If my grandmother had wheels...

Donald Boudreaux wrote a piece in the WSJ asking "If Supermarkets Were Like Public Schools: What if groceries were paid for by taxes, and you were assigned a store based on where you live?" We would be subject, Boudreaux writes, to all sorts of indignities: families would have to buy groceries only from the store in their district; they would pay taxes to finance the store and get a standard weekly ration "for free". Unionized supermarket workers (horrors!) would demonize the noble advocates of reform. And so on.

This is just the kind of insightful economic analysis we expect from America's great financial newspaper. No need to ask why it might be appropriate to provide some goods through competitive markets and others publicly. Well, two can play at that game:

What if national defense were provided by supermarkets? Imagine a world where each of us got to order our own specialized weaponry and position our military forces where they would most benefit us. Doesn't the individual know better than big government how to protect his property?

What if health care were sold by hotdog stands? Impaled by an I-beam, I am being wheeled to the nearest emergency room. Not there, says I, the hotdog stand across town has jumbo franks and we can have my surgery done in the park across the street.

What if used cars were sold in voodoo ceremonies? The car salesman would be dressed in a grass skirt rather than a plaid jacket. Instead of haggling over the price of the car I would be sent out to the jungle in a trance to bring back a car of the priest's choice in my teeth - and it would be the perfect car for me!

What if brain surgery were sold at Gower's Drug Store in Bedford Falls New York? A large-eared teenager would take your order and you would whisper in his ear, "I want you to be my brain surgeon for the rest of my life," but he wouldn't hear you because that's his bad ear on account of falling through the ice to save his brother in 1919. Then he'd whip out a copy of National Geographic and say "listen brainless, don't you know where coconuts come from," which is when you'd start to cry because after all that's why you're there in the first place.