You Think Employers Exploit People ...

Let's examine San Francisco.

There is a reason why San Fran is such a hell hole of homeless hopelessness and filth. It's so bad your 10-month-old can OD on fentanyl just playing in the park. And we all know many of the homeless are addicts or mentally ill or both.

But when doesn't get explored is why it's so attractive.

It's because they're being exploited by an incestuous relationship of city workers and nonprofits. The city workers moonlight for the nonprofits that depend on city funds to stay in operation, and even though it's illegal, the moonlighting government bureaucrats ensure the money train keeps running because everyone benefits from it, except the homeless who are exploited to provide an excuse for it all.

No homeless = no need for the money.

In just one department, the Dept. of Public Health, 300 people have applied for permission to work second jobs. It's not like they are just now seeking employment. Rather, they've been employed and are seeking approval to cover over the illegality. And they are working in positions created based on employers reliant on public funds granted by the city to keep in business so-to-speak. So this is sort of like bribery. We employ you; you make sure the city funds us ...

And this isn't a case of needing the money to survive, either. It's not a like teacher working a second job. In this case, it's forbidden by the City Governance Guide:

Employees are barred from working jobs that contradict, interfere or present a conflict of interest with their city job, according to the city attorney’s Good Government Guide.

In Pratt’s case, her city job running health care in the city’s jails requires her to be on call for the city 24/7, and public record emails obtained by The Standard show her routinely responding to emails for the nonprofit during normal business hours. Pratt earned $123,000 annually at Baker Places on top of her $428,750 city compensation.

“The department is confident that this new process will ensure greater compliance and reduce confusion among employees about their responsibilities when seeking additional employment,” said the health department in a statement.

So working in a position that relies on one employer to keep the other employer funded is no conflict of interest? And I guess it's no big deal that we're talking about things like this employee who is obligated to be on-call 24/7 to the city, but still works and is distracted by and beholden to, another employer and job.

And at the bottom of the structure are the cattle, er, homeless needed to be funneled through it all to give it an excuse to exist. Exploited worse than any worker because they make no money off any of it in any real way. If they did and their lot improved, the structure comes down and the gravy train ends.

a reply to: ketsuko

So you mean to tell me govts are making the problems only to keep their jobs and relevance?

Where do you even think you are?!?!

a reply to: JinMI

Bureaucracy - It's a great racket if you can get it.

a reply to: ketsuko

You seem to have done your homework here.

I don't have anything else to say other than well done. What a mess.

originally posted by: litterbaux
a reply to: ketsuko

You seem to have done your homework here.

I don't have anything else to say other than well done. What a mess.

My contention is that we are our own worst enemies. It doesn't matter what kind of organization you are talking about. If it's comprised of human beings, the larger it is, the more powerful, the more likely it is that it's corrupted and doesn't do what it was originally intended to do. We screw it up. It attracts the power hungry, greedy, the lazy, etc., the ones who are going to exploit the system to their ends and screw everyone else.

It's why communism is Utopian policy and will never work. It needs people to forget how to be horrible, and that will never happen. The main reason that capitalism is best is because it affords people the freedom to minimize the damage the horrible ones can do to them if they're smart enough.

a reply to: ketsuko

So obviously, the moonlighting thing is an issue, but how the heck does a city employee pull in $428,750 a year? I don't care what city it is, but no, government jobs should not pay people that much. That's insanity.

a reply to: ketsuko

We have a term for people like that in my industry.

We call them "gravy sucking pigs"...

a reply to: Hypntick

I can almost excuse that given Cali's insane cost of living. I know from research that in order to realize our current standard of living, both hubs and myself would need to make an instant 1/3 again more than our current salaries. And that is just to break even,not improve.

Nothing new here, nor is it solely left wing economic policy.

You may have heard of trickle down theory, a right wing ideology that has never proven to have worked.

The situation as described in the OP is how the economic construct actually works.

For all other sections, each strata of the construct, to enjoy full economic participation, it is necessary to create an underclass, upon whom jobs for first line white collar workers, are predicated.

This reduces competition for white collar jobs in other industries, thereby protecting and maintaining salary levels. This in turn protects competition for jobs in the professions and higher management. And so on all the way to the fat cats in government, commerce and industry.

If the services to the underclass gravy train is withdrawn, the whole mess comes tumbling down.

a reply to: ketsuko

So after doing my research, 300k is the middle-class salary in that area. Which sounds absolutely awful to me, but oh well. I don't even want to know what I would need to break even; thank god for rural living.

Edit: I just looked up what I would need. Holy carp.

a reply to: teapot

None of what is being discussed is capitalist being government and non-profit funded by government. All of it parasitizes the underlying capitalist market through taxation and fees.

I believe if you read carefully, I nowhere absolve capitalism only point out that this is every bit as bad if not worse because the ones at the bottom get jack, not even a penance. Even southern slaves had a modicum of room and board, and their lot was horrendous. In terms of material circumstances they are being kept in, I don't see the homeless coming out ahead in much except raw liberty.

a reply to: ketsuko

Not sure why so defensive.

The construct is as it s and is so to allow government that have no real allegiance to any political or economic ideology, to maintain social control.

Maybe trickle down does work but only for corrupt practices that protect the status quo.

a reply to: ketsuko

What homelessness is, is people who can't find their place in society. It doesn't make them bad or mentally ill by default.
What homelessness also is, is having zero protection.
People get raped, guys too. Their last posessions stolen. Everyday you need to scavange for the necessities of daily life. So yes I guess after a while your social skills get less polished. Which might appear deranged.
Which is exactly what it is.
But they got no lobby.
People just assume they got a flaw. That it's their own fault.

Your civilisation shall be measured by how it treats the weak.
Or what was it?

Corruption is a symptom that reminds us we got to keep working on finding a better method of gouverning ourselves.

Great OP ketsuko

This is such a bitter/sweet subject to me personally, having been so influenced by SF and the Bay Area in I guess would have been a different time, lol, maybe a lifetime ago ? As kids we went every year to visit our Aunt and Uncle who at the time lived in Berkeley, the coolest house ever from a kids POV, we loved it there ( 1970’s ) our Aunt took us to soo many wonderful places, culture and a whole new world was opened to us, pretty much every cool thing you could associate with a visit to SF and the Bay Area we experienced and it shaped my sister and I’s lives in a positive way, lol, I think ?

20 yrs. Later, the things I now come to understand about about SF politics when I fall in Love with a Man who actually grew up there, was the beginning of my “ awakening “ so to speak……where to even begin with the elitist and down right hypocrisy of that place would take a thread of it’s own. LOL, South Park crudely made the point pretty good with the episode of them all smelling their farts….sigh…

Here’s just one small example of bureaucratic nonsense that fleece’s the tax payers in SF / CA…..the million + dollar bathrooms…..
missionlocal.org...

a reply to: teapot

I am pointing out that your whataboutism was already defanged because I saw it coming when I wrote the OP. People need to wake and realize that it's size and bureaucracy that are the enemy more than any system.