Wasting resources on the rich

Kath and I rode home from Fehraltorf to Kempten at 12:30 at night. We boarded in the car that is ¾ first-class. Instead of walking to the second-class cabin, I just sat down in the first-class cabin, which was otherwise completely empty of passengers. I sat down alone. We hadn’t purchased first-class tickets, so Kath was not going to sit there.[1]

But why not sit there? The car was otherwise empty. We weren’t taking seats from anyone with a first-class ticket. There was no physical reason blocking us from sitting down, nor any moral one. No, the only reason not to use the first-class cabin was that we hadn’t paid for it.

Incredible right? The SBB was dragging an empty wagon through the snowy night for no reason, but we weren’t allowed to sit on perfectly open and available seats because we hadn’t paid for them. Now, that is some deep indoctrination.

Granted, we are capable of buying the seats; we are (still) young enough that we can also just stand for a couple of stations. But, what if the ride were longer? What if the passenger was less capable of moving about the train? What if a person who wasn’t “officially” disabled, but could really use a seat, who could barely afford a ticket, were on a train for an hour?

Our society would dictate that they stand or move between cars to find second-class seating, while the first-class cabin whizzes through the night, empty, waiting for more deserving, wealthier butts to fill its seats.

Think about how odd that is, actually. Our society values money above all else. There is no need that you can express that could avoid a ticket for riding in the wrong cabin, even if that cabin were the wrong one, one you hadn’t paid for, even it were empty and were going unused, even if your use of it would go wholly unnoticed.

The conductor would be wholly within their rights to fine you for taking that seat without having paid the full price for it.

And our society teaches us that that is as it should be.

Sometimes, it’s good to remember how odd and cruel our society can be, how arbitrary its rules appear to those who have been insufficiently indoctrinated in the dominance of capital-based class.

I, of course, sat comfortably in a seat I hadn’t paid for—because no-one else was using it, and no-one saw me do it. If a tree falls in a forest and no-one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?