The new Ten - Commandments that is

I love Victor Davis Hanson's thought process -- here, he nails another one. From Works and Days:

The New Commandments on the Barn Wall
If you think our quiet lives of desperation can sometimes become a bit much, relax. Here are some guidelines to soothe your frustration � a few commandments that make sense out of today�s nonsense.

1) Wealth and poverty are now more relative, than absolute, conditions. The ancient idea of the limited good once again rules. Someone who has more, by definition, took unfairly more from someone else with less, one who nobly chose not to do that in turn to others. Fairness, not poverty, is our national obsession. My 48-inch screen television gets wonderful reception and offers sharp quality, but only if I know that someone else does not (and should not) have a 52-inch screen. I liked my Accord until I found out �he� parked a BMW next to me. But at least I can console myself that I choose not to do the sort of things that the BMW owner succumbed to. As is true in every peasant-minded society, wealth is as collectively scorned as it is privately lusted after.

I really like #8:

8) Neanderthals need nerds. The cool gang banger who is knifed on Saturday night suddenly in extremis worships the surgeon who stitches up his liver and kidneys � a target whom he would otherwise have robbed earlier that Saturday afternoon. The thug who strips the copper wire from our streetlights nonetheless assumes a nerdish engineer will keep designing the wiring scheme that runs his car�s CD. For the good life to go on, each illiterate punk demands one corresponding graduate student at MIT to take care of him. When the former outnumber the latter, then civilization usually winds down.

Just say no. Or raise your prices. The Neanderthals (and the dear Dr. Hanson is probably insulting some wonderful Neanderthals) will just increase their activities to compensate for the added demand and commensurate price increase -- gotta love the free market...