Have contemporary Brits forgotten how to share?
"I really wanted to believe that Mancunians could be trusted with nice things. Just over a fortnight ago, a Chinese company called Mobike brought 1,000 shiny new silver and orange bikes to my city. Unlockable with a smartphone and available to rent for just 50p for half an hour, they could be ridden wherever you liked within Manchester and Salford and, crucially, could be left anywhere public once you were done. ...
Two weeks on and I fear that a dream is all it was. There are Mobikes in the canal, Mobikes in bins and I am fed up with following the app to a residential street where there is clearly a Mobike stashed in someone’s garden. On launch day, the Chinese designer told me the bikes were basically indestructible and should last four years without maintenance. It took a matter of hours before local scallies worked out how to disable the GPS trackers and smash off the back wheel locks.
On Thursday, none of the eight bikes showing on the app as being near my house were actually there. I was so incensed when I reached the location of the ninth and could see it locked away in a backyard that I lost control of my senses and knocked on the door. A young man opened it and I asked nicely if I could rent the bike. He looked surprised and said, no, it was his, and anyway, he needed it later. I explained that was not how the system worked, that the bikes were public, and that if everyone was as selfish as him the whole thing would collapse. He rolled his eyes and told me I would be trespassing if I dared try to fetch it. ...
Steve Pyer, Mobike UK’s general manager, is determined to look on the bright side. Mancunians love the bikes, he says, and are now taking 4,000 trips every day, “even when it’s raining”. ... He does admit that the scale of vandalism took him by surprise. It has been far worse than in any of the Asian countries where Mobike operates 5m bikes. “In Singapore we launched our scheme in March with 5,000 bikes and there have been just two reports of broken locks,” he says."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/16/manchesters-bike-share-scheme-isnt-working-because-people-dont-know-how-to-share
If you're wondering how civilization was lost, Anthony Daniels (Theodore Dalrymple) has some good answers:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Dalrymple