Social corrosion; bumping
It is fair to say I despise bumping. There isn’t a more prevalent low level action that is more socially corrosive to the fabric of society.
It becomes pretty obvious when you view the UK from an external point of view that the country is sleepwalking into collapse.
A dysfunctional economy where the parasitic, rent-seeking buy-to-let is the largest business type, many years of effectively zero per capita GDP growth, and public services that are on their knees yet are expected to bear more and more cuts.
The typical position would be to blame the current Government and exonerate the Conservative Party. Yet that is obviously wrong – the Conservatives deserve blame for the failures of the past 14 years, in which their legacy is almost impossible to parse.
High-level collapse of British society is very obvious and a topic that many have spoken about. But what is rather ignored is how this collapse appears in the little things; specifically, bumping – a slang term for fare evasion where someone either follows behind you or pushes through the barriers.
Every day I use the Tube to get to work; the experience isn’t one I look forward to, but it isn’t the end of the world. Every morning and evening without fail, I will see people bumping.
It’s estimated that bumping costs the network £130 million a year. The penalty charge for fare evasion is currently £100, reduced to £50 if paid within 21 days. But the penalty largely doesn’t matter as the number of individuals prosecuted for it is minuscule.
The staff at stations are told not to do anything, and the police are rarely there. It mirrors a trend in which low-level crime, such as phone theft, has essentially been legalised.
This evening, in fact, I saw 6 people push through the wide gates in 15 seconds. Now, of course, those amongst you who have lived in cities will say this is part and parcel of transport systems; people won’t pay for their tickets.
“It’s happened since gates were introduced” would be the common retort. This, to me, is such an idiotic and defeatist way of looking at life that I don’t even think it’s worth the time it takes to talk about it.
It is fair to say I despise bumping. There isn’t a more prevalent low level action that is more socially corrosive to the fabric of society.
The argument put forward is that the Tube is the most expensive transport network in the world, and the trains were going to run without me, so why don’t I just get on?
That view is extremely corrosive towards the social fabric.
This is frustrating because, yes, TfL is the most expensive in the world as it has one of the highest passenger fares versus government grants funding formulas.
But the reason of ‘the train is going anyway’ is what irritates me the most. It is only functional in the sense that you view yourself as an atomised individual. It is the logical conclusion of extreme individualism as you don’t view society as an existing institution.
The only reason that there is a train is because you exist in a society that is willing to pay for the trains to run. If everyone took the view that the train would run whether or not I pay, the whole system would collapse.
My friends often listen to me talk about it, and I will acknowledge I am rather hyperbolic about it all, but in my view, small actions such as bumping lead to total societal collapse.
It moves the country from a shared community bound together with British norms towards an economic entity in which no one is bound together, and we just happen to occupy the same space in an economic free-for-all.
The logical extension of the atomised individual is: why should I bother paying taxes?
No one likes paying taxes; the pain of seeing a chunk of your money taken from you for what is seemingly no reason is hard to swallow. Social media is full of complaints from people earning £100k+ about losing half their pay in taxes.
There are issues around taxation in the country (my pet view is that Land Value Taxes are the solution). But this atomised view of the individual promotes one to question the role of society in their development.
“I earned this money; why should the government be entitled to half of it?”
Conveniently excusing every stage of government involved in you earning that wage, such as – but not limited to – your education, your health, the safety net if you lose your job, the roads you drive on, the police, and the number one objective of government: the defence of the realm.
An unpopular view amongst the Conservative Party after the past 40 years of Thatcherism/Blairism psychodrama, but society is a real, living, breathing thing.
You do have obligations to others; you exist, as Edmund Burke says, in “a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”
The sooner the Conservative party returns to this view and re-builds the foundations of British society the better.