Weathering the Political #*%&-Storm

By P.J. O'Rourke

Gosh, we're having a lot of political weather these days...

A snowy blizzard of executive orders in the midst of a heavy rain of opposition to the executive signing them... a populist heat wave in the heartland, accompanied by a cold snap of icy disdain on both coasts... tornadoes in the trailer park of government regulation... floods of indignant protests... droughts of common sense... trade-policy tidal surges... hurricane warnings on the Republican lawmaking sea, while a Democratic high-pressure zone threatens to becalm all legislative action... and enveloping everything, the usual fog of politics, now more of a pea soup than ever.

Porter says, "Politics doesn't matter." That can be hard to believe when we're weathering a political #*%&-storm. But it's worth reminding ourselves why what Porter says is fundamentally true. I would add just three words to Porter's dictum: "Politics doesn't matter... compared with us."

We are individuals. Politics is a bunch of people, a crowd, a mob. Individuals are better than mobs. If you're flying with a few individuals, you're probably on a Gulfstream G3. If your flight is mobbed, you're probably in coach.

An angry individual (usually in a middle seat) might attack you. But you stand a chance against an individual. You stand no chance against an angry mob. (Especially when they're trying to get huge carry-ons into tiny overhead bins.)

Also, the individual might not be angry. The individual might buy you lunch. (If you switch seats and give him the window.) From a mob, you get a lynching, not a lunch. (Never mind how many free lunches our mob of politicians promises.)

We are individuals, which means we work. Politics – famously – doesn't work. Or perhaps you're retired, which means you did work. Maybe politics did work, too, once upon a time. But that would be back when the Constitution was being written. And if we're still paying a pension to Thomas Jefferson, someone should look into things at the Social Security Administration.

Politics is "all taking, no making." Everything that is made gets made by we-who-work not them-who-politic. And all forms of work are good. Let no one be denigrated for flipping burgers. I know what would happen if I were on the other side of the counter at McDonald's. You'd get a Big Mac that was shoe leather on one side and cow sushi on the other.

All work is noble. Raising kids and keeping house is maybe the most exalted work of all. Try not raising them. Leave kids under 12 on their own for even a few days and see what you get. (It will be as dramatic as Home Alone starring Macaulay Culkin, but less heartwarming.)

For that matter, leave kids over 12 on their own for a few days. My wife and I did this, and take our word for it... Don't do it.

A house doesn't keep itself, either. When I was a bachelor, I experimented for years with the self-cleaning, self-tidying, "free range" domicile. I learned... a number of things, including what a bad idea it is to put paper plates in the dishwasher.

We are individuals, and specifically, we are individuals reading the Stansberry Digest. Let's take a moment to give ourselves the credit that we're due for being more important than politics.

We are individuals in the free market. We accumulate capital – or do our darnedest to. We manage that capital.

Everything that is made gets made with capital. Just like breakfast gets made with bacon, eggs, toast, butter, coffee, and orange juice.

We supply capital to people who have a good idea for a profitable use of capital. (Make breakfast!)

If the free market didn't exist, capital would still be needed. An "air breakfast"? No thanks. But the capital would have to come from politics, not from individuals.

If the market were controlled by politics rather than individuals, would politics be as good as individuals are at allocating the right amount of capital to make breakfast?

Even assuming that the politics were honest and efficient (a laugh), the answer would be no. Politics would allocate three times the amount that breakfast costs to make – on the condition that we're all served muesli, goat-cheese yogurt, egg-white omelets, and three glasses of kale juice because that's what's good for us.

If the market were controlled by politics rather than individuals, would politics allocate the right kind of capital to make breakfast?

Again, no. In the free market, we have this remarkably simple, quick, highly flexible, low-transaction-cost method of allocating capital. It's called money.

When the market is controlled by politics, the political system quickly runs out of money. We saw this in the Soviet Union where, according to the official exchange rate, the ruble was worth 1.78 to the dollar. After the fall of communism, the ruble was floated on the free market and promptly sank to 1,247 to the dollar.

In a politically controlled market with worthless money, we wouldn't get bacon, eggs, toast, butter, coffee, and orange juice for breakfast. We'd get to chase a pig, apply for a special permit to raid the neighbors' hen house and milk their cow, stand in a bread line, have a coffee tree planted in our name in a public park in our "sister city" in Nicaragua, and all the orange juice we want on a government-sponsored trip to Havana to increase political understanding between the U.S. and Cuba.

Politics doesn't matter – because we individuals won't let it!

We'll weather this political #*%&-storm just like we weathered the previous one that lasted for eight years. In fact, we'll weather this one better, if the gale-force winds of the free market are indeed unleashed by the current political meteorologists.

Politics doesn't matter – and let's keep it that way!

Regards,

P.J. O'Rourke