Big Think

Patrick Byrne: I think we’re eating . . . Collectively, I think we’re eating the seed grain. We’re farmers who are so, you know . . . The image comes to mind when I read about the hedge fund community of Henry VIII, you know, in the movies where he’s got drumstick . . . turkey drumsticks and he’s just __________ slobbering. That to me might be how we’re remembered. I mean we are so short-sighted. We’re environmentally ruining the planet. To me, I think what’s happened is there was some pretty good safeguards that kept . . . Well I think what politics really was from . . . especially from the ‘30s and ‘40s, was once government got in the business of . . . of allocation, allocation, allocation, what happened was people realized it was very profitable to go and capture D.C. and get them to allocate wealth and resources to you. Well we all figured out that game by the 1980s or so, and different groups stopped being able to organize in order to expropriate largess from the public treasury. And so what happened was we all realized there’s one group that we can still stick it to, and that . . . because there’s one group that doesn’t vote, and that’s the future. And so basically our programs now are . . . are . . . Our lifestyle, our rap now is all about sticking it to the future and living better now. And that shows up whether you’re talking about Social Security, or education, or you know, fiscal discipline, anything. It’s basically politics . . . The normal push me, pull you of political life of much of the 20th century has disappeared because we really . . . we all realized, hey, that there’s one group that we can stick it . . . to stick them with the bill, and that’s the future.

Recorded on: 10/29/07