Where else would you want to celebrate a silver anniversary but Costco? Yet that’s where my wife and I went after 35 years of marriage to spend a day together and enjoy what the new Costco in Liberty Township, Ohio had to offer. Out of all the options that are out there, all we really wanted to do was buy a new kayak for some 2023 adventures and have a hot dog meal together. And that’s how it is when you are married for so long. You get a real feel for what your spouse likes, and you get to graduate from any pretension of social circumstance. And the new Costco is fantastic; it was bustling on a Sunday afternoon, and it seemed much busier than it was at the previous location down at Tri-County, which is several miles south of Liberty Township. Now I’ve talked about this situation before, how money tends to move from neighborhood to neighborhood based on the rejection of liberal areas as opposed to conservative regions. Money flows to where conservatives reside, generally leaving behind the toxic stench of liberalism, and you can plot this out on a map all across America. And that was never more obvious than when the Costco in Tri-County moved just a few miles north to Liberty Township, Ohio, to essentially get away from the derelicts that were attending that store, driving away good people who otherwise would have wanted to visit. 

And my wife was certainly one of those people; she would never have felt comfortable going to that Tri-County Costco to have a hot dog meal to celebrate a wedding anniversary. We would go there to have an occasional hot dog together and meet for lunch or while busy things were happening in our life, and it was convenient. But there were a lot of slugs at the Tri-County store that the new store just didn’t have. Now Costco is an excellent example because it has a stable baseline measure. You must have a membership to even get into a Costco store, so a unified value is already established. That means that the typical attendees are regionally inspired. And during our anniversary meal at Costco in Liberty Township, the store was jam-packed, and there weren’t any derelicts, slobs, or slugs of any kind, making it a very nice experience. I’m sure Costco and other businesses would never admit to this problem because it would get them into all kinds of social trouble. But I can say it. People don’t like to be around slugs; when a store gives them a slob-free experience, they will flock toward that economic opportunity. And when I say people are not of a preferred standard, I’m not talking about skin color. There were plenty of diverse people at the Liberty Township store from all over the world. But they at least shared values of a social standard that was refreshing. The cars in the parking lot were all nice; there were not a lot of people with neck tattoos, looking like they just broke out of prison. Nobody smelled like pot smoke standing in line with us. It was nice, and the people there agreed, and it made shopping for things much more fun. 

This is a problem of social management; when an area government becomes too big and starts looking to make victims of its residents, then the bi-product is liberalism. And from there, bad behavior is often rewarded or overlooked. And social conditions in that community go downhill quickly. This can happen in just a neighborhood or in entire states, such as California is these days. It can ruin a community over a decade, or it might take a generation, but eventually, when nefarious characters start bringing bad behavior to a region that people call home, then good people tend to stay locked up in their homes, or they move away. And Tri-County is one of those obvious areas that used to be one of the most vibrant centers of economic activity in the state of Ohio. But as liberal policies failed to regulate bad behavior, then good money packed up and left. And people who had money simply stopped coming to visit because they didn’t want to be around the bad behavior of an out-of-control youth or people who obviously were not sharing values of worth with other people. They didn’t dress well; they spoke poorly to each other and otherwise presented themselves as disasters of intellect and objectionable to a shared experience. This is the cost of too much government that imposes high taxes that pushes people away, leaving behind only the leeches who live off the efforts of others. People with money tend to have values that attract it, so economic depravity follows liberal political policies. There aren’t many places in all of the world where liberal policies equal sustained wealth generation. Wherever big government imposes bad social behavior degradation is soon to follow, including well-known cities like Paris and London. 

Developers have solved this problem of protecting retailers by having privately managed offerings, such as Liberty Center, which is near the new Liberty Township Costco, or the Greene in Dayton, which are self-contained cities of their own. They give you the look of a city environment but are carefully managed to keep away the derelicts and slobs. You won’t find gang behavior in those places with graffiti all over the walls, and that’s what shoppers want. They want to be free of such menaces so they can spend their money on things they value without the threats to their safety, perceived or real. I know many people who have tried to give Over-The-Rhine a chance in downtown Cincinnati only to have their cars broken into and have the women catcalled by unchained youth openly smoking pot on street corners. Only liberals are willing even to look the other way with that behavior. Conservatives, they just don’t go, and they keep their money. And those are the facts, bad behavior pushes away financial wealth and creates a depleted condition. Then it’s so rare to have such an experience as my wife, and I had at Costco that it was nice enough for us to celebrate a wedding anniversary there and to relax. There were a lot of people, but the crowd had shared interests. Many were like us; they wanted to buy a new boat, then right next to it, there were bacon and potato skins. How could you not like that? But nobody wants to deal with people with very little value for things in life, regardless of skin color. Bad behavior will turn away economic activity more than any other detrimental condition. And when communities like Tri-County fail to manage their standard of living and let things slide downhill, the public transportation system starts to bring duds in from the deprived areas; then, the virus spreads to those nicer areas. And it is a virus; it’s a virus of bad conduct. It either spreads to others directly or it inspires them to pack up and leave for an area without such people. And that is a condition of management that is consistent no matter where in the world you go. And it’s why my wife and I went to Costco for our 35^th anniversary as opposed to any other place.

Rich Hoffman