transit), cheap housing is even harder to find(the cheapest you'll get is East St. Louis, one of the most dangerous ghettos in the US), and for those homeless who already have jobs, why would they put themselves in jeopady even further by quitting their job to look for another one? Any job is better than no job.

If it truly were that easy, the homeless population would be greatly reduced in number. The real truth is that a good number have jobs with roughly 1/3 working full time and it simply isn't enough to live off of, most are mentally impaired or disabled to some extent, and yet more HATE the situation they are living in, yet have lost any hope of it ever changing.



Politics of nations like these is an affair that 1st world countries or business interests from these countries have stuck their nose in and manipulated all too often, having made the situation for the people in these countries even worse.

In Iraq for instance, Monsanto managed to outlaw farmers from storing their own seed, trying to push onto the people there the GE seeds that don't reproduce, so that in order to grow food legally, the people there will need to keep buying that product over and over.

Incidences like that have a huge effect on the world, causing a lot of problems for millions of people so that a few can make a large profit.



I don't believe you should be compelled to at all. No where did I ever say that.

I may dabble in activism from time to time, but I'm certainly not a socialist.(although anyone who is shouldn't be afraid to argue in favor of their position, either. It's supposed to be a free country, after all.) I don't agree with personal income taxes, universal healthcare, social security and similar ponzi schemes, and the like. In fact, such schemes are literally unconstitutional just looking at what powers that document grants the government.



While there may be no such thing as 'utopia', certainly it is useful to adress the problems society is facing(war, pollution, starvation, ect.), especially when they stem from any organized bureaucracy seeking to exploit or control a group of people or their property in order to collect revenue. That places the bureaucracy at fault for these problems, even though they don't like to take responsibility. Personal responsibility doesn't work just one way.

If a company pollutes your land and causes harm to your property in the process, or if their pollution causes you medical problems, do they not at least owe you compensation? If a government sprays defoliating agents over a nation's farmland, are they not responsible for the starvation that later results? If a few corporations successfully lobby a government to go to war, and that government manages to install another dictator in place of whoever the former leader was, aren't both parties responsible? Yet in so many cases, these entities aren't held accountable for the harm their actions cause to others as individual people usually are.

I can think of much more hellish ways to live. Given that I have access to a computer, an automobile, enough food to eat, and an education, I have it pretty damn good. But that doesn't mean I should immediately be satisfied with conditions that may not be affecting me personally just because, like so many others are.

Originally Posted by Bill in Houston (Post 46765)

Hey, I wanted to say that you guys inspired me to FIX my mower instead of pitching it.

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Anyway, if not for hanging out with you guys, I probably woulda just bought a new mower. Thanks for the inspiration!

Originally Posted by VetteOwner (Post 46770)

but yea, whenever it will start but then die its usually a fuel related issue, either vaporlock, somehitng clogging the line, or carb dirty. you did the right thing by getting carb cleaner and going to town. 99% of the time its the float bowl needle valve getting stuck.
i let gas sit in our mowers (4 ones a rider) all winter with no stabilizer and it works perfectly fine come spring. (weve had E10 around here since the mid 80's)doing that for as long as i can remember. ethonal is just fine.