My brother and I had dinner the other night at a local restaurant, as we usually do on Fridays. My brother was meeting up with his girlfriend later on, and needed to bring an offering. And what better offering is there than pizza, especially since he expected her two daughters to be at her house. So he got on his cell phone with a local joint and sent in an order for a large pie with mushrooms. They said it would be about 45 minutes. So after we finished dinner, since I wasn’t busy, I tagged along with him for the pizza pickup. When we got to the place, they told us it would still be another 20 minutes. So we found an unobtrusive spot along the back side of the counter where we could wait it out.<\/p>\n
Actually, it was an interesting wait. The place was fairly large for an independent pizza joint, about twice as wide as the usual Jersey pizza dive (which is maybe 15 to 20 feet). And it was busy! All of the tables were taken, and people were double and triple stacked around the counter waiting for their orders. We could feel the heat from the ovens and the smell was wonderful; that old-time mix of tomatoes, garlic, olive oil and yeast that you just don’t get in Pizza Hut. <\/p>\n
And the staff behind the counter were putting on a show. It was fascinating to watch. Every move was made to count. They were slinging pizzas and calzones and sandwiches, sprinkling cheese and pepperoni and onions around, ladling out sauce, pounding dough, grabbing knives and cutting wheels, closing pizza boxes and throwing them on the counter . . . wow. It was quite a ballet. The unspoken teamwork was incredible. Everyone was totally in synch. I wish I had a movie of it. Everyone there was so \u201cJersey\u201d, in their own way. This is what Bruce Springsteed tries to capture (on his better albums, anyway), this is the backdrop for shows like The Sopranos and The Jersey Shore. Yes, with a good dose of Italian-American ethnic vibe; whadda ya want from a pizza joint?<\/p>\n
Finally my brother’s mushroom pie got its turn in the oven, and a few minutes later a guy in jeans and a sweaty t-shirt yelled out \u201cforty-four, mushroom pie\u201d. I was kind of sad to leave.<\/p>\n
Obviously, this is a successful business. The prices are right and the food is good (so I’m told), and the customers were lined up. This is capitalism at its best. As a government employee, I can tell you with absolute certainty and conviction that the government couldn’t set up anything even close to it. This is the kind of thing that just comes together almost by accident, a mix of profit motive and teamwork spirit and neighborhood acceptance. This is the kind of place where the government has to be careful not to mess up a good thing. <\/p>\n
Yes, the government does have a role in the success of this pizza joint, of course. They provide the currency that customers exchange; they regulate the foods and the hygiene so that you are not served anything rotten or dirty or poisoned; they provide roads and police services to regulate how you get to and from such a place; they would put out a fire or take a person who suddenly had a medical problem to the hospital; they zoned the neighborhood so that you won’t have busy pizza joints on a residential cul-de-sac. In sum, they do give a lot in return for the taxes that the owners and customers of this place pay (and probably complain about). But the government cannot make good pizza at a reasonable price. The whole trick of good governance is knowing where to stop governing, where to let people do it themselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My brother and I had dinner the other night at a local restaurant, as we usually do on Fridays. My brother was meeting up with his girlfriend later on, and needed to bring an offering. And what better offering is there than pizza, especially since he expected her two daughters to be at her house. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=962"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1281,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962\/revisions\/1281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}