I wish 9-year-old Marko Calasan had the office next to mine. Then when something goes wrong with my computer — through no fault of my own, I assure you — I could yell “Hey Marko, come fix this!” Alas, he lives in Macedonia.

The CNET website has a nice profile of this genius. We learn that Marko is “perhaps” the youngest system engineer Microsoft has ever certified. He snagged his first credential as a systems administrator when just six.

Marko works for a living. He remotely manages a computer network for a nonprofit organization. The employees tell him they are “very glad that that there is a good administrator.” But he seems a little unsure of it, saying, “I think that’s true, but who knows.”

Marko also teaches computing to other kids at his school. When I heard this my spidey sense tingled ferociously. What? Has he put in his years at a teaching college? Mastered the latest labyrinthine educational theories? Where’s his teaching certificate? The kid’s an outlaw!! At least, he would be stateside.

Marko works when he works and plays when he plays. He doesn’t indulge in computer games because, as he puts it, “there is nothing serious about playing games on computers. . . . If you want to play, go outside and play with your friends.”

Yes sir! I will do that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Could House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have spilled the beans, laid bare her party’s vision of economic growth in one offhand utterance?

A terrible tragedy in impoverished Haiti. An earthquake. The scope of the damage staggers the imagination . . . and spurs outpourings of charitable aid from America, and across the globe.

And this is where Mrs. Pelosi chimes in. As if she had never heard of the Broken Window Fallacy, she just blurted it out, hazarding that Haiti “can leap-frog over its past challenges, economically, politically, and demographically in terms of the rich and the poor and the rest there, and have a new — just a new, fresh start.”

Over 70,000 dead, Haiti in ruins, and she’s talking about hope for a “real boom economy.”

Now, I know, politicians like to spend money. They think it does a lot of good — though in Haiti’s case, the billions spent, previously, have sure fizzled. But Pelosi isn’t just arguing that the aid is going to remake an impoverished country. She thinks that scurrying about rebuilding is a net positive.

If you wonder why politicians so like economic booms, even the most artificial ones, look no further. They cannot distinguish between real progress and the frenzy of making up for disaster.

Perhaps that’s why they are so nonchalant about the disasters their own taxes and regulations so often cause.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

The age of the glittery mirror ball and loud, simple dance music is over.

According to Ian Schrager, as recorded in Vanity Fair’s recent oral history of disco, it “wasn’t AIDS that made the nightclub business difficult. Government regulations did it in.”

Schrager and his partner set up their first nightclub, in Queens, for $27,000. The more famous Studio 54 — or is that “infamous”? — went up for $400,000.

“Now,” says Schrager, a major real estate developer, “with all the regulations, fire codes, sprinkler requirements, neighborhood issues, community planning boards . . . before you even put on the first coat of paint, you’re into it for over a million dollars. What it’s done is disenfranchise young people.”

And it’s not just disco that’s suffered. It’s worth remembering one sad side effect of all the red tape cities and states put up to new enterprises. It leaves the private sector desperate to focus on the surest forms of wealth generation, less able to serve niche markets. Like discos.

Nowadays, to establish and run non-school,  non-work activities for young people, volunteers organize community events, write grant applications and hold out their hats. This crowds out funding for needier, worthier charities, and litters our towns with poorly run government-funded efforts.

Personally, I don’t like disco — but could it be that things were better when entrepreneurs like Schrager set the stage?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Haiti has suffered horrific devastation. It didn’t have to.

There was no way to prevent the 7.0 earthquake itself. But estimates of as many as 200,000 dead? That didn’t have to happen.

Economist Donald Boudreaux recalls that in 1989, an equally powerful quake hit the San Francisco Bay area. It caused lots of trouble but killed fewer than 70 people. But Haiti is a much poorer country than the U.S., with weaker buildings and roads, for starters.

Why so poor?

Haiti is not a free society. It’s had one corrupt tyrant after another, recently emerged from the terrorizing rule of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was sent packing in 2004.

Many pundits are saying that the way to strengthen Haitian society over the long haul is torrents of foreign aid. Economist Jeffrey Sachs wants Washington to spend billions on a five-year development plan, which he says it should fund by taxing Wall Street bonuses.

Charity and rescue efforts are wonderful. Government-to-government foreign aid, not so much. Haiti has remained desperately poor despite the massive flow of foreign aid, which, over the years, has mainly subsidized corruption. What Haiti needs is stability. The ability to attract investment. Less propping up of corrupt politicians. Less foreign aid, more freedom.

But a free society is something Haitians will have to build themselves.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

For years, politicians and activists have declared that we have a right to medical care. Not a right to freely contract for medical services, mind you, but a fundamental right to medical care.

This assertion serves as the moral force behind those pushing for nationalized, universal health care legislation. But can medical care really be a basic right?

Well, it’s nowhere to be found in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.

Should it be?

Again, no.

Rights cannot involve requiring others to provide a product or service to us. We can’t simply demand, with talk of rights, the expertise and labor of doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers. Why? Because they possess the same rights we possess, in particular, the right not to be enslaved.

Watching the 2,000-page health care bill plod through the congressional sausage factory, the fraudulent nature of this “right to medical care” claim becomes painfully obvious. We’re not getting a new right from the deal. Instead, politicians are slapping us with a new mandate, forcing us to fork over our hard-earned money to health insurance companies.

If our right to freedom of speech worked this way, the First Amendment would mandate that we buy a local newspaper and sign up for cable TV or XM Radio. The Second Amendment would force us to own a gun and pay dues to the NRA.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.