Special Report
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Bailout
From science fiction to fact in less than thirty years.
In a recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Stephen Moore highlighted the parallels between today’s economic events and those depicted in Ayn Rand’s classic Atlas Shrugged.
“Many of us who know Rand’s work have noticed that with each passing week, and with each successive bailout plan and economic-stimulus scheme out of Washington, our current politicians are committing the very acts of economic lunacy that ‘Atlas Shrugged’ parodied in 1957,” Moore wrote. Point taken: Rand was eerily prescient in predicting the encroachment of big government during this crisis.
Then again, it doesn’t take Nostradamus to predict that eventually government will go awry. In fact the ultimate riff on government came out roughly 1,957 years (give or take about 33 years) before Atlas Shrugged, when someone, probably a clever proto-Objectivist, quipped, “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s,” as if to warn us that eventually the government is going to do what it wants to do, and the rest of us are better off worrying about more important things.
No, if you are looking for the most complete forecast of today’s economic and political turmoil in 20th century literature you will have to look beyond Rand’s one-dimensional economic vignettes to a work of scope and sophistication: Douglas Adams’s all-encompassing masterpiece, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Adams prognosticated the current scenario in such detail that it is hard to know where to begin accounting for his accuracy. But perhaps a good place would be the election of Barack Obama, who in Adams’s framework is a giant lizard.
As the alien Ford Prefect explains to the human protagonist Arthur Dent, an ancient democracy is bound, eventually, to elect only lizards for its leaders. Why?
Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?”
“What?”
“I said,” said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, “have you got any gin?”
“I’ll look. Tell me about the lizards.”
Ford shrugged again.
“Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happened to them,” he said. “They’re completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone’s got to say it.
Precisely right — in the last election we elected one younger, slightly more government-loving lizard over another older, slight less government-loving lizard, and some of us think that the lizard we ended up with is the best thing ever. They’re completely and utterly wrong, of course.
Don’t hope for anything better in the next election cycle, though. Adams distills the underlying flaw of democracy in one paragraph:
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.
About the Author
Joseph Lawler, former managing editor of The American Spectator, is editor of Real Clear Policy. Follow him on twitter: @josephlawler.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (33) | Leave a comment
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Alan Brooks| 1.13.09 @ 11:46AM
lets just be blunt:
"if you cant afford a mortgage, please rent instead"
Jeremiah| 1.13.09 @ 12:18PM
It's probably not beyond surmise why it was Republicans who gave us the biggest, least comprehensible, and probably most irresponsible bail-out in history, effectively seizing the banking industry on behalf of the most wealthy men on Wall St.
It's a gruesome, demonic parody of socialism: Marx turned on his head, as it were, in which class war is waged from above and class struggle is turned into a relentless downward pressure landing on the shoulders of the middle class.
Enjoy your revolution, everyone.
L. Ross| 1.13.09 @ 12:34PM
Jeremiah:
Dude, you're a loveable little nutball. Don't ever change.
It was nice to remember a bit about one of the great works in the english language. The HitchHikers Guide to the Galaxy (later compiled into the The Universe) is a rolicking, fun read. By contrast, Atlas Shrugged is one of the most tedious, painful works I've ever read.
As far as the crisis/panic/depression we are rapidly sliding into, I think its just hysterical that we are spending all this money and bailing out all these companies in an effort at market manipulation. If the government knew how to prevent a depression/recession, we would never have one. This is all just silly.
Derek| 1.28.10 @ 11:37PM
The audio book worked for me.
bfwebster | 1.13.09 @ 12:52PM
Great article. In fact, I was just thinking of Adams (and THHGTTG) the other day as well. In recounting the massive galactic economic collapse caused by the custom luxury planet market (cornered by Magrathea), the radio show says, "And so the system broke down. The Empire collapsed, and a long, sullen silence settled over the galaxy, disturbed only by the pen-scratchings of scholars as they labored into the night over smug little treatises over the value of a planned political economy."
Sadly, I fear that's exactly what we're entering into (with Krugman and Reich leading the way). ..bruce..
Jack Bauer | 1.13.09 @ 1:50PM
trying to understand the failures of the wizards of Wall Street
Shouldn't that be the Lizards of Wall Street?
Bye bye. And thanks for all the fish
Alan Brooks| 1.13.09 @ 3:50PM
Jeremiah,
the difference between us is you , like Commies and libertopians, fear those in power, i fear those whom we have to lock our doors at night to keep out. and the dopes who cant make their mortgage payments. and dopes who hang out in the 'hood and threaten to whup ass.
you think i'm maybe a reactionary, but i'm a cynic who think the masses are fit to roll in the mud and listen to rap music.
i happen to like Obama because he is bourgeois, a successful black. maybe he hasnt done anything but he is no OJ of any sort. being a total cynic i hope i can get away with saying i like Obama, i just dont like blacks.
because they don't care diddly about me.
Alan Brooks| 1.13.09 @ 4:15PM
Jeremiah,
if bailing out the rich keeps the unwashed away from all power
then more power to greedy barons on Wall Street, in Detroit, and everywhere. the rabble don't have power but they do have influence and that is more than they deserve because they were BORN INFERIOR, born to be white trash rednecks and black trash bros 'n' the 'hood. born to curse about whupping a--es in the street and born to smoke maryjewanna in publik housing.
i should have listened to El Rushbo long ago, he was right, a 100 percent tax on the poor should be levied, to wipe out poverty.
then all the funds confiscated from the poor are to be given to such as Leona Helmsly, tax free.
you cant diss me because i'm a misanthrope who likes being called a reactionary who favors as draconian measures as are politically possible, because it is absolutely true, i detest and despise humanity.
Nietzsche was correct, lower humanity is "fertilizer" and i now see all must be done--even soaking the poor as a last resort-- to keep the masses from having any more than the undeserved influence they already possess.
call me a monster, it doesnt matter, as long as you spell the name right.
The Bailout to HELL| 1.13.09 @ 8:10PM
Don't rock the boat it may turn over.
Just read the Book of Daniel, and Revelation, but read it slowly.
America and Israel wants a war and they are going to get it. Obama, or No Bama, people that seek power and get it has had to make a pact with SATAN himself.
frankg| 1.14.09 @ 6:41AM
Er...uh, nice comments everyone, and uh, yeah, just what I was thinking...thanks for all the fish.
Carl Oberg | 1.16.09 @ 12:20PM
Excellent piece, Joseph. You have successfully blended my two favorite subjects: limited government and THHGTTG.
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