The problem with poverty is that, while it is a growth industry, it has proved, at least for its practitioners, to be massively unprofitable. Programs for the unemployed and unemployable create a seemingly never ending need for reports by highly paid experts to ruminate upon and an ever expanding necessity for social science graduates to be added to the public payroll. But their solutions for the afflicted usually boil down to having them fill holes in the road with funds which come from a hole in the ceiling and flow out through a hole in their pockets, leaving very little in the end to actually fill any holes at all. It's all justifiable, of course. You can't help “them” unless you help yourself! Despite the increase in “self help” programs, however, the poverty problem persists.
Poverty breeds crime, lowers living standards and erodes education. It draws lines in the dirt - the “haves” and the “have-nots”. It can turn concrete canyons into masonry mazes of terror and city blocks into jurisdictional jungles. Entire urban areas become like tumbled down tombstones in a cemetery city populated by victims in waiting.
There is a solution, however, if pages are taken from projects that do work, which are plentiful in the private sector - most notably in the world of high profile theme parks, such as Universal World or Disney World. Here people can experience for themselves all the thrills and spills portrayed in high grossing action/adventures, thrills that will last a lifetime! Thrills that will make your adrenalin blast off like a rocket and your bank balance plummet like a rock. Suppose these thrills were transferable to areas of urban blight? That if entering these areas of gut-wrenching poverty meant a heart-pounding “high” instead of a heart-stopping death? What if these decaying dead zones were turned into thriller theme parks?
If you think about it, to be a “survivor” is not just a wonderful feeling, it is an experience that is sure to be recounted, enhanced and embellished at countless cocktail parties. Disaster and adventure and social soirees go so well together.
The chance of survival is slim in a slum, but if you do survive, it is a tale to tell forever!
You can be propositioned by a prostitute or mugged by marauding thugs. Thrill to the experience of being caught in a crossfire. By colorful souvenirs from bag ladies, winos and degenerates, conveniently located on every street corner. Tour a tenement that's so dilapidated your dog wouldn't live in it. Take part in a violent domestic dispute and help the police identify the body. Have your picture taken with a rapist, a robber or a murderer in the Rogues' Gallery. Top it all off with an evening walk in through Panic Park. If our high-crime areas became high profile theme parks, you could do all this and never risk any more than the price of admission! Whatever that is, it is cheaper than the price of fear. Imagine people lining up, paying to get into purgatory as the sun goes down completely safe in the knowledge that they are secure. No one is really getting hurt. It's all an act. The “victims” and the “violators” are all actors. Everyone gets to go home at the end of the day. And governments can relax in the knowledge that big or small, every municipality can share in the profit potential of poverty with their very own theme park.
Picture this: a subway train rattles through the early morning hours. Each of its cars is packed with people mimicking sardines reading the stock pages. But these people are not wearing blue pin-stripe three-piece suits. They are dressed in glad rags and just plain rags. They are the former residents of rat-infested flats on their way to work in high paying positions, re-enacting their former incarnations as poverty stricken peasants. There are already several bus loads of tourists with cameras loaded for action, waiting at the gates of Violence Village ™, where muggings happen not only at the turnstile, but at every turn - and the victims get to keep on living!
