Mr. Slaughter Says

Today I talked with Mr. Slaughter about credit card technology, the cashless society and crooks.

I've been noticing the cartels of "homeless" who are dropped off for their shift at the usual corners and picked up again; splitting the cash.  Do they have middle men, and CEOs?  They share the same signs, (folded cardboard, "God Bless") and one told me he made $300 on a good day.  Now why was I the one to buy him an ice cream cone?  Of course, many people could make $4987 dollars in a day and still not have the wherewithall to pay their rent the next week..

One guy was wearing long sleeves soaked through on a day it was Florida humid hot so painful it hurt to walk from the air conditioning in a building to the air conditioning in the car.  I gave him some water and two dollars.  I considered it not a handout but life insurance.

I was talking to someone else about this yesterday, and she and another Good Samaritan gave a man some change but lit into him, telling him he needed to get a job.  I've done that twice.  Usually I ignore or give a buck.

Today Mr. Slaughter said that one tactic is to ask at gas pumps, work in teams, and while your car is unlocked and you're talking to one person, they can grab things from your car.  I've never seen that.  But there is one gas station in one part of town, and another in another, that often has people asking me for bus fare.  I guess bus fare is a way to keep people from handing them food when it's money they want.  I always wonder what they think is waiting for them at the other end of that bus route.  Here in Orlando, a popular bus begging destination is Daytona.  Why would anybody bus over one or two towns without having the resources to bus back?  It's not like they moved across country for a new life- they bus back and forth to the next county over?  Why?  This isn't Tijuana.

The other day, for three days in a row, there was a man dressed in a suit with a sign saying he needed to have gas money to get to a funeral out of state.  That was a new one.  

One time a young kid asked me for money for cigarettes.  I asked him if he had a job.  He said no, but he had tried.  I asked him how many times he tried and he said twice.  I think sometimes people need to talk.  They think it's money that they need but that's just part of it.  He didn't get money from me.

Mr. Slaughter said that he doesn't keep cash.  He was surprised I knew that the new credit card chip, new here in Am; was keeping track of our location.  He said most people don't want to know that.  I didn't say it, but along with helping to cut down crime on the crooks within the system, it probably won't do anything but help the crooks outside the system- you know, kingpins and politicians.  I managed to say Dallas was brought to us by Bank of America and Pulse by Dunkin Donuts.  I wonder if he knew what I was talking about.  He said he just buys McD gift cards and gives those to people who ask for money.  That's a nice idea, but I still needed cash to give to the acupuncturist and that's why I was talking to him in the first place.  It takes someone off the grid to want actual bills, I guess.  Wouldn't I rather pay virtual dollars for a less effective doctor to poison me?  Wouldn't I rather add to the metadata so corporations can figure out how to market to me better?

The chip in a credit card will tell where I am, but wouldn't a database check of the ZIP codes of recent charges do the same thing?  You know, if a charge came from Kalamazoo and then one from Texas- an alert could pop up- what's the chip really doing?

What I think about is that the Nazis were pretty efficient and they didn't have computers.  But I suppose if you think every regime is kinder and gentler than the one before you aren't bothered by that.