Link: http://shade-treeeconomist.blogspot.com

I would like to invite all of my readers to check out The Shade Tree Economist. This is a blog that my friend Mike has just started that is concerned with all things economic and businessy. For example, I don't know if any of you out there have heard this, but apparently, the country is in some kind of recession ... who knew? Well, Mike writes about that stuff. He has a great way of making a very complicated subject even more complicated and harder to understand but he is funny when he does it. For example, here is an excerpt from a post he wrote where he compares Socialism and Capitalism;

Allow me to expand on Hayek’s premise by invoking one of the foremost examples of Socialism America has ever produced: Gilligan’s Island. If you think Cuba is the only place that could successfully combine palm trees, pristine beaches, and the triumph of the proletariat I beg you to flip on Nick at Nite and behold a Marxist paradise.

In all seriousness (yeah right, but work with me here) the seven castaways serve as perfect examples of why Socialism cannot scale beyond a handful of people. Each castaway uses his/her talents to produce something that is shared among the group. The Skipper and Gilligan provide manual labor like in the episode where the Skipper shoves a bit in Gilligan’s mouth so his ‘little buddy’ can serve as a 98 pound oxen and plow a field. The Professor provides the intellectual firepower to develop technologies like coconut phones and an amazing array of transistor radio based applications that can do everything but send a radio signal. Mary Ann cooks and cleans in a perky half-shirt and short-shorts combo (yummy). The Howells did nothing, representing the 15 – 20% of every society who feel entitled to leach off the work of others. And Ginger did everybody.

See. Told ya. Makes perfect sense.

For those of you who are interested, Mike and I were actually roommates in college. He was the straight-laced business major and I was the care-free science major, think Odd Couple but with more booze and pharmaceuticals thrown in. I have always enjoyed talking with Mike and reading his stuff mostly because disagreeing with him is a lot of fun. I like to watch as he turns beet red and the little vein on his forehead pulses as I spout off my liberal musings. When we talk our goal is to see who can make the other go apoplectic first.

Whoa, Whoa! Calm down people! It's OK. I know it is hard to believe, but it is possible to have dissenting opinions with someone and remain friends. I know that, officially, the art of conversation died out in 1978 with the release of Three's Company on television, but I can assure you, Mike and I are proof that you can have an intelligent discourse about a subject without resorting to calling someone the mutated spawn of Joseph McCarthy and Adolf Hitler or referring to someone as a commie tree-hugging ankle-biter. We rarely do that, and then, only when tequila shots are imbibed sometime during the conversation. Anyway, check out what he has to say, I think you will find him both entertaining and enlightening.

The Shade Tree Economist