The only thing he said that I agree with is number 6.

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Can you be more specific?

Hitting his points in turn...

1. What is wrong with making money?

2. Do you agree with "And because I care more than you do, I'm a better person. And because I'm the better person, I have the right to boss you around."

3a. What is incorrect about "Even democracy stinks. Imagine if our clothes were selected by the majority of shoppers, which would be teenage girls. I'd be standing here with my bellybutton exposed. Imagine deciding the dinner menu by family secret ballot. I've got three kids and three dogs in my family. We'd be eating Froot Loops and rotten meat."

3b. Do you believe that all will be glorious and good if only you get "the bad people" out of politics and get your "the good people" in?

4. What is wrong with his analysis of fairness. Do you personally, want to be leveled down to the planetary average standard of living?

5. You dont think envy and coveting are stupid and sick?

6. I disagree with him. There is plenty of good free advice. You just have to make sure the person giving the free advice isnt trying to sell you something...

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I disagree more in degree than in kind. As for one, I think it is foolish to set your #1 career goal as making money. I think better advice would be to find something that you like and are good at, that also pays well, and focus on doing the job well. The people I know who made good money throughout their life, and been happy doing it, followed that rule. I know a number of people who put the $s ahead of everything else, and ran themselves into serious burnout.

My criticism with 2 is that one can have high ideals and work for a better world without being that kind of jerk. He is making it sound like everyone with ideals is a jerk, which is crazy.

Yes, deciding everything by popular assent would be foolish, but that is not a reason to be apolitical. While I know O'Rourke would prefer a conservative oligarchy, we live in a democratic republic, so who is in office does effect our lives. Yes, there can often be little difference between one party sitting in a seat or the other, but that is usually do to a lack of idealism.

While fairness of outcomes is as stupid as he puts it, fairness of process is something else. If I work my ass off to be the best person in my department, I don't want to see the promotion going to some slacker just because he goes to the same church as my boss. As a child of white, middle-class, privilege, I want to see some of my tax dollars spent to create opportunities for people whose circumstance of birth would deny them hope. As for the growing income gape, history has shown that tends to precede the revolution.

As for 5, religious extremism has been the root of the worst events in history, so I don't support it. I notice he only goes to the part of the bible that tells the have-nots not to envy the haves, and makes no mention of the parts in the New Testament that condemn wealth and property, or the parts that condemn usury

I believe is listening to wise advice. Sometimes that advice comes from elders, and sometimes they are full of shit.

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I dunno, whenever I hear someone say "Level the playing field" I think it's the same form of the verb as in "Level the building."

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I notice he only goes to the part of the bible that tells the have-nots not to envy the haves

yes, and this is long after giving the advice "go out and make a bunch of money" because you making money doesn't take it away from other folks.

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"because you making money doesn't take it away from other folks."

Money is just paper, or these days, just numbers in a computer, it doesn't exist in a real sense. The existing resources that represent real wealth, however, are finite, and taking them for yourself all too frequently does mean taking them from somebody else. The paper mill owner who chooses to use 100% virgin pulp, instead of recycling used paper back into his system because it's not "cost effective", takes away thousands more trees per year from everybody else. The industry that discharges untreated wastes into surface waters rather than spend money on effective treatment takes the quality of that water and the entire aquatic ecosystem away from everybody else. The McDonalds shareholders who maximize their profit margin by promoting the clearcutting of Amazonian rainforest to raise cheap beef takes that ecosystem and all its important functions away from everybody else -- including the farmers raising that beef, and the money they get for that comes nowhere near the actual value of the intact ecosystem when you factor in the costs of replacing its services. The list goes on.

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"But my generation exhausted the Earth's resources of the weird."

Those aren't the only resources they exhausted, and the generation they fathered, and the generation we fathered, and the generation that one's going to father.

"1. What is wrong with making money?"

You can't eat money, or clean water with it, or turn it into oxygen or prevent erosion with it. The problem with O'Rourke's part of that generation is that they think money itself is a resource, and it's not. It's supposed to represent resources, and it doesn't even do that anymore. Most of the "wealth" possessed and controlled by the wealthy is imaginary at best.

I agree with rhonan about doing what is truly important to you rather than just pursuing a big paycheque. I'd rather have a satisfying low-income lifestyle than an unsatisfying high-income one. I'd far rather live in a clean and healthy world than, for example, convert forests to toilet paper in the name of money. We've got to stop shitting where we eat or there won't be anyplace fit to live no matter how much money one has.

"2. Do you agree with 'And because I care more than you do, I'm a better person. And because I'm the better person, I have the right to boss you around.'"

No, and neither do a lot of people who have ideals that include protecting resources from overconsumption. "Liberating" that redwood by today's standards involves killing it and removing all its ecological functions and services permanently. The ecotourism guy, if conscientious, may have more of a long-term effect on protecting those redwoods and the ecosystem they represent, but only if they're around to protect in the first place by the time he gets there -- and only if the government agrees with him that THEY can make more money by having people look at them than by building things out of them.

It's way past time that all the many opportunity costs of resource extraction were figured into the equation, not just how much one can get on the market by cutting down a forest or paving over a wetland, but how much it would cost to replace all the services those ecosystems provide. We're starting to, but it's uphill work against those who can only see value in their own short term profit margins. This article about British street trees illustrates the concept nicely: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/green-giants-our-love-affair-with-trees-815329.html . It's called "ecosystem valuation" ( http://www.ecosystemvaluation.org/ ) and it's very useful in a society where people think that money is the most important thing, because it describes the real value of real things in the only terms that those people can understand, the ones with dollar signs in front.

"3b. Do you believe that all will be glorious and good if only you get "the bad people" out of politics and get your "the good people" in?"

No. Because I agree with the definition of politics if you break it down: "Poly" meaning many, and "tics" meaning bloodsucking parasites. But regarding 3a, a representative democracy (in the form of a federal republic in our case) is supposed to include protection against the "tyranny of the majority". If it doesn't, it's time for another revolution.

"4. What is wrong with his analysis of fairness. Do you personally, want to be leveled down to the planetary average standard of living?"

Fairness is a fairy tale. Justice, however, is an achievable state. The way that the top 1% of the people lives keeps the bottom 80% (or so) from achieving any kind of decent standard for themselves, and the 1% like it that way -- that's how they stay where they are, like the feudal lords, by exploiting the sweat of the peasantry or stealing their natural resources. Otherwise, they might have to sweat themselves, and oh noes, we couldn't have that. On the other hand, there is no way in hell that we can elevate that 80% even to the general standard of living of the other 19% (or so) without completely wrecking the planet. Part of the reason for that is that there are simply too fucking many of us for starters. Related to that are unsustainable economies based on infinite growth in a finite world, and living standards that actively and continually reduce the ability of the planet to maintain them. (continued next post)

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"5. You dont think envy and coveting are stupid and sick?"

You think the solution is as easy as "Get rich and get your own"? As long as there is abject poverty, there will be envy of those who are not only not abjectly poor but conspicuously rich. There aren't enough actual resources available for everyone to be rich by the standards we set, because in the real world, mules and pot roasts don't just grow on trees, and even if they did, someone would have to chain themselves to them to avoid having them cut down by someone else with a government logging permit. And again I agree with rhonan, that O'Rourke is cherry-picking his Biblical nostrums. I bet he doesn't agree with Jeebus driving the money-lenders out of the temple, since they were just trying to get rich after all.

"6. I disagree with him. There is plenty of good free advice. You just have to make sure the person giving the free advice isnt trying to sell you something..."

That much is true. And these days, what most people with "advice" are selling is a bill of goods, in the idiomatic sense. But even those who offer truly free and intentionally helpful advice these days are often ignored by those who can only see the value in short term monetary gain. For instance, I doubt O'Rourke would even finish reading this post of mine, much less consider what it has to say. And I certainly don't expect to get paid for it, or any of the advice I've given out so far over the years. Of course, once I graduate my advice will be "worth" more to more people, and I will expect to get something in return, but I'll settle for a living wage.

I wonder if O'Rourke got paid for his commencement address... a lot of celebrity commencement speakers get the equivalent of a year's wages (or more for people at my income level), just to talk for twenty minutes. So, I guess we can discount all the rest of O'Rourke's advice if we take the last point.

As far as commencement addresses go, I rather like this tidbit from Kurt Vonnegut's speech at Rice University ten years ago (incidentally the year of my own undergrad commencement):

http://www.vonnegutweb.com/vonnegutia/commencement/rice.html

"...So what does this Methuselah have to say to you, since he has lived so long? I'll pass on to you what another Methuselah said to me. He's Joe Heller, author, as you know, of Catch 22. We were at a party thrown by a multi-billionaire out on Long Island, and I said, 'Joe, how does it make you feel to realize that only yesterday our host probably made more money than Catch 22, one of the most popular books of all time, has grossed world-wide over the past forty years?'

"Joe said to me, 'I have something he can never have.'

"I said, 'What's that, Joe?'

"And he said, 'The knowledge that I've got enough.'"

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Loved it; blogging it.

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As always, PJ is a hoot. My fave line; "We were the generation that believed we could stop the Vietnam War by growing our hair long and dressing like circus clowns."

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