On clement days—which means most days here in California—I get back and forth between my home and my office on a bicycle. Alas, I have found it simply impossible to purchase a simple, three-speed bike of the kind I fondly recall from my youth, which wasn’t really all that long ago, by the way, because every bicycle manufacturer on the planet now offers only single-speech “beach bikes,” which are no good for hills, or multiple-speed bikes (ten-, 15-, 21-speed are the usual options) on which the chains, the countless gears, and the derailleurs are always getting out of whack, and who wants to ride a bike a component of which is in French anyway?

Each morning when I climb onto my 21-speed bike, only three speeds of which ever work properly, I find the term “market failure,” popularized by John Kenneth Galbraith, entering my mind. For a moment or two every morning, in other words, I am—I can’t help myself—a socialist.

Schwinn, are you listening?