Recently we had a new roof put on our house. The morning they were due to start working I came out of my front door to be greeted by a plastic covered lawn and a team of roofers already busy at work and it wasn’t even 8:00 AM. I came home about 7 PM expecting to see the old roof ripped off and plastic sheeting everywhere. What I saw was a new roof! I couldn’t even tell the roof had been replaced, there was no debris, no plastic or unused tiles and nails lying about. I was pleasantly surprised.
About a month later there was water leaking down our front driveway. We called the county water utilities office who maintain the water system. They were pretty responsive and came out only a few days later and dug up our driveway. My car was still on the driveway but now trapped, they didn’t bother to inform me what they would be doing, they just went ahead. Then they left. Surely they’d be back tomorrow? Nope.
After a few weeks we gave them a call to find out when they’d be back to pick up the cones and repair our driveway. They said they would have someone out there as soon as possible. But 2 weeks later our driveway was still a coned off gravel pit. We called again. They told us they had forgotten but would have someone out there the following week. And so they did. We had a team of about 4 fixing the driveway, 2 sat in their trucks most of the time but they did get out to finish up the job. Then they all left, with our newly cemented drive still coned off. That was months ago. Anyone want some cones?
Just shows the difference between companies motivated by the dollar versus government monopolies motivated by … um… Actually I don’t know, they don’t seem to have much motivation at all. As a government monopoly they are forced on us, there is no alternative, they can’t go bankrupt and they can’t go out of business. They are Coercion, Inc, founded, funded and protected by the government. There tagline is “we’ll do business with you whether you like it or not.” Probably not, that’s why they have to be forced on you.
The title is taken from Harry Binswanger’s article “The Dollar and the Gun”, (Objectivist Forum, June 1983), which exposes the leftists’ equivocation between “economic power” and “political power”.
