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06/08/2005: "Europe – The Dittohead Economic Paradise"

A key Dittohead virtue is everyone paying their own way. They hate “socialism,” which they define as the government providing a service that could be provided by the private sector. I put socialism in quotes because they interpret any spending to “promote the general welfare” (using the phrase from the Constitution) as taking from one citizen to give to another. If the government doesn’t provide any services whatsoever to individuals, then this “taking” problem is solved. What does this look like? It looks like every individual individually paying for anything and everything. And, to a large degree, this is what Europe looks like. Despite its reputation for socialism, there is a far larger degree of pay-as-you-go than most Americans would believe. Let’s consider some examples I personally experienced last week in Italy. I drove a rental car halfway across the country on the autostrada, the Italian version of the interstate system. Contrary to the US, where a sizeable percentage of the interstate system is free, every inch of the Italian system requires payment of a stiff toll. This toll is high enough so that, years ago on my first driving trip into Italy, I tried taking a back road across the Apennines to avoid them. I learned a lesson from that experience – life’s too short to risk on insanely narrow roads and big oncoming trucks when there are no road barriers to stop a plunge of half a mile down the mountainside! Here’s an even better example of the pay-as-you-go services that full-scale implementation of Dittohead economic ideals would have on our daily lives – the European washroom. For example, in the Milano Centrale train station, a major transportation hub, the restrooms all had turnstiles that required exact-change payment of 70 Euro cents - about $1 (not on the stall, but on the main door to the washroom itself). What kind of service did this payment entitle you to? The sole fixture of the men’s and ladies’ stalls was a hole in the floor. A Dittohead economist would interpret this as a perfectly reasonable illustration of the “whatever the market will bear” principle. If you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go, so why shouldn’t somebody be able to make the appropriate amount of money from this imperative? This being a basic need, people should be spending some basic cash! If you don’t want to pay, or want to be able to sit down, you can just hold it in (or, judging by the smell in the elevators, think creatively!)