Society's Leeches

I don't go downtown much. I'm a homely suburbian guy who doesn't like to get his nose dirty and is frightened off by buildings taller than Shawn Bradley and streets dirtier than his own lavatory. But yesterday, a job interview necessitated that I visit the large Public Library in Downtown Dallas.
The first thing that jumped out at me was the sheer lack of houses. I didn't see a single privately-owned residence during my drive through that sector of the city, despite my desperate attempts to find something comforting I could cling to. I realize that there's a complete lack of space, but you'd think that some big-shot would want to build a nice place within twenty minutes' commute of his office building.
There's a lot of futility going on. One of the more humorous things I've seen lately comes to mind; one guy was bundled up to the point where the only unobscured portion of his body were his eyes. He was sitting on a kind of go-kart with two large brushes on the front, going back and forth across the street andd essentially vaccuming. A couple of questions jump to mind. Firstly,
Who the hell deemed this machine worthy of months of design and production meetings? Is there any way that this is a constructive use of someone's time and his employer's expenses?
Second... the man is basically wearing horse blinders. I didn't see him turn his head the entire time, esumably due to the fact that he was wearing a neck brace in a desperate attempt to get anything between his flesh and the raging wind. How is a dude who can only look straight ahead supposed to clean the streets or keep from colliding into a large sewer rat? And how is this vacuum possibly more effective than a bunch of those kids and senior citizens who adopt highways?
One thing got to me more than anything else. That thing? Homeless people.
Let me start by saying that I'm not trying to rip on people who have caught an innumerable quantity of bad breaks in their lifespan. Some guys have been preordained for crappy fortune since before they were born, and that's God's business. I do have a problem, however, with those people surviving on their colleagues' vomit and an occasional hamburger, living for nothing but inebriated debates with each other and the occasional fistfight. There's more to life than taking a midday nap in a public toilet stall and mumbling incoherently to children about mentions of the apocalypse in Job. The bible's a fine pastime, as long as you make it that. Don't come out of it remembering nothing but Old English recitations about things you don't understand.
Refer to the aforementioned street sweeper. Even the most incredibly useless tasks imaginable have a wage attached to them. Most of them require less previous education than the average public high school. Gary from Under the Bridge, however, has chosen to revel in his own waste and other people's orange peels rather than hypothetically contribute something to someone at some point. That's what bothers me. The utter complacency that it takes to be completely and utterly passive about adding to someone's life.
The fact is, a lot of what we do is futile. Decisions are made by a few powerful people who gained our approval on a ballot and those who paid them to win us over. But there's a great deal of difference between giving up on every action of your day- and knowing that what you do may not inspire millions to change the world, but trying anyway.
Or for that matter, just serving up a burger and a non-shifty-eyed smile to Executive Bob and his three lard-filled family members.