“I know the Russians love their children too!”

Sting

I know it is all the rage to hate the Russians these days. They are bad, bad people. They want to ruin our elections, they have some of the most terrifying car accident videos on YouTube, and they are responsible for the death of Apollo Creed. You remember Ivan Drago’s sweeping haymaker to poor old Apollo’s jaw, the Russians could have stopped it from ever happening. Or was that just a scene in a Rocky movie? It doesn’t matter, it is hard to tell the difference between well-made fiction and real-life anymore anyways. If you don’t believe me, you probably haven’t watched the news in a while.

After living in Russia for a full year myself, let me assure you of something, the Russians do love their children too.

I have seen it first hand. They actually kiss their kids, bundle them up in wintertime, and pick daisies with them in the local park when the warm sun is out. I even held a Russian baby one time, and they smile and coo just like American babies. I know what you are thinking, don’t let them fool you, they are buttering you up so you might give their parents the coordinates for America’s nuclear missile silos and we will lose War Games when Matthew Broderick gets on his Tandy computer for the second time to play “Global Thermonuclear War.”

One day my wife and I were given a tour of the city we were living in at the time, Stavropol. We went to go see the daycare center where most kids from age of 2 to 4 grew up before they went to school. It was a huge place, and there was a giant playroom that was full of toys: Lincoln Logs, Legos, teddy bears, Barbies, Cabbage Patch Kids, and of course, Matchbox Cars.

I love playing with toys, so in my curiosity, I sat down with a few of the kids and started playing. But as I picked up the toys I noticed that most of them were sad and sorry looking. I held back my tears as I saw that every car I picked up had a missing wheel or no wheels at all. Each teddy bear was ripped, dirty brown, and had smeared snot and other assorted kinder-fluids on theIr matted down fur. Many of the Barbies were headless and the biggest shocker of all was that most of the crayons were broken in half.

I sat in bewilderment, wondering if these kids ever had the joy of opening up their very own brand new box of assorted crayons that had never been used? I will never forget when I got a brand new box of 48 Crayolas all organized in a rainbow pattern, and the box had a sharpener on the back. I ran to my bedroom and hid the box from my sisters until I used them on just the right coloring book.

But the poor Russian kids, I was told they had to share everything. It was all “Public Goods”. Instead of placing their favorite matchbox cars on a shelf that they could look at as they went to bed, they used them as weapons to throw at each other during playtime. And the teddy bears in that daycare never knew the warm pillow of a child’s bed. Who wants to snuggle with a smelly bear?

What good are public goods? No one treats them as their very own. Public goods is a fancy way to say that everything is up for grabs, even the person who is a careless creep has just as much right to them as the person who tries to really care. Over time public means worthless.

When all the toys are for everyone, none of the toys are individually loved. Private toys, however, are cared for, loved, admired and placed high on a shelf. Private toys are special, just ask Woody and Jessie from Toy Story. They know a child’s love.

So what is the point of the saga of the Russian toys? Pretty obvious, isn’t it? Public goods are a humbug.