My Humble Solution To The Greek Crisis

Please note - this is intended as satire, not a serious proposal, nor a political commentary.

I think I have arrived at an easy way for Greece to get itself out of this criss.

Unfortunately for Greece, its greatest days were long before the advent of the modern world and concepts like "patents", "trademarks", and "copyrights". But why should that stand in the way? There have been more than a few retroactive patents awarded in the past, and we in the United States have seen fit to grant patents for things like genetic sequences -- something that no man created, but rather just happened to be the first to find.

So, why shouldn't Greece be allowed to hold a patent on arguably its greatest invention?

Democracy.

Now, I know, Greek democracy (or rather, Athenian democracy) is very different than what we call democracy today. In fact, I daresay Athenian democracy would be barely recognizable to Americans as democracy. But let us not quibble over the details.

According to the Democracy Index, roughly 50% of the world today lives under democracy (be it perfect or imperfect). That's about 3.4 billion people, folks.

Now, when the U.S. launched military operations against Iraq, one of the stated reasons was to bestow democracy upon the Iraqi people (along with eliminating potential WMDs, getting rid of Hussein, and holding him accountable for various human rights violations and terrorist activities). So far, our operations have cost America about $704 billion dollars.

Iraq has a population of 31.2 million people. So, if we allow for one-third of the motivation being democracy, that gives us a price of $7,500 per person for democracy. And for the purposes of this exercise, we'll just treat this as a one-time payment paid by the current generation forever more.

Now, the Greeks being fair-minded people won't charge us that established "retail" price that the United States has paid. Instead, they'll grant a perpetual license for 10% of that amount - really a rather reasonable amount when you look at patent licensing agreements for novel technology and innovation.

Do the math (10% of $7,500, multiplied over 3.35B people) and you get a sum of $2.5 trillion. That is what the world, collectively, owes Greece for the right to use democracy.

So, given that the total outstanding sovereign debt of Greece is only about $400 billion, maybe the fairest approach is to call the whole thing even.

Please note - this is intended as satire, not a serious proposal, nor a political commentary.