Poll: Hungary bans homeless people.

[SteewpidZombie]

So...can we fix stupidity and ignorance with mass cullings or lobotomizations in North America yet? Because I'm pretty sure that both situations would be/are incredibly stupid in their own rights.

 

[Brawndo]

If I were a homeless person in Hungary and a cop tried to enforce that law against me, I'd be all like, "Cool story officer bro, now haul me off to jail where I'll be warm and have a real bed and three meals a day."

 

[Jingle Fett]

So they're going to fine someone who's broke? I suppose they should demand food from the starving while they're at it...

 

[William Ossiss]

I don't know about everyone else, but something about this seems... pun worthy. Or at least worthy of being made into a joke. Something like:
"The homeless people were so hungry that they tried to eat the country, so they banned them."
It works, but not as well as I'd like.

 

[Kopikatsu]

I don't know if anyone realizes this, but we have laws like this in the United States, too. They're called Vagrancy laws. For example, if you don't have an ID or more than $2 on your person, you get a $50+ fine.

Hope you find a place to keep your wallet while lounging at the beach, ladies. (As in, put some damn clothes on!)

 

[Lancer873]

"You're just treating a symptom, it's a problem with the human race. The fish rots from the head, as they say. If you want to cure the disease, you have to cut off the head."
"... Of humanity?"
"... It's not a... perfect metaphor..."
Is it wrong that this is the only thing I can think of right now?

 

[TheIronRuler]

They will just fill their Jails with the homeless, where they will be provided with warm beds, food and free healthcare.

You write it as irony, but this may just be the point of the law.

Many homeless people struggle with multiple problems and refuse voluntary help. A law like that can be used as a handle to attempt and forcibly help such homeless people. For instance mental disorders could be diagnosed by force and then treated, while out on the streets, you'd never get them to visit a doctor, let alone a psychiatrist a lot of times.

The Netherlands has a similar thing called 'bemoeizorg' which would translate as something like 'harassing care' that's really a big succes. Basically aid workers seek out problematic people who avoid things like social services and try to move them to accept care.
Similarly we have a law that allows to put in prison systematic offenders of small crimes for two years where they can be made to undergo treatment such as detoxing from drugs or treating mental illness. Again, a smashing succes.
But fairly draconic, because someone could receive two years in prison for simple shoplifting. Then again, people like that are caught shoplifting or stealing almost weekly.

Because before that, for many cities, a group of only a few hundred of these systematic offenders, often homeless, drug addicts, or both, caused the vast majority of crime. For instance the capital Amsterdam (population nearly 800.000) had 600 of those systematic offenders in 2001, and they were responsible for over two-thirds of all crime in the city. In turn 90% of those systematic offenders were drug addicts.

But since those two measures are in place, that number has dropped sharply, and crime figures have been decreasing each year since.


So returning to Hungary, I wouldn't write off this measure as being bad just yet. With sensible enforcement and sufficiently investments in services in prisons, this could actually be a good thing.

A lot will depend on how they shape the enforcement of this law, and what sort of rehabilitation measures they take in prison. If they just put them in a cell untill they're released, it's pointless.

.
I thought that doing such a thing will burden their Justice system greatly, that's why I didn't approve of it. Rehabilitating them is wonderful and all, though I don't think such a thing can be done successfully in most cases, but will they have enough room for all of those men and women?

 

[SmegInThePants]

what happens when they leave prison, after serving their sentence, still homeless. Wait for them as they exit the building w/a fine in hand? Welcome to freedom! Here's your fine!

 

[Mau95]

While we're at it let's ban murder and having credit card debt. That'll make it go away!

Murder is already banned. Just like drunk driving and stealing.

 

[Therumancer]

[
It's an issue that needs to be resolved? Are you ok? Homelessness is something that can be solved? Are you being serious or is this some kind of new age humour I don't get?

That...makes so sense whatsoever. In every economy that involves money, there will always be poor and homeless people. Always. It's an unavoidable artifact of a money based economy. You think these people can "just get jobs?" You think an economy can have 100% employment? If you give it more then just 1 second of thought, you realise it's impossible. Literally impossible. Like if 100% of the people of working age in a country were employed, what then of of the employment agencies? I don't know about other countries, but in Australia employment agencies and Centrelink employ a LOT of people. What would they do if there was 100% employment?

Choosing alcohol and drugs over rent? Let me ask again: are you ok? People get addicted to drugs, and alcohol "helps" others with pain in their life. They didn't take cocaine once and then decide that the rest of their lives will revolve around it. There are other issues involved, others you and I couldn't fathom. These kind of issues will always exist in an economy that uses money.

The way money works and has its power is because a lot of people will always have "less" and others will have "more" (in a relative sense). It will always happen, it's how money works, how it will work for a long time to come. It has to happen, and institutions set up help make the system work. These are not evil but simple necessity. School is one of them.


^^Going from your post above, you have some bizarre views man. Like really bizarre. You talk about shipping people, forcing them to work, like it's something casual and takes no resources to do. I mean, do you give thought to your posts? Do you think you're the first person ever to think of something like this? Do you know why this hasn't been done in a serious manner? Probably might have to do with many many many factors, one of which is....*drum roll* money! You think money just appears? If money is given for this outrageously silly project, it HAS to be taken away from other areas the Government could spend money. That's unavoidable. That money won't just be plucked from a tree conveniently for this project.

I'm fine, and I probably understand economics better than you do, even if you'd doubtlessly argue the point with me. The differance here is purely one of morality, since I am not a left wing extremist.

In general there is no valid reason to have homless people choking the streets and filling up alleyways (which is what this is about) other than moral arguements about not punishing them further, and making arguements of best case scenarios of why they might be there. It's not that we CAN'T do anything with the people that fall that far as I suggested (ie press them into goverment service in a way that doesn't interfere with domestic business interests).

See, my point of view is simply that instead of handing them free food, shelter, medical care, and other things, make them work for it. They can't find a job? Well there is plenty of work that needs to be done globally that the US is having trouble meeting the demands for, with our forces... both military and humanitarian... being stretched. You give the Homeless what they need to survive, but you make them work for it, and you make them work for it in a place where people who employed doing that work already are not going to lose their jobs.

It's a pretty simple solution, but the the liberal outcry is "OMG, your talking about making them work as opposed to just giving them stuff... how horrible".

The bit about pressing them into international service is again, because if you use them domestically to say build roads or whatever, then the contractors that are employed doing that will be put out of work. On the other hand if you have them build roads in say rural Africa where there are no contractors or anything (which is why we're down there doing it as charity) they help out without putting Americans out of jobs, and in return get food, shelter, and care.

Nope, this won't prevent people from falling this far, but it will prevent, or greatly reduce, the number of them laying in alleyways, dead in gutters, or harassing people for change.

 

[DEAD34345]

Actually, humanitarian aid has done as much, or more harm as it has good. Even in the best cases you simply wind up with people becoming dependant on the aid, as opposed to using it as a springboard to becoming self sufficient. In most cases your acually contributing to the problem by providing fuel to the junkies and criminals. The cases of "Hollywood Homeless" are actually pretty rare.

In the end the bottom line is to deal with the problem, and there is no NICE way to do it. My basic attitude is one where you pretty much put them to work in such a way that they contribute something for the resources they are using.

Now, I understand the left wing outrage, but if you really thought this through you'd probably be asking "well, why not give them jobs in the US where it's safer" and the answer to that is similar to why we use convicts for hard labour a lot less than we used to. If you say take a bunch of goverment dependant proles or prisoners and put them to work on say road construction domestically you wind up taking that job away from the actual contractors that ARE working and depend on that work for their continued employment. Putting construction companies out of business so you can employ the people who were homeless is kind of counter productive. Ultimatly with prisoners it's been determined in most places that the benefits to contracting the work outweigh the benefits of using prison labour. I've read a few things about it.

On the other hand if we send them out overseas to say build roads in Africa or whatever they are saving the goverment money because in general we do that off of tax money and donations as opposed to directly contracted labour. It's vastly increasing the number of people working on those projects.

Likewise in the process of doing that kind of work, the guys in question are going to be picking up skills in things like construction, farming, food preparation, and other things. Sure it's not NICE, and a lot probably will die, but it does solve the domestic problem while making use of the people, and giving them chances at self improvement.


It's not pleasant to think about, but consider that we're dealing with people liable to wind up dead in a ditch somewhere.

I have more sympathy for the plight of the mentally ill who wind up on the streets than the general pool of homeless people to be entirely honest. But that's another whole discussion that gets into one of the handfull of exceptions I believe exist (there are exceptions to everything, and I'm sure you could convince me of more that might be practical to implement given time).

Your outrage is pretty much moral, rather than practical. If problems like this could be solved by volunteer health workers, projects, and soup kitchens we wouldn't be having this conversation right now. this is an issue (in the US... and Hungary as this post was discussing) because those things haven't helped.

The problem is not that homeless people exist, that's pretty much unavoidable in our society. The problem is that the homeless people have miserable lives, and we should do whatever we can to help them. I don't know or care what you're talking about when you keep saying "Hollywood homeless", even if someone is homeless due to their own actions or even if they're crack addicts or minor criminals, it's still a good thing to help them.

I'm sorry, but you must be trolling. "Actually, humanitarian aid has done as much, or more harm as it has good."

You must be, right? I admit you're quite good at it if so, because I honestly started to get angry there. Might even be the first time that's happened to me.

I hope you're trolling anyway, because the idea that people really think like you claim to is worrying, frankly.

Volunteer health workers, projects, and soup kitchens have helped, because they have given homeless people some medical care, food, and temporary jobs. That's all they were supposed to do. The goal isn't to eradicate all homelessness, the goal is to improve the lives of those who are homeless slightly. You can't eradicate homelessness without forcing them all into slavery or death like you have suggested, and then we have the much bigger problem of poor people being forced into slavery or death.

Ah, who cares? I give up. Arguing with you is pointless because you're either a troll, or so far gone that I'm never going to be able to reason with you. All this is doing is making me angry.

 

[Jinx_Dragon]

This is not a new idea.

Many countries still have vagrancy laws on the books, that effectively ban homelessness and poverty. It does nothing to change the fact people are homeless or broke, but gave the local sheriff means to run a 'vagrant' out of town or lock them up in jail till they croked. It lead to wide spread abuses within the legal system, as one can expect when you have such a poorly implemented law.

This will have the same effect, allowing the Hungry government to lock up people for such a flimsy excuse. Expect to see it being used against all sorts of minorities and the likes as well, probably predominately used against people the government views as 'unclean.' That is the normal story of such laws, given that the system would already be designed to make these 'unclean' people more likely to be vagrants.

PS: make sure you have 20 cents in Australia, if you can't produce at least 20 cents worth of money you are a vagrant and can be locked up.

 

[Something Amyss]

I'm sorry, but you must be trolling. "Actually, humanitarian aid has done as much, or more harm as it has good."

You must be, right? I admit you're quite good at it if so, because I honestly started to get angry there. Might even be the first time that's happened to me.

I hope you're trolling anyway, because the idea that people really think like you claim to is worrying, frankly.

trolling or not, this is a very real view that a lot of very real people share.

It's usually paired with the magical thinking concept of "poor/homeless people are just lazy."

 

[Jinx_Dragon]

As for the 'get a job' comments, I have to side with the people who are saying it isn't that simple.

I don't know where it has got to, but someone put forth a very good flash animation as to why this isn't as simple as people think. The highlight of it was the fact there is more people in the country, any country, then there is available jobs. Of the vast majority of the jobs that are available, many pay at minimal wage and often you will need more then one to be able to put together enough money to survive. Sure there are some places where there are higher number of jobs then people, but over all the reason most countries have unemployment is simply because there is not enough jobs for everyone to begin with.

Oh, and if your argument is to move to an area where there is a surplus of jobs I have to ask the question. How does someone without a job afford to relocate? The fact is: Unemployment is a lot more complicated then just a lack of will.

 

[Jfswift]

That is just ridiculous, although in jail at least they'd have food and shelter.

and living with the people society deemed fit to lock away.

People make jail sound like a walk in the park.

*Nod* yea, it is crazy and stupid really. There must be a better way to deal with the homeless than locking them up.

 

[similar.squirrel]

The only time the country of my birth gets on the news is when it's busy embarrassing itself.

Funny thing is, a lot of these people are homeless because their jobs ceased to exist when Socialism collapsed. Apparently Hungary can't take care of its genetically superior people without the help of filthy Commies.

Fuck, I hate my country.

 

[cdstephens]

ITT: No one reads the article sourced.

The purpose of this law isn't to reduce homelessness; the purpose of this law is to jail the Romani people in Hungary through indirect means. This is actually extremely smart on the government's part because if they had a law specifying the Romani people then it would attract more negative attention than this. Of course locking random homeless people up is going to be a waste of time and money. However, if the government dislikes the Romani people, a great number of whom are homeless, then this law enables them to lock up the Romani people simply for being who they are.