A Tragedy of Privacy

When I picked my daughter up after school today she was really tired; by the last couple weeks of term she’s usually pretty worn out. Nevertheless, as we drove off she told me with youthful enthusiasm that her and a couple of friends were going to start a business over the weekend.

“Oh?” I replied, “so what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to bring a pop-up table, and sell oranges, lemons, limes, and other citrus.”

“Where are you going to get those?” I inquired.

“From the orchard!”

“Hmm, I’m not sure the landlord would like that.”

She went on to explain that her friends were going to make some lemonade and cupcakes to sell too. “So when we get older we have enough money to buy a house,” she explained…

My heart sank. I didn’t explain to her the origins of private property: the violent dispossession of peasants and indigenous peoples from the land to force them into the ‘free’-market system, where they could ‘voluntarily’ sell their labour to a landlord or employer to earn a wage to buy the things that the Earth provides for free. Nor did I explain to her that given the current trajectory of political economy, it would be unlikely that she and her friends would be able to afford a home from working menial jobs, including their pop-up stall, and that the likelihood of her owning a home one day depended much more on her inheritance than on her hard work. And I definitely did not tell her that older women are the fastest growing demographic of homeless people…

Instead, I sat quietly, brooding on our school system that helps induce a money-centred worldview, where young people, aged even in the single digits, are led to use their time, dwindled energy, and creative spirits, to make money so they can buy a house one day. And, in parallel, where they learn no concomitant lessons about the origins and causes of the social ills I just mentioned above, much less about how to participate in society as active and informed citizens that work for the common good, and contribute to the systematic eradication of the very hierarchy and domination that cause those social ills.

…After spending some time in the library and helping her get settled to read a book, I heard her mention to a friend in passing about her business plans over the weekend. I went home with a heavy heart, and a visceral mandate to fulfil the longstanding purpose of education set by the federal government, that all young Australians become active and informed citizens, “who work for the common good, in particular sustaining and improving natural and social environments.”