Samuel Johnson: Six bouts, twelve fighters, and one question that nobody could pin to the mat.
Niccolo Machiavelli: Six bouts, Doctor, and you scored every single one of them for the wrong man.
Samuel Johnson: Tonight we go to the replay, sir, and the replay will vindicate me completely.
Niccolo Machiavelli: The replay has never vindicated anyone, Doctor, which is exactly why I love it.
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Samuel Johnson: Good evening, and welcome to the highlight reel of the season. I am Samuel Johnson, author of the Dictionary, and for six weeks I have called the toughest card in the history of political economy with perfect impartiality. Somebody fetch Boswell, for tonight I mean to be quoted.
Niccolo Machiavelli: And I am Niccolo Machiavelli, your color man. Since the season began I have been turned down for employment by Otto von Bismarck and by Alexander Hamilton, who forwarded my letter to Thomas Jefferson. I am therefore unemployed, and free at last to tell you the truth.
Samuel Johnson: Let us run the tale of the tape for the whole season. One question in the main event. If the law treated a data center like a plain warehouse, with a warehouse’s share of power and water and no special tax break, could it still make money?
Niccolo Machiavelli: Six bouts to answer it, Doctor, and I would like the audience to know that nobody was disqualified, though several men deserved it.
Samuel Johnson: Roll the tape on bout one. Henry George, gentle as a parson, walks to the center of the ring and hits Leland Stanford with the Georgia figure, two and a half billion dollars of tax forgiven in a single year. Then George calls the whole thing a tip. A tip, sir! The crowd was on its feet.
Niccolo Machiavelli: Now watch Stanford in slow motion. Every time he is hit, he says I do not recall. He absorbs the blow by simply declining to remember it. That is not a defense, Doctor. That is a technique, and I want it taught in schools.
Samuel Johnson: Then the reversal, and I grant it was a beauty. Stanford catches George with his own book. A strict single tax would leave the servers untaxed too. I took a subsidy, sir, says Stanford. You wrote one.
Niccolo Machiavelli: Off the ropes, with the opponent’s own manual. Cesare Borgia never threw a cleaner punch in his life.
Samuel Johnson: Bout two, the Professor against the Scotchman. William Graham Sumner reads Andrew Carnegie his own words from 1890, that the steel industry was not yet fully grown and had to be protected. Then the finishing move. Your industry is no infant, sir. It is merely holding the bottle!
Niccolo Machiavelli: And then my man Carnegie finds the hole. The ratepayer’s sixteen dollars a month never reaches the data center at all. It goes to the owners of power plants. Sumner had to concede it on camera. He had been prosecuting a man who was not holding the purse.
Samuel Johnson: Before Carnegie scored an own goal, sir. He said he always built with his own money, once the tariff was paid! I have not seen a man confess that cheerfully since my Dictionary defined oats.
Niccolo Machiavelli: It was a charming confession, Doctor, and charm wins rounds you would never award on points.
Samuel Johnson: Bout three, and I confess it was painful to call. John Locke, a Whig, and the first Whig was the Devil, defending the common well. Jeremy Bentham comes off the top rope with Locke’s own pitcher. By your book, he says, the water belongs to whoever draws it.
Niccolo Machiavelli: The crowd thought it was over. Bentham even scored his own move a nine.
Samuel Johnson: And then Locke reads the very next line, sir! The pitcher is fair only while a whole river is left. When the aquifer falls, the proviso closes the tap. Then the line of the season. You cannot carry a dead man to the next page.
Niccolo Machiavelli: Bentham scored that one a twelve, which is the only time in history a utilitarian graded on a curve. I still had Bentham on my card, Doctor, for volume of arithmetic alone.
Samuel Johnson: Bout four, the lawyer against the Prussian, and the greatest upset of the season. Bismarck hits Blackstone with a passage from his own Commentaries, permitting a forced sale with full compensation. Sir William, he says, you are not a wall. You are a cashier.
Niccolo Machiavelli: And Blackstone does not go down. He comes back with three conditions. The legislature must order it, the payment must be full, and the use must be public. A wire to one unnamed customer, he says, is not the public.
Samuel Johnson: And then the upset, sir. The Prussian agreed with him! A line for a private customer should be bought and not taken. I called for Boswell, because I had just praised a German.
Niccolo Machiavelli: Then Bismarck’s late blow, which nobody saw coming. Make them generate their own power, and the turbines move next door. You have moved it fifty yards and changed the smell. That one followed us all the way to the finale.
Samuel Johnson: Bout five, the tag team rematch. George and Sumner both won their first bouts, and both despise the subsidy. Then they discover they despise each other’s cure even more.
Niccolo Machiavelli: George calls the Professor’s contract a regulated monopoly with good manners. Sumner says George would hand the reins to the horse thief and call it reform. Two clean shots, Doctor, both landed, and neither man went down.
Samuel Johnson: And gentle Henry George raised his voice for the first time all season, and then apologized for it. Sir, I nearly wept.
Niccolo Machiavelli: Then he forgave his opponent on the way out of the ring. In my profession, Doctor, public forgiveness is a foreign object, and the referee should have checked his gloves.
Samuel Johnson: Bout six, the main event. Walter Bagehot opens the ledger and lands the opening line of the season. A business that cannot pay for its own electricity is not an industry. It is a mood.
Niccolo Machiavelli: And Bagehot works the body all night. The best campuses can pay. The old ones and the city ones cannot. The rule does not kill the industry. It sorts it. Then he calls Hamilton an aristocrat on purpose, purely to watch him detonate.
Samuel Johnson: But the turning point belonged to Hamilton, sir, and I will give it to him. He would defend help voted openly by a legislature. He would never defend a subsidy hidden in a widow’s electric bill or a sealed contract. Let Congress vote a bounty in daylight, he says, and put its name to it.
Niccolo Machiavelli: And Bagehot answers by giving up the warehouse entirely. The honest rule is not be a warehouse. It is pay what you cost. Six bouts to arrive at four words, Doctor.
Samuel Johnson: Now to the season awards. Move of the season, in my judgment, goes to John Locke, for reading the next line of his own book while the whole arena thought he was finished.
Niccolo Machiavelli: My move of the season goes to Leland Stanford, for I do not recall. He used it every time it mattered and was never once penalized for it.
Samuel Johnson: And the undefeated champion of the season, sir, is not a man at all. It is the sealed contract. Twelve men climbed into the ring, and not one of them laid a glove on it.
Niccolo Machiavelli: On that, Doctor, we agree completely. Nobody knows what these companies pay for power or water, so nobody could finish the sum. The belt stays in the drawer.
Samuel Johnson: Then let me state your scoring fairly, sir, before I knock it flat. You score the man who leaves the ring with the most, whatever he took to get it. Survival is your only virtue, and a clean escape is worth more to you than a true argument.
Niccolo Machiavelli: That was accurate, Doctor, and nearly impartial. And yours. You score the man who was right, whether or not he won a single exchange, and you assume the crowd will eventually agree with you. It is a lovely system. It has never once predicted an election.
Samuel Johnson: Virtue won this season, sir, and the replay proves it!
Niccolo Machiavelli: VIRTUE NEVER EVEN LEFT THE LOCKER ROOM, DOCTOR!
Samuel Johnson: HENRY GEORGE WON THE FIRST BOUT CLEAN, SIR!
Niccolo Machiavelli: STANFORD ADMITTED NOTHING AND WALKED OUT RICH!
Samuel Johnson: LOCKE READ THE NEXT LINE AND WON!
Niccolo Machiavelli: BENTHAM DID MORE ARITHMETIC THAN THE WHOLE CARD!
Samuel Johnson: BLACKSTONE HELD THE LINE ON THE FARM!
Niccolo Machiavelli: BISMARCK FOUND THE HOLE IN FOUR VOLUMES!
Samuel Johnson: YOU ARE A PENSION HUNTER WITHOUT A PENSION!
Niccolo Machiavelli: AND YOU TOOK THE PENSION YOU CALLED TREASON!
Samuel Johnson: SIR, YOU WILL RETRACT THAT AT ONCE!
Niccolo Machiavelli: I WILL RETRACT NOTHING AT ALL, DOCTOR!
Samuel Johnson: If you have enjoyed the season, like and subscribe, and pay no attention to my colleague. He wrote the greatest book on power ever produced and dedicated it to a Medici who never read it. This season he applied for work with a Prussian and an American, and was rejected by both, and then by Thomas Jefferson by mail. He is the only man in history to be fired by three governments he never worked for.
Niccolo Machiavelli: Yes, like and subscribe. And remember that the Doctor defined a pension as pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country, and then took one from the King. He defined a pastern as the knee of a horse, and when a lady asked why, he said ignorance, madam, pure ignorance. He called himself a harmless drudge, and that was the only time he was ever accurate about himself.
Samuel Johnson: Until the next card, I remain your impartial servant.
Niccolo Machiavelli: And I remain available for employment. Good night, and do come back.
