Kris Kardashian's Butt: Capitalism In Motion

In honor of the pending death of capitalism, thanks to American conservatives deciding that Rick Santorum somehow should represent conservatism, I figured I would explain why capitalism served us well. . . before we kill it. To aid me in this, I’m going to use the Kardashians, the NFL and the reasoning techniques of the famed Greek philosopher Rambloniclese. Onward!

There is nothing redeeming about the Kardashians as far as I can tell. They’re like a combination of the Manson Family, the Addams Family, and a porno. But I do like one thing about them. See, I never would have made them famous, but somebody else did. And that’s what makes capitalism great. Stick with me here.

The Addams Family Porno

Capitalism works because it allows 310 million Americans to look around themselves every single day and make their own decisions. If they see something they think the rest of us would like, they have the right to try to sell it to us. And we have the right to buy it or not. And nothing proves the value in this system more clearly than the fact that I never would have looked at Kim Kardashian’s butt as a money-maker, but somebody else did.

Ditto with the NFL. The NFL combine begins on Thursday as a large group of male sportswriters and NFL types get together to take nice long looks at a bunch of male athletes and judge them on how they look in their underwear. And no, I’m not kidding. Sounds kind of gay, doesn’t it? But more importantly, it sounds kind of dull. But get this, people watch it. Not only that, they talk about it, they write about it, and somebody even included it in a videogame. Just like Kris Kardashian’s butt, somebody guessed right.

The point is simple: if it were up to me to run the world, there would be no Kardashians and I never would have thought to put the NFL draft on television. It’s only because our system doesn’t rely on me that we have these things. Now imagine what else the world wouldn’t have if it were up to me to decide what people could watch, read, buy or believe?

Now let’s consider a man named Gary Lineker. He’s an a-hole from Britain who announces soccer games. I’m told soccer is some sort of sport. Old Gary, who hosts a program on the BBC, says that soccer players earn too much. Indeed, he thinks they shouldn’t be paid more than nurses or teachers. Gary’s a flaming hypocrite because he gets paid £2m a year for basically flapping his lips. But let’s not worry about that because hypocrisy is the new black in fall fashions. Instead, let me ask a series of questions to see if I can enunciate the problem with Gary’s line of “reasoning.”

What happens to the rest of the money soccer earns if it doesn’t go to salaries? It would go to club owners. So really Gary has decided that some people shouldn’t be made millionaires because that’s unfair to billionaires. But how can all these billionaires be so stupid as to pay this amount of money to the players if they aren’t worth it? And what gives Gary the right to decide that he knows better than the billionaires how much to pay the millionaires?

In truth, Gary doesn’t care about the billionaires. He’s just a spiteful little turd who doesn’t like some people earning more than others. But why pick teachers? Why not convenience store clerks? Why even pay soccer players at all? They should be like government employees should be and they should play for room and board. . . and live on a plantation. In fact, now that I think about it, why do teachers earn so much? Teachers should earn $1 an hour. And my opinion is as valid as Gary’s so why don’t we go with my opinion?

Also, while we’re readjusting the world to our own prejudices, I don’t like really soccer and people shouldn’t be allowed to watch it because I don’t like it. And before you try to tell me that people want it, let me just cut you off and say that I don’t care what people want, because I know what’s best.

Get the point?

Here’s the thing. Capitalism works because it lets millions of people try to sell their ideas to millions of other people in the form of products and services. When a want or need appears, somebody fills it, they don’t have to wait for me to decide if it should be filled. And through the trillions of decisions made each day by every single one of us, the human race goes about making each other happy.

It’s only when the *ssholes get involved and decide they want to control what people get paid or what products can get made or what ideas can be brought to life or which companies should be winners and which losers that things fail. That’s when there are no Kardashians or NFL draft or new cars or butter or health care. . . just lots of lousy GM cars nobody wants. And every dollar the government sucks away from us and every regulation they impose to help some crony is a decision the government deprives us from making. Government is the enemy of freedom.

So let’s all raise a toast to Kris Kardashian’s butt, to rap music, to overpaid athletes and a million other things we don’t like but which somebody else does, and let us thank God that for a brief moment our country was bright enough to adopt capitalism. It shall be missed.


P.S. There’s a Politics of Trek article up today at the film site.