Homeless Internment Camps: History Is Set to Repeat Itself
Why are the wealthy pushing so hard for the criminalization of homelessness? Why would they push for homeless internment compounds rather than more affordable housing options for lower-income families, disabled and elderly people who are struggling to stay out of homelessness, and the ones who already are homeless? Why not push for work training programs for the new world of AI and a digital society?
Profiting from Human Misery: The Push for Homeless Internment Camps
It is shocking to think that after the US had Japanese American internment camps during World War II, anyone would push for a homeless-American internment camp in 2024.
Humans often fail to learn from history, leading to a repetition of inhumane and barbaric acts. On this planet, such actions are disturbingly likely to recur as the wealthy and powerful exploit situations for their benefit, convincing the masses, even their intended victims, to support them.
If they house all homeless people, they get very little return. But if they put everyone in these proposed camps, they can do what they’ve done with prisons and turn a hefty profit. They might even give them the same type of labor in the camp as in prison. The difference is that if they hired people from the workforce, they’d have to pay a much higher wage. If they use prison or homeless camp labor, they pay them next to nothing, if anything.
How AI and Greed Are Shaping the Future of Homelessness
The truth is that computers, robots, and AI are rapidly replacing people in various jobs. Self-checkouts will be increasingly common. Many fast-food restaurants are signing up to have robotic AI flip burgers and make fries, eliminating the need for a large number of human workers. The list is endless.
These things are just the beginning, though. I watched a documentary about “smart hospitals” in Japan, where a patient is cared for by robots and computers with little human interaction. From what I learned, it’s been a success so far. Many people don’t realize this, but the population is set to peak and then decline, leaving a shortage of young people to fill the jobs in the medical field. We are already seeing this in some countries where the birth rates have fallen, and there is a huge concern about what happens as the current workforce ages. They say that AI robots will be made specifically to be caregivers to the elderly, eliminating work for human caregivers.
Respect for Elderly People Plummets
Now, if there is one thing I can tell you for sure about American culture, it is that there is little to no respect for the elderly. They are seen as no longer valuable and a drain on healthcare. How could that happen? Historically, elders have been respected as leaders and wise people who can address any situation. How could they have gone from that to being considered worthless in modern life?
One way to understand it is to look at a Neanderthal woman who was featured recently in a Netflix documentary. She was considered elderly for her time, probably around 45 years old. As one person perfectly put it, she was the Google of her time. Without computers, books, or ways of saving data, the eldest people among you were the keepers of information. Those who lived long enough knew what to do in certain weather situations, where to go when food was scarce in a particular area, or what plant to find to make medicine for an infection. However, as humans found ways to archive information, having elders who would recall and pass down data became less essential.
With the advent of AI, they can recall nearly all information ever posted on the internet within a few moments. With AI, you don’t need all the organic people. Elderly, disabled, and poverty-stricken people who need financial support are seen as undesirable by the wealthy, and the gap between rich and poor has widened enormously in the past few years.
Elderly Homelessness: The Overlooked Crisis Fueled by Wealthy Indifference
As housing prices soar, the cost of living spikes, and the population ages, an increasing number of people will require assistance to avoid homelessness. This is why we are witnessing a significant rise in homelessness among the elderly population today.
Essentially, if the wealthy can sweep the streets clean of these various “undesirables” and eliminate the eyesore of homeless “tent villages,” they can pretend they have solved the problem. In reality, they only moved the problem out of public view. The wealthy and powerful choose to believe that addiction and mental illness are driving all homelessness, rather than their own greed, as if that should mean those suffering from those things do not deserve help. They choose to listen to someone like Elon Musk making false claims and not to those in the homeless sector with “boots on the ground.”
I’m not saying that there aren’t any wealthy people on the planet who care about their fellow man. I’ve known a few people who have been generous and compassionate toward poor and homeless people. However, the separation between “them and us” can be staggering.
The Divide Between Wealth and Poverty
I’ve done many types of jobs in my lifetime, and some jobs were working for wealthy and “well-to-do” people. You can see and feel the divide the second you step into their homes. They cannot even relate to people who live in low-income environments. In all the homes I worked in (back when I could still work), I have never seen one that didn’t look like it was furnished with the most expensive furnishings money could buy. They didn’t have roach traps or mouse traps in the kitchen. They had mostly organic fresh vegetables, fruits, grass-fed meats, and cheeses in the fridge. You rarely saw processed food in boxes and cans in their pantries.
I’m not saying they have no problems in life, but many problems that are catastrophes for a poor person (such as my $4,000 unaffordable repair job on my 15-year-old vehicle) don’t exist for them. They can throw money at almost all problems. How can they even begin to relate to poor or homeless people unless they are somebody who rose from poverty? But that is rare.
The Lack of Perspective’s Impact on Homeless People
I once heard it said that people can only relate to you from their own points of view and experience. So, all the people with the power to control our lives and make laws and policies are primarily people with no way to relate to people like myself. It’s easy to understand why they lack compassion for us. They don’t see us as even remotely equal. It’s as if we aren’t even the same species. Herding homeless people into an internment camp will mean even less to them than if we were animals. And, with Musk labeling us all as addicts, fanning the flames of disgust, makes it even easier to dismiss homeless people as worthless.
Increasingly, they need human workers less and less. A huge driver of the lower birth rate in many countries is poverty. If you eliminate the poor by pricing them out of life with greed, and you have a workforce of robots to replace them, how much do you think the wealthy and powerful will miss sharing the planet with the poor “dregs of society”? They soon won’t even need us to wash their toilets.
