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When approached for money, I feel the transaction is a little one sided in that basically homeless people just make the statement 'got any spare change' and you either fork it over or not.
If I were approached and was given an interesting anecdote/saying/quote/fact/trivial tidbit, I would be happy to
fork over a few coins.
Assuming the streetperson could read, welfare should supply flash cards containing one or two line statements, researched and processed by newly employed beggars whose job it was to read through journals/newspapers etc finding interesting things. Much like the news section/quote/joke of the day random generators on many homepages and searchengines, they would be like sidewalk pop up screens.
The card would read - "CONFRONT PERSON AND SAY: Excuse me but, did you know that Glaciers store about 75% of the world's freshwater and if all land ice melted, sea level would rise approximately 70 meters {210 feet} worldwide. Could you spare a dollar?"
You would have to ensure the text was short, the example above might be a bit long, and that there were very few double ups as it would be painful to be getting the same info at each streetcorner. Each person would of course get a fresh supply of new cards at the end of each week, and the process would encourage the streetpeople to learn and source their own content - as the more interesting/humorous the statement the more likely they will get some money.
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Street performers who attempt to
entertain, amuse or delight
passersby in exchange for
donations are certainly common
enough; you're just suggesting a
different flavor of busker. |
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I suspect those little factoids
would become irritating,
especially since they'd have to
engage your attention directly for
some period of time. At least the
classic "Spare change?" protocol
resolves quickly, one way or
another, and more traditional
buskers can do their thing without
having to actually buttonhole
passersby. |
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There are some buskers whose trade
is delivering entertaining
monologue rather than the more
common musical performance,
dancing, mime, magic tricks, etc..
This is close to what you
describe, though I haven't heard
any of them rattling off random
factoids. |
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And eventually the homeless population would become smarter than the rest of the population, and they would band together in the streets, demanding homes and meals and an end to the world's glacier problem. |
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Quite often I run into homeless people who do have some sort of joke or one liner that attempts to soften you up. There is one guy who's turf is the crosswalk in front of the Art Institute of Chicago that has two jokes...one for crossing the road each way with the crowd. (He also sells StreetWise so that also qualifies for 'working' for his donation.) |
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