Last night I had a dream so scary I woke up my husband screaming for help. The whole North Korean army was chasing me, and it was my own fault.
The other day, I wrote about "buying" North Korea, the way you would try to find a buyer for a crummy property in your neighborhood just to clean it up. So, how do you buy a country, or parts of a country?
Here's a hint from the Wizard of Oz. In the original, uncut version--not the shorter form seen on TV-- there's a scene in which the Emerald City guards (black haired and sporting bristly mustaches) march past the camera. Hordes of them! They look like an army. That's because they ARE an army. The rumor was that the Turkish army was hired for the role.
So here's my question about that scary dream: why was the North Korean army chasing me? I think they wanted movie contracts.
Who wouldn't rather be in the pictures than in a war?
2009年6月15日月曜日
2009年6月13日土曜日
How much would it cost?
The total area is something like 50,000 square miles and lots of those miles are too rugged to use for anything useful. You can't grow things. You can't mine things. You can't live there.
How much would worthless land like that cost?
Let's see. 50,000 square miles is 32,000 acres. You can get 30 acres in rural Tennessee for $285,000. So, if we add three zeroes to that, maybe 32,000 acres would be a little more than $285,000,000--in really round figures, of course. Let's call it $300 million, for the sake of argument.
A thousand acres in the outback of Mexico is currently going for $550,000. That times three is 1,650,000. Add a zero to bring it up to 30,000 and we've got a price tag of $16,500,000. Not even $20 million. More affordable? Sure!
The land I'm talking about is a little farther than Mexico and a lot farther than Tennessee. It is the entire country of North Korea.
Wouldn't it be a better bargain to just buy the place outright than to keep pouring money into military options?
For mere millions--not the billions that are drained away from health and education spending by a voracious military budget--we could buy North Korea, evict the current landlord, and sleep well at night without worrying about missiles and nuclear testing. I say, let's buy it.
How much would worthless land like that cost?
Let's see. 50,000 square miles is 32,000 acres. You can get 30 acres in rural Tennessee for $285,000. So, if we add three zeroes to that, maybe 32,000 acres would be a little more than $285,000,000--in really round figures, of course. Let's call it $300 million, for the sake of argument.
A thousand acres in the outback of Mexico is currently going for $550,000. That times three is 1,650,000. Add a zero to bring it up to 30,000 and we've got a price tag of $16,500,000. Not even $20 million. More affordable? Sure!
The land I'm talking about is a little farther than Mexico and a lot farther than Tennessee. It is the entire country of North Korea.
Wouldn't it be a better bargain to just buy the place outright than to keep pouring money into military options?
For mere millions--not the billions that are drained away from health and education spending by a voracious military budget--we could buy North Korea, evict the current landlord, and sleep well at night without worrying about missiles and nuclear testing. I say, let's buy it.
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