Horse 3143 - Who Are The Savages?

The shopping cart is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing.

To return the shopping cart is an easy, convenient task and one which we all recognize as the correct, appropriate thing to do. To return the shopping cart is objectively right. There are no situations other than dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return their cart. Simultaneously, it is not illegal to abandon your shopping cart. Therefore the shopping cart presents itself as the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it. No one will punish you for not returning the shopping cart, no one will fine you or kill you for not returning the shopping cart, you gain nothing by returning the shopping cart. You must return the shopping cart out of the goodness of your own heart. You must return the shopping cart because it is the right thing to do. Because it is correct.

A person who is unable to do this is no better than an animal, an absolute savage who can only be made to do what is right by threatening them with a law and the force that stands behind it.

The Shopping Cart is what determines whether a person is a good or bad member of society.

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I live in the bogan western suburbs of Sydney. This is where people are and grammar aren't. A couple of suburbs over in Mount Druitt, legend has it that you should never stop at a red light because bands of youths will appear from everywhere and steal all the tyres, the doors, the windows, all of the mechanical electrical parts, all of your clothes; and you'll be left completely naked and sitting in the shell of a car which is up on cinder blocks. 

Blacktown Transport Interchange as it wants to be known but Blacktown Station as it actually is, has as far as I can tell, the most arrests of people in the country for public urination in the lifts.

In terms of culture, Blacktown exists as a massive shopping centre and not much else. In has some cinemas but not really any kind of cafe/restaurant culture, unless you consider the top level of that massive shopping centre to be a cultural hot spot.

Blacktown is somewhere people need to be rather than somewhere they want to be. It exists not as a destination like Parramatta but as a place of function like other suburbs such as Seven Hills or Kings Langley close by. 

Blacktown Bus Station is also used as a place of function; which explains why there are so many abandoned shopping trolleys strewn around. The people who need to use the bus to go shopping, already do not have access to cars to do so. The actions of people abandoning their trolley before they get on the bus aren't necessarily malicious but they are thoughtless and mindless; acting on impulse and necessity.

When I took this photograph, I had 17 minutes to wait for the bus; so I was bored enough to count the shopping trolleys at Blacktown Bus Station.

There were 79.

That's 79 abandoned shopping carts trolleys across four sets of bus stops and more in the commuter car park. I have no idea how long that any individual trolley had been there; nor do I have any idea how often that they are collected but I do know one slightly interesting thing from the available data contained within those 79 trolleys. There were no Aldi Trolleys.

Shopping Trolleys generally had the name of the shop who owns them, printed across the trolley bar. The most common trolleys are those owned by Woolworths, Coles, Big W and Target. There are far fewer which are owned by Blacktown Fruit Market and Tong Li supermarket. There were exactly nil Aldi trolleys.

Aldi uses a token return system; which means that people must insert either an Aldi token or a $2 coin to unlock the mechanism to release the trolley from the shop's own array. $2 is sufficiently enough of an economic incentive that people are either going to miss if they fail to return the trolley, or for people who find a trolley out in the wild to do enough work to return. If it takes four minutes to return a trolley, then the rate of return is $30/hour. 

Aldi have correctly assumed that some people will not return the shopping cart out of the goodness of their heart. I do not think that it is fair to label people as "absolute savages who can only be made to do what is right by threatening them with a law" however, when faced with the problem of taking their shopping home they will tend to act on impulse and abandon their shopping trolley when the bus arrives.

The shopping trolley might very well be the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it but even it is subject to a minefield of circumstance. The other side of this, is how much the supermarket is willing to charge people for the service of delivering their shopping home. 

I remember as a small child in the land of the past where memory is and grammar aren't, that my mum could hand over a $20 note for the entire week's shopping at the supermarket and they would then deliver that shopping home. This was because there was no such thing as plastic bags and shopping would be packed into the big boxes that the myriad of items would be delivered to the supermarket in. The reason why I remember this is because one day, they started charging for the service and the $1 charge which is 5% of the total, was madness.

Supermarkets neither offer such a service any more, nor do they leave out the boxes for people to pack their shopping into, neither do they pay as many people to operate the tills. The abandonment of shopping trolleys is actually a logical consequence of multiple policies by the supermarkets themselves. Will they do what is right without being forced to do it? Absolutely not. Companies do what is profitable. 

Companies almost by nature are unable to do the correct thing because it is the right thing to do. Maybe the analogy is correct. A company is legally a person, who owns things, who acts, who can enter into contracts, and who is subject to law. A person who is unable to do this is no better than an animal, an absolute savage who can only be made to do what is right by threatening them with a law and the force that stands behind it.