15 Minute Prisons

I can't reinforce enough how evil these are. The 15 minute city has been mentioned in media considerably in the past yer or so. There are pilot projects springing up all over the world as we speak. Oxford, England and Cleveland, Ohio, USA are just a couple that come to mind. These city zones where you live and work and and can acquire all your daily needs within a 15 minute walking area are being sold as reducers of carbon output. I contend that they are actually prisons.

Looking at Oxford as an early example, it is designed so you have to apply to be able to leave your zone without penalty. You can be granted up to 100 passes to other zones in a years time…sounds incredibly similar to, “where are your papers” from the previous century’s prison-state systems. I contend this is all incrementalism. It sold as a convenient and efficient way to live. A utopia that all your could ever want is available and plentiful and convenient. How long before it evolves into the same existence of scarcity as the aforementioned “previous century prison-states”?

To help ensure compliance, blockades will be placed on all the roundabouts that are being constructed. These roundabouts were sold to the masses as a means to allow the efficient flow of traffic. They will now efficiently divert all traffic back into the 15 minute prison block. Not that it matters for long. Now that everyone is in the 15 minute city, there is no need for car ownership at all.

What comes later is more disturbing. Once you have everyone into these 15 minutes prison blocks, the power elites can turn up or down the resources that are allowed to flow into these zones. They can also begin to reduce or even eliminate the permits allowed to freely move between the zones. The numbers of people housed in each zone will be carefully set at an easily controlled level. Communications will then be eliminated between the zones. This will ensure there is no ability to coordinate uprisings in multiple zones that could overwhelm the crowd control mechanisms.

A digital currency is another key tool in this. People could just drive out of the zones. Simply say be damned the fines, “I am fee”. Once you are outside the zone though, you will find your digital currency no longer has any value to purchase anything. Even if you could get a car with a tank full of gas and could get it past the barricades, you could not buy more gas when you ran out. You could not buy food or lodging. Your money will only be good in your zone.