A day in the life of a republican
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A day in the life of Joe Liberal
by Gil Guillory at the Mises Blog.
Joe gets up at 6:00am to prepare his morning coffee. He makes it with a machine he could not possibly have made himself. He does not know where it was made, or how it works, and may not care. He does not know the people that planted, cultivated, harvested, dried, roasted, packaged, freighted, warehoused, distributed, marketed, or retailed his coffee, and may not care. The company that insures the manufacturer of the coffee machine required that it meet certain safety guidelines, as established by the private insurance-company-funded Underwriters Laboratory. Joe has seen the UL mark, but is not really sure what it's for or how it protects him. He doesn't clearly understand why greedy businessmen might be interested in a safe product. All of this was made possible by libertarians who fought for and won the legal right to free trade.
He fills his pot full of good clean drinking water which he bought from Ozarka, because the local government monopoly of water supply bears the comforting designation of "accepted" and also tastes funny.
He thinks back to going to church on Sunday. He is happy to have a community where he can participate with other like-minded people in ceremony. This was made possible by the long struggle to disentangle church and state, and his church enjoys the absence of taxation. He wishes other aspects of his life could be so free.
He takes his daily medication with his first swallow of coffee, and then he takes a long drag on a cigarette. He bought his medication while on a trip to Mexico, where, thanks to less regulation and looser enforcement of IP laws, they were much cheaper. His medications are safe to take because he bought them from a reputable dealer. He can still afford cigarettes and can still legally purchase them, because of those who continue to fight for his rights, even if his exercise of those rights might harm him or his family.
Joe takes his morning shower reaching for his shampoo; it is fragranced with some sort of exotic flower and there are strange chemicals in it - god knows what - and he bought it, well, because he liked the picture of the kangaroo on the bottle. He luxuriates in his bourgeois moment in the shower, a luxury unavailable to even the most wealthy of only 200 years ago. He is able to have many of such seemingly simple luxuries because some greedy businessmen sought enormous profits in the only way they could: satisfying consumer demand.
Joe begins his work day; he has a good job with excellent pay, medicals benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because the accumulation of capital over centuries has now brought the discounted marginal value product of a schmuck like Joe to unimaginable heights. Joe doesn't know anything about economics because he doesn't have to. He is no smarter than his forbears, and he works less. Nonetheless, because he participates in a world-embracing division of labor where his specialized work on a growing capital base is greatly valued, he is richer.
Joe's employer pays these standards because if they don't, his employer's competitors will.
It's noon time, Joe doesn't need to make a Bank Deposit so he can pay some bills - he uses online banking and direct deposit. He has no idea how these systems work, or what a banking clearinghouse is, but he is able to use these services at the lowest cost practicable because banks compete for his business. Notwithstanding the massive interventions to the business of banking, such as the creation of central banking and the Federal Reserve system and the repudiation of the gold standard, he is able to weather the government-induced business cycles and inflation by investing in mutual funds, annuities, stocks, bonds, REITs, real estate, and other investment vehicles. He is able to do this because of greedy entrepreneurs and libertarians who fought against usury laws.
The online banking leaves him free to take a moment to browse amazon.com for his favorite books, movies, and music.
Joe is home from work, he plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive to dads; his car is not among the safest in the world because he chose not to buy a Volvo. His brother has a Volvo, but he has a gas-guzzling muscle car. He has this choice because nationalization of the auto industry was prevented.
He arrives at his rural boyhood home. The house didn't have any good programming choices until DirecTV offered an array of programming and high-speed internet, too. His dad uses a VCR, which only became affordable to him after lots of rich people bought the early, expensive versions and the manufacturers improved the designs and cut costs. In fact, his dad has a cell phone, TiVo, refrigerator, microwave oven, and a CD player - all of which became affordable to him because they were first the toys of the super-rich, and the crackpot schemes financed by the wealthy entrepreneurs willing and able to risk their money in such endeavors.
He is happy to see his dad who is now retired. His dad lives on a reverse mortgage - a recent market innovation. After his visit with dad he gets back in his car for the ride home. He turns on a radio talk show. The host keeps saying that libertarians are kooks and anarchists and thank God for continual market intervention and government protection. Government intervention and taxation improves and will continue to improve the standards of living of Americans. (He doesn't tell Joe that his beloved Democrats/Republicans have fought to destroy every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day.)
Joe agrees, and puts his support behind protectionism, taxation, monopolies, interventionism, and war: these are obviously the things upon which civilization is built.
Sam Bostaph's version:
Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with bottled water because he knows that the municipal water system supplies water that occasionally has e coli and other natural organisms that will make him ill--after all his mother died from drinking water that was polluted by sewage after a heavy rain. Joe tried to sue, but was told that the city had sovereign immunity from such suits as a result of state law. If the water he pours from the bottle he bought at Safeway is polluted, he knows he can sue the manufacturer and collect big, so he feels pretty sure that it's clean.
Joe grinds his coffee beans carefully because they're very expensive as a result of the U.S. government-enforced international coffee cartel that exists to protect the jobs of coffee importers--heavy campaign contributers to Congress. He's also careful about how much sugar he puts in his coffee because it costs seven times the world price of sugar as a result of the U.S. government imposed import restrictions on sugar to protect the domestic sugar beet and sugar cane industry.
Some mornings he drinks a coke instead, although it hasn't tasted as good since the manufacturer substituted corn syrup for sugar as a sweetener, since sugar is so expensive.
With his first swallow of coffee Joe takes his daily medication for his liver cancer. His doctor assures him that it is the best medication available in the U.S., although more effective medicines are used in Europe. Joe has a life expectancy of only two more years, but it will be a decade or so until the FDA tests on those other medicines are complete and they are allowed to be sold in the U.S. Joe feels protected anyway; after all, he might lose his hair or suffer some dizziness from the new medicines.. The FDA will protect him from that eventuality. Besides, the medicines he takes are paid for by money that his employer would have otherwise paid him in his regular salary. Since he never sees that money, he doesn't realize that his medicine isn't really subsidized by his employer after all.
And so on....
Originally Posted by mikenold
