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Finn, I think this whole 'is the employeer responsible' bit is a red herring. No one has suggested the employeer is responsible for anything, other than operating in the current customary way in our capitalist society. That is, paying some sort of market wage and not feeling obliged to concern themselves beyond that.
In the microcosm, James Robertson's case is just one individual case. He has reasons, whatever they are, to stay put and not move closer, not to change to a closer job, and not to operate a vehicle. He has been dealing with his individual situation in a way that strikes most of us as extraordinary--using up many hours a day walking. If his work also requires physical exertion, the sum of his daily efforts is surely way above and beyond the ordinary call of industriousness. So people feel he has earned recognition and tangible support.
Maybe you disagree. But your contrarian stance seems to be a defense against an attack made only in the most general terms here, the basic feeling that 'something is wrong' in general. Mr. Robinson's particular and unusual hardships thus become symbolic of less extreme but more general hardship--a widewspread feeling that the rewards to labor are often not just, that the marketplace disfavors labor too much, and the system offers no opportunity to redress this.
Your defensive stance, as Joad points out, really amounts to a defense of the right of the owners of capital (the 1%, or less) to be unconcerned with either Mr. Robinson, or with the larger systemic issues. But who is the economy for? Are reforms in favor of the mass of workers automatically undesirable? Are all criticisms of the system as it exists to be rejected out-of-hand? I think there are ideas worth exploring, in the face of ever-mounting inequality. The system as it exists may not be the best possible, after all. It may be unstable and headed for one kind of blow-up or another, for one thing....
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