It's interesting how much we talk about money as a collective. Prices, costs, buffers, budgets, rents, SEPA, profit and loss, cash accounts, VAT filings, depreciation, inflation, investment, Konto, Skonto, Saldi, Soldi, Zasta, Basta.
All we really wanted was to be bike people with equal rights: against cars, fascism, discrimination and exploitation. But the realities of building a cooperative came pelting down on us like one of those pretty Berlin summer rains that fill the underpasses in Charlottenburg in no time.
We'd love to get by without capitalism, to live like on Le Guin's planet of The Dispossessed: everyone contributes their share, everyone has what they need. The story in the book then takes a somewhat different turn, but with us it's no dough, no go anyway.
Giffey had it in her hands to make life a little easier for the not-so-rich majority, so that they wouldn't permanently have to throw more than half of their hard-earned cash at the roof over their heads, straight into the pockets of landlords subsidised by housing benefit.
But no, we'd rather model ourselves on socially failed cities like Paris, where even a well-earning couple can't afford a comfortably sized flat. Foresight? No thanks, because whoever lets property has dug a pit for others without ever being able to fall into it. And the system is so neatly thought out: ordinary earners get housing benefit from the state so that they can pay the rents landlords set at will. The conceptual opposite of expropriating Deutsche Wohnen.
But I digress. The fact is, even in a left-wing collective we talk about money all the time, because we're forced to deal with it constantly. Customers think what we do is great, just not the price it comes with. We do more, because we replace cars through our own pioneering effort, but asking more for doing more is somehow too much after all. And yet we lack the courage to get even more expensive so that we can pay ourselves comfortably and in line with the risk. When you've built the house of cards yourself, you feel every gust of wind differently.
In the Ruhr, where I come from, people take a practical view: “Hömma, wat willze machen, et is, wie et is, machse nix.” (Roughly: listen, what are you going to do, it is what it is, nothing to be done.)
“El Niño #02” is part of CROW, the worker-run bike collective that has set itself the goal of replacing cars with bikes: through cargo bike deliveries and bike repairs, for a better quality of life for everyone and without bosses.