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karbytes_16_september_2024.txt
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karbytes_16_september_2024.txt
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/**
* file: karbytes_16_september_2024.txt
* type: plain-text
* date: 16_SEPTEMBER_2024
* author: karbytes
* license: PUBLIC_DOMAIN
*/
I finally got some (over-ear) headphones today (for approximately $20) from one of the fanciest Target stores I have ever been to (and it was the first time I stepped foot inside that upstairs Target store in downtown Sunnyvale approximately three hours ago (and right now is approximately 12:00PM Pacific Standard Time on 16_SEPTEMBER_2024)).
I’m sitting at the courtyard between Philz Coffee and the Caltrain station. There is one large gray tent set up in the courtyard perhaps in Wi-Fi range of the Philz Coffee cafe. According to news sources I checked, there may be some rainfall in this area throughout the week (and there has been a significant drop in air temperature and increase in cloud cover and wind since yesterday).
Homeless people have allegedly been increasing in numbers due to economic hardships (spurred on by rising costs of living in part due to supply shortages and logistics impairments due to the ongoing foreign wars such as the war initiated by Russia against Ukraine during the past three years and mass layoffs at many companies partly due to the advent of automation and what I think are deliberately unsustainable new minimum wage standards for fast food employees in California (which is $20 unlike many other arguably more difficult and more necessary hourly jobs (and I think that new “ridiculously high” minimum wage for fast food employees is designed to incentive restaurant owners to reduce their human staff numbers to just what is necessary in order to keep the restaurant profitable (i.e. not go bankrupt in order to keep paying its employees more money than what the restaurant brings in) while automation could dramatically cut labor costs and the stress of having many people in a small kitchen (because robots due not have built-in propensities to become territorial, hungry, easily offended, sexual, or violent the way animals have evolved to have for the sake of their survival and reproductive success))).
I have been reading many news stories during the past three years about how major cities in the San Francisco Bay Area such as San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, and even Berkeley have been conducting “very aggressive” homeless encampment sweeps (i.e. dismantling tents, towing away vehicles which were being used as shelter) and arresting homeless people who fail to leave the premises before the announced sweeping date (along with homeless people getting their possessions vandalized and stolen by enforcers of such policies).
Unless those people who are evicted are offered longer term housing than merely being told to go to a homeless shelter, it seems that those evicted vagrants are being forced to stay perpetually “on the run” instead of able to settle down in one designated place which they don’t get locked out of due to overcrowding.
These are just partially informed thoughts I have. I honestly see there are multiple positions which seem somewhat valid to take on the matter. For instance, one part of me thinks it is unfair for people who work full-time jobs (i.e. more than 35 hours per week) in roles which are designed to support people other than just themselves (and which generate tax dollars that go back into the system to pay for social services so that those who need them do not have to personally pay to use them) to have to be the primary funders of such social services while those who do not work full-time (or at all) could technically get away with living off of those social services at the expense of those who do work full-time (though I honestly am playing “devil’s advocate” in this “argument” by pretending that most humans are doing the bulk of the “heavy lifting” instead of the few humans who make up less than 5% of the total population doing the most revolutionary work along with the technologies they invent to offset human labor costs while increasing value output from those technologies).
Eventually, I think that more than 70% of the adult population will be “leisure class” and only optionally employed at “token jobs” which gives them some extra money and other benefits in exchange for compliance with whatever the job policies are (while subsisting on an unconditional basic income which would be sufficient to pay for all basic living expenses (including housing)).
I have come across some informational sources over the past five years which suggested that there have been more than enough material resources (including housing) to provide every person a decent standard of living but, for whatever reason, the mainstream media has been propagandizing the “myth” that (false) scarcity of material resources and lack of technological know-how have prevented every human (at least in the United States of America) from having consistent access to basic resources.
Related to the idea of there being a false scarcity of material resources and technological implementation is the fact that solar energy (whether harvested through photovoltaics or passive heating of light-absorbing materials) seems to remain grossly underutilized as a pollution-free and portable (i.e. able to use on moving vehicles including spacecrafts) means for generating use-able electricity/energy. Also, lab grown meat (and other animal-derived food/industrial products) could be a viable (cheaper to produce, more scalable, and less destructive to the ecosystem) alternative to further animal farming for slaughter and rainforest clearing to make way for livestock whose body parts, milk, or eggs are harvested by humans as food sources.
Last thing (and what originally compelled me to write this note): holy shit, over-ear headphones paired with ear plugs and decent music or sound-blocking noise generators are literally making the difference between me not being able to concentrate and feel comfortable in populous and busy settings and me being able to literally feel like I’m at home in my own room happily immersed in my own insular bubble of introverted bliss. It was foolish of me to go for so long without such equipment. I could say the same thing about having my own bicycle. Such material assets have dramatically expanded my range of possibilities for how I can live relatively cheaply, sustainably (ecologically wise), and joyfully. I hope my blog helps prove to myself and others that it is entirely feasible to live in a way which is affordable, fun, productive, reasonably safe, and minimally harmful to the environment.