To wit: they’re creating actual nomad clans over there.
Over the last two years, street encampments have jumped their historic boundaries in downtown Los Angeles, lining freeways and filling underpasses from Echo Park to South Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, a city-county agency, received 767 calls about street encampments in 2014, up 60% from the 479 in 2013.
Some residents believe the city is exporting its downtown homeless problem to their neighborhoods. But social service agencies and volunteers say it isn’t that simple. They say that although downtown development and skid row cleanups are squeezing out some homeless people, many camps are filled with locals.
…And those locals are clumping together (the article notes – idly! – that they’re already starting to self-select). The next step will be for the nascent clans to realize that they could probably do better for themselves if they group up formally and start a regular migratory pattern using known available resources. The bit where they end up roaming the Californian landscape, estroying the Dirt People’s greedy, water-sucking cities in the process, will probably not be for a couple more generations. Even the Mongols needed some time to work things out.
…Yes, I am being facetious. Mildly, at least. But if that article didn’t fill you with a baffled and bemused dread of the idiocies that come out of California’s Democratic party-dominated state government, I don’t know whether to be appalled of, or impressed by, you. I mean, it seems blatantly obvious that the problem here is that the current system in California is nigh-designed to force people out of their houses and live in the streets; and if one wishes to fight that, one should start by figuring out why they’re making it harder for people to keep their houses, and stop doing those things. But apparently jobs and homes are taken away from malignant evil Poverty Sprites… which would actually be accurate enough, as long as one concedes that they mostly work for the city, county, and state bureaucracies.
Telling you. Nomad clans. You laugh now, but wait until the first news reports come in of a horde sacking Mendocino…
Via Instapundit.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
Any resemblance to the horde that sacked Furgeson is purely coincidental…..
During the drought, members of the Politburo and movie-stars had green lawns while the peasants’ lawns shriveled up and died. I figure that conservatives should flee, and the rest…well, the rest get the government that they deserve.
Delta Smelt induced greenie water restrictions have depopulated the Central Valley. Van Thunderdome be far off for the nomads?
If you’ve visited Quartzsite Arizona in the winter, you’ll realize we’re halfway there. It has a whole postapocalyptic-nomad-caravan vibe that really has to be experienced to be believed.
While this is somewhat amusing we should also take this as a warning. California in the 80s was where Texas is today, a growing and vibrant economy that attracted a crapload of people to move and live their and to become Californians.
Lets hope Texas avoids the Golden State’s fate.
ugh, you really need an edit button, correction to the above, its *there* not “their”
I enjoyed the Adams reference,and as a born and bred Californian it is heartbreaking to see the decline of my home. I never thought I would leave but as soon as the kids are out of school (private and Catholic) my husband and I are out, which saddens me.
I got out a decade ago, having read the writing on the wall. I don’t miss it. I miss some of my friends … but many of them fled, too.
For a second there, Moe, I thought you were going to make a Fallout-New Vegas reference.
I’m gonna shock you: never got around to playing the series. I know, I know: it’s cosmic awesomeness on toast. Just never had the time.
I read this book : The Road / Cormac McCarthy . I think there was something in there about the clans eating the rich . Or something . Anyway Blood Meridian was better .
“I was there, I saw it all. The blood-crazed horde stormed the strip mall. None were spared – Fantastic Sam’s, Domino’s, Super Nails – all were plundered. There is nothing left, nothing. The last pepperoni slice, the last bottle of hair gel – all is gone.”
Mad max: Cali Edition.