Our government has announced a desire for thousands of people to resume activity that they themselves know is unnecessary and unproductive. To return to commuting into city centres to do jobs that could be done from home and gain little to no value from being performed in an office environment..
Why? Because thousands of people travelling into cities is apparently what the cities need to stay alive. Our economy somehow demands that people do unnecessary work and lose several hours a week on unproductive travel time in order that office workers can be encouraged to buy more coffee and donuts, to impulse buy because they're bored and have nothing to do, and to go out for lunch to escape the drudgery of office life.
What a fragile economic ecosystem we have created, in which people not doing something that harms themselves and the environment is deemed harmful to the greater good of the system because that system cannot funnel away the spending arising from their boredom and frustration. That we have all these businesses depending on people being dissatisfied with their work, or at least in need of a distraction, or perhaps just too busy due to their commute to be able to take proper care of themselves. Businesses that, while perfectly fine in other ways, can only sustain themselves on the psychic suffering of their fellow citizens.
The commute to work is bullshit. Pretty much nobody enjoys it, it’s a waste of our collective time and energy, and if it can be obviated by technologies that allow us to work remotely, there is obvious social good in doing so.
But a working class that also has time to itself, time to think, time to care for itself, and time to organise… That's a dangerous prospect for a capitalist class who has been so reliant on keeping us leashed in debt and survival wages for years. And as they hold the keys to power right now, they will do what they can to put things back where they think they belong.
To put us back where we belong.
Maybe let's not let them.
Originally posted Summer 2020