The Perfect Town

  Catherine was a 23-year-old nice-looking girl who lived in Sacramento, California. She had been raised in a traditional middle-class family and was well-educated, having completed her studies all the way through college. She had studied at the California State University, a University somewhat notorious for its bad quality, but she was able to complete a Medicine course nonetheless. She had always been a straight-A student, being considered highly intelligent by her peers. Catherine was a typical hardworking student in college, constantly working and studying, which limited the amount of friends she had. During that period, she frequently had taken part-time jobs since she always felt bad about asking her parents for money. Naturally, she had had only money to afford basic supplies such as food and clothes, but she had never asked for much. Catherine hadn't had many friends except for Paul, a 23-year-old man who believed that humans would share their wealth with everyone, living in pure equality, if there were no governments. In college, he was seen by the other students as an underachiever, living off of Catherine's shadow. He had often copied her homework and asked for her money, saying that he did not want to work only to further the goals of evil corporations such as Subway.

When Catherine finished college, Paul decided to drop out since, without her, he was like a parasite without a host. When Catherine knew about Paul's decision, she sat down and talked with him about it, trying to convince him to reconsider. However, he was somewhat able to make her believe that equality of outcome is better than competition to thrive in society. This meant that, for example, the swiftest runner should slow his pace to allow the most sluggish to go forward and not to be so back in the line. On spur of moment, Catherine's world was turned on its head as if her entire existence had been fraudulent. She had been always taught that mercantilist ideas, such as the ones created by Adam Smith, should be the norm. She was unable to counter Paul's claims because the time she had spent with him had led her to a slow indoctrination.

 Catherine began taking as gospel an ideology which punished success and rewarded mediocrity as incentivized by Paul. They both lived as parasites of the state, getting welfare while doing nothing productive in return, ultimately buying a recreational vehicle where they could live in the Last Free Place of America, Slab City. Slab City was a town located in southern California, about nine hundred and twenty kilometers from Sacramento. The two friends discovered that that town was out of government jurisdiction and that the wealth was shared among all residents.

The ride to get to Slab City was long. Catherine and Paul initially drove past major cities in the state such as Los Angeles and Bakersfield and through rural areas established within the desert, as they approached their final destination. Slab City was the remains of Camp Dunlap, a Marine Corps barracks used during World War II. It had about 200 permanent residents, but during the winter - when the "snowbirds" came - it could have up to 2000 people within its borders. Those snowbirds were recreational vehicle owners and squatters, people who took abandoned properties for themselves for a short period.

 When Paul and Catherine arrived in that "city", they immediately met some of the residents who they could recognize from a documentary made on the city. The residents were happy to guide the two friends around the site, showing them the library, the church and some popular attractions namely East Jesus, a habitable art installation decorated mostly with junk such as bottles and scrap metal. Catherine and Paul were quickly acknowledged of the bad sides of the installation, either because they were not as harmless as they could appear or so as to not be afraid of them. Paul was amazed by everything in the city. He thought the art installations such as the Mammoth and the dinosaur were marvelous.

 Catherine wanted to think like her friend, but deep down she couldn't bear with the enormous downsides. Although she thought government regulation wasn't ideal, she couldn't tolerate the fact that they had no private property. That meant that there was no police force (privately owned or otherwise) to protect them if they were victims of the "common crimes" listed by the residents - shootings, arson, destruction of necessary tools such as solar panels, etc. There was no private healthcare system either. Since civilization was about 40 kilometers away, they would almost surely die if they were hurt. Catherine ended up asking Paul about these concerns, but he simply told her that police force existed in the form of mob justice and healthcare was unnecessary since everyone in the town was surely trustworthy. Catherine was skeptical. However, she decided to give the benefit of the doubt to her friend and the tour went on. As they visited the library, Catherine quickly discovered an "agenda". Her favorite books were completely nonexistent, having been replaced with books deemed "acceptable" by the local community. These included, of course, "The Communist Manifesto" and some others relating to Social Justice, including "Saints and Social Justice: A Guide to Changing the World".

Suddenly everything looked bright again in Catherine's mind. She realized the tactics being employed by her friend to change her views. Those were, of course, censorship and the thought that that was the "fairest" possible socioeconomic system, having equality of outcome regardless of the work done by each person. When she defied this, Paul immediately understood she was no longer a sympathizer of his cause. He immediately decided to tell the other residents that there was an individualist amidst their ranks and, provoked by this, set out to capture and lynch her. Catherine tried making a run for it, looking for her recreational vehicle. She sat on the driver's seat and turned on the ignition. As she was about to cross the gate at the city's boundary, a shot was fired to one of the tires, derailing her into a centenary oak.

 Catherine was stunned and everything around her looked blurred. Lost between reality and dreams, she was dragged out of the car. She shivered as her body was being lifted into the air by Paul's heartless arms. A swarm of Volkswagen vans circled them. Within a blink of an eye, Paul tied a noose around Catherine's fragile neck, looped the rest of the rope tightly around one of the oak's branches and brought Catherine almost to her untimely demise. A cracking sound was heard as the oak's branch broke under the girl's weight leaving her nearly unconscious body laying sole in the dusty floor. Paul kneeled and began crying helplessly as he realized that his socioeconomic beliefs had gone too far and had almost led him to murder his best friend.

Humans are inherently capitalist beings as their survival instincts imply that the strongest survive and thrive. This is mirrored by both flora and fauna in nature. Nature itself brings the weakest organisms to extinction. As the oak survived alone in the desert by going further and extracting the nutrients it needed, so did Paul when he looked inside himself and understood the true meaning and strength of Catherine's friendship. The beautiful and intelligent Catherine, who had always supported him and helped him to become a better individual. It is naïve and oxymoronic to deny humans' instincts and to state that without a government humans would share their wealth, as represented by Slab City, the "perfect town" many dream of.