If you haven't noticed, the median transient is a drug addict (mostly meth/opiates) and the typical drug addict chooses not to participate in society, inasmuch as you can accept that they have any agency at all. Some may think they are being compassionate with this victim-coddling but this only makes sense if you take the view that the victim-criminals enjoy their situation, since the coddling isn't elevating any of them out of poverty.

I've never heard of a squatter with a job

They can work like decent human beings, and if they prefer to pray on innocent people, they should be incarcerated.

No sympathy for you from me. There will always be people on both sides of the spectrum. There’s people who work hard to pay rent without resorting to criminality. In fact this is more common than your characterization that if you’re poor you steal, or as you call it “poor people things”. What an insult to those people.

I suppose you condone the gross shoplifting and then the slippery slope to committing felonies.

(Note: I have no problem with people who sell drugs or sex and think both should be legal. I'm referring specifically to theft here.)

I'm not sure why we need to accept this increased crime tradeoff. Why can't we (here "we" refers to folks who are willing to work for money rather than steal) just wall ourselves off from them?

There is quite another type, alive and well in our political and legal system, that have no problem stealing or ruining thousands for a few dollars gain for themselves. I well and truly wish these folks hadn't been born.

I feel as soon as humanity grows out of the stage where this kind of behavior is tolerated, we'll be well on our way to the utopia that most of us hope for. Once you nip this impulse in the bud, it won't matter if the systems are socialist, capitalist or whatever, they'll probably work just dandy. This is why we can't have nice things.

I've been dirt poor, I've been homeless, I've been alone in a foreign country with no one to turn to, I've lived in such shit places that my neighbour got shot down with an AK not 100 meters from my doorstep ... in Europe. I still didn't steal.

There are systemic issues which keep people down, that doesn't excuse immoral and illegal behaviour. I've known a lot of criminals, they're by and large scumbags, not some modern robinhoods stealing for the sake of their family because of capitalism.

We should put criminals in jail and mercilessly shame and make fun of people like you that construct some nonsense rationalization for all of us accepting allowing our homes, our towns our streets to turn into shitholes. You are a LOSER and the rest of us are getting real sick of putting up with your type.

I was going to mention in my original post, but I'll add here.. that the misguided moralisms are only part of the problem. There is a not insiginificant portion of the voting (or non voting) population, and political activists, that support and enable this nonsense not out of a misguided sense of compassion but similar to parent comment here, because they have a bitterness and ressentiment towards this or that other part of society and want to see orderly civilization destroyed.

In some ways this may even be a subconcious motivation, but it is there. There's been way too much explicit crime and degredation for many to just be fooled by good intentions for this to continue unabated..no, it's something else as well. Many are thrilled with these trends.

So..

>You think people are shoplifting from Whole Foods for fun?

Yes, absolutely this is a part of it. They do it because they want to and they can. Some may want to stick it to the man like you want them to do. But it doesn't matter, because some sob-story claim of being poor "therefore crime" is untenable even if true and should be rejected out of hand. It's bullshit.

Nice places are expensive. The whole world cannot nor should they assume some right to live anywhere just because. Politicial dysfunction does play a part of economic pain, but some people will not be able to make it in expensive places. They do not have a claim to tear down these places just because they can't afford to live there. They deserve jail for that. I want to have nice clean orderly crime-free streets. And this is entirely achievable and has been achieved in many times and places throughout history, in the US as well. The moral position is to take anyone trying to destroy this or inflict crime on people and businesses and put them in prison.

Sorry for the negativity, feeling bitter about it.

Please wake up from the fairy tale that all bad things have a just cause that can be fixed. No. Some people would rather steal your stuff than go to the trouble of getting their own legitimately.

I think that "tax rents" is the method whereby this can be done, if it can be done at all.

These are people who live in poverty. Their lives are so bad that punishment is near meaningless.

Sounds simply dreadful. Not an attractive way to live and not an attractive society to live in.

Not that normal people would ever try to live this way. I suppose you could terrorize them into saying they were trying to live this way.

By the way, breaking into buildings, stealing food, and then donating some money to a fashionable cause is thrill seeking and attention whoring, not philanthropy.

they need to survive by stealing is a failure of the system that is in place, either education or the social support system. Accommodating for the system's failures by giving up property rights is a defeatist take at best, virtue signaling at worst.

Which is exactly the same as jackbooted thugs going into people's homes and relieving them of physical property.

And it's morally wrong. Like putting tags on people to make fun of them.