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David McElroy

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Without the state, who would plow roads? We and our neighbors will

By David McElroy · February 13, 2014

Plowed street in Suffern, N.Y

When Vincent Ferrari woke up Thursday morning, his neighborhood in Rockland County, N.Y., was snowed in by about six or eight inches of snow. By halfway through the day, Village of Suffern snow plows were still nowhere to be seen, but what happened early in the afternoon is a great lesson in how people can co-operate — if they’re allowed to make their own plans and they don’t rely on government.

When nobody from the village showed up to clear the street, the neighbors did it themselves.

“Without government, who would plow the roads? Let me tell you who,” Ferrari said late Thursday afternoon. “My neighbor’s grandson and five of my neighbors.”

The neighbor’s grandson — a young man named Tommy — has a truck with a plow. The mayor of the village lives about a block from Ferrari, but she’s apparently on a trip to Florida this week. No plowing had been done in the 12,000-population village as far as Ferrari could tell, so by early afternoon, Tommy got to work clearing the street. Ferrari and five other neighbors went out with shovels and worked on the areas right around everyone’s driveways.

“He plowed and then we each dug each other out,” Ferrari said. “You know what that’s called? Voluntary co-operation. You know who hasn’t been down my street? A [government-owned] snow plow. Not a single one. We are the only street in the whole area that’s cleared because we did it rather than waiting for our savior elected officials.”

It wasn’t until even later than that — about 4:30 p.m. — that a plow from the village finally showed up. Ferrari said one of his neighbors complained about nothing having been done all day to the street. The plow driver pointed to the street that the neighbors had cleared themselves and claimed he had done it.

“I was here three hours ago, see?” the servant of the people lied.

The neighbor knew who actually plowed the street, and she told the guy so.

“No you didn’t, so don’t even try it,” she said.

Ferrari said the experience made him feel great.

“It was so uplifting,” he said. “It was everything anti-statists say in one microcosm. It made me smile so much on the inside.”

Even though Tommy didn’t to the work for money, Ferrari said he ended up paying him $100 in gratitude.

“So the next time you wonder who would deliver essential services if government didn’t, just remember that you have your own future in your own hands,” Ferrari said.

When I posted Ferrari’s story on my Facebook page Thursday afternoon, most people saw it as a great example of people voluntarily co-operating — as a symbol of what people could privately do if they were left to their own devices to decide how to plan their affairs. But one of my friends didn’t see it that way.

“Great…but what do you do when no one in the neighborhood has a truck or plow?” he said. “And who’s going to voluntarily plow the highways and local roads between cities?”

So how will people band together to do things on a level bigger than just one street of one neighborhood? Surely there couldn’t be ways that people could voluntarily co-0perate through the market, is there?

How will we possibly eat without government to supply us with food? How will we possibly have homes without government to build them for us? How will we possibly have methods of transportation to take us across the country on multi-million dollar jet planes without government to build and operate them?

Hey, maybe there will be grocery stores and homebuilders and airlines one day. You know. Voluntary arrangements between private citizens operating without government coercion.

Nah. That couldn’t work, could it?

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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

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Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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