Primates and Bananas

Have you ever tried to open a banana by the stem like most humans do, only to be met with utter fruity failure when the stem bends and bits of banana ooze out all over your hands? Or even if you get a good clean break, those little banana string thingys (official scientific™ term) clump around the banana fruit and you have to keep peeling them off as you eat. This isn't a problem for monkeys and apes...they peel the banana from the bottom if they don't just eat the whole thing and let out a primal scream. Try it, you'll see how easy it is to do and how cleanly it peels. Peeling a banana that is, not primal screaming.

So what do these critters know about something so simple as peeling a banana that we superior humans do not? Absolutely nothing. They don't think about it, they just do what is natural. We humans, however, look at a banana and see the stem and think "ooh, a convenient handle", as if nature packaged this fruit with an easy-to-open system like shredded cheese in a zip-lock bag.

Sometimes thinking too hard about how to approach a problem can create a mess, when there are simpler solutions. Consider the market. Often times those on the left like to criticize capitalism and call it evil, as if it were something that was devised to bring misery down on the human race. They argue from an "intellectual" point of view, claiming that this paper and that, these deep thoughts and those make their case. Looking through the lens of history, it is easy to see how many times these intellectually engineered systems fail.

Why do they fail? Aren't these highly educated progressives smart enough to devise a simple system that works? The answer is no, they cannot, because they can't do simple. See, capitalism is really nothing more than an economic extension of human nature. I'll trade you this for that, and if I can get more value out of my trade, then that is better. It creates wealth where it did not exist previously by changing the value of something. Its so simple it wasn't invented or thought up in some prestigious, progressive university on the East Coast. And it works too. There are winners and losers in capitalism, but the winning and losing is governed by the actions of the winners and losers themselves, not by decree of self-proclaimed experts or a federal government.

Like peeling a banana from the bottom, the economical banana isn't immune from problems. But this does not justify making things even worse by using a backward method. Concisely put: if something simple works well, why complicate it? So the next time your liberal friends are praising Keynesian economics or Karl Marx's beard, just peel a banana from the bottom, enjoy its fruity goodness, and think what an educated idiot they are.

Feel free to comment below. Please keep it civil and respect my no-cussin' policy.