Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Pyramid Scheme

I thought I would very badly paraphrase Marco's point at the end of his post here that it doesn't matter what sort of cockamamie nonsense we spend our money on, it will still be more sensible than what the rest of the developed world has done with theirs. This has a lot of resonance with me. So let's go ahead and build the National Broadband Network. Let's buy a shiny new carbon management bureaucracy. Let's work out the most expensive way we can possibly think of to deal with asylum seekers, and do that.

But what I really think we should build to bring our debt levels in line with the rest of the world is a pyramid.

Yes, that's right. After we stop painting the Harbour Bridge, it will rust away to nothing in a hundred years. A tsunami is sure to get the Opera House sometime in the next millennium. What have we really got in terms of durable architecture to tell the people five thousand years from now how great we were? Nothing. So, a pyramid. Instead of this pissant little monument to commemorate the birth of the Australian Labor Party, we should have taken all that stimulus funding and built a ruddy great pyramid, as in the cheap and nasty photoshop artist's Google Earth impression below:

The Great Pyramid of Barcaldine, before addition of marble facing and golden bit on top.
 

I have gotten up at three in the morning to post this, I reckon it is such a great idea. 

5 comments:

Dr Clam said...

I observe that at the 2006 census the population of Barcaldine was 1337, an obvious numerological portent that this would be a great idea.

Marco Parigi said...

It's not as silly as it sounds, and we should really be aiming to make a monument that lasts 10000 years, like the long now foundation clockhere.

Dr Clam said...

Yes, I'm more serious about it than I sound, too. I would vote for them if they promised to build a monument to last 10,000 years.

Have you seen this?

Marco Parigi said...

I would give it a fair chance. There are better places than barcAldine in Australia, because desert areas (maybe even inside a mountain) are better protected from the elements and sabotage.

Marco Parigi said...

I was mentally going through all the stuff we have in our house thinking about what the oldest functional things were. We do have a handful of photos that are about 100 years old inherited from Kylie's grandma. Other than that there is one working "watch and play" Donkey Kong game from our childhood, well say early 80's, and a working laptop from around 1992. It is a bit of a throwaway society, and so much stuff is sold or thrown away rather than being passed down :(