Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Panhandling
I've notice a growing problem in my area, this may not affect some of the loyal readers of this blog (whom live elsewhere) but I thought it was worth a post. Now I'm not referring to homeless people asking for money, I understand that certain readers who live in bigger citys have these problems, but in my area there is something stranger...and dare I say more problematic. This is regarding people who sit on street corners, busy intersections, etc. and ask for "donations". This goes from Firemen asking money for "Jerry's Kids" to kids basketball teams and churchs asking for donations. What happened to actually working to raise money? If your church wants to go on a trip, if you want to raise money for you basketball team's jersey then fucking go out there and do a car wash, sell candy bars, fucking something. This bullshit of just sitting out on the corner and asking for money....wtf. It gets worse when they actually come and basically harass you for your money. I had a little girl come up to my window (keep in mind it was closed and I was not making eye contact) and start knocking on it. OK I could hear you a mile away, you are weaving in and out of traffic, if I don't roll my window down and acknowledge you leave me the fuck alone, no I do not want to donate to whatever it is you are doing...probably not even raising money for any "charity". The city kicks homeless people out of public areas for doing this same act...why aren't they removing these people? Again I have no problem with people doing a carwash, they are at lease offering a service, they are WORKING for the money. The problem is the people of this country are getting lazy, and the fact that they are now just asking for money it bullshit...what is this teaching our youth?
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4 comments:
agreed. ship them back to norfolk
i would have been infuriated if that bia woulda banged on my window....
there are similar annoyances up here. i cant count the number of times entering the silver spring metro that I have had a kid of less than 10 try to hand me an obama flyer....if there were no consequences i would seriously kick the kid in his head
I hear you. Unless you are the age to vote, don't hand me anything regarding it....but more to the point, don't hand me anything at all. I don't want it.
this is the exact kind of thing nathan and I have been chatting about the past two nights. people think it is virtuous to give to those in need because "selfish" is thought of as such a horrible character quality.
for instance, if i decide to keep the money that EARN and I don't want to GIVE it to a church, that is considered selfish, and therefore wrong. I don't think I'll ever forget this one story: I was filling up my car with gas in the wonderful town of baytown (slum), and a man came up and asked for 5 dollars to help fill up his truck. yes, he was driving a truck with horrible gas mileage and ASKING me to GIVE him money. I looked at him and just said no without any explanation. He then said something along the lines of "so much for american unity" and some other bullshit. i was just baffled that someone would actually get mad that i didn't just give him any money for no reason.
you said it best in your blog, and i agree. read up on the philosophies of Ayn Rand. I just finished Atlas Shrugged and it is about 1100 pages of making this point over and over. boring, but makes you think how our society classifies people who are dumb enough just to give away money for no reason as being "nice" and "kind" and those who don't as "selfish." I guess I am proud to say, I am selfish and I am going to spend my money as I see fit. I don't think I really care about what other people think.
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