• TrackinDaKraken@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    My mom took me to school for kindergarten, after that I walked. But, I didn’t walk alone, I walked with a group of kids of different ages. It wasn’t organized, it just happened. I’d wait for the kids to pass my house, and join them, a few friends from first grade would be mixed in. The group would grow as we got closer to the school, by the time we got to the crosswalk there were probably fifteen to twenty of us.

    This was the early 70s in suburbia, all the kids in the neighborhood at least knew of each other because everyone was outside all summer long, and of course we went to school together. The school was right in the middle of the neighborhood, and only four blocks from my house.

    For as much as people bash suburbia, I have fond memories of growing up there. Ultimately I think most of our woes as society stem from capitalism, we just don’t see it. It’s not that car culture allowed for sprawl, it’s that capitalism required us to drive into the city every day to make a living, to earn slave wages. Work from home, or from smaller, distributed locations has been viable for 80 years, apart from factories that make complicated products, but they want us all together for the same reason they don’t want us working from home now. It’s greed, hubris, and their deep desire to be worshiped by their worker bees. They want to stand on a platform, hands on hips looking over their mini-fiefdom, and admire what “they’ve” accomplished.