unpaid ( corvee?) labor

it snowed a bit here yesterday and i just came in from about an hour's worth of work clearing the walks, digging out the driveway , and uncovering my son's car...the municipality did what passes for a fair job of plowing last night but they still left me with some work if i didn't want to rip the exhausts off the vehicles...admittedly the fact that my son's car was parked on the street had something to do with the volume of snow i had to move...but still it had to be done if, for instance, i wanted my mail delivered...this is a yearly process since there have always been more vehicles than driveway space here ( what's that say about ecological footprints? i did, however, use a shovel to clear the snow...no more mechanical crap than necessary...a sort of physical carbon offset...along with my perennial's root systems [but that's a different blog]...and i have driven only 742 miles since i changed the oil in my pickup on december first...a 14.8 mile a day average...not a complete sinner )as i was removing the pile the city left me i began to ponder on unpaid labor here in bitch daniels' state of emergency...services that the state used to provide have been offloaded onto the public wherever possible...corners cut...and bureaucratic thinking ( if not the actual size of the bureaucracy ) has taken root with a vengance...have a go at renewing a driver's license...or consider that the state used to print and mail tax forms but ( unless you are filing the simplistic form )you have to expend your paper and ink to print the forms and tax schedules yourself...and that's just the state...how much of what i do in what is commonly called "spare time" is relevant to my direct needs and desires and how much of it supports the government or economic entities ( read corporate interests)? i mean nipsco and the criminals at j p morgan chase represent on-line bill paying as a convenience but the reality is i have to do the legwork to establish the links that actually save those entities hard cold cash...and i have to do it monthly...is that convenience for me or for nipsco? there's more to this than appears on the surface and it's something i will be thinking about as i go about my daily routine...how much unpaid labor in support of someone or something else's interests have i been enculturated to take on a s an unconscious matter of course? it bears looking into.