As prepared by friends and presented to me many years ago at my 60th birthday party

1. Name highways, bridges, parks, tunnels, hospitals and libraries by auction … to the highest bidder. You can bet the IBM highway or the Bankers Trust tunnel will be well maintained.

2. Breed smaller people — we could save the world ’s resources by building smaller cars and houses, growing less food, manufacturing only small sizes of clothing.

3. Lend builders money with their building ’s elevators as collateral. Then let them try to skip a payment.

4. The second best place to have a good idea destroyed is Washington. The first is Detroit.

5. Economic cure . . . SLEEP LESS. Then we could eat more, drive more, spend more, etc. with the extra time. (If we breed smaller people as in #2 above, who also sleep less we could have a problem.)

6. The Soviet Union was the ultimate break-up candidate. . . an ossified institution totally unresponsive to its customers (the people) and its owners (also presumably the people). Making the parts smaller, and hopefully more responsive to owners and customers should work a lot better.

7. When you lose in the stock market don ’t say “never again. ” Say “smarter next time ”. . otherwise you lose twice, both the money and the next opportunity.

8. Venture not. If this whets your appetite for more wisdom, you can always buy the book, thus killing two birds with one stone.. Making yourself smarter and Arthur richer.

Happy 60th Arthur.

Extracted painfully from “Thriving up and down the Free Market Food Chain.

©1991, British Far East Holdings, Ltd. Published by Harper Business. Written by Arthur Lipper III.