FuelPass, PowerPass, and soon FoodPass. Citizens of western societies seem to gradually have to get used to the idea that from now on they will need to chase the next SomethingPass if they want to survive. The anger against this tactic of taking money from one pocket of public reserves to transfer it to another is absolutely justified. However, we are not at all certain that the search for the deeper causes behind such tactics goes to their roots.
A common stance towards this phenomenon is to treat it as just another subsidy tactic. And this is the first mistake. If the various “survival passports” were to be compared to some past income support practice, then they probably resemble coupons more. A subsidy is given to you in the form of money which you can spend however you wish. Various passports, on the contrary, are characterized by a clear commitment to consume specific products. From this perspective, therefore, they re-qualify the concept of salary and monetary support. If money is, in any case, a crystallized social relationship in realized and abstract form, it allows, at least in the form of a salary and precisely because it has an abstract form, a degree of “freedom” regarding its disposal. Passports, by imposing specific forms of consumption, remove from their beneficiaries even these meager margins of freedom. The long arm of the state thus extends even into the micro-behaviors of its citizens.
However, neither is the comparison with coupons entirely accurate. Because even (paper) coupons involve the possibility of functioning as quasi-money, to the extent that they can be exchanged. Passports are absolutely personalized. The second mistake is that many refuse to translate “pass” literally, as a passport, that is. Perhaps because it reminds them of something from the whole fiasco with the coronavirus. Something that many would like to forget. They are closing their eyes in vain, however. The great advantage of the various passports, as their use spreads (who has come out to oppose health passports beyond some “marginal” people?), lies in the possibilities they provide for data collection, for recording and monitoring behaviors on a microscopic scale. And it will not remain unexploited. So let the various “rebels” protest about having to live with allowances. Those might perhaps be discarded at some point. The logic of the passport, however, has come to stay. It may not be called an allowance, but payment with a card and in digital currency. Perhaps then they will realize exactly what the stakes were/are. Only it will be (again) too late.