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Marketing Agency Uses Homeless As Wi-Fi Hotspots
An anonymous reader writes "Marketing agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH) has launched a controversial charity scheme at this year's South by Southwest festival, in which homeless people are being used to provide Wi-Fi hotspots. The project, Homeless Hotspots, seeks to address people's need for a high-speed data connection at the festival in Austin, Texas, by issuing the homeless with T-shirts that say 'I am a 4G hotspot.' Passers-by may then pay what they wish either in cash or by PayPal to get online 4G networks via the Wi-Fi device that a homeless person is carrying and the proceeds go to the Front Steps Homeless shelter in Austin."
Why don't the proceeds go to the homeless person carrying around the equipment!?
And why wouldnt these homeless folk try to immediately cash in, sell or trade the hotspot device for money or a nice bottle? They are $100+ devices, nevermind 4g service for a day or so.
It's basically an updated version of the street newspapers that homeless people have been selling for decades. Micro-business like this can be the first step and getting out of poverty.
Giving jobs to those people in need instead of just some spare change is exactly the thing that can help them.
This is the most exploitative, ignorant, inhuman scheme I've ever heard of.
He is not a wifi hotspot. He is not a thing. He's not something for you to graffiti-tag to market your shitty pay-per-use wifi. He is a human being, and entitled to dignity.
If you're interested in helping, do so. Don't come up with some bullshit scheme to allow you to profit at the same time as you pretend to be helping.
Hey I plan too! Let's use battered women as sparring partners! We'll partner with Golds Gym, give them a t-shirt that says "I'm used to it!". We'll make a fortune off of all the misogynist muscleheads who hang out there. Then give the proceeds to, oh I dont know. We'll make up some "dont beat women" charity or something, make ourselves directors.
Is to give those jobs to people who aren't homeless but merely out of work. Unemployment is crazy these days and I'm sure lots of not-bums wouldn't mind doing this for a little extra cash.
Actually, what we should probably do is bring back indentured servitude for homeless or unemployed people, and introduce slavery for people who are in prison for serious crimes. "Got a life sentence for raping and killing 19 little girls? Enjoy working in the plantation/factory/sewers forever, buddy." It would certainly solve the issue of people outsourcing jobs to other countries because the labor is cheaper...
Raising awareness? Maybe we should all wear ribbons? Puh-leese. Last time I checked, homeless people are self-evident and don't need their awareness raised. If anything, I'm a little too aware of them when I enter my local grocery store. Yes, people are homeless often because they cannot follow rules, whether criminal or otherwise. A huge number of them are addicts, and most shelters have rules about sobriety. That's a major reason why many still live on the streets - they'd rather imbibe than have a roof over their heads.
So hell yes it's a legitimate question that they might keep the money or pawn the device. Anything else is political correctness, just as is the term "raising awareness."
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
I'm not sure you are arguing that this is minimum wage laws hurting the poor. You're arguing that having to pay people at all is hurting them.
Minimum wage only means you have to pay the guy 10 bucks an hour, and not 2, for 3 days. (Or whatever the numbers are at this festival, minimum wage here is 10 bucks an hour). But if you could pay 2 bucks an hour they'd still have all of the other employment questions that have to be addressed (declaring it correctly to the revenue service).
To argue against the minimum wage you'd need to show how this business could run paying their people less than minimum wage, but can't manage at minimum wage, and then how those people would still be able to live at the price they can pay. When you're on a donation system though (even if the preferred price is 2 dollars for 15 minutes) you don't really know what the viable revenue stream is, and, in this case, because it's for a 3 day festival with the 'proceeds to charity' you can charge a ridiculously large amount of money, but you still have no idea how much take you'll have. It sounds like this is being run as a charity thing because well, it is. 3 days of work isn't going to be enough to meaningfully help someone out of a homeless shelter, no matter how much you pay them. But a few hundred or a few thousand bucks to the homeless shelter can help a lot of people for a lot more than 3 days.
FTFA:
I don't get why that's a worry. The homeless are providing a service, which makes the productive members of society, and should provide them with a little self-respect. So what if the program doesn't care anything at all about them or their future? How is that different from the situation that almost every wage slave on planet earth - they're all providing a service for a company that pays them for it, and I don't think there are many employees that are under the impression that the company they work for is doing because the "care about them."
This program just does for the homeless the same thing that almost every company and government employee does to people: turns them into human resources.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
I think it's perfectly reasonable. This could be a great service in larger cities and especially during events like sxsw. Have a place at the homeless shelter that maintains the equipment and keeps it charged. The homeless person just checks out a fanny pack with the equipment and gets paid upon returning it. In the meantime they go about their daily lives, except now they have a t-shirt and a gimmick. I would eliminate the cash donation part in favor of a premium text charge or being redirected to a donation page upon connecting. You could even serve up ads if that model works better for you. Apart from preventing a rash of homeless muggings, taking cash out of the equation helps eliminate any confusion over who you're giving the money to (Am I giving this homeless dude money or paying for WiFi? Feel free to give the dude a dollar if you would normally). However you do it, the donations go back to funding the program (maintaining equipment, paying the homeless), and anything left over goes to the shelter. Odds of this being profitable would be greatly improved with any advances to make the equipment cheaper and more durable. People get Wifi, a homless dude makes a little money to get by, shelters gets donations, advertisers get to slap a label on it. Everybody sounds happy to me.
So, you believe that life owes you something for nothing, eh?
Unless you are truly infirmed, or aged where you can no longer provide shelter and food for yourself, then no....no one owes this to you for free. It all takes effort. Why should someone that works to pay to eat and have good shelter, have to work that bit harder to give it to you so you don't have to?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Why are the infirmed and aged owed anything? If you're going for 'you get what you earn' they should just be left to starve to death or die of exposure. You appear to be allowing *just enough* compassion to appease your conscience.