(cultural observation) TAXI DRIVERS I take a taxi along the same street every da

(cultural observation)

TAXI DRIVERS

I take a taxi along the same street every day. Its about a $5 fare to the office at most. The taxis collect both on the corner across from my house where Pavel waits for me most mornings unless he gets a fare to the airport. The majority sit around Kontractova (The Place Of Contracts – the old market).

Now, you know, I have this aristocratic moral intuition that means speaking truth to power, being unforgivingly demanding of peers, forgiving of dependents, and charitable to the working man. And so I like to tip people at the bottom who do good work and deliver good customer service. I see it as a civic duty. A way of creating a feedback loop of good service, and the ‘commercial society’.

So, because of this behavior, I have this reputation as a ‘mark’ among the taxi drivers. And I love it.

Every morning I get to play this game. Everyone knows its a game. And it’s a pretty fun game. If Pavel is across the street he charges me $5, and he won’t take more. If I dont have a five, he gets it from me the next day. If He’s not there, then I walk to Kontractova and try to find someone else.

And the drivers at Kontractova compete, good naturedly, for my fare. Why? Because they know that I love the game with them, and that I’ll always pay more. So we always have this dance. I tell them $4, they tell me $10, I tell them that it’s robbery and offer $5, they tell me “You are businessman!, I have good car!” and finally we settle on $6 or $7, and they know I’ll give them $8 or $10. So I get to play this sort of human pokemon game every morning for the price of a latte, and I absolutely love it. It’s a weird way of belonging to the community but every single person who works on this street pretty much knows me now.

It’s a Karma thing. I just love it. Conservatism is, after all, a social philosophy tightly bound by the law of Karma. And while I’m a libertarian, I’m a conservative and therefore aristocratic, libertarian.

We are only equal in our care for one another.

And that’s the only equality we need.