The Pen is Mightier than the Cutlass
June 23rd, 2009 | 1 Comment
Indeed there is further proof that the pen is mightier than the sword. Just ask our Democrat-controlled federal government.
While it’s now old news, I came across yet another reference to the TARP plan that was approved a few months ago in the short span of just a few weeks. The very plan that reset the bar on how large really, really big numbers can be, and instantly brought into our vernacular phrases like, “Oh, that will only cost us $39 billion.” As if “only $39 billion” was a pauper’s sum that can be found lying around the house cleverly concealed in a cookie jar or possibly stuffed in a mattress in grandma’s room.
$700 billion! Your bank statement would read $700,000,000,000.00! Engineers and scientists would refer to this as $7.0E+11. Computer geeks would proudly proclaim $700 gigabucks!
Do any of these figures or terms ring a bell of familiarity to something in the real (sane) world? Not likely. But it got me to thinking.
Travel back with me to the heyday of Piracy in the Caribbean Sea for a moment and let me make the following absurd assumptions:
- Piracy was rampant from 1580-1730. (In reality, it was more like “only 40 years,” but who’s counting in this day and age?)
- For those 150 years of rampant thievery, let’s assume that there were 2 successful attacks on shipping (and towns!) each and every week, non-stop, year in and year out. (A typical pirate crew would perhaps attack a 6-10 vessels in a year, very few of which were actually successful.) For our assumptions, this makes the total number of successful attacks 150x52x2 = 15,600!
- Let’s presume that the plunder taken from each and every one of those 15,600 successful attacks yielded the pirate crews $5 million ($5,000,000.00, $5.0E+06, $5 megabucks) apiece in today’s dollars. (The largest take recorded during this time was valued at nearly $200 million. But the vast majority yielded little more than food, grog, textiles, water, and/or clothing, valued far less than $50,000.)
So, what’s the total take from all the sinister, wretched, thieving, murdering, keel-hauling, scum-sucking activity during the entire history of Caribbean piracy? Based on the above, it’s $78 billion in today’s dollars. And I’m thinking that may just be a little high, but again, who’s counting?
$78 billion.
A pauper’s sum indeed! An amount that just barely surpasses 11% of the TARP bailout package.
So, in less than a month, and with the simple squiggle of our President’s pen, our government was able to rob its citizens of 9 times the entire plunder of the Caribbean that took 150 years to amass by all the thieves of the sea at the time.
Proof positive that the pen remains mightier than the cutlass. Thank you, Mr. President.