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Post by 1 on Dec 31, 2010 15:14:30 GMT -5
Six days after our departure from Tokyo, we passed through Bering Strait and crossed the Arctic Circle. Although it was May, it was very cold, and as we turned our course westward, the ice floes got more numerous, and soon we were flanked by pack ice on both sides. Still, the Kapitan Fedosov was doing a good fifteen knots; we were following the zigzagging channel made by an icebreaker a few days earlier. On the bridge, Joel explained that we'd be sailing on our own for another day until we came to the seventy-first parallel: the convoy was being formed at Ambarchik, where our two icebreakers were waiting. There'd be six ships in all; three were ahead of us, one could be seen on the horizon astern, and the last was presently passing through the Strait.
"A ship that's built for use in the Arctic isn't just any ordinary tub," Joel told me. We had become friends during the past week, and with my background in engineering I found the bridge a fascinating place, so I spent a lot of time there.
"First of all, she has to be built to the highest standards of hull strength, which means Lloyd's ice class IA Super. Second, she has to be incredibly agile. We don't just have a regular screw pointing backwards, like many other ships. We have a propeller assembly that turns a full 360 degrees to move us in any direction that may become necessary. Water jets on the sides of the hull enable us to move the entire ship sideways. We also have a sophisticated setup of computer control, combined with satellite navigation. Data from our radar and from electronic sensors in the hull and propulsion gear of the ship are constantly combined with satellite information on the ice situation. The result is that the ship noses her way along the easiest route available, avoiding contact with icebergs entirely."
The sun was low and cold over the southern horizon; it was about noon. Suddenly Mike Davis stormed in, yelling and complaining. His computer had lost contact with its satellite, and he was out hundreds of dollars for every hour he was cut off from the markets—or so he claimed. He had followed the instructions for his computer, placing its amplifying external antenna outside his cabin window, but the computer had simply stopped working that morning. So now he demanded the use of the ship's antenna gear, and wasn't taking no for an answer.
It took all of Joel's phlegmatic patience to make Mike understand that the ship's satellite communication gear was built for entirely different frequencies than those used by the telecommunications carriers, and that even if it had been technically possible to assist him, the ship's equipment was meant for navigation purposes and wasn't available for other uses. The existing Local Area Network, having Internet access, couldn't be made available to passengers for security reasons: if a passenger brought in a computer virus or otherwise crashed the network, the safety of the ship would be at stake.
I volunteered to continue the lesson, saying a few words about the differences between the Inmarsat marine communications satellites and the low and medium earth orbit satellites serving portable computers and telephones. To spare Mike the humiliation of being evicted from the bridge, I suggested going down to his cabin to see if we couldn't check out his gear and get it working again. We tried, but to no avail—there was no cellular telephone network anywhere near, and the outside temperature was way below the rated limit for his satellite antenna—and to divert Mike's wrath, I thought to ask him about his investing business.
"What industries should one invest in these days?"
Mike gave a grunt.
"Death deferment is your best bet," he said. "It's a little-known business, operating under the guise of health care. At the current state of the art, it's possible to keep almost every dying body biologically alive for as long as there's insurance cover and the families have any assets left. The returns are formidable: for every day you leave the life support systems on and the body keeps vegetating, you take in thousands of dollars with very low operating expenses. Then, when the money runs out, you pull the plug and harvest the organs. Simple. Just make sure you go for the large hospital chains that have divested terminal care into separate subsidiaries. But if you get into individual contracts on specific people, avoid AIDS patients: they tend to die unexpectedly, and can't be revived. Stroke victims and people in a coma are best. Now that we've got death with dignity and assisted suicide outlawed altogether and everyone is an organ donor, it's really good business. Even living wills are now invalid, thanks to our lobbyists and all the free help from the churches."
"Who are 'we' here?" I asked.
"An informal group of socially aware, progressive investors. It has no name, but we work well together. We're into nursing homes, as well. Our nursing homes have higher occupancy rates than the average, also thanks to efficient lobbying."
"What's the connection there?"
"The key success factor is getting those old people into our homes and terminal care facilities that have the best insurance and the most assets, plus relatives that can take over the payments when needed. Choosing them is easy; everybody's medical and financial information is accessible through the Internet by hiring the best hackers.
"As you identify your next clients, you need to round them up. For this we use local police officers whom we pay kickbacks—quite unofficially, of course. For a beginning, the success rate was poor: officers tended to give up if a spouse or a caregiver refused to give their consent. We've got that problem solved now."
"How did you solve it?" I inquired.
"We got a Federal program set up that directs money to the county level for the purpose of rehabilitating young offenders. Local authorities can reduce their police budgets by hiring precisely the recruits we need: easily corruptible thugs. Now objecting caregivers are tasered or shot point-blank, and the new client is simply carted off. A cop is a cop, even when he's lining his own pockets, and you shouldn't try to resist him. It's pretty shocking when such cases get into the news, but these federally funded guys are practically impossible to fire, once counties have started accepting the money for them.
"Another law that we had a hand in passing says that, for the good of the patients, once you're in one of these facilities, you can never get out again, as long as you can pay. It's a fine industry, really."
"That would take nerves of steel," I mused. "Anything less gruesome for a beginner?"
"The peace-of-mind industry is hot, too."
I lifted an eyebrow.
"Peace of mind includes anything and everything that makes people feel good and secure. Business such as insurance; entertainment including religion; belief systems, motivation, inspiration, fashion, trend bureaus, cosmetics and cosmetic surgery: in general, having your personal matters in order and belonging to the right crowd. From an investor's point of view, the best branch of this industry is televangelism. With the depression, a lot of good talkers, like used car salesmen, are out of work and available to do the delivery, but they need capital for the necessary investments and connections to find a distribution channel. They don't need to know what they're talking about: all the material is available from Internet vendors."
"Wouldn't that make for rather bland sermons?"
"No," Mike replied, "it now works fine. The first attempts at simply computer-generating sermons fell flat, but the vendors learned fast. They went and bought up tens of thousands of real sermons, cut them into paragraphs, and classified the paragraphs. That's where the science part comes in. The preacher picks a subject that he knows will appeal to his audience just then, and the software he's bought from the vendor assembles a sermon from the right paragraphs in the vendor's on-line library. When the preacher has made his own adjustments, the software checks the language, makes sure there are an optimum number of appeals for donations, and creates the teleprompter material and the audiovisuals, including the Bible quotes. You need a call center to take in the money: that's cheap, because they're all located either in India or in American prisons, and the labor costs are way below minimum wage. I own a chain of televangelists, and they've made me rich."
The crassness of it all flabbergasted me. "What on earth makes people want to pay for evangelization by a guy who doesn't believe in what he's saying?"
"We're not talking evangelization here. The thing that brings in the big money is hate speech."
"Hate speech? Isn't that illegal?"
Unfazed, Mike kept revealing his business secrets. "Someone else would end up in jail, yes. But at least in the States, anybody who calls himself a Christian priest or minister is free to rant and rave right up to, and including, the point of raising a lynch mob. There was a law against it for a while, but it didn't last. Totally un-American. The preacher and his audience are simply practicing their religion, and nobody can stop them from doing that.
"You just have to choose your targets right. Blacks and Jews are out; gays and Muslims are in. Political liberals, pro-abortionists, gun control proponents, and women's rights activists go like hotcakes. If you promote concern for Nature over the profits of big business, you'll be hounded as a 'New Age environmentalist,' and prayers will be said to protect the nation from your demonic influence. Anybody who is anti-war, anybody who speaks out for civil rights, anybody who defends the interests of other nations against those of America (that is, the interests of America's billionaires), teachers who teach evolution, politicians who are in favor of any kind of fiscal transfer of wealth other than to the rich: we get them all. It's called moral coercion: Either you live your life as I say (not as I do, of course!) or I'll make you. My televangelists get the people up in arms and put the thumbscrews on politicians and civil servants, and the tax-free money keeps rolling in."
"You mean you target individuals, not just objectionable behavior in general?"
"Yes, of course," Mike confirmed. "Old-fashioned fire-and-brimstone preaching is perceived as challenging the hearers themselves, and who wants to pay for that? The viewers I'm after are prepared to help finance campaigns against other people, and it has to be identifiable individuals, real flesh-and-blood villains who are out there, and whom they could take a baseball bat to, if it came to that. We get lots of leads from Conservative Internet vigilantes as well as from right-wing Christian bloggers and Web forums. My office coordinates teams of on-line volunteers from the churches who dig the dirt on the targets. When we have enough material, we distribute the dossiers to the televangelists. I own a law firm, as well, so I can take the targets for everything they're worth and avoid being sued. The process, once it's set in motion, doesn't stop until the target is dead, imprisoned, or destitute and on the street. You don't want to be a liberal in the Bible belt."
"A modern witch hunt, then," I concluded with poorly concealed disgust.
"Yes, only we're much more efficient than they could be in the old days, even in their home villages. The Department of Homeland Security has the data on everyone, and the people we want are already blacklisted there. Many of our volunteers work in law enforcement and have access to the Federal data bases. Often we simply pick somebody off the blacklist who is conveniently located for a preacher who needs a new target. The Feds say nothing—we're just doing their dirty work for them."
"How do you get on the blacklist?" I asked.
"If you're anything other than a regular credit-dependent consumer, you're already in a gray area. Add to that things like no mortgage, no car loan, or frequent use of cash, and red flags go up. If you read books other than those sold in supermarkets, you're dangerous. If you read a quality newspaper and listen to the Public Broadcasting System, you're doubly dangerous. Using public transportation while having the means to drive shows you're anti-American. Hinting or asserting that those who made billions on the wars that resulted from events like Pearl Harbor, the assassination of President Kennedy, and 9/11 could in any way have been involved in organizing or enabling those atrocities gets you directly on the blacklist.
"All your Internet use is routinely monitored, and anything other than shopping, local news, sports, and harmless comedy gets analyzed. Any interests or hobbies beyond church, sports, and entertainment are bad. Any gaps in your paper trail with the authorities make them really nervous. Even being unusually healthy and of normal weight is flagged: it indicates that you may have the wits to see through the advertising that governs typical consumer behavior. Having contacts with people on the blacklist will get you blacklisted, too. If you have objections to making your personal information public, you obviously have something to hide. If your computer has an unusual operating system that doesn't provide back doors for market researchers and intelligence agencies, you're a terrorist suspect. After that, it only takes an overseas phone call or a view of a news item on a foreign Web site to bring the jack-booted federal thugs to your door. On the other hand, speeding tickets, petty crimes, and occasional financial troubles only prove that you're human, and are never held against you.
"The quickest way to get on the blacklist would be to stand on a soap box in front of the White House and recite the U.S. Constitution: it contains statements so dangerous for the oligarchy that runs the country, that you'd be booked for sedition before you were half-ways through with it."
I realized that before I left Sydney, I had been entirely harmless according to Mike's criteria. I also knew that when I'd return to Australia, I'd be the perfect candidate for blacklisting.
"What about you, then?" I asked. "You don't fit the description of the innocent consumer. Aren't you worried for yourself?"
"No, I'm rich enough to be exempt from all that. As you probably know, the rich don't even pay taxes. I'd have to do something to hurt other rich people, like insider trading or setting up a pyramid scheme, to get myself in trouble. Although I'm only a multimillionaire, the billionaires tolerate me, because they figure I'm in the same boat with them."
The computer was still off-line. I was treated to some more foul language on primitive Russian ships that didn't have the most basic services, and on how Mike would be suing the pants off the ship owner.
That metaphor soon came home to roost. Looking quite ravishing in a silk negligee, Kathy emerged from her dressing room and put an end to our fiddling with the computer.
"Mike darling, don't worry about your money! It's doing quite nicely where it is. Money is just like a garden: if you disturb it too much, the flowers don't grow as well. We've got better things to do..."
Quite alarmed, I watched her begin her strip-tease performance for her husband, altogether indifferent to the fact that I was still in their cabin. Slowly and sensuously, she peeled off her wedding present from Mike, a morphing, stretching cellular phone in shocking fluorescent pink that she had been keeping wrapped around her left forearm. Not waiting for the next garment to come off, I departed quickly and discreetly, and didn't see them again until dinner.
After lunch I went to my cabin to read, as it was too cold to spend much time on deck. A while later, there was a knock on the door, and young Evelyn appeared. I asked her to sit down, and wondered what the matter was: she seemed bored and upset at the same time.
"Did you bring your helmet, Gregory?" she asked.
After giving a fleeting thought to my motorcycle helmet, stored away back home in Sydney, I realized that she meant the Virtual Reality variety, and told her that I didn't own one.
It turned out that Evelyn, too, had lost touch with the rest of the world.
"I only brought along the most basic sex software because I had this really cool thing going with a guy in Adelaide. It's been a couple of days now that my computer has been dead. I guess we're really out of touch—my cell phone isn't working, either. It'll be weeks before I can get back on-line again, and I thought maybe you and I could have hooked up our gear via the wireless interface. All I have is Godzilla and the Incredible Hulk, and it's so boring!"
Having seen her out, I reflected on the fact that she hadn't done the obvious thing, which would have been to ask me to go to bed with her. Just as well, because I'd have had to turn her down: in that regard I wouldn't have had the excuse that I wasn't adequately equipped. It left me wondering what Virtual Reality might have been doing to the procreation of the species.
I returned to reading about Islandia and John Lang's very different problems with his women. Unrequited love aside, Islandian society and the ethics of her people were a fascinating proposition, and I wondered if anything similar would be possible in real life and modern times. Before I knew it, it was nearly six o'clock, and dinner was announced.
A relaxed Mike Davis turned up with his smiling wife, and somehow he seemed a lot less concerned over his financial isolation. Nevertheless, our discussion over dinner turned to money, due to the news of a large-scale corruption scandal that had been uncovered in Europe.
Apart from occasional Siberian radio and TV stations along the coast, and rather spotty satellite service, our main source of news was digital shortwave radio. The ship's public-address system carried the World Service of the British Broadcasting Corporation several times a day, and now and then I'd listen in to other stations with Dieter, who had brought along a pocketsize all-band receiver. It was very stimulating to hear actual newscasts without commercials and with no mention of entertainment. For those who wanted to know, there still was access to real information.
The latest newscast began as we sat down for dinner. According to the BBC, special prosecutors in several European countries had conducted a concerted investigation into official corruption in high places, and had uncovered a multitude of improprieties, often connected to the laundering of criminally obtained money, and to tax evasion by shady enterprisers. Dishonest officials were to be found everywhere, and bribes had been paid for turning a blind eye to ongoing criminal activities as well as for favoring privileged vendors in public procurement programs, just to mention the most obvious entanglements.
A closer analysis of the problem had showed that drug money was often involved. It had been known for a long time that many terrorist organizations financed their activities by producing or selling drugs, and in spite of long and expensive campaigns, organized crime was still riding high all over the world, often well connected to the corrupt civil servants.
But now the tune would change. The BBC interviewed the president of the European Union, who took the opportunity to present his administration's final solution to the problems of economic crime plaguing Europe and, indeed, the whole world.
"The root of the whole crisis is cash. As long as shady deals can be paid in cash, there'll be money laundering and corruption, tax evasion and terrorism. Europe is now ready to give this festering cancer on society a lethal blow. Our new bar code-based payment system has been thoroughly tested and will be implemented in all European countries during the next few months. Corrupt officials will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And to deny terrorists and criminals their main source of income, legal drug companies and pharmacies will take over the production and distribution of all recreational drugs except cannabis. The tobacco industry and its distribution network will act as the legal supplier of marijuana and other cannabis products. Cannabis products will be freely available; other recreational drugs will require a doctor's prescription and participation in an approved therapy program. Science has proven that drug addicts are ill, not delinquent. So let them have their medicine through legal channels, along with the care they need. Drug prices will be held as low as possible to discourage illegal suppliers.
"The nations of the world have finally taken the matter of economic crime into their own hands and will solve it completely. No honest person has had any reason to use cash for years now. Cash has outlived its usefulness and has become a public enemy. By abolishing cash, we will force all payments into the banking system, where automated controls will ensure that any illegal transactions are reported to the authorities, and that taxes are collected fairly and consistently.
"Economic crime is directed against the people, and the people will mercilessly stamp it out. By legalizing drugs, we not only take an immense amount of cash flow away from criminals, we also make an army of qualified law enforcement officers available to fight economic crime and other expressions of disloyalty toward the people and its elected leadership. The nations of Europe are to be congratulated on their resolve in standing up to this challenge, and on their determination to end, once and for all, the scandal of the uncontrolled use of cash!"
The BBC continued with a special program on all the gory details of tax evasion, forging of currency, money laundering, and corruption, making it evident that the reform was long overdue. The Japanese prime minister and the US president read statements in support of the scheme, and made it clear that they weren't far behind in implementing it.
"It's about restoring the conditions for civilized life," the American president concluded, announcing, at the same time, the reorganization of the Drug Enforcement Administration as the Dollar Enforcement Administration.
"And it's about time," Jim Frost said. "Every man and his dog has been forging currency on color copiers and personal computers and getting away with it. Laundering dirty money has been as simple as buying valuables for cash in the name of some phony company, and then reselling them, plus depositing the proceeds in the bank. Taxes are bound to go down when all this leeching on decent people is stopped!"
"This campaign may catch some small fish and put some drug dealers out of business, but the big schemes will go on," Mike Davis commented. "The top operators in the criminal world never touch cash, and their payments can't be traced or taxed. Big business will continue its legal lobbying and its clandestine payments to politicians. Its pawns in government are safe from all those investigations. This whole show is on for some other purpose."
"Could you please be a little less cryptic?" Dieter Braun asked him. "How do those in the know handle their payments?"
"Just an example: they may pretend to play the futures markets. Futures markets are great for the purpose, because they normally generate big losses and big gains in a short period of time. Let's say that A is to be paid a million dollars by B. A buys a futures contract on some commodity whose price is likely to go up. B sells an identical contract in a totally unrelated deal in another part of the world. If they're right, they then reverse the deal and A gains the money, while B loses the same amount."
"And what if they guess wrong?" Ilya Sergeievich wanted to know.
"These people have deep pockets," Mike explained. "They can take a few fluctuations. It's no worse than flipping a coin until you encounter a head. They'll continue, perhaps for stakes that are twice as high, until the right amount has been transferred. To the outside world, it looks as if one person has been smart or lucky and the other has had a bad run. No amount of auditing can hope to be able to pair such deals and find out who's been paying whom."
"And, of course, we aren't really talking about persons," Sheila Johnson added. "All the big fish operate through corporations; the smart ones even pay their corporate taxes so everything looks legal."
"It wouldn't be the first time a government exposes some petty crime in order to take people's attention off the large operations conducted by its friends with its blessing," Joel noted. "This happens in Africa all the time; it's so ingrained that nobody expects anything else. So what could be the real purpose of this entire high-level hullabaloo?"
"It can't be denied that economic crime has been getting a lot too popular lately," Dieter said. "Like Gregory's Japanese friend pointed out, the public has been taught greed; it can't be governed by appealing to values anymore. In this day and age, the logical solution is to confine all payments to the banking system and apply automated controls and on-line taxation.
"But there are other aspects to the official supervision of payments. Nowadays, it's almost impossible to go for a day without making a payment of some kind. Without cash, you'll always pay with something that has your name or account number on it. Such a payment system always knows who the payor is, and where the payee is located. What's more, an electronic payment transaction isn't just a transfer of value. It also records every item we buy and every service we use.
"Once all our payments go through the banking system, there'll remain, in the computers of banks and retailers, an unbroken trail of all our whereabouts and all our consumption. If the government or somebody else—typically direct marketing companies—wants to analyze our payments, they can find out not only where we've been, but also who else was there at the same time, and how often we've been in the same place with specific people. That way, they can nip emerging protest movements in the bud. And they'll know exactly what we buy and what services we use. The statistics can tell them what newspapers and books we read, what TV programs we watch, whom we talk with on the phone; in short, both our opinions and our tastes, as well as our circle of acquaintances, depending on who wants to know."
"There's yet another side to the matter," I added. "Once electronic payment is legal tender, and there's no cash, you'll have to have a bank account in order to be able to buy or sell anything. If they don't like you, they can close your account. You're likely to stay in line if the alternative is giving up eating, aren't you?"
"And do you know what?" Joel said. "A generation ago, most people in this world wouldn't have given a hoot about such a change, because they fed themselves then, and water was available for free. But now, what you're saying affects everyone, even those in the poorest countries. Since the Great Drought, everybody has had to pay for their food and water, and this kind of blackmail passes nobody by."
"If that's the objective, then they'll also have to abolish personal checks," Mike observed. "Checks can be negotiated and used much like cash."
"How will I go about selling something I've made, if nobody can pay me with either cash or checks?" Dana Frost wanted to know. "I've sold a lot of quilts and other handicraft items, and it's been a nice extra income for me."
"Technically speaking, you've also been cheating on taxes by not reporting that income," her husband reminded her. "With the new payment system, you can't do that anymore. You'll have to get some kind of software and a bar code reader from your bank, and as you ring up the payments, sales tax and income tax are deducted then and there!"
"Would you really bother with all that?" Kathy Davis wondered. "Wouldn't it be a lot simpler and cheaper to take the quilt or whatever to a concession store and let them handle the payments?"
"Here we have another important property of the new system," Dieter exclaimed. "It can be used to stop trade between individuals and force everyone to use business as an intermediary. In the process, like the Japanese monk pointed out, more profits, taxes, and interest are generated, and more of our wealth will be transferred to the owner and shepherd classes. Gone are the days when you could hire your neighbor's teenager to mow your lawn and give him ten euros for his trouble. Now you have to engage a landscaping contractor and pay not just the cost plus profits and taxes, but also health and liability insurance, Social Security, leave loading, and what have you. Plus a fee to the bank for recording the payment. Great!"
"I don't think I like it," I said, half to myself.
"But I do," Mike retorted. "It'll do the economy a lot of good, like Dieter says. Sure, it may add some complication to life, but there are efficiencies to this system that will save many losses and expenses. And if the result is that some crooks get caught, what could be better?"
He had actually mistaken Dieter's sarcasm for an endorsement. As I was pondering this, Jim handed me a plate of cakes and pronounced his verdict on the new order.
"It looks to me like you're beat, Gregory. You may like it or not, but you won't have much of a choice. You do want to keep eating, don't you?"
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