My Opinion: Jón Gnarr - The Philosophy of Luxury Socialism

When I was a kid I never had to clean up after myself. I didn’t wash the dishes or the glasses. I didn’t wash my clothes. I just threw them on the floor when I took them off and then, a few days later, they appeared clean and folded in my closet. I didn’t even tidy my bedroom. It just got cleaned by itself while I was not at home. My mother did all this, and I thought that was reasonable. When I grew older, I was expected to take more responsibility for myself and my activities. My mother was tired of this and found it unfair that she had to clean up my mess.

I began clearing the table and taking the dishes and glasses to the sink. I put my dirty clothes into the laundry basket in the bathroom. I started tidying my bedroom and when that became my responsibility, my conduct started changing too. I stopped littering my room as much as I used to. As a teenager I was fairly self-sufficient and had even learned to operate the washing machine. I have done the same with my own children and increased their responsibility according to their maturity and age. I find this healthy and natural.

Mr. Garbageguy

A few years ago, I was visiting my friend Hans in Holland. He asked me to help him take the trash cans out to the street, because the garbage truck was coming the next morning. While we were strolling with the trash cans, I told him what the garbage collection was like in Reykjavik. That in each garbage truck there was an army of people who ran into the gardens to pick up the garbage for you. Hans found this a very amusing idea. He had never known such luxury, and had always taken care of his own garbage. He imagined himself standing by the kitchen window, drinking his morning coffee, when the cheerful garbage man came, like Postman Pat, to pick up the garbage.

Good morning, Hans!

Good morning, Mr. Garbageguy!

In my neighborhood, here in Houston, the garbage truck comes once a week. You take your trash cans out to the street the night before. Otherwise they will not be emptied. We have two trash cans, one for general domestic waste, the other one for recycling. In it we put plastics, glass and cardboard. The truck is equipped with a mechanical arm which picks up the trash cans and empties them. The driver is the only person in the truck. When he has emptied them you take them back to the house. This is in every respect a satisfying task. I meet my neighbors and chat with them. The cost is at the minimum, and the ones who create the garbage are responsible for it. The city is not playing your mother.

Who is responsible for a Christmas tree?

Waste disposal in Reykjavík, and in most places in Iceland, is unpractical and overly expensive. Not only is it badly organized, the ideology behind it is wrong. We are in many ways like irresponsible children who throw litter wherever they are, and then it is the responsibility of others to clean it up. While most civilized communities seem to try to increase the responsibilities of the people in most areas, we seem to be either far behind, not comprehending this simple ideology, or going in the opposite direction. In so many areas, we think the so-called authorities should take care of things for us. It’s their duty to clean up the trash we throw on the street, pay an army of people to pick up our garbage at our doors, and even remove the Christmas trees after Christmas.

It is an interesting paradox that the political parties that profess to stand for independence and the responsibility of the individual are the ones that promote this luxury socialism most fervently, as seen in the annual event when the councilmen of the Independence Party go around the city, along with a journalist from Morgunblaðið, picking up Christmas trees that people have thrown out of their window. And the message is not that these people are plebs and that people who throw garbage out of their windows are slobs, but that the authorities should have the decency to clean it up. A society based on this kind of thinking is costly, and the people become a little bit like a spoilt teenager who doesn’t know how to operate a washing machine and the parents have hired a domestic help to clean up after him. He likes it. He doesn’t know anything else and becomes angry if somebody points this out or criticizes him. He doesn’t understand the cost of the domestic help and won’t think about it. He likes this ideology and wants to see it in more areas in his life. Nothing is his fault. He struggles with his finances and in his relations with others, and he thinks it is his parents’ fault, so he demands more from them. He is doomed to be stuck in this rut until he faces the fact that his life is based on a bad idea. He can learn to operate a washing machine like everybody else.