O’Rourke and Smith, a Beautiful Pas de Deux
January 21st, 2008 at 11:34 am by CrankyThe lastest P.J. O’Rourke book isn’t technically one of his books. It is called P. J. O’Rourke on The Wealth of Nations and is hopefully the first installment of a series of commentaries called “Books That Changed the World”.
Modern authors, so the idea goes, will be matched up with classic works and authors to create a thinking man’s Cliff’s Notes.
All that said, here is why this is a fantastic read.
Useful information to those who think history began in 1968.
The commentary goes on to say how it was commerce that first led to the concept of freedom that we understand today. Traders formed primitive corporations which would handle paying rents to lords and landholders. Lords loved getting the rents without having to interfere in the day to day businesses and the messy task of collections. This left them plenty of free time to pursue their pleasures.
The traders and producer, being free to trade and produce began to become wealthy.
Continuing on with the nature of medieval lords (and what appears to be celebrities):
For a pair of diamond buckles perhaps, or for something as frivolous and useless, they exchanged … the price of the maintenance of a thousand men for a year, and with it the whole weight and authority which it could give them. The buckles, however, were to be all their own, and no other human creature was to have any share of them; whereas in the more ancient method of expence they must have shared with at least a thousand people … and thus for the gratification of the most childish, the meanest and the most sordid of all vanities, they gradually barted their whole power and authority.
To which P. J. masterfully summarizes: