Bar Room Socialism
I had a conversation about politics with a random stranger in a bar the other night. I don’t recommend ever discussing politics or religion with strangers, especially when they are imbibing alcohol or any other psychoactive chemical. Like unprotected sex with random strangers, this sort of intercourse can be very dangerous, if also a lot of fun.
However, in this particular case, there were no blows exchanged.
Although this particular conversation wasn’t very interesting or productive, it did cause me to remember a more amusing conversation, in a different bar, a few years ago, that I thought would be worth posting here. It happened something like this:
In 2003, after having had to evict a problem tenant, my wife Jo and I decided that being absentee landlords was just too much for us, and we decided to sell our house in New Orleans. Having had some very fun times when we lived down there, and having some very good friends in the area, I decided to make one last trip down to the house before putting it on the market. This would give me a chance to clean the place up, fix a few things, and to spend some time with old friends. I also invited my best friend Alex, from my home town in Michigan, to come down and hang out with me for a week.
On maybe the second night we were there, Alex and I were hanging out at The Erin Rose, on Toulouse just off Bourbon, one of my old haunts in the French Quarter. We were at the rear bar, and were having one of our typical discussions about governments, personal liberty, and the virtues of capitalism, when the guy next to us announced that he was a socialist.
I turned to him and said, “Really? Like a card carrying socialist?”
“Yes”, he replied, “want to see?”
I nodded and said “Absolutely, I have never seen an actual socialist card before.”
He pulled out his wallet, and produced a white card with red lettering that proclaimed “The person named below is a member in good standing of the Socialist party USA” and named him as Eric G. Witte.
“That’s really cool!” I said, and then had an evil thought (not unusual for me). I said “Can I buy that from you? How about for 50 dollars?” And I pulled out my own wallet and produced a fifty.
I expected this to lead to some sort of awkwardness or an argument about the evils of capitalism, and was instead surprised when he said, “Sure thing!”, and the exchange took place immediately.
Disappointed that I was out $50 with no fun, I then turned to Alex and jokingly said something like “I’ve always wanted one of these!”
Eric G. Witte then said “You could get one a lot cheaper than $50 – I only had to send $10 to the Socialist party to join.” Whereupon he got this faraway look in his eyes, and started doing the math and said “Wow! It was actually easy to get that card. If I could sell more of these for $50 a piece, I could get almost five times my money back!”
“Aha!” said I, seeing a chance to get my money’s worth of argument, “You are actually a capitalist!”
His eyes refocused and he said “Oops.” Then, thinking quickly, he turned to the bartender and handed her the $50 bill he was still holding in his hands.
“Drinks for everyone!” he announced loudly.
* * *
Moral of the story?
“Everyone is a capitalist – at least until you remind them that they are not supposed to be.”