Out of the Way

When travelling it is not uncommon to see several tour groups visiting a site. Museums, castles, palaces, churches, old city centres are frequently swarming with groups lead by a guide holding a flag, an umbrella or some other item.  

The day of a tour group often starts in hotels. Groups will often congregate early for breakfast, crowding out the singe traveller, so they can make their 8AM departure.  The tour starts with a bus ride to the first site. At any site one will note convoys of buses in the parking area and schools of people proceeding in an orderly manner through the site.  Any one tour day could include several site visits ending with a return trek to a hotel where the cycle ends only to be resumed on the following day. 

The ambient population is  made up of mostly young people, often in their 20’s to 40’s;  tour groups are disproportionately made up of older people; more often than not, retirees.  

This disparity made me wonder if there was something afoot.  A scheme to remove older people from the general population; to get them out of the way. But if that was the case how to do that without arousing suspicion or protest?

Travel.  Travel immediately removes people from the local environment. At the destinations they are separated from the general population.  First they are isolated by hosting them in hotels. Then they are pack onto buses with tinted windows unseeable from the street; never seen on public transportation. Finally the elderly are taken to museums and other places young people have little interest in seeing.  Each of these steps keeps old people out of the way. Concentrating them in groups has the effect of lowering the numbers in the ambient population.

Following a travel model the elderly pay their way, as opposed to government sponsored programs that would incur significant management and capital costs for isolation institutions, which would present an incremental tax burden to the working masses — young people. 

Something out of A Brave New World?