Jon Stewart of the Daily Show once complained, “Why did God put all the oil under crazy people?” I offer the following theodicy: He didn’t. It’s the oil that made them crazy. All they needed were enough machine guns to control the oil and they could buy Rolls Royces to their heart’s content without developing a diversified entrepreneurial culture.

Brilliant.

In Egypt one person in three works for the government (whether directly or indirectly). In Turkey, many ways comparable to Egypt, it’s about half that and everybody sees more prosperity and growth in Turkey- a lot more.

Anyone can see that it will take nearly everything two people have left over after their own needs to work hard enough to produce enough to carry and pay for one government worker/program-recipient in those ‘big government ruled however you wanna call it’ states, and not at too high a pay at that. Once you get to that level, who has any energy left to pay any attention to what the worker writes on paper? The regimes fall– and in real terms that means the government workers/program recipients go find something else to do for money– in no small part the real engine of the ‘early success’ of whatever regime comes next. Hire them back– and repeat…..