Government regulations destroy many things that are important to us. Licensing laws prevent us from practicing our chosen profession. Taxes rob us of our hard earned money. Lately, the food police have been trying to take away our most cherished, most delicious snacks.
But there are some things the government hasn’t been able to take from us: music, happiness, and that glorious combination of the two, song. At least until now.
The city of Winnipeg has a new rule: no singing on city buses. Any violations will be punishable by a fine of $100. That’s right, it’s a tax on singing, by which the city will fill its coffers at the expense of happy citizens. Silence is now the law of the land.
The fine doesn’t just apply to singing, but to live music of any kind. Gone are the days of the lone troubadour entertaining a busload of weary and disgruntled passengers with songs of love and heroism.
Granted, there will be many passengers who will rejoice at the new law. For these grinches, the expression of human emotion is a burden from which they feel entitled to be spared through the mechanism of government force. “It’s bad enough we have to ride the bus,” they grumble. “Why should we have to listen to other people’s singing?”
Why, indeed? For that matter, why don’t we also ban talking on buses? No one wants to hear what other people have to say anyway. Why not also ban reading while we’re at it? I can’t count how many times I’ve seen someone reading a book by Hillary Clinton or someone equally unpleasant on public transportation. Why should that ghastly visage be inflicted on me?
The basic price of utilizing public transportation is having to interact with the public. The people who try to deny this reality are the ones you see wearing doctors’ face masks on the subway. Using legislation to try to remove everything that characterizes “the public” from public transportation is alienating in a culture that already encourages avoidance of all human contact.
Moreover, even if we concede that there are circumstances in which loud, out of tune renditions of Taylor Swift tunes is not an ideal atmosphere on a city bus (a concession I make only with considerable reluctance), the imposition of a fine is surely too harsh a penalty. Is it too difficult simply to kick the offending parties off at the next stop? But of course, that would not allow the local government to enrich itself at the expense of its citizens, clearly an unreasonable proposition.
The one bright spot of this misguided legislation is that it opens a hole in the market for what would be, in my opinion, a very worthwhile service. Now that city-run buses are to be dreary zones of mournful silence, there is an opportunity for private bus lines to fill the happiness-gap. One only hopes that some enterprising entrepreneur will not delay to long before launching a festive “Song and Dance” bus line to restore the joy of music to Winnipeg’s once-cheerful citizens.