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… news reports would regularly include stories of “grocery experts” offering new and “pioneering” proposals to improve grocery distribution, and of the citizens of “grocery districts” meeting with their local “grocery boards” to discuss and debate these different proposals. Each affiliate of a major national network (like each of the national networks), as well as each newspaper and other significant news outlet, would have its own “grocery reporter” (or “grocery correspondent”) to keep tabs on the latest efforts to improve the way government delivers groceries to citizens.
When new big-city mayors are sworn into office they would typically replace the incumbent “Grocery Superintendents” (or “Grocery Chancellors”) with their own preferred “Grocery Superintendents” (or “Chancellors”). The local policy punditry would discuss in great detail the differences in the grocery-supply philosophies of the new Grocery Superintendents compared to those of the outgoing Superintendents. “Grocery-beat reporters” would often solicit from people on the street these people’s opinions of the different methods proposed to improve grocery distribution. Questions such as “Do you think new Grocery Chancellor Smith’s proposal to allow a handful of people to buy their groceries from charter grocery stores is a good idea? Or do you side with former Chancellor Jones in staunchly opposing charter grocery stores?” would be asked and seriously answered.
Ordinary men and women – physicians, electricians, cab drivers, auto mechanics, professors of economics, web designers, kennel owners, carpenters – almost none of whom have the slightest bit of expertise or experience to qualify them to assess the different methods proposed to deliver groceries, would nevertheless be expected to have such an opinion, and they would be applauded if and when they attend the next meeting of the “Grocery Board” to express their opinions on how best to supply groceries.
When some new method of supplying groceries is chosen, many people will await with great hope and joy the coming improvement in grocery supply – and such people will always suffer disappointment when (as would nearly always be the case) the expected improvement in grocery supply doesn’t materialize. “Professors of Groceries” in all the top “Schools of Groceries” across the land would debate with each other and with the public the whys and why-nots of the failure of the latest scheme to make America again #1 in international measures of grocery distribution. Newspapers of record would regularly feature headline reports on the “grocery crisis.”
Anyone proposing to get government out of the grocery-supply business would, of course, be ridiculed as being totally unrealistic or being an out-of-touch ideologue, or accused of harboring a secret desire to see the the vast majority of people starve while only the top one percent of the population continues to enjoy excellent access to superb groceries. Likewise, proposals to cut (or to not increase) grocery-district funding would be widely condemned as being pro-starvation proposals. And efforts to measure the performance of grocery-store workers would be mocked as impossible as well as unfair to such workers. Efforts to restrain the pay of grocery-store workers would be portrayed as efforts to deny ordinary citizens access to the best possible supply of groceries.
Ordinary citizens would, in short, be expected to ponder appropriate grocery budgeting as well as alternative grocery theories, and to have informed opinions on all grocery-supply matters – for, in the finest democratic tradition, these citizens, as voters, would be responsible for superintending the supply of groceries.