Cassius Methyl

March 30, 2015

(ANTIMEDIA) In just the past year, homelessness in London has risen by over one third. Since 2010, the rate of homelessness in this city skyrocketed an entire 79%.

A report by the Department for Communities and Local Government revealed homelessness rose by 37 percent between 2013 and 2014, while the rest of the UK saw an average 14% increase.

According to an article from RT,

The report said that there were nearly 750 people sleeping rough on the streets of London, which accounts for 27 percent of the total national figure. Some 46 percent of the capital’s homeless were UK nationals, while others were Polish, Romanian, Irish, Portuguese, African and Asian nationals.

Additionally, this news coincides with London becoming the city with the most billionaires in the world.

Figures such as London Ministers are publicly responding, seeking “homelessness prevention schemes.” A British charity called Crisis is trying to get a law passed that will “force councils to provide help for people who are not prioritized on local authorities’ housing lists.”

The charity’s chief executive Jon Sparkes said the current laws were “failing people facing homelessness.” He also said “Welfare reform, benefit cuts and a chronic shortage of affordable homes mean more and more people are coming to their council as homeless. But as the law stands, far too often when single people ask for help, they are turned away to sleep on the street,”

In other words, he wants more laws.

Isn’t that putting a band-aid on the real problem?

To bring up a relevant piece of background information, in the UK over 6,000 people committed suicide in 2011. The annual suicide figure has remained near that number since; they have a significant, possibly increasing, problem with suicide.

So what are these things all symptoms of? Economic decline, wealth disparity, and a culture with no hope for prosperity; quite similar to the US in that regard.

Many activists believe that a certain philosophy could be the most viable solution to economic decline, elitism, hierarchical corporate monopolies with limited potential for employees, and wealth disparity. Some people think that solution is agorism, or creating our own businesses and economic infrastructures from scratch instead of choosing to work within large corporations.

If you are unfamiliar with the philosophy, agorism entails growing community gardens over buying 100% of your produce from a store like Wal-Mart and utilizing your own water supply over relying on city water. Agorism is about self-sufficiency, sustainability, decentralization, and self-responsibility.

This philosophy includes the creation of a decentralized or truly sustainable currency. A currency that is essential to avoiding the inevitable devaluing/collapse of the inflated dollar.

Agorism is already being lived to a certain capacity. The independent media is a prime example of this – we started from nothing, and now, many of us independent media sites get more views than the mainstream media.

Some people already have community gardens, provide for themselves and choose to make their money without working for corporations that ultimately damage society. Societies and groups of people all over the world practice agorism with success, and many of these communities live without problems that these “first world” countries are afflicted with.

Agorism is a return to our not so distant roots. 200 years ago, growing our own food and having our own sources for water was the norm and has been for thousands of years before that. In perspective with the rest of human history, “first world” living, where our food and water are centralized and/or privately owned, is a dangerous departure from our natural ability to sustain ourselves.

So what can we do? At the very least, we can start small and see where it takes us.

A primary reason starting a business feels so difficult or hopeless is because of arbitrary taxes and regulations designed to stifle independent economic activity. Such hurdles need to be disobeyed to pursue agorism as the solution to our economic problems, be it in the United Kingdom or United States.

With undying drive and hard work, we can overcome the legal hurdles, like regulations and taxes.

Unfortunately, if we try to live agorist in America, the force of government will be used against us, as was the case with people like Robin Speronis. However, with undying drive and hard work, we can overcome the legal hurdles, and establish a foundation for future generations to develop.

Due to the lack of independent infrastructure and economic opportunity, people become jobless, homeless, and hopeless. If we work with constant effort to shape the future and build our economy back into the hands of the people, the younger generations can replace the old, hierarchical economic structures with their own and prosperity could once again be ours.

There are currently enough empty houses in the US and likely in the UK to house every person that is living on the street; but due to our current onerous, centralized economic system, the people that need these homes the most do not get access to them. Alternatives like agorism must be pursued. Homelessness cannot be fixed by passing more laws, it’s our entire economic system which breeds oppression that needs to be overhauled.

If this resonates with you, please share it with as many people as possible. It’s important that we fully assess why people become homeless, and fix problems like that from the root.

This article (The Painfully Obvious Solution to Homelessness) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and TheAntiMedia.org. Tune in to the Anti-Media radio show Monday through Friday @ 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Help us fix our typos: edits@theantimedia.org.