Shark Attacks, Garbage Plates, and Legal Plunder

Three kinds of eating for #ThreeThoughtThursday

For me, Substack is a job, not a hobby. Please help me keep (most of) my content free by supporting me today!

#1 The Garbage Plate

Last week, I told you the moving tale of my hardscrabble childhood out on the prairie in the 19th century. (It might not have actually been my childhood.) In the course of that heart-wrenching yarn, I told you about the signature condiment of Rochester, NY.

But I did not tell you about what that condiment does.

Rochester’s signature condiment is, in fact, slorped all over Rochester’s signature contribution to world cuisine: the garbage plate.

The garbage plate is a horrifying, magical concoction invented in the early 20th century by Greek immigrant Alex Tahou. Since the Tahous have trademarked the “garbage” name, other restaurants call their versions a trash plate, junkyard plate, compost plate, and the like. But we all just call it garbage anyway.

I know…your mouth is watering already.

Imagine a plate with a mound of mac salad abutting a mound of french fries or home fries. There might also be a smaller mound of baked beans in there somewhere.

Now, put a hot dog, or a cheeseburger, or both, or some other meat, atop the mounds.

Next, smother it in a thin ground-beef hot sauce that, it has been said, “slightly resembles the amount of meat and grease one would scrape off a grill at the end of a shift at a burger restaurant.”

Throw on some onions and maybe a few flourishes of mustard and you’re done!

Few people outside of Western New York have heard of it, and when they do, most react with skepticism and fear. But it actually works.

I was certainly skeptical when I first got here. Then one day, in a bowling alley in a town abutting Lake Ontario, I had one. And I understood. It really is garbage. Delicious, delicious garbage.

It’s also great hangover food. Or so I’ve heard.

#2 MediaReality™, Actual Reality, and Shark Attacks

Recently, a commenter brought up one of the many ways in which news media fabricate a reality™ that bears little resemblance to actual reality. This reminded me of a story.

If I have my timeline right, it was early 2002. My girlfriend (now my wife) and I were traveling to Florida on a big ‘ol jet plane…

I don’t know if you recall, but the previous year was The Year of the Shark Attack. The media were obsessively obsessing over instances of sharks killing people. It was a topic of water-cooler discussions and a subject of TV shows.

But then someone ran the numbers and found that shark attacks were actually down that year. The hype was entirely the result of the media’s decision to fixate on it.

I told a fellow passenger on our flight about these data, and she absolutely, stridently, unequivocally refused to believe it. Shark attacks were a HUGE problem. Way higher than normal. She was sure of it.

There is a lesson in here somewhere. It is either

a) if you swim in the ocean, you’re maybe probably definitely going to get eaten by a shark, or

b) don’t believe stuff the media says.

#3 Legal plunder

Another commenter, in response to a recent article, quoted Bastiat:

"However, the law can become a threat to itself when used to legalize plunder."

I love Bastiat quotes! But that one prompted me to ask,

When was the law NOT used to legalize plunder?

Continental feudalism and manorialism created a fixed class of serfs, from whom the ruling classes drew taxes and resources.

Socialism, communism, and all other forms of leftism are based on an ethos that specifically lionizes and legalizes plunder. That is their whole point.

So what system does not?

American-style constitutional republicanism? It certainly legalizes plunder now. How long was the period from its start to when it too began allowing legal plunder? A few decades? The lifetime of one human grandmother? Less?

Whenever that brief interregnum was, why do we persist in believing that we can somehow wind the clock back to that point now? And even if we were able somehow to achieve that fantastical task, how long could we maintain that condition before things reverted back to legal plunder?

It’s all legal plunder. That is pretty much why governments form.

The sooner we all understand that, the sooner we can end it.

Eugene Peretz/Flickr/CC2.0