Love Thy Neighbor... Even When the Weather Sucks

It's snowing like crazy and I have about 100ft x 10ft of driveway to shovel.

My neighbors are an older couple, I'd guess somewhere between 65-75 years old. I see them outside shoveling a walkway every time it snows. I've offered to help, but its a lot to do mine AND theirs and they just have a plow guy come in the morning. The wife told me they pay him $30 each time.

The other day they left their garage door open and I saw an old snow blower sitting in the way back. When I went out tonight to shovel, the old man was shoveling too so I took that opportunity to ask him about it. He said he wasn't sure if it ran and that it'd been a couple years since he started it.

He went inside and I thought "I will make it run if it means I don't have to shovel this drive anymore". About 20 minutes pass and his wife comes out. I explain to her that if they'd be wiling to sell the blower for cheap, I'd fix it and I'd do both their drive and mine when it snows. She said she'd let her husband know my proposal.

A few minutes later, he comes out and asks if I was serious about what I'd said. Giddy as a school girl, I let him know that I was absolutely serious. So we opened up the garage, went to start it and it cranked right up.

He gave it to me on the spot. He said he didn't want anything for it, but if I'd do his driveway after doing mine, that's good enough as payment for him. I agreed and I cleared both our driveways in less than half the time it would take me to shovel just mine. He even filled it with gas first.

I don't have an extra $200 for a snowblower right now. But I am young, and I don't mind doing an extra driveway with a machine.
He has a snowblower but doesn't have the back to run it. He doesn't need $200, but he needs his driveway cleared. To me, the value of what I need is greater than the value of what he needs. To him, the value of what he needs is greater than the value of what I need. We just completed a transaction without even incorporating a medium of exchange!

The moral of this story is that Capitalism and Voluntarism work and we all practice it daily. You are an anarchist whether you believe it or not. There is no such thing as government. There are only mutually consenting parties and third party individuals who will do the bidding of powerful men at the barrel of a gun. The inhibition of capitalism cannot exist without violence against peaceful people.

By the way, I recently acquired a self propelled snow blower and I'm doing driveways for $20 ;) #GoogleVoluntarism