WEBVTT NOTE 11. Commodify My Grass, and Everything Else 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.840 Commodify my grass and everything else. 2 00:00:05.840 --> 00:00:11.760 Every once in a while we gain a glimpse of how things might work in a fully privatized 3 00:00:11.760 --> 00:00:13.900 society. 4 00:00:13.900 --> 00:00:20.760 When it occurs, like a flash of light in the darkness, we should take notice, try to understand 5 00:00:20.760 --> 00:00:27.940 its source and seek ways to make the flash the norm to light up the world. 6 00:00:27.940 --> 00:00:33.380 And so it happened with my yard this week – yes, I'm part of the whole American 7 00:00:33.380 --> 00:00:38.540 fetish for recreating English manor estates in miniature in our front yards, a legacy 8 00:00:38.540 --> 00:00:46.540 left by our former colonial owners whose rule we pretend to have thrown off 225 years ago. 9 00:00:46.540 --> 00:00:52.380 But this legacy of serfdom still oppresses us in a self-imposed way through our tendency 10 00:00:52.380 --> 00:00:58.040 to want large lawns of green grass that grows for no particular purpose in our front and 11 00:00:58.040 --> 00:01:06.340 backyards that also exist for no particular purpose. And so we try to keep them up, we 12 00:01:06.340 --> 00:01:09.940 mow them, we water them, we try to keep the weeds away with fertilizers about which we 13 00:01:09.940 --> 00:01:18.380 know nothing. When I'm at the hardware store, I'm asked to choose between 5, 40, 10, 10, 14 00:01:18.380 --> 00:01:27.680 10-10-10, 40-15-30, and 0-40-15, and I have no idea what all this means, so I do the next 15 00:01:27.680 --> 00:01:32.260 best thing – I go for packaging and promotion. 16 00:01:32.260 --> 00:01:37.660 This stuff claims to make my yard healthy and green, and that's what I want, but wait, 17 00:01:37.660 --> 00:01:39.020 the next one claims the same. 18 00:01:39.020 --> 00:01:44.220 Oh wait, here's one that also controls the following 42 weeds, and surely my weeds are 19 00:01:44.220 --> 00:01:48.020 on this list, but how can I know for sure? 20 00:01:48.020 --> 00:01:52.260 Once I took a sprig of weed into the store and asked, what is this? 21 00:01:52.260 --> 00:01:54.260 The guy said he didn't recognize it. 22 00:01:54.260 --> 00:01:59.500 Well, how can I control it if even the experts don't recognize it? 23 00:01:59.500 --> 00:02:05.180 Then there's this whole pre-emergence slash post-emergence issue. 24 00:02:05.180 --> 00:02:09.520 One bag of fertilizer says that I better use this stuff before the weeds grow. 25 00:02:09.520 --> 00:02:12.460 So now I feel like a slacker because my weeds are already growing. 26 00:02:12.460 --> 00:02:16.620 And anyway, how are you supposed to know that you have a weed problem until they grow? 27 00:02:16.620 --> 00:02:21.680 Am I supposed to be some kind of soil tester with a laboratory in the basement? 28 00:02:21.680 --> 00:02:26.300 This guy happened to mention to me over dinner that he uses a company called True Green, 29 00:02:26.300 --> 00:02:28.360 and sure enough, there is such a company. 30 00:02:28.360 --> 00:02:31.180 It takes care of all these issues for you. 31 00:02:31.180 --> 00:02:37.620 The slogan of the company is, go greener, but it is obviously a hilarious play on words. 32 00:02:37.620 --> 00:02:40.660 We aren't talking environmentalism here. 33 00:02:40.660 --> 00:02:45.900 The company was formerly known as Chemlawn, but then public opinion was browbeaten into 34 00:02:45.900 --> 00:02:53.420 into hating chemicals – hence true green – same as sugar smacks – was transformed 35 00:02:53.420 --> 00:02:58.900 into honey smacks when public opinion turned against sugar. 36 00:02:58.900 --> 00:03:03.660 In any case, this company struck me as a dream come true – it turns out to be a national 37 00:03:03.660 --> 00:03:08.260 company like McDonald's or CVS with locally owned branches. 38 00:03:08.260 --> 00:03:12.420 I went to the national website and put in my address, and by the time I got home, I 39 00:03:12.420 --> 00:03:16.780 had a full analytical chart stuck in my door. 40 00:03:16.780 --> 00:03:25.100 It turns out that I have a problem with crabgrass, chickweed, bittercress, bahiagrass, dichondra, 41 00:03:25.100 --> 00:03:30.460 wild onion, dallas grass, henbit, buttonweed, nutsedge, spurge, carolina, geranium, poa, 42 00:03:30.460 --> 00:03:33.940 anua, vetch and fire ants! 43 00:03:33.940 --> 00:03:39.420 But fortunately I have no active diseases and the mowing has been good – up with that! 44 00:03:39.420 --> 00:03:45.520 Let's get this – the company says that I need to aerate my yard. 45 00:03:45.520 --> 00:03:49.540 So now, I recall a product I saw in one of those in-flight magazines. 46 00:03:49.540 --> 00:03:52.700 It was a pair of shoes with huge spikes on them. 47 00:03:52.700 --> 00:03:57.180 They were called yard-aeration shoes, with the idea that you strap them on and walk around 48 00:03:57.180 --> 00:04:00.140 your yard poking holes everywhere. 49 00:04:00.140 --> 00:04:05.040 This struck me as something good to do, but that I could actually buy these shoes and 50 00:04:05.040 --> 00:04:08.480 do that seemed completely implausible. 51 00:04:08.480 --> 00:04:13.120 Ever since, I've had the feeling that my yard needed this done, but I had no way to figure 52 00:04:13.120 --> 00:04:15.080 out how to do it. 53 00:04:15.080 --> 00:04:20.600 Well, all problems are solved, thanks to TruGreen, and for a lot less money than one might expect. 54 00:04:20.600 --> 00:04:22.720 Why hadn't I done this years ago? 55 00:04:22.720 --> 00:04:24.160 It's a mystery. 56 00:04:24.160 --> 00:04:28.880 I was somehow under the impression that this was a job for a real man to do. 57 00:04:28.880 --> 00:04:33.680 I mean, what is my life worth if I can't keep up a great-looking yard and impress all my 58 00:04:33.680 --> 00:04:38.240 neighbors with my lordlike control over my domain? 59 00:04:38.240 --> 00:04:39.920 Enough of that, I say. 60 00:04:39.920 --> 00:04:45.000 My grass is a commodity, and it should be properly commodified – its care totally 61 00:04:45.000 --> 00:04:46.000 commercialized. 62 00:04:46.000 --> 00:04:51.120 But it does start one to think about things. 63 00:04:51.120 --> 00:04:56.080 Here we have a national company – and there are probably many others – that is dedicated 64 00:04:56.080 --> 00:05:00.560 to making life's stupidest tasks completely bearable and doable. 65 00:05:00.560 --> 00:05:05.320 Is there anything that private markets can't do? 66 00:05:05.320 --> 00:05:08.240 I'm thinking here of the trash problem. 67 00:05:08.240 --> 00:05:13.040 No, there is no trash nightmare taking place in my town, but there are persistent problems 68 00:05:13.040 --> 00:05:16.480 that drive me crazy over time. 69 00:05:16.480 --> 00:05:18.960 Why didn't the city take my trash? 70 00:05:18.960 --> 00:05:23.600 Oh, I put a box in the clippings bag and I'm not supposed to do that. 71 00:05:23.600 --> 00:05:28.720 Or I put clippings in the official city trash container and I'm not supposed to do that. 72 00:05:28.720 --> 00:05:32.840 Or I put an old chair out on Monday and old chairs are only collected on every second 73 00:05:32.840 --> 00:05:37.480 Wednesday, or I put out limbs from a tree on the second Tuesday of the month and don't 74 00:05:37.480 --> 00:05:43.280 I know that limbs are only collected on the third Thursday of the growing season? 75 00:05:43.280 --> 00:05:45.280 Then there is the water problem. 76 00:05:45.280 --> 00:05:51.160 The city – all governments – are dedicated to making us use less and less of the stuff. 77 00:05:51.160 --> 00:05:55.120 Our toilets don't work, our showers are reduced to a trickle, we are hectored not 78 00:05:55.120 --> 00:06:00.880 to water the grass, our clothes, washers and dishwashers are supposed to run on one gallon 79 00:06:00.880 --> 00:06:07.200 And still, every time there is a spell without rain, we are warned that civilization may 80 00:06:07.200 --> 00:06:14.280 soon come to an end, and the water must be severely rationed, as if it isn't already. 81 00:06:14.280 --> 00:06:18.880 Are we really supposed to believe that private markets can't deliver water to our homes 82 00:06:18.880 --> 00:06:23.520 in a way that is economically rational and consumer-friendly? 83 00:06:23.520 --> 00:06:28.000 Same with electricity, gas, sanitation and everything else. 84 00:06:28.000 --> 00:06:34.080 To modify all these things and we'd see local, regional, national and even global companies 85 00:06:34.080 --> 00:06:40.000 competing to serve us, falling all over each other to bring us exactly what we want at 86 00:06:40.000 --> 00:06:45.680 prices that are low and falling like the prices of computer hardware. 87 00:06:45.680 --> 00:06:51.920 As for mail, this is a no-brainer. 88 00:06:51.920 --> 00:06:56.800 Thank goodness that no local government has decided that lawn care is a public good that 89 00:06:56.800 --> 00:07:00.320 must be provided by quasi-public companies. 90 00:07:00.320 --> 00:07:04.680 I can promise you this – if this were the case, we'd all have a set of aerator shoes 91 00:07:04.680 --> 00:07:09.000 in our closet, and the grass would still be infested with every weed listed above, and 92 00:07:09.000 --> 00:07:13.680 then some, including untold diseases. 93 00:07:13.680 --> 00:07:21.200 Private lawn care – here is the flash in the darkness that shows the way forward. 94 00:07:21.200 --> 00:07:26.680 Commodify yards, commodify water and trash, commodify everything. 95 00:07:26.680 --> 00:07:34.760 Then, and only then, will we become what all Americans secretly dream to become – lords 96 00:07:34.760 --> 00:07:38.200 of our estate in every sense.