Sunday, August 15, 2010

The homeless

I saw two beggars the entire time I was in China, and they had real problems (one of them had no legs). There were plenty of people selling stuff on the side of the street though. Why don't we have that in America? Because it's illegal. Our unintended consequence of banning most street vendors is beggars everywhere. And our only response to beggars is to try to ban them or force them to live as dependents, instead of letting them be productive members of society.

We have a sick society in some respects and it's our own fault.

2 comments:

chickelit said...

I think it's hard to tax street vendor activity which is another reason laws against it pass.
There's an enormous flea market on weekends near use. I've often wondered how the city manages to tax all those transactions. I'm sure they do somehow.

Jason (the commenter) said...

It's business owners that don't want vendors around.