If the Government Made Pizza

There's nothing like pizza, and there's nothing like a great pizzeria. I have a favorite one in my hometown of Winnipeg, run by a friendly Greek family who put a lot of love into their pies and price them very reasonably. I enjoy going there, talking a little baseball with the owner and his son, and getting the best slices in the city.

Every now and again, they'll surprise me with something extra, like a free Christmas sweetbread. Today, they gave me a delicious fresh-baked foccacia on the house. We've even exchanged small gifts over the years, like books and baseball cards. In short, I've got a good thing going with my pizza suppliers: voluntary, mutually beneficial economic interaction mixed with respect and friendship. It feels good to vote with my dollar for a business that provides me with great food and great service.

The other day I was at a government office trying to get a new I.D. card (something I don't want, but am being forced to have if I want to be able to travel). After a long wait, my number was finally called, and I went to a cubicle where my application was processed by a rude and officious woman who spoke in prim, grating upspeak. She treated me with overt disdain, and told me she wasn't happy with one of my forms. She told me she couldn't give out I.D.s to "just anyone who came in off the street". I evenly reminded her that I was in fact paying for the I.D., not being given it, and that I was after all a taxpayer (you know, those people who pay her salary), and not "just anybody". She gave me a dead-eyed Hillary Clinton stare.

After being told that my application for an I.D. was denied because of a silly technicality involving the way I photocopied a form, I walked out in disgust.

My mind started to ponder what it would be like if private businesses treated their customers the way government treats the taxpayers who are hypothetically being served by it. Obviously, they wouldn't last a day if they had to earn their revenue by providing great service, rather than just taking it by force through taxation schemes, under which we all have to pay for whatever is put on the bill, whether it meets our standards or not. I thought about how much more responsive even the most heartless of corporations is to demand, public outcry, and market forces than governments are; how boycotts and public pressure can lead companies to change their practices very rapidly for fear of losing money, while governments act with impunity and the deep state rolls on through the cosmetic changes of election cycles.

That train of thinking led me to daydreaming about how horrible the world would be if my most beloved small businesses were run by bureaucrats rather than entrepreneurs. And, most frightening of all, I wondered what it would be like if I had to get pizza from the government instead of my favorite pizzeria.

What would it be like if government made a pizza? Hmm, well....

First they'd fund a 3 year, 18.5 million dollar study to find out what pizza is. Then they'd do a lengthy feasibility study to find out if pizza could in fact be made, and after that there'd be public hearings on pizza, followed by the formation of various pizza committees. Politicians and subsidized academics would sell people on the idea that pizza was a public service and a human right, something which everyone deserved to have "given" to them on the back of the taxpayer. They'd have flocks of naive folks screaming out for their slice of coveted government pizza.

And finally, they'd be almost ready to put the pizza in the oven.

But first, they'd have to impose a Pizza Tax and set up a Department of Pizza, staffed with an army of zealous apparatchiks devoted to regulating pizza enjoyment, making pizza equal and fair and safe for democracy, and of course protecting us all from the scarier types of pizza. There'd be new laws put on the books, and lots of new regulations which, just by coincidence, happened to benefit the biggest, hardest-lobbying pizza conglomerates and make it nearly impossible for their small-time competition to operate. Next, it would be time to establish a Pizza Enforcement Agency, tasked with tracking down those lawless sociopaths who made pizza outside of the new, loving regulatory framework or made tax-free pizzas. Corporatist profits, tax revenue, and government salaries would rise like dough, and the state's foray into pizza would be declared a success by all the appropriate mouthpieces.

But wait, the public are still waiting for that pizza! It's been years now, and after all those studies, and all those committees, and all those pizzerias put out of business, people want the pizza they were promised.

Finally the pizza would be put in the oven.

There'd be a great parade on the day the pizza was presented to the public. At the end of it all, after all the billions of dollars of taxpayer money spent, after most of the stalwart neighborhood pizzerias had been forced to close, a politician would step to a podium.

He'd smile for the cameras and present a soggy cardboard box full of melted processed cheese strings smothered over mouldy Wonder Bread, topped with strawberry jam, dog hair, and rancid lunch meat.

Then he'd give an impassioned speech on the importance of pizza, and tell the public that dangerous, hate-filled conservatives were trying to defund the pizza programs, and now was the time to stand together.