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[Creaca]

Oh? Aren't we?

How many sacrifices have your offered to our sun god Cthulhu?

How many?!

[Emperor_Jonathan]

Oh? Aren't we?

How many sacrifices have your offered to our sun god Cthulhu?

How many?!

We pay our sun god. In money. What are you, old school?

[Cthulhu]

I stay inside, I don't owe the sun anything.

[Duke 2.0]

 Thankfully the Sun God really has too much Hydrogen and would very much like to get rid of it. Thus the burning. Once he offered Earth a couple-million-billion-billion tons of hyrdogen, but Earth was going through the whole outer crust solidifying thing and felt like the offer was to hide her surface, implying she was ugly. Poor girl never lived that down.
 Of course, we have Jupiter and Saturn that took up the slack.

[DJ]

Actually, fruit trees like apples or cherries grow just fine without maintenance. But, like other people said, it's a really bad idea to eat anything growing close to a road. I guess it could work if they were planted in the centre of a large park.

[Cheddarius]

Friggin' toxic roads messing up all my plans

Plants... they grow on their own, don't they? I mean, it's not like there were no fruits before humans cultivated them. A lot of fruit is in the wild, and animals eat the fruit and such. And it doesn't necessarily have to be free - just "free for me". Will seeds grow when they are put on the ground? Fruit seeds are spread that way (animals defecate the seeds after eating the fruit), right? Therefore, theoretically, if we throw a bunch of wild fruit tree seeds in the park, trees will grow. And then homeless people can come eat it. And it's not like it's that hard. You can just make it a community thing, and people will do it for free. Meaning the taxpayers won't have to pay them, not meaning they won't expend energy or something.

[winner]

I bet the fruit tree idea could work in certain locations/climates. I don't know enough about the needs of those trees to really say though, but they are very high maintenance. The costs might be considered higher than the benefits. Also, you'd have a small-scale tragedy of the commons.

they aren't high maintenance at all, I have seen cherry trees growing well as decoration at schools and there is an orchard that has been abandoned for 50 years with apple plum and pair trees doing fine on it.

[Creaca]

Therefore, theoretically, if we throw a bunch of wild fruit tree seeds in the park, trees will grow. And then homeless people can come eat it.

And then those homeless people crap in the park like normal, making more trees! Perfect!

[Cheddarius]

In my elementary school there were cherry trees. Everyone tried to get some but we were all too short. Also they tasted terrible because they weren't ripe. I think they turned ripe during summer, but they were gone by the time we returned in fall.

[Aqizzar]

Plants... they grow on their own, don't they? I mean, it's not like there were no fruits before humans cultivated them. A lot of fruit is in the wild, and animals eat the fruit and such.

First of all, you really don't know anything about agriculture.  The whole reason that human populations were able to grow larger than a dozen people per square mile was that we stopped eating whatever happened to be laying on the ground, and started tending to plants to make them grow more.

And it's not like it's that hard. You can just make it a community thing, and people will do it for free. Meaning the taxpayers won't have to pay them, not meaning they won't expend energy or something.

What the crap are you talking about?  "Make it a community thing"?  You're expecting people, out of their own good will, to not just donate to charity which they already don't do, and spend their time and effort growing fruit trees for people they don't want around anyway?  And then you're going to call that free?  Good Lord man, you took the time to type this, you couldn't have spent a few more seconds seeing if there's any line of logic within it.

[Cheddarius]

Okay then.

[MrGimp]

I'm going to be the conservative asshole here (even though I'm borderline anarcho-liberal) and say that society does enough for homeless people.  There are shelters in all major and not so major cities.  Theres soup kitchens, charity drives, churches, and even the generosity of local businesses.  When I worked at pizza hut us drivers would let the managers know when we saw a homeless guy eating out of our dumpsters, and wed throw a pizza in the oven for em.

It's ingrained in us as a species to take care of our own.  I dont think we need new programs.  Certainly no new federal programs.  The reason we have so many homeless is because we actually dont let them starve.  We dont give em caviar and fine wine, and we dont build them their own private mansions, but their basic short-term survival is as guaranteed as it can be.  Its better than caveman times, or back in the jungle.  They didnt have social security, disability, medicare and medicaid.  There was no free food for hunters that couldnt catch anything, or free shelters for those who could not build or find one. 

So while our present society may be totally corrupt and dysfunctional, it's still better than anything we've managed to come up with before.  And at least in western society, the vast majority of homeless people got that way through their own actions.  Its very rarely just random chance that takes a good, well-adjusted hard working person down that far.  Its usually drugs, alcohol, and horrible life choices.

More should be done for the poor of other countries.  American (and European and Japanese I presume) homeless are spoiled brats compared to hard working Burundi farmers, who aren't given free pizzas, shelters, and health clinics.  If anything, we should be growing apples for them, not the drunks and winos of the richest parts of the world.


...


Am I right?   

[Cheddarius]

Cracked.com says that beggars can make $100,000 a year.

[MrGimp]

One of my old roommates told me he could make 200 bucks in an hour or two sitting at the gas station bumming money.  Thats how he got money on the weekends to drink and party.

[JoshuaFH]

One of my old roommates told me he could make 200 bucks in an hour or two sitting at the gas station bumming money.  Thats how he got money on the weekends to drink and party.

I think you should go find that roommate and kick him in the balls for taking advantage of people's generosity.