P J O’Rourke
There were so many highlights from P J O’Rourke’s speech, it is hard to know where to start. I guess I’ll start with the one that resonated most with me:
The 1 trillion, 487 billion dollars that America is spending on the financial bail-out plus the economic stimulus package is equal to more than a year’s worth of U.S individual and corporate income tax payments put together. Which raises the question: Instead of a bail-out and a stimulus, why not no taxes for a year? Zero. Zip. None. Stop taxing us!
Would this be an economic stimulus? Uh, yeah.
Just imagine that – a tax free year. Think what they would do to prosperity, economic confidence and growth.
Economic freedom is the freedom we exercise most often and to the greatest extent.
Freedom of speech is important – if you’ve got anything to say. I’ve checked on the internet. Nobody does.
Freedom of Belief is important – if you believe in anything. I’ve watched cable TV. I can’t believe it.
Freedom of assembly is important – if you have an assembly to go to, the way we do.
But most people to go to the mall. And, at the mall, they exercise economic freedom.
I’ve often said I value my freedom of speech more than my freedom to vote – because I exercise it every day – not just once every three years. But O’Rourke usefully reminds us that economic freedom is the one we use the most. This is partly why things were so ghastly in the old Soviet bloc.
The worst thing in politics is “bipartisan consensus.” Bipartisan consensus – that’s like when my doctor and my lawyer agree with my wife that I need help.
He had dozens of good lines like this. Most have been used in his books, but not the same as hearing them in person.
The Free Market was killed by the Bolshevik revolution, by fascist central planning, by Keynesianism, the Great Depression, World War II economic controls, the British Labor Party victory of 1945, Keynesianism again, the Arab oil embargo, Tony Blair’s and Bill Clinton’s “Third Way” economic policies, and by the current financial crisis.
That’s ten times the Free Market as has died in the past 100 years. And every time the Free Market dies, everybody wants to know, “What would Adam Smith say?”
It’s a “Hi, God. How’s my atheism going?” moment.
A useful knocking back of those who claim this is the end of capitalism.
So how would Adam Smith fix our financial crisis?
Sorry, but it’s fixed already. The answer to a decline in the value of speculative assets is to pay less for them. Job done!
O’Rouke argued strongly against bailing out banks that made bad investment decisions.
So far, the best Barack Obama has been able to do by way of an Iraq policy is to make what I think of as the “high school sex promise:” I’ll pull out in time, honest, Honey.
Heh.
Best investment I’ve made lately? I left a $20 bill in the jacket pocket of this suit last month. And I just found it this morning. (Which puts me way ahead of my mutual fund.)
Double Heh.
Not that we’d want to live in a country ruled only by the best and brightest. That would be too much like being married to Cherie Blair.
A very backhanded compliment.
Obama’s got a great economic plan. If it’s working, tax it. If it isn’t working, bail it out. If it’s just scraping by, drop the Federal Reserve Bank on it ‘till it screams for help.
The Libertarianz liked that line. They had two tables there. Was very funny when they announced that they had 20 people at the dinner, as someone yelled out “So your whole party is here, is it” 🙂
Politics is going to take over the car industry. I can predict the result – a light-weight, compact vehicle with a small carbon footprint using sustainable alternative energy. When I was a kid we called it a bike.
He also railed against bailouts of US car manufacturers.
What we get is a choice between left-wingers who can’t learn from the past and right-wingers who can’t stop living in it. Between left-wingers who want to tax us to death and right-wingers who would prefer that we get shot with an assault rifle by a lunatic in the work place.
Targets on all sides.
And I don’t just hate bad politics. I hate all politics. I even hate democracy.
Imagine if our clothes were selected by the majority of shoppers, which would be teenage girls. I’d be standing here with my midriff exposed.
Amongst the humour is a powerful reminder that the state should not decide all things for us. That we should get to decide what light bulbs to use, what shower pressure to have etc.
Last year the U.S. Congress passed “The Farm, Nutrition and Bio-Energy Act of 2008.” This was $285 billion dollars worth of agricultural subsidies and price supports. $285 billion dollars is five times the pre-war gross national product of Iraq. For what the “Farm, Nutrition and Bio-Energy Act of 2008” is costing American tax payers, we could have avoided the war with Saddam Hussein and just bought his god damned country. (And I bet we could have sold it to China for a profit. The Chinese want oil. Hand’em the deed to Baghdad and let ‘em go get it. Give the Communist Chinese a little taste of Falluja and they’d be wishing for monk riots in Tibet.)
A great solution to Iraq and China!
So, while I’m holding the cow’s head and my friend is holding the cow’s middle, Pete takes this freezing cold syringe thing and inserts it into a very personal and private place of the cow’s. Then what Pete does, is he stick his arm into an even more personal and private place of the cow’s – all the way up to the elbow.
Now, Pete does this not to get on the internet with a pornographic website, but so that he can feel the tip of the inseminator tube through the cow’s intestine wall and guide that tip into the cow’s uterus.
It was a pretty gruesome thing to watch and, I’m glad to say, since I was up at the cow’s other end, I didn’t watch it. But I’ll tell you one thing – I will never forget the look on that cow’s face.
It was the same look that I got on my face – for the same reason – when I read the “Farm, Nutrition and Bio-Energy Act of 2008.”
This probably got the most laughs of the night – again it was superb humour but with a serious message underneath.
Once more, huge kudos to the CIS for bringing P J to NZ. A great night.