Did you ever wonder what's with those little stickers that come affixed to each and every apple, banana and other fruit now sold? Who mandated this? I thought for sure this has the earmarking of some government bureaucrats with more time on their hands than they should have. After all, think of how many extra make-work jobs these could create. Unemployment would be a thing of the past. Putting them on bananas was not so bad; you threw out the banana skin along with the tiny sticker. But they are a nightmare with apples; they take valuable time to peel off and, often, you lose a bit of the apple skin which most people eat. Government gone berserk, in a new petty way, I surmised.
But I was soon disabused of this notion. A little bit of research put me straight. Here is what I learned.
The government had nothing to do with this system. Those tiny labels are Price Look-Up (PLU) stickers. The numbers on them allow cashiers, also self-checkout, to identify the items to which they are affixed. Thus, they are placed in the same category as all other grocery items. The computer system now “knows” how much of each was sold, and, thus, how much to order anew. This system also assigns different numbers to items that look exactly alike to the naked eye, for example distinguishing organic from non-organic produce.
Silly me for doubting the free enterprise system and Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” which leads entrepreneurs to seek profits and thereby make the world a better place for all of us. Now that I know this, I’ll grin and bear my difficulties with apples and look forward to the next improvement emanating from the free market.
A similar occurrence took place with regard to time zones. These, too, improve human flourishing, and came about, not as you might expect, from the compulsory mandates of the state, but through laissez faire capitalism. Who started them? Railroad companies. They were faced with the difficulty of creating timetables over long distances. This institution, too, came about without the malevolent hand of the state. It first took place at a meeting of their General Time Convention, which instituted standardized or “railroad time.” North America was divided into the continental time zones with which we are all now familiar. This occurred on November 18, 1883. It was 35 years later, in 1918, when the government finally got into the act and made compulsory what was previously voluntary.
From where will analogous private enterprise initiatives emanate? One possibility is road running. Every major city has at least a few races scheduled each weekend day. Some of these events attract thousands of runners and race walkers. How do they determine the winners? Is there a crush on the part of everyone to get to the relatively narrow starting line, and thus have an advantage over those who perforce must start hundreds of yards behind this point (it sometimes takes 5 minutes or more for such competitors to reach the starting line).
Not a bit of it. Gun time, the instant when the starter’s pistol goes off is irrelevant to determining the victors. Rather, it is chip time that is the deciding factor. What is that? On every bib, which is safety pinned to the front of each racer’s t-shirt, is an electronic device that measure the exact time take from when it crosses the starting and finishing line. Thus, someone starting 10 minutes after everyone else, and finishing the course in 9 minutes less than the ostensible winner, comes away with the prize. Note, the complete absence of any governmental control in this process.
Where will the new initiative in this domain come from? This can only be speculative, but right now, each race requires one bib with a chip. There are hundreds, thousands of races each year. One of these days each competitor will purchase one electronic device which can be used for all races. Participants pay to join each race, and this mechanism will allow that to occur.
What about other “crunches?” Perhaps the most onerous one is traffic congestion. There used to be “rush hours”: from 8-9am and 5-6pm, when bumper to bumper was the order of the day. Now, this wasteful procedure occurs pretty much, continually, from 8am to 8pm, in most major cities, and even in many middle-sized ones. It is wasteful, it is infuriating. But government is in charge, so what can you expect? There was an attempt to apply peak load pricing in New York City, for which the Big Apple gets credit, but this is only a small improvement in one small geographical area.
Again, this can only be speculative, but, if private entrepreneurs were the owners and managers of the road, it is extremely likely that they would borrow a leaf from the organizers of foot races, and traffic would flow smoothly on our roads and highways as it does in those competitions. They could engage in peak load pricing, which would smooth out the demand for roadways on the path to cars that move consistently on those roadways.
