# The homeless, the impoverished and the Military

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-homeless-the-impoverished-and-the-military/515173>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [October 26, 2009, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-homeless-the-impoverished-and-the-military/515173 "2009-10-26T13:32:45Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 4

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**Author:** ![Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimmy_Gibbler)\
**Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-homeless-the-impoverished-and-the-military/515173/61 "2009-10-28T00:15:59Z")

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> [@furt](#):
>
> Oh, bollocks. I worked with the homeless for years, and **Shodan** is entirely correct – your long-term, chronically homeless are nearly all mentally ill and/or substance abusers.
> 
> People from deprived, shitty childhoods may usually end up poor, and may be periodically homeless, but they generally find a way off the streets in a few weeks or months … unless they become mentally ill or addicts.

Ah, yes, Horatio Alger’s Law. Thank heavens _we_ don’t have to do anything!

Confidential to **T.B.** : I didn’t say every middle-class person believes this. But I don’t doubt the number of poors who also believe these premises is lower (and it’s less pernicious, since poors don’t get much of a say in how things are run). Interestingly, most rich people I’ve known don’t tend to go in for the “screw the poor” rhetoric (in fact, they tend to be the types working at Serious Think Tanks and NGOs they produce earnest reports on the plight of the disadvantaged). Maybe they believe similar things, but, as with all things rich-people, the expression is much more elegant.

But my main defense is this: no matter how you slice it, middle-class people aren’t the victims here. Let’s not pretend that they are.

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**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\
**Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-homeless-the-impoverished-and-the-military/515173/62 "2009-10-28T01:11:53Z")

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> [@Blalron](#):
>
> Hunting and gathering isn’t really a viable option either, because I’m bound to run into a property owner or park ranger who will stop me.

As they told the counterculture type back in the 1960s who was determined to practice Hindu meditation techniques while living off the land in a national park, “The Ranger ain’t gonna like that, yogi.” 🙂

As far as I’m concerned, while the courts have held the draft, being for national defense, not to be a case of involuntary servitude, the sort of proposal contemplated by the OP, not being for national defense but explicitly “to make them pay for their (presumed) benefits”, flies in the face of the 13th Amendment.

And under my ethics, if we as a nation once decide that “they” have to do something (whoever “they” may be) because it matches “our” social policy, the first thing that should be done is to require those who propose it to themselves undergo it. In the instant case, for example, **Kearsen** should be compelled to serve military service. (And this is not a personal remark directed at **Kearsen** or an _argumentum ad personam_, but rather the particularization to this specific case to the contrapositive of the Golden Rule: “Whatsoever you would not be willing that others do unto you, do not do that thing unto others.”

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