An ‘À la carte’ Society

‘À la carte’ is an esoteric term whose original meaning has been long-lost. For centuries, scholars have debated the etymology of these words. In modern-day times we have all come to accept its meaning to describe a pricing model in which goods or services traditionally bundled together are separated out, giving the end-user (“free” humans beings) greater choice at lower cost.

I can only presume this term came from somebody hundreds, perhaps even thousands of years ago mispronouncing the phrase “on the cart,” which of course we all know would be referring to a cart that buyers would often use in the old times to carry their goods as they shop, paying only for things that were on the cart. Anyone with a first grade education understands that this is where the modern-day grocery shopping cart evolved from.

Believed to have been first discovered in 3492 BCE

Our modern-day society seems to have lost its way with respect to the easiest & most humane way to charge its residents for the goods & services it provides. In today’s day & age citizens are taxed at absurd rates of 30%, 40% or even 50% of their income to fund goods and services whether the citizen uses those goods & services or not. This is practically the equivalent of somebody loading your grocery cart up with items regardless of if you need them or not and then forcing you to pay whatever price they deem appropriate. Clearly none of us would stand for that when trying to feed ourselves & our families however we are forced to stand for it in virtually all facets of life with regard to paying taxes.

Before your head explodes, understand that I do not believe that these goods and services should be provided to people for free.  I believe the system should be opened to the free market and that people should only be charged for what they use… whatever is “on the cart” so to speak. I will gladly pay my fair share of any good or service that I consume but I find it increasingly difficult to justify paying absurd amounts of money for things that I do not use, have not used, and will never use. I also find it hard for any contrarian argument with regard to an à la carte system. How can you convince me that I should pay for things that I do not use? More importantly why would you want to?

An added benefit to an à la carte system would be the emergence of the benefits of the free market. If people are truly only paying for what they use, we will have a clear gauge of what free human beings actually want to spend their money on, instead of the money being forcefully taken from them via the threat of jail and then being spent as a small number of bureaucrats see fit.

Opponents believe that using a logical model like this would result in the elimination of things public parks, festivals and fairs. While there’s no way to prove this without actually trying the à la carte model, if that happens to be the result it would be nothing other than the free market responding as it should. If free human beings do not choose to spend their money in a way that supports parks, fairs or festivals it simply further evidences how criminal it is to steal their money & spend it on items that should not exist.