Human, All Too Poor

Clinton’s former chief spin doctor, George Stephanopoulos, pocketed a cool $3 million advance for his tell-all book, “All Too Human.” The book hits the stands as the dust from El Presidente’s turbo-zipper escapades settles.

That phrase “all too human” packs a lot of punch. German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche penned a piece entitled “Human, All Too Human” in 1878, and I suspect that’s where Stephanopoulos lifted the title. That’s an interesting angle when you consider that Nietzsche told us that God is dead, and Stephanopoulos holds a master’s degree in theology. I’d love to have a cup of coffee with those two and hear them hash out the God thing…except that in 1900 God said Nietzsche is dead, and God always has the last word on these things.

Humanity has always been the wrench in the works of economic theory. You can’t have economics without people, but, then again, once you add people (and their stupid behavior) into the equation, all the elegant theory seems to fly out the window. For example, one premise behind economic theory holds that people are rational.

Nobody’s crazy enough to think that people really are rational, though. Particularly in groups, the weak minded nature of our species is as conspicuous as a 200 pound woman in a thong bikini. If God is dead, then we replaced him with democracy, which is the all-consuming worship of the mob. Interject mob psychology into economic matters, and you’ve got a real comedy on your hands.

Never mind foggy theory, let’s look at some facts. Of the two most populous nations in the world, one (China) is not a democracy, while the other (India) is a democracy. The average civics teacher will somehow try to draw parallel between democracy (a political concept) and free markets (an economic concept), but in truth there’s no real connection.

Dictatorial China has over twice the per-capita Gross Domestic Product of democratic India ($3,650 vs. $1,680 based on Purchasing Power Parity). If the hordes of India are poor, it’s because they’ve voted for policies that have kept them poor. Hello, groupthink. All too human, indeed. When everyone can vote to take everyone else’s wealth, there’s soon not much wealth to go around.

Somebody will ask me what the grand solution to that problem is, but I don’t see it as a problem. People make decisions. People live with the consequences. It seems like an even-handed enough proposition. Sure, I’d rather live under a democracy than any other form of government, but I’m not seduced into some kind of trance by it.

Many folks, however, are. Consequently, there are a lot of confused people out there who thought that spreading the religion of democracy world-wide, often times at gun point, would somehow spread prosperity. Most of the world, however, continues to live in wretched poverty, not because it’s been forced to, but because it chooses to. The lesson is simple: You can liberate mobs from dictators, but you can’t liberate humans from humanity.