Here's the link to the article for anyone interested.
I have a couple of comments about this. In no particular order, and some I would love to say to him, others I would love to say to his supporters and people who think "Yeah! He showed those lazy good-for-nothings!".
Here are some facts if you didn't read it
- He had to "quit" being homeless 10 months in because of his health. During the entire experiment, he says he was going to the doctor's often.
- He went into this, like the title says, on purpose (meaning with intention and energy and his feet hitting the ground running)
- He only made it to $64,000 - which is still an impressive amount to make in 10 months starting from zero, yes, but also not even a tenth of he claimed he would do
So here are some things I want to say about that.
- Do you realize how fucking lucky you are? For so many parts of this, luck was a part of this. Can you imagine if, instead of finding the nice human that let you sleep in their RV, you found the not-so-nice human that mugged you or stole the little you had gotten?
- You were able to go to the doctor? Often? Throughout the entire experiment? How? Did you have health insurance? How were you paying for that if you were homeless and "broke"? Did you pay for the doctor out of pocket? Was this in America? (I seriously didn't check what country he was doing this in).
- The fucking privilege of just being able to quit? I'm like completely fucking gobsmacked I'm so angry about that. Knowing you have a fucking safety net to fall out of your "experiment" onto makes it so much easier to try shit that might not pan out. If it's do or die, and you know this is your entire life, and your longterm is bleak as fucking shit, you're not going to be a quirky little risk taking entrepreneur, you're going to find a job with better stability.
- I will bet my left shoe that if he needed a ride to a doctor or needed something super desperate, he was able to call someone up and get help on the DL. whether he did or not, people can argue about, but undoubtedly he could have.
- You *started* this with energy and purpose. Like an athlete waiting at a starting line for a gun to go off. People that are actually in poverty have been run ragged already, can barely force themselves forward, have no energy or gusto left.
- This also means you started off with pretty decent mental health. That's a privilege in and of itself. Imagine if your skull's primary organ didn't function as well as it was supposed to? What if you needed medication that would help you function like a normal human being, and you didn't have access to it? What if your mental health had taken a much steeper dive than it probably did? (Which, let's face it, if you didn't have a way out of this, the hopelessness of everything probably would have fucked you up a bit).
- Think about how hard this was on your physical health after 10 months, and now imagine you can't quit. There is no safety net or life to go back to. Imagine being however old you are, and you can't afford to go to the doctor, and you can't afford to miss work, and you're weak and in pain but you have to show the fuck up anyways to serve coffee to some elitist trash that thinks they're better than you because they're wearing a suit and you work for minimum wage and, "if you didn't want to be here, you'd just work harder". Think about how your health would be after foing this for 5 years, or 25 years, or 50 years. Imagine your family having horrible health concerns, and you couldn't go to them or be with them or help them, because you couldn't afford it. Imagine sustaining a severe injury that prevented you from working, and just like that all the money you saved got eaten up by rent and necessities and outrageous doctor bills no longer covered by employer-sponsored health insurance, and you were very quickly back out on the street, back at $0 (if not negative money; many people are desperate for food or to pay the bills or rack up medical debt or what-have-you and take out often predatory credit cards and are now in terrible debt).
- I want you to think beyond the "wow, be nicer to people because that was harder than I thought it would be!". I want you to gaze into the hungry faces you charaded amongst, and I want you to know that the day you broke was 30 years ago for these people, and it's never really gotten better for them.
- I want every fucking politician to be forced to live like this, for a year. Not in any way to prove that "oh look anyone can do it!", oh no. I want them to know, intimately, the struggle that their hungriest constituents live with every fucking moment. Just like I want every politician to need to be forced to use disability equipment for an entire month, exclusively, just so they can understand the accessibility issues that people with disabilities face.
- Fuck you for thinking poverty could be your little joke experiment to stick it to those who just can't pull themselves up by their bootstraps. I'm glad your health got hit, I hope you understand better now.
Sorry, I had a lot of angry feelings about that. My rant is over, sorry everyone, you can all go home now. Actually no fuck you I'm not sorry, it should be said and I'm glad I fucking said it.
