Get 'em!

"Sometimes the Google Bus just seems like one face of Janus-headed capitalism; it contains the people too valuable even to use public transport or drive themselves."
Rebecca Solnit, Diary.

While it's easy to see how Ms. Solnit comes to see the Google, and other technology company, employees who ride to work in their company-supplied busses as lording it over the long-time, and less affluent, other denizens of the San Fransisco area. The protest that halted one of the buses show the simmering resentment of those who feel that they are being pushed aside by the onslaught of technology money.

But one wonders if the anger is misplaced. The people who work in the technology industry are playing by the rules. If, as Ms. Solnit alleges, landlords are looking for ways to throw people out into the street and evade rent-controls to soak technology workers for a slice of their paychecks, isn't it they who are the villains?

When I spent some time at the Occupy Seattle protests (Remember them?) a few of the more conspiratorial of the 99% told me that The Power That Be often set the working people up to bicker among themselves to keep them from seeing the real enemy. For my own part, I suspect that such manipulation is wholly unnecessary - people spoiling for a fight often look for whomever is within arms reach, and those most often close at hand aren't those are the root of the problems.