So I'm forced to go to Wal-Mart

The Cold War was a battle of ideologies--not just democracy vs. totalitarianism, but also between capitalism and communism. Most of us would think that the Cold War ended with communism and socialism vanquished. But alas, socialism has taken ahold of the very military which once guarded against the Red Menace.

In a normal economic system, you have supply and demand. When there's a lot of demand for, say, haircuts on a military base, you have suppliers stepping in to fill the demand--i.e., building lots of barber shops and offering many haircuts. Then you have the barber shop at Wheeler-Sack Army Airfield:

Seriously, four hours a day for five days a week? I spent 45 minutes driving through the snow to Ft. Drum only to find out that you guys don't cut hair on weekends? Between the long lines at AAFES and its nature as, essentially, a government-run business, I have to get haircuts, uniforms and boots on the economy just on principle.

This, of course, led me to get my hair cut at Wal-Mart, which, fortunately, was not as scary as it could have been.