Saturday, February 4, 2012

Make Believe

A Yale Law School professor was on the Daily Show a couple nights ago. He said, "We in academia" assume the whole system of government is corrupt, and that there is "marketplace" of special interests that limits the damage, in the mysterious way the invisible hand of the general marketplace is supposed to benefit everybody, but doesn't, as we all now know. He also knew the marketplace of special interests doesn't benefit anyone who is without the millions required to bribe a politician in these days of open market competition in bribery.

This Yale Law professor is an expert in "Private Equity Companies" which use other people's money to buy other companies then sell them off at a profit. He said he had the numbers and can prove these companies increase productivity, that they even increase the number of employees. He didn't say how they did it, so I will tell you. They create monopolies closing some companies, merging others. Monopolies make higher profits not by being efficient, but by controlling the supposed free market, raising prices, and by on the whole employing fewer people.

The same comedian the month before had on his show a Harvard Law school professor, of Ethics, no less, who said it wasn't illegal to bribe politicians but, he conceded, it was still wrong, in his opinion.

This story is entitled Make Believe because it starts with all the Harvard Law School Professors and Yale Law School professors on a slow boat to China, along with the formerly happy as pie directors of monopolies. They have been graciously allowed to leave the country. There's been a revolution, in case you didn't hear. They are taking with them a few large numbers in the account files of banks referring to a currency no longer recognized by the American government.

What happened then? There was an evolution of the marketplace. With all the liars and thieves and monopolists on the boat to China, the creative people were left behind. And what did they do?

They remade the world.

Make Believe.