Sometimes you can do more damage to a bad idea with humor and satire than with a great scholarly treatise. That’s the working premise of Ken Schoolland’s The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible. This book is a wonderful takeoff on Jonathan Swift’s political satire Gulliver’s Travels and it romps all over the big, dumb ideas of socialism, egalitarianism, and democracy. Written in 1981, the book is now in its fourth printing and has been translated into 21 languages. It’s wickedly good fun with a serious purpose.

The plot is simple. A young man, Jonathan Gullible, is caught up in a great storm one day while out sailing his small boat, and washes up on the shore of a strange and suggestively named island of Corrumpo. There he encounters people who have mostly succumbed to advanced stages of governmentitis; that is to say, they embrace the same authoritarian notions that becloud the minds of most Americans today. That suits the rulers and moochers (to use Ayn Rand’s apt term) who benefit from the ignorance and foolishness of the mass of the people. In one episode after another, Schoolland lampoons idiotic ideas and demented laws that the reader will easily recognize as having counterparts on the American political scene.

One of the first lessons Jonathan learns, for example, concerns the superficially attractive idea of collective ownership. He comes upon a man who has just caught a small fish in a lake. The fisherman laments that the lake is not nearly as productive as it once was because people dump trash in it and overfish it. He explains to Jonathan, “This isn’t my lake. It belongs to everyone — just like the forests and streams.”

“These fish belong to everyone…” Jonathan paused, “including me?” He began to feel a little less guilty about sharing a meal that he had no part in making.

“Not exactly,” the man replied. “What belongs to everyone really belongs to no one — that is until a fish bites my hook. Then it’s mine.”

“I don’t get it,” said Jonathan, frowning in confusion. Half speaking to himself, he repeated, ‘The fish belong to everyone, which means that they really belong to no one, until one bites your hook. Then the fish is yours?’ But do you do anything to take care of the fish or to help them grow?”

“Of course not,” the man said with a snort of derision. “Why should I care for the fish just so someone else can come over here at any time and catch ‘em. If someone else gets the fish or pollutes the lake with garbage, then there goes all my effort!”

And now Jonathan is on his way to understanding the tragedy of the commons and the folly of collective ownership.

In another chapter, entitled “Power Sale,” Jonathan encounters his first politician, Lady Bess Tweed (Schoolland’s names are always good for a chuckle), who asks Jonathan to vote for her and to make a campaign contribution. She promises to pay him well.

“Pay me for a contribution and a vote?” asked Jonathan with a puzzled look.

“Of course, I can’t give you cash — that would be illegal, a bribe — say no more, say no more!” said Lady Tweed winking slyly at him and poking him in the ribs with her elbow.

“But I can give you something just as good as cash and worth many times the amount of your contribution to me. It’s as easy as priming a pump. A few bills in my palm right now and you can expect a gusher of goodies later. That’s what I’ll do and how about that?” she said.

Lady Tweed explains, of course, that in office, she could arrange loans or licenses or subsidies or tax breaks for Jonathan or ruin his competitors with regulations and fees and inspections, or arrange for new government projects to be built so as to benefit him. Befuddled, Jonathan wonders how she can be so generous. Lady Tweed explains that it’s easy for a politician to be generous — with money taken from taxpayers.

Occupational licensing takes a direct hit (“Lords approve death penalty for outlaw barbers!” reads a newspaper headline), as do victimless crime laws, rent control, eminent domain, sin taxes, the governmental postal monopoly, welfare programs, and just about every other piece in the mosaic of needless government.

Schoolland’s writing is reminiscent of the biting sarcasm of H. L. Mencken. You’ll have fun reading it, but perhaps much more fun in giving copies to statist-minded friends or relatives. It will no doubt lead to a lot of juicy arguments.

George C. Leef is a contributing editor of Carolina Journal, monthly newspaper of the John Locke Foundation.