Despite the trillions of dollars that are being tossed around like pennies to save businesses these days the United States taxpayer doesn’t have an unlimited amount of wealth to be bailing out everyone in the economy. The U.S. automobile industry is about the last part of the economy that ought to be seeking a handout. Here is an industry that has managed to lose a world-wide lead to foreign competition because it hasn’t been efficient and innovative. We can debate how much of the blame for that goes to bad management or short-sighted union officials but whatever the cause the U.S. companies should either die a natural death or figure out a way on their own to survive in a competitive global economy.

I’m not enthusiastic about using taxpayer dollars to bailout anyone beyond the financial institutions whose collapse could send us into a decade long depression. But if we had a few hundred billion dollars to spend on propping up companies that can’t make it on their own here’s my proposition: let’s help new innovative firms that will be the future of the country rather than the fat lethargic ones that couldn’t innovative their way out of paper bag even if they had the money.

So if Congress and President Obama have $500 hundred billion dollars in chump change that they want to use to bailout firms, they should dole it out to venture capital firms so that they can help keep capital flowing to the entrepreneurs who will be the source of the great companies—and jobs—a decade from now. Suppose the financial crisis of today happened a decade ago. Would we have been better off saving a thousand entrepreneurs or one automobile company?

Well, if some of those entrepreneurs included Brin, Page, Bezos, and Omiyard, we would have been far better off shelling out money to 997 companies that would have failed and 3 that would have succeeded massively and changed the world.

If there are only a few life preservers left, most of us would rather throw them to the young and healthy, and not to the old and infirm. Bailout happy politicians – especially those who are bailing out by spending our money - should heed that age old wisdom.