N.P.D.: Neoliberal Police Department

I was looking at graphs of Kuroda-kun's bazooka in the transit fare enforcement office when a call came in. I grudgingly alt-tabbed to see it. It was Klaus Schwab himself.

“Bad news, officer. We got a situation.” Or so I heard over his thick accent.

“What? Is Biden trying to raise corporate taxes again?”

“Worse. A boomer just evaded their fare on a bus to the comnunity consultation on the proposed neighbourhood.”

I slammed my keyboard so hard that Palantir marked my house as a terrorist base. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Community meetings are the most depraved form of communism. They represent the oppression of the many by the few, and of the weak by the incompetent. Do we have a plan?”

“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to catch whoever did this and we’re going to expose their ideas to the free marketplace of ideas our democracy was based on.”

“Easy, chief,” I said. “Those who oppose new housing construction depress demand for low-skilled manufacturing workers who make things like furniture and hard hats. In other words, they hate the global poor.”

He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Sue Jamal Seong-min Juarez-Lopez Fox-Cockett Deliah al-Hussein. Now you get out there and find that person.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”

I turned on the Xiaomi car's siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal community center strangled on all sides by suburban wasteland. I held my breath and went inside.

“Hands up, and away from the grass!” Grass is an oppressive symbol of racist exclusionary zoning regulations and more importantly, it is a major cause of spatial economic misallocation.

I flashed my badge and my gun and a picture of Soros. I realized that I hadn't talked to anybody since my wife left me a few years ago, so I blushed in embarassment and panicked. “N-n-nobody move u-u-unless you w-w-want to!” I stammered. They ignored me.

It took me five whole minutes to regain my composure. I then roared, “Which one of you punks am I going to shoot for defying the forces of globalized finance?” They finally stopped, although their hostile stares revealed they were against both me and the free flow of globalized capital. Just like the CCP.

“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of economic liberty is the foundation of our modern world?”

It didn’t seem like they did.

“Seriously, guys. The wealth disparities betwen country pairs like the two Koreas are natural experiments that prove the importance of free markets. In fact, the case of China's real estate collapse shows that implicit government promises to support real estate prices by restricting housing supply in high-demand cities creates a fundamentally unsustainable investment boom in housing leading to potential economic catastrophe.”

Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn't even care about economic news from halfway around the world.

I figured I could wait them out. I started loudly reciting tables from A Monetary History of the United States. A pregnant lady said I was giving her cramps, but I didn't care because her shirt pin said "Coalition of Progressive Electors / COPE", which marked her as a succ. Just then, a retiree turned away and limped off.

I could see he was going towards the grass. “Freeze, and get of the lawn!” I yelled. Too late. A foot made contact with various invasive Poaceae species. At least they were being trampled. I went after him.

“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was much faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on grass. An empowered UN needs to tax this negative externality, but thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt nationalist governments and the grass-touching lobby, it will never happen.

I was losing him, but then we reached his house. “If you don't come out, I'll raise the retirement age!” I yelled.

“Too bad you aren't old enough to vote” came the response. Ignoring the fact that I was actually under 18, those boomers cannot be reasoned with.

He turned. In his hand was a dangerous AR-15 assault weapon. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a Chevrolet Suburban less than a foot from his head. I shot the multi-ton regulatory loophole again, on purpose.

“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I evaded fares to go to the community consultation to lobby against neo-Kowloon Walled City.”

“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I photographed his ID to calculate the profit-maximizing fine using an algorithm developed by u/Integralds himself.

“Because I was afraid.”

“Afraid?”

“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of homeowners,” he said. “I’m a homeowner.”

I wanted to coldcock the guy. A homeowner stole my wife. Instead, I shook my head.

“Let this be a message to all your rent-seeking landowner friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many community consultations you attend, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of economic freedom underpinned by efficient regulation.”

He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me the recommeded tip. I recieved an extra 20%.