Classic P.J. O’Rourke

The latest Newsweek Magazine just arrived. The cover reads in ominously dark, capital letters: WE ARE ALL SOCIALISTS NOW. I wish I had something intelligent to say in response, some incisive commentary to submit, but wit and wisdom elude me. I do wonder if Rothbard, Mises, Friedman, et al are privy to our predicament, and if they are, I would guess they are stirring mightily in their eminent tombs right now, as we above ground, those of us Paying Attention, are convulsing in our chairs.

I wanted to share these three classic P.J. O’Rourke rants–ancient excerpts I had stored on my hard drive many years ago, and which I discovered anew the other night as I sought mental recourse in the files of old. Even if you don’t agree with his politics, you have to appreciate his delivery, unequaled in creativity and humor among contemporary journalists, with the possible exceptions of the late Hunter S. Thompson and Mark Steyn. (Also recommended, and relevant, is O’Rourke’s brilliant “How to Stuff a Wild Enron” from the Atlantic.)

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The government has any number of ways of inflicting parity on taxpayers and food shoppers. For example, there’s the “nonrecourse loan.” This is a loan farmers can get from the government using their crop as collateral. But the government sets the value of that collateral not by the crop’s price but by what the crop’s price ought to be in a dream world full of parity and happy farmers. Say wheat is selling for $3.50 a bushel, but the USDA thinks farm life would be a more fulfilling experience if the price were $4. So the USDA sets the “nonrecourse loan rate” at four bucks, and farmers can get a loan of $4 for every bushel of wheat they’ve got lying around. Then if America happens to suffer a terrible outbreak of toast weevils and the price of wheat goes up to $10 a bushel, farmers can pay back their $4 loans, sell the wheat for $10 and bank the profits.

But if everybody in the United States suddenly goes on an all-meat diet and the price of wheat drops to fifteen cents, the farmers can blow off the loans, make the government eat the wheat and not even get an ink smudge in their credit histories. It’s an absolutely no-risk business transaction, like doing real estate deals with your dog.  “Beach front? You don’t want beach front, Fido. I’ve got some prime dumpside acreage, chicken bones and dead rats all over the place. I’ll trade you straight up.”

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The Republicans were running on the Dumb-Old-Dad platform: “You kids today, you don’t know how good you’ve got it. Why, back in 1979 inflation was so bad that nickels cost fifty cents, the Dow was minus a million, they were giving out food stamps as stock dividends and you couldn’t walk to your garage without getting held hostage by Iranians.” Meanwhile the Democratic platform was pure whining brat: “Like, full employment is sooooo boring and I hate having a big navy and you promised a drug-free American and I want my free drugs now.”

The Democrats were for a lot more of something to be named at a later date. The Republicans were for less of whatever it was except the death penalty. The Democrats said, “We don’t know what’s wrong with America, but we can fix it.” The Republicans said, “There’s nothing wrong with American, and we can fix that.”

We had a choice between Democrats who couldn’t learn from the past and Republicans who couldn’t stop living in it, between Democrats who wanted to tax us to death and Republicans who preferred to have us die in a foreign war. The Democrats planned to fiddle while Rome burned. The Republicans were going to burn Rome, then fiddle.

When you looked at the Republicans, you saw the scum off the top of business. When you looked at the Democrats, you saw the scum off the top of politics. Personally, I prefer business. A businessman will steal from you directly instead of getting the IRS to do it for him. And when Republicans ruin the environment, destroy the supply of affordable housing, and wreck the industrial infrastructure, at least they make a buck off it. The Democrats just do these things for fun. Also, the Democrats wanted the federal government to solve every one of America’s problems, from AIDS to making sure the kids wipe their feet before they come in the house. For chrissake, the federal government can’t even deliver mail, and how hard is that? The stuff’s got our address right on it and everything.

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Government subsidies can be critically analyzed according to a simple principle: You are smarter than the government, so when the government pays you to do something you wouldn’t do on your own, it is almost always paying you to do something stupid.

Government improves the environment about as well as government does most other things. Government usually doesn’t work. It doesn’t work because it’s political. People who are wise, good, smart, skillful, or hardworking don’t need politics, they have jobs. The difference between the political process and an honest life is the difference between parading around waving picket signs while hollering catcalls in front of the White House and getting up in the morning to go make a living.

Government also doesn’t work because of the problem of concentrated benefits and diffuse costs. Say Congress is considering legislation to give people with nose rings free Pearl Jam CDs for life. Citizens with an extra hole in their schnozzle will be phoning and faxing and E-mailing pro-Pearl Jam sentiments to their congressmen and senators. We people with normal faces will oppose the bill. But nothing very terrible is going to happen to us if it passes. It’s pocket lint compared to what health-care reform will cost. So we won’t bother to lobby against free CDs. We’ll just wonder what happens when those people kiss and she gets her nose ring tangled in his mustaches hair, and then we’ll turn off the news and fix dinner.

When government does, occasionally, work, it works in an elitist fashion. That is, government is most easily manipulated by people who have money and power already. This is why government benefits usually go to people who don’t need benefits from government. Government may make some environmental improvements, but these will be improvements for rich bird-watchers. And no one in government will remember that when poor people go bird-watching they do it at Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Government is not in the business of producing results. Government is in the business of producing government: passing laws, changing rules, setting up bureaucracies. This is why government is always more interested in problems than solutions. A good problem lets congressmen get news coverage for introducing high-minded and noble-sounding legislation, provides the EPA with justification for an expanded budget, and gives Al Gore a campaign speech. A good solution benefits the general public—by no means a protected species.

Government programs fail. There’s no shame in this. Lots of things in life fail, as anyone who’s over forty-five and has body parts knows. But government failures refuse to go away. When a private entity does not produce the desired results, it is (certain body parts excepted) done away with. But a public entity gets bigger.