I want so badly to believe in the free market.

Not as a slogan, not as a team identity, but as a living system that actually disciplines bad actors and rewards good ones. I’ve built a lot of my worldview on that premise — that competition should make companies better, not worse.

But lately I keep running face-first into evidence that the market is failing in places where it absolutely cannot afford to. And it’s horrifying. I don’t want to give the anti-capitalist side ammunition. I really don’t.

But the truth is the truth, and pretending it away doesn’t make me safer.

Which brings me to the first story.

Many of you will remember what happened to me last summer. Verizon’s customer service was so catastrophically bad that even when I called them while my account was actively being hacked, they couldn’t stop it. Not wouldn’t — couldn’t.

I was on the phone with them within seconds after getting inappropriate authorization texts. I kept saying, “It’s happening right now,” and he kept reading from scripts.

He kept saying, “You’re getting the texts because you called us.”

“No, sir. I am calling because of the texts. The texts came first. The texts preceded the call in time. I got the texts, then, later, I called you.”

Every time I tried to explain it, the Indian agent would reply, “Is good, Miss Hole-ee! Is normal! Is good!”

That is a direct quote. Now that it’s been long enough to be funny, Josh and I repeat this to each other sometimes for a laugh.

Is good, Miss Holly! Is normal, is good!

The fallout was so severe I eventually had to get the Vermont Attorney General involved just to repair the credit damage from the identity theft that followed.

And here’s the rub: it’s not just Verizon. No cell phone company has customer service worth a damn. Not one. I keep giving them chances because what else can you do — go completely phoneless?

So now I’m having a similar experience with Straight Talk, a company that apparently believes customer support is an optional add-on available only to the spiritually enlightened.

This is not how a functioning market is supposed to behave.

The Straight Talk fiasco relates to my neighbor — let’s call him Jack, though that’s not his real name. Jack is one of those people you don’t expect to meet in a rental: a genuinely good man who quietly improves your life without asking for anything. He served in Afghanistan. He’s the kind of neighbor who noticed that I responded warmly to his 1776 hoodie and Trump 2024 hat — which I meant as a gesture of friendship — and decided I was someone worth looking out for.

Since then, little things that are physically hard for me with my bad shoulder and strain my drawing arm just… get done. My stairs are mysteriously salted. My car is mysteriously cleared after a storm.

Jack is the kind of neighbor who restores your faith in humanity.

He’s also having financial problems, and this week his phone got shut off.

I called Straight Talk. Mind you, there is no policy barrier to a third party paying someone’s prepaid Straight Talk balance. None. This should have been a five-minute call.

Instead I spent more than an hour trapped in a customer-service funhouse where the laws of logic do not apply.

The agent — also Indian, which matters only because it introduced an extra layer of uncertainty. I couldn’t tell whether he didn’t understand English well enough, or whether he was reading a script he didn’t actually comprehend, or whether Straight Talk just hires people who aren’t trained to think beyond it.

I explained the situation. He tried to upsell me on a six-month plan.

Me: Is his line eligible for that plan? His phone is currently TURNED OFF FOR NON-PAYMENT.

Him: “Yes, yes, sure, is no problem!”

The payment didn’t go through their system (it never reached my card company; I was checking in real time).

Him: “Miss Holly, I am seeing here his phone is turned off for non-payment, so his phone is not eligible for this plan!”

We repeated this exact loop four times.

On the fifth attempt, I finally got him to get a manager to confirm the obvious sequence:

Pay his current plan. 1.

Get the line turned back on. 1.

Wait a few minutes. 1.

Then buy the six-month plan.

This should have solved everything.

Instead? The call disconnected.

My friend

has often talked about this, and I’ve posted more than one story about how bad it is, myself.

The era of “call the company and they fix it” is dead. The institutions we all rely on — phone carriers, banks, utilities, insurance — have offloaded so much of their operational capacity that the average consumer is now effectively navigating a hollow shell.

The scripts remain.

The websites remain.

The hold music remains.

But the part where a human being solves a problem? Gone.

I genuinely believe that in the coming decade we’re going to see the rise of a new profession: fixers. Not handymen, not IT support — but people whose entire job is to navigate the bureaucratic ruins left behind by companies that stopped caring whether they function.

Intermediaries who do the work that customer service used to do, because customer service no longer exists in any meaningful sense.

And here’s the question that keeps me up at night:

How do companies stay in business when customer service is this bad?

How does a company not go belly-up when 52 minutes isn’t long enough to take a payment?

How does a “market” function when the consumer has no leverage?

When the choices are bad, worse, and “your call has been disconnected”?

When loyalty isn’t rewarded, competition doesn’t improve anything, and the only path to resolution involves state attorneys general, congressional offices, or a personal fixer on retainer?

I want to believe in the free market. I still do.

But belief requires evidence, and right now the evidence is grim.

If the system doesn’t course-correct soon, we’re all going to end up living in a world where buying a phone plan — or correcting a hacked account, or helping a neighbor — requires the same energy and expertise once reserved for filing a lawsuit.

And that should terrify everyone, no matter what you think about capitalism.

Coming soon for paid subs: a story about poor white trash, Walmart, a sled, a pile of laundry, a perfect moonlight night, and why New England is still where the most things are objectively correct.