Restaurants

Over ten thousand years of human culture, the concept of having a special building or room to eat in is very recent, only about two hundred years old. After you’ve fixed everything else, the nuts and bolts that go into making a functioning culture, plumbing, power, heat and light, trade, leisure time, roads, transport, a system of laws and policing, then and only then, can you relax and think about eating out.

Oh, and you must have a democracy. Restaurants only really work with democracy. It’s a truth you don’t often see on a menu. The birth of restaurants as we know them came with the French Revolution; along with food, a restaurant serves freedom of speech, and association, which is why they have never done particularly well in countries that don’t like people who speak to each other and meet in groups.