Are you in Carolina’s 90 percent? Karl Marx, an eminent economist and starving communist, once wrote in his Communist Manifesto that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
Back in Marx’s day, there was a class struggle between the bourgeoisie and proletariat, or the rich and the poor. The rich owned factories, and factories owned poor workers.
Marx criticized capitalism’s knack for crafting an unequal distribution of wealth. Wealth distribution, in economic terms, measures who owns all the dollar bills within a society.
Today, Carolina suffers from a non-wealth inequality: an unequal distribution of wheels. College perpetuates a class struggle between bougie bikers and the pedestrian masses.
As of 2011, only 10 percent of Carolina students ride bicycles, while almost 90 percent walk. This means that 10 percent of students own 100 percent of the campus’ wheels!
That’s a social inequality so egregious, it makes Occupy Wall Street look like a preschool playground squabble.
Wheel ownership affords Carolina’s helmet-wearing elite all types of bike privilege perks. They enjoy faster transit times, VIP bike rack parking and minimal backpack strap sweat.
All the while, Carolina’s walking class suffers sans wheels. While bikers speedily commute from cushy suburbs, walkers’ wheellessness forces them to inhabit crowded, overpriced slums on campus (aka “dorms”). They also have higher shin splint rates than bikers.
The wheel of misfortune worsens: bikers flaunt their wheels. Acting like they were born with a silver pedal under foot, the 10 percent bullies the 90 percent into submission with the threat of being run over by commuting bikes — right into a faceful of Pit bricks.
