Son of the Return of Everyday Capitalism - Agoraphobia

You'd think food shopping would be one of the most innocuous innocent, perhaps even friendly, experiences in modern life.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that the vast emporia of corporate power that house the supplies we need to live on were any of those things.

Instead they are miniature warzones where we triage ourselves so as to be present for as short a time as possible. A bit like life really.

We subject ourselves to food hidden behind layers of propaganda. We allow, though not by choice, big businesses to push their agenda at the risk of our own health. We are encouraged to want what we don't need and buy more of it.

In fact we are so encouraged that these corporations have to divert their profits into hiring working class sympathisers as security. Think about that: we don't get access to food without the threat of punishment, if we violate the property rights asserted, forcibly, by the owner class. That's food! Meanwhile the need to maximise profit is such that the precariat paid to serve you is replaced by those self service machines. This is called innovation: an artifice of politeness designed to replace people's jobs. Violence clothed in programmed politeness and bagging anomalies.

Capitalism grants power for that ownership class to protect their profits from the threat of force initiated by those that need to eat - the rest of us, in other words! Think about that; that is the world we have wrought.

How does that not traumatise people? What is the effect of this environment on us. I said that shopping should be innocent and friendly. We aren't meant to be agoraphobic; we are meant to be social and communal animals. What then does it say about the agora when it's a high pressure environment guarded by our own used against us if we are impolite enough to need what we cannot pay for? Does survival not trump profits? 

How have we allowed supermarkets to own the things we need to live on?

But wait, I say, it gets worse (or just as bad but in different ways!) - those of us on low incomes find that everything costs more. Something innocuous and friendly becomes fraught in different ways: bus fares are such that you need to remember to buy all you need at once or it will cost you more. The poor spend the most as a percentage of their income; in effect they are the drivers of the economy. Yet there is nothing to support them in so doing. Bus fares are the same no matter who you are, forget to buy what you need and you have to make another trip.

Even something as simple as fares for public transport are all part of the system. Ever wonder why it isn't the norm for employers to pay for worker transport costs? They should: it's part of the cost required for them to do the labour you need doing. But that would eat into their profits. Not only that, but workers (especially the unemployed) are given no concessions.

This is why I call this everyday capitalism. We take it all or granted, and yet all of this informs an increasingly hostile environment. Is it any wonder we end up at each other's throats: divide and rule, family break up, etc.

It's the drip drip destructive drip of everyday capitalism.