The Final Word

The inescapable force of self-interest

Even Berkeley’s homeless express capitalistic tendencies

By Aditya Kashyap
From the March 2007 Print Edition

            Yes, it’s true. Capitalism has permeated even the most sacred of Berkeley’s leftist institutions: the homeless establishment.  It seems as though this world doesn’t come without the greatest sense of irony. The homeless are now conducting a small-scale business in the form of a recycling collection group.Walking to class one morning, a peculiar sight instigated my curiosity: Three homeless people were diligently collecting cans while a fourth homeless person was giving them orders urging them to work harder with remarks like “Hurry up young ’uns, we still got three more [streets] to go.” Wondering what exactly they were doing, I approached the fourth man, who identified himself to me as Ralph.

“I’m just curious, but what are you doing?” I asked him.

“Can’t you see?” Ralph responded. “We’re collecting cans, son.”

“I see that,” I replied, “but what exactly are you doing?”

            It turns out that Ralph was the leader of the group, a manager of sorts. Up until recently, there has been a divide in the homeless residents of Berkeley. There were those who chose to collect cans and earn their meals, and there were those who chose to beg.  Flawed as it was, there was a balance in the system.  Most of the homeless people, whether they worked or not, survived day to day by whatever means they felt most suited their place in society.

            Recently, however, there has been an influx of new homeless people who choose to recycle instead of begging.  Some of them, according to Ralph, have apparently heard that there was an abundance of un-recycled cans that could be turned in for profit.  Ralph had been collecting cans for the past 15 years in Berkeley, never facing any problems and making what he considered a “great run.”

            However, Ralph is now facing competition for the first time. “It started about last May,” he told me. “They [the newcomers] basically took over the entire area from Derby to Bancroft east of Telegraph. Boy, they didn’t leave ‘nothing’! There were times I was hitting maybe five [Big] Macs a week — if I was lucky.”

            Ralph was tired of being outperformed by the competition. He wasn’t going to take it any longer.

            Ralph knew that there was one advantage he had over the competition: experience, 15 years of it.  He knows the garbage truck routes, the trash days for every street, and levels of recyclable materials each street produced. He decided to share this information with two of his young colleagues and they immediately went to work. Soon, the group grew in size.

            “I have two other guys working on the north side this morning,” Ralph told me. “We don’t work against each other anymore, it doesn’t make sense. Each street gets only as much attention as it deserves. We need three people for this street, but the La Loma only needs one. It just doesn’t make sense for four guys to go for the same cans when really there are only enough for three.

            Now, Ralph has been at it for about three months, and he claims that he is making double what he made before. “Fifteen [Big] Macs, and that’s on a bad week.” He even recruits now, based upon qualifications such as speed of collecting. “I test ’em first,” he claimed. He has a weekly schedule worked out with locations pinpointed.

“On paper?” I asked.

“Nah, it’s all in here,” he replied, pointing to his head.

Competition, employment, and optimized efficiency; this is capitalism at its best, and I’m lovin’ it.

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