WEBVTT NOTE 20. In Praise of the Tourist Trap 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.000 In Praise of the Tourist Trap 2 00:00:03.000 --> 00:00:17.000 I'm in Florida for an event sponsored by the Mises Institute, and flying into Fort Myers meant walking through the glorious microcivilization that airports have become, little utopias of commerce and plenty. 3 00:00:17.000 --> 00:00:42.000 In the airport you can stand in one spot and choose to walk 20 feet in any direction and find yourself in a Spanish or Thai restaurant, or grab a book from a literary looking place, or have Starbucks, or eat a decadent cinnamon roll, or pretend to be on Seville Row at a high-end men's store, or perhaps get a massage or a tuss down a martini or two, trying on the high life for as long as it lasts. 4 00:00:42.000 --> 00:00:46.000 You say it is all sheer fantasy that this is after all just a stupid airport? 5 00:00:46.000 --> 00:00:49.360 Report, I say, what does it matter? 6 00:00:49.360 --> 00:00:51.840 They have the stuff, and we want the stuff. 7 00:00:51.840 --> 00:00:53.320 What's not to like? 8 00:00:53.320 --> 00:00:58.040 Should we prefer some baron building like the driver's license bureau? 9 00:00:58.040 --> 00:01:03.600 You know that if governments were wholly in charge, this is the way it would look. 10 00:01:03.600 --> 00:01:10.160 Thank goodness for free enterprise and what it is permitted to do to make life more interesting. 11 00:01:10.160 --> 00:01:15.880 All these commercial establishments are wholly dedicated to slavishly serving you and me 12 00:01:15.880 --> 00:01:23.000 and every other traveler, giving us what we want in the most convenient way possible. 13 00:01:23.000 --> 00:01:28.080 This stands in contrast to, for example, the TSA. 14 00:01:28.080 --> 00:01:33.760 Ah, but what about the tourist trap? 15 00:01:33.760 --> 00:01:38.120 These are stores that specialize in heavily marketing what passes for local culture, and 16 00:01:38.120 --> 00:01:41.720 fobbing off tchotchkes on us at inflated prices. 17 00:01:41.720 --> 00:01:43.020 So here is how it works. 18 00:01:43.020 --> 00:01:47.880 You fly into Dallas and you are confronted with a hat store that sells 10-gallon hats 19 00:01:47.880 --> 00:01:54.120 and tacky belt buckles, plus rattlesnake tails and every variety of prickly pear jelly you 20 00:01:54.120 --> 00:01:55.660 can imagine. 21 00:01:55.660 --> 00:01:59.320 What an outrage that a store would dare to make money on people's crazy lust for things 22 00:01:59.320 --> 00:02:01.420 related to Texas! 23 00:02:01.420 --> 00:02:04.620 But you know what? 24 00:02:04.620 --> 00:02:08.900 It turns out that in Texas, people really do wear hats like that. 25 00:02:08.900 --> 00:02:11.180 They really do. 26 00:02:11.180 --> 00:02:14.120 And those rattlesnakes are real. 27 00:02:14.120 --> 00:02:17.200 They are crawling around right now in surprising places. 28 00:02:17.200 --> 00:02:21.440 And such things are not altogether common in other places like Maine and Singapore. 29 00:02:21.440 --> 00:02:25.200 So yes, these are distinctively Texan. 30 00:02:25.200 --> 00:02:28.700 And so it is, with all the rest of this seeming junk. 31 00:02:28.700 --> 00:02:34.520 This is the very essence of Texas culture, boiled down into consumable bites. 32 00:02:34.520 --> 00:02:38.740 And it turns out, people actually do want these things. 33 00:02:38.740 --> 00:02:44.440 How often does it happen that you fly into some odd place, decline to buy the local tchotchkes 34 00:02:44.440 --> 00:02:46.700 and then kick yourself later? 35 00:02:46.700 --> 00:02:51.500 Maybe, when you get home to Chicago, you might wish that you had brought back some prickly 36 00:02:51.500 --> 00:02:55.260 pear jelly and a rattlesnake tail to show your friends. 37 00:02:55.260 --> 00:02:59.500 It turns out that these shops really do meet a need – they allow us to experience local 38 00:02:59.500 --> 00:03:05.580 culture and take home a memento without having to do much work at all. 39 00:03:05.580 --> 00:03:10.780 The first shop I found when flying into Fort Myers offered these fantastic shells, five 40 00:03:10.780 --> 00:03:13.060 for ten dollars. 41 00:03:13.060 --> 00:03:19.080 I picked up a big starfish, a sand dollar, some fancy looking crab condominium, a long 42 00:03:19.080 --> 00:03:24.060 pointy thing from the bottom of the sea, and I threw in one more shell for good measure. 43 00:03:24.060 --> 00:03:27.860 Now you say this was a really stupid purchase, for I could have easily walked out on the 44 00:03:27.860 --> 00:03:31.940 beach and picked up buckets of shells for free. 45 00:03:31.940 --> 00:03:36.140 That might be true enough, but I'm not out walking on the beach. 46 00:03:36.140 --> 00:03:40.140 I'm in my hotel room blogging, and blogging all the more joyfully knowing that I have 47 00:03:40.140 --> 00:03:44.620 a suitcase full of really cool-looking seashells. 48 00:03:44.620 --> 00:03:49.600 But I haven't mentioned the greatest find of all. 49 00:03:49.600 --> 00:03:53.820 And tell me whether you have ever seen anything like this before. 50 00:03:53.820 --> 00:03:57.900 It is the head of an alligator. 51 00:03:57.900 --> 00:04:03.540 It is not a big thing, it is a small alligator, but it is real, with teeth and all. 52 00:04:03.540 --> 00:04:07.980 It was $14.99. 53 00:04:07.980 --> 00:04:11.100 I consider this to be a bargain. 54 00:04:11.100 --> 00:04:17.260 I have never seen one before, and I hope that I will never encounter the live version. 55 00:04:17.260 --> 00:04:21.660 Someone else went to the trouble of raising these nasty things, hacking off their heads, 56 00:04:21.660 --> 00:04:26.260 freeze-drying them or whatever they do, painting them with some shiny stuff, packaging them 57 00:04:26.260 --> 00:04:40.840 And I now have a treasure from Florida to take home, without having to visit a single 58 00:04:40.840 --> 00:04:44.300 swamp or risk life and limb. 59 00:04:44.300 --> 00:04:48.840 You say that I am a victim of a scam, a naive tourist who coughed up money for a worthless 60 00:04:48.840 --> 00:04:49.960 thing? 61 00:04:49.960 --> 00:04:55.460 That I've been taken advantage of by a voracious merchant who preys on unknowing non-Floridians? 62 00:04:55.460 --> 00:05:00.300 Floridians, None of this seems true to me. 63 00:05:00.300 --> 00:05:06.300 It seems to me that this tourist trap gave me exactly what I wanted, and I'm deeply 64 00:05:06.300 --> 00:05:08.940 grateful. 65 00:05:08.940 --> 00:05:15.460 The more travelling I've done, the more I'm alert to the need not to be suspicious of 66 00:05:15.460 --> 00:05:18.060 these local merchants. 67 00:05:18.060 --> 00:05:21.720 When in Rome, buy rosaries, blessed by the Pope. 68 00:05:21.720 --> 00:05:24.760 When in Mecca, buy some tickets to paradise. 69 00:05:24.760 --> 00:05:27.920 When in New York, buy a big apple tea. 70 00:05:27.920 --> 00:05:32.040 When in Paris, snag that tiny model of the Eiffel Tower. 71 00:05:32.040 --> 00:05:36.360 In Russia, get some of the dolls that stack inside of each other. 72 00:05:36.360 --> 00:05:41.040 In Pittsburgh, revel in beer and steel. 73 00:05:41.040 --> 00:05:43.840 These tchotchkes are made for us. 74 00:05:43.840 --> 00:05:48.120 We should be happy to be trapped by the prospect of owning them all. 75 00:05:48.120 --> 00:05:52.760 If this is oppression by shysters, the world could use even more of it.