Ageing

Capitalism relies on maintaining an artificial scarcity of essential goods and services (like housing, healthcare, transport, etc), through processes of enclosure and commodification. We know that enclosure enables monopolists to raise prices and maximize their profits (consider the rental market, the US healthcare system, or the British rail system). But it also has another effect. When essential goods are privatized and expensive, people need more income than they would otherwise require to access them. To get it they are compelled to increase their labour in capitalist markets, working to produce new things that may not be needed (with increased energy use, resource use, and ecological pressure) simply to access things that clearly are needed, and which are quite often already there.

Take housing, for example. If your rent goes up, you suddenly have to work more just to keep the same roof over your head.  At an economy-wide level, this dynamic means we need more aggregate production — more growth — in order to meet basic needs.  From the perspective of capital, this ensures a steady flow of labour for private firms, and maintains downward pressure on wages to facilitate capital accumulation. For the rest of us it means needless exploitation, insecurity, and ecological damage. Artificial scarcity also creates growth dependencies: because survival is mediated by prices and wages, when productivity improvements and recessions lead to unemployment people suffer loss of access to essential goods — even when the output of those goods is not affected — and growth is needed to create new jobs and resolve the social crisis.

There is a way out of this trap: by decommodifying essential goods and services, we can eliminate artificial scarcity and ensure public abundance, de-link human well-being from growth, and reduce growthist pressures.

Instead of simmering in a stew of rage and resentment I began to wonder if that conferred invisibility could be harnessed. If I reframed it as a cloak of invisibility I could do all sorts of things “inappropriate” for my age.

I refrained from robbing a bank (though fairly sure I could have got away with the loot), instead turning my attention to street art.

My first guerrilla paste-up a decade or so ago was in a lane in Ballarat, Victoria. I was quite nervous and slightly fearful of being at least fined so I donned a hi-vis vest and put out semi-official public work signs and had a friend spotting for me. I needn’t have bothered – people went past me and simply did not see me.