Larry and the TQA

June 2022

Larry from the Textile Quota Agency phoned Barry, over at the Weight Quota Agency in a bit of a nervous frenzy. It is no coincidence, by the way, that their names are similar; we instituted a name quota, of course, so there are only five male names (Larry, Barry, Jerry, Harry, and Gary) and five female names (Shelly, Kelly, Melly, Nelly, and Ellie) in the world. It’s only Fair.

Anyways, Larry sputtered, “Barry, we have fifteen hundred surplus size 2XL uniforms in inventory here. Are you guys still short on your obesity quota?”

“Yea, yea, I know. We’re trying to get the numbers up. I’m just waiting to see how many volunteers we got, we’ve already started sending out mandates too.”

“Thanks, Barry, but it is troubling that we are still short, so please keep me posted.”

This was indeed troubling news. Quotas had been established, of course, for almost everything on Earth by this point, with a few minor exceptions like toenail length and hair length, which haven’t been regulated yet, but the Government is working on those too. It started a hundred or so years ago with minor, meager, tepid, and frankly, wholly unsatisfactory quotas. Schools set certain percentage requirements for each ethnicity that they had to let in. It was only Fair, of course, but it was not enough. Then came quotes on height and hair color (which proved challenging to meet for redheads), and eye color, and religion (which was eventually dropped when the Government got rid of that silly idea altogether), and age, and shoe size, and so on. These measures seemed to work as they got more far-reaching and had the desired effect of making every graduate as equally unremarkable as the next. They of course set quotas for grades too. 100% of each class was to receive an “A”. For how would someone feel if he got a “B”, or a “C”, let alone an “F,” while some snotty, nerdy, book-wormy, high-achieving weasel got an “A” by busting her butt studying all semester? This quota had to be set, of course, of course.

Eventually, these brilliant measures, after proving their efficacy in universities, were applied to other aspects of our society. As Government centralized and grew, it became easier to institute these quotas. There was at first significant resistance from some folks, especially in the United States—those damn money-grubbing classical liberals put up a good fight. But after a couple generations of students came of age under the quota system, they all agreed wholeheartedly to these measures. How could they not? The Government worked out a deal with the few money-grubbing capitalist holdouts by giving them prominent roles in certain Government agencies. This surprisingly turned them immediately into radical Egalitarians, which the people, of course, were happy to see. You should hear the beautiful, touching speeches these reformed capitalists give about Equality. Oddly enough, they still reside in huge mansions, are the only people left not using public transit, and still seem pretty much filthy rich. But the Government tells us not to think too much about this, and so we don’t. One friend told me they need these resources to properly do their jobs and ensure all is Equal for the world, which makes a whole lot of sense to me.

We have all sorts of great quotas like certain percentages of male/female parents, male/male parents, female/female parents, single parents, and individuals who don’t have kids. The Government supplies the babies, of course. I sometimes wonder where they come from. I’ve been told not to think about that too much either, so I don’t. To fill each segment of a quota, we use a great system that starts with “volunteer periods,” in which people can sign up to a segment of the quota. Funnily enough, some segments fill up much quicker than others, and some don’t fill up at all, despite the Government reminding us of the obvious fact that they are all Equally good segments to be a part of. So we added a sort of lottery system to the popular segments of each quota. And after these periods end, the government simply sends mandates to people at random to inform them they’ve been assigned to “such and such” segment of “such and such” quota. They also send kits to these people, if necessary, to help them conform to the mandate. For example, someone who is in the “legally blind” segment of the Vision Quota will be sent a special pair of glasses to be worn at all times that blurs her vision significantly. Of course, this is only Fair.

There are new quotas developed every year by our agencies and of course, new agencies need to be created and staffed to regulate these quotas every year too. About 90% of the population works for the Government, the other 10% is unemployed, which is necessary to maintain the Unemployment Quota.

This year we started the Weight Quota Agency because we realized it is not really fair to have asymmetries in size, because all body shapes and sizes are Equally beautiful and healthy and sexy and functional and all the rest of those nice things you could say about a body. And besides, imagine how a five-hundred-pound person would feel if he were to remove his VR headset only to find all sorts of fit and strong people doing all sorts of athletic feats for recreation right in front of his eyes in the real world—it would be a travesty. And so we now have a nice Even spread of people of all weights.

Naturally, all sorts of other agencies needed to be created to support the Weight Quota Agency—one of which is the Textile Quota Agency, ensuring we make Equal amounts of every size of uniform for people to wear. And this is where we now find Larry fretting over the 2XL surplus. For some reason, the “obese” segment of the quota seems to be dying off faster than the Weight Quota Agency can replenish its numbers. The reason for this is something we simply can’t figure out. There must be some radical asymmetry of justice that hasn’t been fixed by quotas yet. Our Government’s best and brightest minds (which are just about as good as anyone’s mind on Earth, of course) are on the job, so I’m sure we’ll solve this mystery soon.

But until then, volunteer forms for the “obese” segment are going out all over the world, and many people are simply being selected and sent mandates. “Weight addition kits” are being distributed with Government-subsidized UberEats subscriptions to unlimited Dryers ice cream, McDonald’s burgers, and Hostess Twinkies for folks to up their weight as much as possible. Subscriptions to Disney-plus, Netflix, and Hulu are also being automatically added to each individual’s VR-headset too. Strangely, even though we are under one Government, and capitalism has been abolished, companies like Dryers, McDonalds, Hostess, Disney, and Netflix still exist. But the Government officials, many of whom oddly sit on boards of these companies and go to all sorts of fancy company-sponsored events and also live in big fancy mansions, tell us not to think of this fact too much, and so we don’t. One friend told me these companies need to be around to help the Government run properly and ensure all is Equal for the world, which makes a whole lot of sense to me.