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Summarily Economic
October 15th, 2006I just finished reading P.J. O’Rourke’s “Eat The Rich”, which I should have read eight years ago when it was first published (I’ve been busy). A wondrous tome rich in O’Rourke-isms and conceived through world travel and an estimated about two dozen cases of scotch (he must be on the wagon).
O’Rourke’s final chapter could be read alone, showing in summary pages the true grandeur of capitalism as well as the vivid villainy collectivism. Aside from Thomas Jefferson, O’Rourke makes a few statements that cement the concepts of money, government, and fairness. On the subject of why an authoritarian open market (China) is a Bad Thing™:
A businessman finds that one of his stockholders has tanks, artillery, and jet fighter planes. This violates a fundamental rule of happy living: Never let the people with all the money and the people with all the guns be the same people.
China may well be the worst of our geopolitical nightmares — a wealthy, militant, maniacal oligarchy. The top tier of that regime has all the money (since business license and power is bestowed by the government) and all the guns. And they seem to be creating more of each all the time.
More importantly, O’Rourke bludgeons the trite socialist argument for economic “fairness”:
The market is “heartless.” So are clocks and yardsticks. Saying the economic problems are the result of the free market’s failure is like gaining twenty pounds and calling the bathroom scale a bum.
Throughout the book, O’Rourke identifies what Thomas Jefferson had penned so long ago, and which we as a species continually forget and forsake.
… a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government
