Who Does Your Shopping For You?

Imagine if the government decided that it was going to buy all of your
groceries for you. This is to make sure that everyone gets the amount of
food that government decides you need. It's to make sure that nobody does
without, regardless of their income. Such a noble, compassionate idea, and
only the cold-hearted rich could oppose such an idea.
But wait. In this program, just to make sure that everyone got groceries of
equal quality and freshness and nutritional value, the government will pick
out the fruit and vegetables, as well as the brand of cereal and milk, and
the size of the eggs. They'll even decide whether you get jumbo,
farm-raised, free range, etc. In short, as a part of that program, Uncle Sam
will make all of those decisions for you. And if anyone else tries to sell
you groceries, Uncle Sam will use the power of Congress to make sure that
those questionable grocers obey every regulation that can be squeezed into a
two thousand page document. You'll be able to use any grocer that you want,
but rest assured that your grocer won't sell anything that Uncle Sam doesn't
approve, or charge less for your groceries than Uncle Sam charges. If the
private grocer steps out of line, don't worry. Uncle Sam will take care of
them. Oh, and don't be foolish enough try to stay out Uncle Sam's grocery
plan. Because if you don't go with someone's plan, you could actually get
fined more than the price of a years' worth of groceries. Never mind that
Uncle Sam doesn't have the legal right (which by law MUST be specified in
the Constitution) to require you to subscribe to a grocery plan, they're
going to do it anyway.
This is obviously ridiculous. Nobody would allow the government (which
couldn't run a grocery store), to pick out their groceries for them, nor
would they want the government to put smaller, more efficient, less
expensive grocery stores out of business. I mean, when was the last time the
government ran a business better than the private sector?