LESSON #1
Yossarian was riding beside him in the co-pilot’s seat. “I don’t understand why you buy eggs for seven cents apiece in Malta and sell them for five cents.”
‘I do it to make a profit.’
‘But how can you make a profit? You lose two cents an egg.’
‘But I make a profit of three and a quarter cents an egg by selling them for four and a quarter cents an egg to the people in Malta I buy them from for seven cents an egg. Of course, I don’t make the profit. The syndicate makes the profit. And everybody has a share.’
Yossarian felt he was beginning to understand. ‘And the people you sell the eggs to at four and a quarter cents apiece make a profit of two and three quarter cents apiece when they sell them back to you at seven cents apiece. Is that right? Why don’t you sell the eggs directly to you and eliminate the people you buy them from?’
‘Because I’m the people I buy them from,’ Milo explained. ‘I make a profit of three and a quarter cents apiece when I sell them to me and a profit of two and three quarter cents apiece when I buy them back from me. That’s a total profit of six cents an egg. I lose only two cents an egg when I sell them to the mess halls at five cents apiece, and that’s how I can make a profit buying eggs for seven cents apiece and selling them for five cents apiece. I pay only one cent apiece at the hen when I buy them in Sicily.’
‘In Malta,’ Yossarian corrected. ‘You buy your eggs in Malta, not Sicily.’
Milo chortled proudly. ‘I don’t buy eggs in Malta,’ he confessed… ‘I buy them in Sicily for one cent apiece and transfer them to Malta secretly at four and a half cents apiece in order to get the price of eggs up to seven cents apiece when people come to Malta looking for them.’
‘Why do people come to Malta for eggs when they’re so expensive there?’
‘Because they’ve always done it that way.’
‘Why don’t they look for eggs in Sicily?’
‘Because they’ve never done it that way.’
‘Now I really don’t understand. Why don’t you sell your mess halls the eggs for seven cents apiece instead of for five cents apiece?’
‘Because my mess halls would have no need for me then. Anyone can buy seven-cents-apiece eggs for seven cents apiece.’
‘Why don’t they bypass you and buy the eggs directly from you in Malta at four and a quarter cents apiece?’
‘Because I wouldn’t sell it to them.’
‘Why wouldn’t you sell it to them?’
‘Because then there wouldn’t be as much room for profit. At least this way I can make a bit for myself as a middleman.’
‘Then you do make a profit for yourself,’ Yossarian declared.
‘Of course I do. But it all goes to the syndicate. And everybody has a share.’
Don’t you understand? It’s exactly what happens with those plum tomatoes I sell to Colonel Cathcart.” “Buy,” Yossarian corrected him. “You don’t sell plum tomatoes to Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn. You buy plum tomatoes from them.” “No, sell,” Milo corrected Yossarian. “I distribute my plum tomatoes in markets all over Pianosa under an assumed name so that Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn can buy them up from me under their assumed names at four cents apiece and sell them back to me the next day at five cents apiece. They make a profit of one cent apiece, I make a profit of three and a half cents apiece, and everybody comes out ahead.”
Catch-22
LESSON #2
“You know, a thousand dollars ain’t such a bad price for a medium bomber and a crew. If I can persuade the Germans to pay me a thousand dollars for every plane they shoot down, why shouldn’t I take it?” “Because you’re dealing with the enemy, that why. Can’t you understand that we’re fighting a war? People are dying. Look around you, for Christ’s sake!” Milo shook his head with weary forberance. “And the Germans are not our enemies,” he declared. “Oh, I know what you’re going to say: Sure, we’re at war with them. But the Germans are also members in good standing of the syndicate, and it’s my job to protect their rights are shareholders. Maybe they did start the way, and maybe they are killing millions of people, but they pay their bills a lot more promptly than some allies of ours I could name.”
“Decent people everywhere were affronted, and Milo was all washed up until he opened his books to the public and disclosed the tremendous profit he had made. He could reimburse the government for all the people and property he had destroyed and still have enough money left over to continue buying Egyptian cotton. Everybody, of course, owned a share. And the sweetest part of the whole deal was that there was really no need to reimburse the government at all. “In a democracy, the government is the people,” Milo explained. “We’re the people, aren’t we? So we might just as well keep the money and eliminate the middleman.”
“Why don’t you sell your cotton to the government?” Milo vetoed the idea brusquely. “It’s a matter of principle,” he explained firmly. “The government has no business in business, and I would be the last person in the world to ever try to involve the government in a business of mine. But the business of the government is business,” he remembered alertly, and continued with elation. “Calvin Coolidge said that, and Calvin Coolidge was a President, so it must be true. And the government does have the responsibility of buying all the Egyptian cotton I’ve got that no one else wants so I can make a profit, doesn’t it? But how will I get the government to do it?” “Bribe it.”
“Bribe it!” Milo was outraged and almost lost his balance and broke his neck again. “Shame on you,” he scolded severely, breathing virtuous fire down and upward into his rusty mustache through his billowing nostrils and prim lips. “Bribery is against the law, and you know it. But it’s not against the law to make a profit, isn’t it? So it can’t be against the law for me to bribe someone in order to make a fair profit, can it? No, of course not! But how would I know who to bribe?” “Oh you don’t worry about that. You make the bribe big enough and they will find you. Just make sure you do everything right out in the open. Let everyone know exactly what you want and how much you’re willing to pay for it.”
GreasedUpWillie says:
One of the best novels ever. I think it was Milo’s dad, who was a farmer paid by the government to not grow crops. He used the money to acquire more land on which to not grow greater amounts of crops. This gave him the free time to rail against all non-agricultural government spending as Socialist. Heller writes in such a way that if you didn’t laugh at these things, you would cry.
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19th January 2013 at 2:05 pm
Administrator says:
GreasedUpWillie
I’m trying to enlighten these shit throwing monkeys with some literature. It was Major Major’s father.
“Major Major’s father was a sober God-fearing man whose idea of a good joke was to lie about his age. He was a long-limbed farmer, a God-fearing, freedom-loving, law-abiding rugged individualist who held that federal aid to anyone but farmers was creeping socialism. He advocated thrift and hard work and disapproved of loose women who turned him down. His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn’t earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major’s father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa. On long winter evenings he remained indoors and did not mend harness, and he sprang out of bed at the crack of noon every day just to make certain that the chores would not be done. He invested in land wisely and soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other man in the county….
Major Major’s father was an outspoken champion of economy in government, provided it did not interfere with the sacred duty of government to pay farmers as much as they could get for all the alfalfa they produced that no one else wanted or for not producing any alfalfa at all. He was a proud and independent man who was opposed to unemployment insurance and never hesitated to whine, whimper, wheedle and extort for as much as he could get from whomever he could.”
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19th January 2013 at 2:11 pm
Eddie says:
Certain books, if read at an impressionable age, can make great influences on the reader that will affect his point of view forever. Stumbling on this book and reading it at age 15 or so may have had such an effect on me.
Either that or I was just born an INTJ and a natural cynic.
But then, as now, I found this book to be fascinating, funny, and real in a way that no other novel of war ever was for me. And Heller never wrote another book anywhere near as good as this one.
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19th January 2013 at 2:20 pm
Ron says:
I hadnt heard of this guy.I almost wish i hadnt read this post it gives me ideas.I was thinking of how many people have figured out how to do this.
I do remember reading about many farmers paid to not grow any crops on theyre land.
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19th January 2013 at 3:14 pm
GreasedUpWillie says:
Nicely done Admin. I was too lazy to dig through my basement for the book.
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19th January 2013 at 5:23 pm
KaD says:
Here’s another good read on how the economic system works-and doesn’t work: Why collectivism (socialism) is doomed and the next great crisis will massively shift America toward conservatism
A mass die-off of people living in cities, in other words, is essentially a mass die-off of Obama voters (or more liberal-minded, socialist-minded people). This is one reason why rugged individuals, survivalists, preppers and rural people are ultimately going to be in the majority: because crisis comes to civilization with surprising regularity. Every crisis resulting in a mass die-off inevitably kills those who are less able to survive because they are living as parasites on a system that will ultimately fail them. The true long-term survivors are those who live and breathe independence, self-reliance and personal defense.
…humanity is stalled in a cycle of pathetic conformity, raising a generation of over-Google-fied morons who have lost all imagination and are but a shadow of their ancestors. The convenience of city life has, with some exceptions of course, produced apathy, timidity and acquiescence. The real values of progress — innovation, invention, determination and self-reliance — are now far more prevalent in rural-minded citizens who are strong, rugged survivors and explorers.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/038739_cities_country_living_conservatism.html#ixzz2ITJ9PBTD
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19th January 2013 at 7:43 pm
marissa says:
I love that book. Catch-22 is one of the finest pieces of American literature of the 20th century. The day will come when it is recognized as such.
Joseph Heller
Kurt Vonnegut
Hunter S. Thompson
Upton Sinclair
John Steinbeck
20th century American literary greatness.
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19th January 2013 at 2:59 am
Eddie says:
Marissa
You left out a few of my favorites.
Earnest Hemingway
Jack Kerouac
Ken Kesey
Tom Robbins
Robert Heinlein
Gertrude Stein
Charles Bukowski
Neal Stephenson
I’d be interested in what other TBPer’s consider the Great Literature of the 20th Century. Please add to the list, anybody.
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19th January 2013 at 11:59 am
GreasedUpWillie says:
Eddie:
Sinclair Lewis would have to be at the top of my list. John Dos Passos is up there as well. John Updike’s Rabbit series was a great piece of Americana that captured the mood and issues of several different modern eras in the United States (60s, 70s, 80s). Conrad Richter’s the awakening land trilogy, starts with an Ohio frontier cabin, and follows the characters and their decendants until a town is built. Gives you a great perspective on how America was built at the family level, and what a family went through to settle this country.
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19th January 2013 at 12:30 pm
anotherjuan says:
eddie, i see your heinlein and raise you one asimov. nobody mentioned salinger yet. i like updike.
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19th January 2013 at 1:27 pm
Eddie says:
I started to mention Asimov,but thought if I got too many Sci-Fi authors on my list I might not be taken seriously.
On reflection I decided to add Armistead Maupin to my list. And John Irving too. I’m not sure where really good fiction ends and literature begins.
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19th January 2013 at 2:38 pm
TJF says:
There’s only one catch….
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19th January 2013 at 8:59 pm