What do the Canadian Naomi Klein book “No logo” and the area of paid parking have in common, which was introduced on the Warsaw Saska Kępa? If we can see a wider picture, these 2 things will show us how paradoxical the way the left has gone through 25 years.
Klein's book was considered an anti-globalist (or alterglobalist) left-wing Bible. She dealt mainly with how people are manipulated by the image of companies and brands, but in fact she was a tirade against global corporations and large business. With specified a message and approach was the associated left, especially the new, young and ideological one.
Now let's go almost 25 years ahead and see what's happening on the Saska Kępa. For respective weeks now, the territory has been in a deep crisis due to the paid parking region introduced there. I will not compose in item about the situation or how it happened. It is adequate to mention that respective times the introduction of the SPP on Saska Kępa was given up after the expert reports, which indicated that not only it did not make sense, but could even be harmful locally. In the end, however, councillors associated with the left by the sign The City of Ours has achieved their goal, possibly based on manipulation (the substance of signatures under petition on the issue of the SPP is in the prosecutor's office). The effects are dramatic: a complete deficiency of space abroad of the zone, immense losses of local businesses, people who do not have a study (required to receive a subscription) for rape seeking any parking space for rent. And, of course, circulating like vultures all night, city watch, lurking at the parked cars. And that's easy, due to the fact that desperate people park where they can.
Let's skip here the analysis of the phenomenon of urban movements specified as City Is Ours, which, increasing out of a seemingly noble idea, became cancer of local communities. To put it briefly, in practice it looks like a tiny group of fanatics who have made a way of life out of their activities, has arranged a reality for unorganized tens or hundreds of thousands of people, claiming, of course, that everything is for their good and on their behalf.
Equally interesting, however, is simply a different, very seldom seen aspect of the case. If we reflect on the far-reaching consequences of specified actions as the introduction of SPP on the Saska Kępa – which is, of course, just an example of the functioning of the utmost left in the urban edition – and if we combine this with another activities of leftist groups and movements, we will see any correctness. What is the left offering us? Today, the banners carry climateism, withdrawing us in prosperity and development, but besides attacking private property and, invariably, expanding taxation burden and redistribution, which, by all means, strikes the mediate class and tiny business.
Just like ideas like SPP. The main victims are tiny businesses – cafes, restaurants, tiny shops – as well as those who do not live in costly apartments with underground garages. But who gains? Large corporations, offering food with a truck, companies specified as Uber or Bolt or those offering cars for short word rental. After all, many people may yet choose to quit having a car.
And this is the regulation in the conduct of the modern left: its flagship ideas destruct tiny and medium-sized companies and endanger to impoverish the mediate class and push it down in terms of wealth. Instead, they favour the richest ones due to the fact that they will always be able to redeem themselves from oppression. Clean transport zones – another fetish of the left – work precisely that way. They gain wealth that can afford newer cars or possibly a charge for entry into the zone, while they lose older car owners who, in general, do not make more contamination than the fresh ones.
Left-wing ideas are besides conducive to corporations that offer the rental of equipment of all kinds, as well as to large companies that, thanks to economies of scale, are even able to gain from idiotic regulations. Take, for example, the ESG system, which is shortly mandatory extended non-financial reporting, which will include all listed companies, and consequently their co-operators and suppliers. Within the ESG, companies will gotta confess their actions in areas specified as climate protection and equality policy. Whether they are progressive adequate in the field of ESG may depend on whether banks want to lend to them. As last May's study for the Warsaw Enterprise Institute assessed economist Damian Olko, only companies straight covered by the ESG's work will bear an yearly weight of up to PLN 2.6 billion. A burden that has absolutely no rational reason. ESG is simply a concept of the purest ideological, but very hoarded by the left.
Who's gonna lose it? Most of the smaller companies, of course, will gotta invest in external entities producing ESG reports and then in their audit (reports must be audited by certified auditors). At the very least, they will lose or, in fact, gain from cutting out any of the competition due to additional costs, large corporations, which will easy make in their own structure departments dealing with the creation of ESG fictions.
So you can see that the left has undergone paradoxical transformation: from anti-globalism from Klein to highly harmful, ideological concepts, destroying tiny entrepreneurship and mediate class, and favoring enormously large business and corporations. Without any exaggeration, it can be said present that the modern left is an ally of the globalists in the worst edition.
And here you can ask yourself: whether this is happening out of stupidity, and so – whether we are dealing with Lenin's useful idiots – or at least in part we are talking about people who have a large sense of where the jams are and that is the main motivation of their actions.
Luke Warches
Luke Warzecha: The People (European) want it!