11 Eat the Rich
We’re so close to being rich. Everybody in the world could be rich as hell. The benighted masses of India could quit pedaling bicycle rickshaws and start dragging Lear jets through the streets of Calcutta. Indians in the Brazilian rain forest could be singing in the rain. The endangered fauna would wear thong bikinis: “Save the Girl from Ipanema.” Eskimos could give up clubbing baby seals and devote their arctic vastness to building an Olympic-quality ice dancing team. When we’re all wealthy, Sally Struthers will be featured in magazine ads headlined, YOU CAN SEND THIS CHILD TO SUMMER WEIGHT-LOSS CAMP OR YOU CAN TURN THE PAGE . CARE packages will contain oyster forks and truffles. And altruistic musicians will hold benefit concerts to raise enough money to pay the Rolling Stones to retire. Money won’t solve all our problems. But money will give us options—let us choose the problems we want to have. Leisure conglomerates may open franchises in Bosnia and Herzegovina where Muslims and Serbs can blast each other in paintball wars. Self-destructive individuals will still exist, but instead of dying from drug overdoses in pay-toilet stalls, they will be able to expire in luxury at the Chateau Marmont like John Belushi. The Taliban fundamentalists might continue to keep women in seclusion, but they could do so by opening a Bergdorf Goodman’s in Kabul. They’ll never see those wives again. All this is possible because the modern industrial economy works. Obviously it works better in some places than in others. But it works, even in the poorest areas. Côte d’Ivoire now produces almost as much per-capita wealth as the United States did when the Monroe Doctrine was declared, and Egypt produces more. America did not consider itself a poor country during the 1820s, and, in fact, at that time it was one of the world’s most prosperous nations. Extensive research has been done on the history of this industrial economy, much of it by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
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