IT HAS BEEN TEN YEARS since my office was last cleaned. It was like opening a time capsule—and not just because what I found was old. What I found represented a different epoch, a time when all things that mattered were subject to the law of scarcity: what one had no one else could have and therefore it was treasured and hoarded for all eternity.

CHECKING OUT AT THE grocery store the other day, I paid for my sack of rolls. The checkout person handed me my bag.

“Thank you,” I said.

“You’re welcome,” she replied.

I walked away with a sense that something was wrong. Do checkout people usually say, “You’re welcome,” and nothing else? Not usually. Usually they say, “Thank you,” same as the customer says. (Remember, we are talking about the American South, land of politeness, here.)

I’M THE GUY WHO just last week managed to find a plumber who would increase the water pressure in my entire house, defying government controls and thereby causing all appliances to work better. It’s not surprising that this was necessary. Government regulations have made a mess of our daily lives. Whether it is banning effective products or mandating inferior functionality in our appliances and fixtures, government’s role here is indisputably to degrade our quality of life.

I’M TRYING TO ORDER a hamburger, medium well, but the cook was involved in a heated argument with the customer who was insisting that DSL is better and faster than cable for a home internet connection.

“Man, DSL rocks!”

“You are crazy. DSL ain’t nothing. Cable’s bandwidth rocks!”

“You are paying for nothing. You can’t download nothing on cable!”

And so on.

REMEMBER THOSE SILLY DAYS in the 1990s, when Clinton, Gore, and their friends cobbled together our money to put computers in every classroom and community center? The hope was that the computer would at last do what the government has so far been unable to do after a century of work: make every child literate and high-minded. It turned out that most of the new computers gathered dust and became obsolete.

THERE ARE MOMENTS in history when the people are on the move, consistent with the logic of history, and no force on earth can stop them. You can see it in the images of Russians in 1990 pulling down cast-iron statues of Lenin. You can see it in the images of the Romanian people charging Ceausescu’s palace in 1989.

IN THE FREEZER SECTION of the grocery store, there’s Vanilla Bean, French Vanilla, and yet another vanilla flavor called Homemade Vanilla. Now, come on!

EVERY ONCE IN A while, we gain a glimpse of how things might work in a fully privatized society. When it occurs, like a flash of light in the darkness, we should take notice, try to understand its source, and seek ways to make the flash the norm to light up the world.

WHENEVER I’M FEELING BLUE about domestic politics—there is plenty about which to despair—something great happens that reminds me of the long-term case for optimism, which is all about the astonishing expansion of the division of labor globally and in ways that weren’t even possible just a few years ago.

Free Association, Peace, and plenty