The concept of class war weapons has been on my mind lately. Basically the idea is that in war, the ones that benefit are contractors and weapons manufacturers. Those that profit most from war are those that offer services to all sides fighting in the war.
The idea of class war weapons is kind of interesting to me. It forces me to think differently about the products, services and systems that we currently have in place and how they might effect different classes.
Recently while waiting for a friend I was kind of annoyed by the lack of seating around the subway stop I was at. Then I discovered that someone had taken the liberty to push a Village Voice paper box on it’s side providing an excellent spot to sit in a place where there was no decent public seating. This made me think that they should design all paper boxes to also double as public seating. Thinking about the design of this multipurpose paper boxes I was curious about where and how to put the coin slot and door on these in order to make it not too much of a stretching exercise to pay for and pull out your paper. I suppose though once you get your paper, then you would have a nice place to sit and read it. Future paper boxes might even provide some shelter from the weather.
Thoughts on this coin slot position for a horizontal paper box brought me to the idea of a coin-opp seat. The idea is pretty simple, you put a quarter in, pull the seat down and sit on it, when you get up, the seat retracts and is ready to accept more money.
With coin-opp seating, you can assure that the riff-raff aren’t going to be sitting around (unless of course they can shell out the big bucks for a seat). This is what I might consider as an excellent example of a class war weapon. In contrast, the previous example of simply pushing paper boxes sideways is more of a class war tactic than a weapon.
There are all sorts of class war weapons out there, just got to be aware of them I suppose. Uh.. can anyone tell me what the opposite of barbed wire is?