Shopkeepers

Where would we be without shopkeepers?  Let's say that Uncle Ken gets a hankering for an Italian beef sandwich, but nobody is selling them anymore because the corona shutdown put them all out of business.  No problem, all he's got to do is feed a cow for two years, kill it, gut it, skin it, and cut it up into pieces small enough to slice really thin.  Oh wait, he has no knife.  No problem, all he's got to do is find a piece of scrap iron somewhere and rub it on the sidewalk until it gets sharp.  Of course he can't make a sandwich without bread.  No problem, all he's got to do is plant some wheat, wait for it to mature, harvest it, grind it up into flour, and bake his own damn bread.  Oh wait, he has no oven.  I could go on with this, but I think I've made my point.

Of course we need the academics almost as much as we need shopkeepers.  Without them the shopkeepers wouldn't know how to make change or figure out their income tax.  I suppose we need the politicians as well.  Without them the government would be run by the biggest and meanest guy on the block, and the only way to get rid of him would be to hire somebody even bigger and meaner to literally kick him out of office.  We might not need a government at all if everybody was nice to each other, but then who would print the money Uncle Ken needs to pay the shopkeepers, who need it to buy the fixings for their Italian beef sandwiches?  Let's face it, we really are all in this together, whether we like it of not.

I saw on the TV news this evening that another Michigan barber shop has reopened in defiance of our governor's illegal order.  The lady barber said that she risks losing her license, but she was about to go bankrupt and lose her whole business anyway.  I read somewhere that many businesses have already been so badly impacted that they might not be able to reopen ever.  Somebody will replace them eventually, but meanwhile there will be some empty storefronts on Main Street, and even Michigan Avenue.

I saw on yesterday's news that Elon Musk has reopened his Tesla plant without permission.  They reported that some of his employees were nervous about the virus, but that others were just happy to get back to work.  They said that they couldn't interview all of them because there are over a thousand people working at that one plant.  That rich capitalist pig!  Where does he get off employing a thousand people to make electric cars that the academics say we need to stop global climate change that's going to otherwise kill us all?