A few days ago I took a call from a woman who needed help with repairs in her studio apartment. There was mould and a roof leak that got so bad that she woke up one night with water dripping on her face. She was now staying at a friend's place. Needless to say, she had complained many times to the real estate agent but nothing had been done and relations had deteriorated to the point where she felt too intimidated to speak up. So I got the low-down and offered to talk to the agent on her behalf.
I call Jacquie and politely express my concern about the tenant's situation. I have all her escapes covered and am ready to pounce with relevant legislation and counter-arguments. That's when she tells me that the owner of the unit is a farmer. He's in deep shit because of the droughts and interest rates. He can't afford his mortgage repayments and is gonna default very soon. Obviously he has no money for any repairs. So here we are, all on the same side, getting fucked by the system and only occasionally realising this fact.
This reminded me of a recent youtube of a concert/protest by Rage Against The Machine where Tom said to the cops that they actually had more in common with all the people there than with the greedy, mad politicians inside. He called on them to realise that we have been turned against each other when we're actually suffering together.
We're like pawns and until we promote to the 8th rank we will continue to be sacrificed by those that are playing the Game.
3 comments:
Except he's in deep shit because of the drought (at least as the most immediate cause) which doesn't have anything to do with any system.
The drought makes his livelihood unsustainable and reduces his income to the point where he cannot afford his mortgage repayments. I can argue that he's in the shit as a result of both.
I'm not making a generalisation about The System being inhuman capitalism. I'm past that. What pisses me off is the epidemic of debt that is strangling so many people and putting at risk such a basic human need as shelter, in a prospering country may I remind you.
So let's see, the farmer will declare bankruptcy, the mortgagee will repossess the apartment, the woman will be evicted without minimum notice (and maybe may have enough time to find another place to live). The farmer? Well, who knows. The mortgagee will sell the apartment for a profit to someone who can afford it and someone's shares will go up by a cent.
If that smacks of Marxism, that's because I've been reading about it in an International Relations textbook. I'm just learning at the moment. All I'm saying for now is that something feels very wrong with our society... our system
I'd say the main problems here are:
-our agricultural system sucks so it's hard for farmers to get by
-availability of housing in sydney sucks
-not enough people know enough about finances to manage their own and everybody seems pressured to buy an investment property which means when times are hard heaps of them will pop
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