So I don’t take public transport I’ll be honest,and neither do I have a car at the moment! Bleeeeeeak…

Anyway, a reader forwarded me onto someone who wrote a note on the Facebook (Won’t mention names) on the Metrorail strike, or at least impending strike, and while it may seem conspiracy theory-ish, it’s actually got some decent ground to work on, and in my mind, makes complete sense. It’s a well known fact that I don’t follow local news (Preferring to live in blog la-la land!), but this is interesting. This is the actual note:

THIS WHOLE TRAIN STORY IS WORKING ON MY NERVES.

I was calculating this morning..
My weekly train ticket costs R64,00, for a journey from Heathfield to Cape Town.
That works out to a monthly cost of about R275,20 for this month and I am forced to buy weeklies because they won’t sell us monthly tickets because of the impending strike.
The normal price for the monthly ticket for the same journey is R198,00.
Which means that for the next month they are making a profit from me alone of R77,20..

Now let’s speculate that there are about 1million people travelling by public transport in Cape Town.
Clearly there is more but let’s take a round number like 1 million.

If they are all doing the same as me and having to buy a weekly ticket (keep in mind some people are actually buying singles and return tickets which will generate even more cash but let’s stick to my example of the weekly tickets only) then in this one month Metrorail will generate:

1 million X R77.20 = R77 200 000 [77million 2 hundred thousand Rand!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]

Now… Doesn’t that sound a bit fishy to you.
I mean, if this strike doesn’t happen, people are still stuck having to buy weekly tickets cos they MUST get to work. But then metrorail still makes all this money IF NOT A F@CKLOAD MORE!!!

Conspiracy theory maybe…????
Is this how Metrorail has decided to make money to pay these workers more wages?

So there is the story…What do you think personally? Do you think this is a sinister plan by Metrorail to increase profits to pay workers?

Metrorail: Like a sinister fox! (See what I did there? I also did this to keep the boys attention…FOCUS GUYS…GOSH! I would so make Megan happy…)

But this is typical of the totally unstable manner in which the world runs. If we really think about it, the basic workings of the world are built on poor people. They are poor, so will take any work they can get. Because they need to take any work, they will also take any pay.

And so us who are well off can continue to live our lives as they are, without paying vastly more for the basic things. Everything on which we rely is based on cheap labour somewhere. Food, clothing, the people who work at the shops that sell us food…all these people are paid very poor wages.

So while everyone says “Oh how can so and so demand a 10% wage increase?” A 10% increase on R3000 or so is only R300. What are you expected to do on R3000? The only reason we can continue to buy things so cheaply is because there are people working for very little money. Pick ‘n Pays prices would increase vastly if each worker were to earn at least R80000 per month. But then the top dogs would need to take a salary cut, OR the cost would need to be passed to the consumer.

With strikes, there is only so long that workers can hold out (Without pay) before they have to work again, otherwise they will literally die. So we read about these things in the paper, carry on living our awesome lives and wait for the strikes to pass, and then we carry on cruising again as if nothing had happened.

It’s the way of the world and the unstable and unsustainable system on which the world is built. The fact is, there is enough ’stuff’ in the world to go around, it’s just that most of the stuff in the world is concentrated in a small percentage of the world.

The world is constantly balancing on a knife edge because it is run by the workers who are paid very little. Unfortunately for them, the rich simply overpower them with money…so they can strike for as long as they like, but they will go bankrupt long before their employers and they will have to get back to work. It’s a power imbalance in the world, not only here.

And while we all want equality in the world, I bet that nearly all of us are unwilling to give up the great things in our lives. Imagine earning less, but than paying the ‘real’ prices on things. Imagine every car was R500000? Imagine every iPod was R10000?

The real cost of things is astonishing, but it’s kept down by cheap labor.

If you’re not quite sure what I’m talking about, watch The Story Of Stuff, actually you have to watch it, it’s great and explains, in about twenty minutes, everything you need to know about this world. You can watch it HERE

Unfortunately, the worlds systems are carrying too much momentum to stop.

And the only thing that can and will stop this momentum, is the complete eradication of the worlds resources, which isn’t too far away at the rate we’re trashing the planet.

God, I probably sound like your mom! (Who’s quite nice by the way) Or Al Gore.

But this is all true.

Peace!

I know commenting is not the big thing here at SLXS (Cos we’re all lank busy!), but it would be great to hear some opinions on this Metrorail story…I’m intrigued…