The Surplus and the Bystander

Arun Kundnani is an author, professor, and activist who began his new book

If you read about broken-windows policing, it's pretty clear that neoliberals’ main concern is precisely to make people, who don’t have a wage, pay for their enjoyment of our streets. People who earn wages are disciplined by their need to compete; someone else can always replace you on the job, right? But if you're unwaged and get a welfare check, irrespective of what you do in life, you're breaking the neoliberal rules. The fear is that you can go down a street and have the fun of breaking a window cost-free, no price mechanism to restrain your behavior. So the police need to make that low-Level crime cost.

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