| | The leader of Egalitaria, nervous and dumbfounded, went to the Decision Room. The Decision Room is where you rule Egalitaria from and in the center of the room is the Table of Expediency -- set up like a chess-board. The senators were sitting around the board, but they left the leader's chair open. The leader could see that they were ruling over Egalitaria without him and he thought he might have been ousted.
Leader of Egalitaria
Have I been ousted?
Senators
No, your chair is still here, but you may notice that the top of the back-rest was cut off, and now it stands no higher than our chairs.
Leader of Egalitaria
What does that mean?
Senators
You've been semi-impeached, though you still hold the highest political position in the land.
Leader of Egalitaria
Do you mean like when a Chairman of the Board is also a main shareholder in the company but the other board members -- when added together -- hold more total shares than him (e.g., say 51% of all shares), effectively able to trump his role as some kind of a tyrannical, unilateral decision maker?
Senators
Yes, that's exactly what we mean.
Leader of Egalitaria [examining the pieces of the chess board]
One of the pieces is missing, the one called "blatant rights violation." Where is it? We need that piece in order to rule over Egalitaria ...
Senators
That piece has been taken off of the Table of Expediency. We made an executive decision about that. It was taken off of the table.
Leader of Egalitaria
But how do you expect to have a social system without blatant rights violations?
Senators
We will inform you as we go. We have been working all night on fundamentally transforming our own political process. Let's examine policy case #1:
Jeb the fisherman, the only citizen of Egalitaria that goes into the water. Jeb has an idea for a project where he will farm the algae from the sea in order to make a compound that can be used to coat pages of textbooks, making them more smooth and much more durable. He wants to be able to accumulate enough apples to hire Dookie, who is willing to work for 2 apples an hour ...
Leader of Egalitaria
Wait a minute? I have several questions. First of all, what about us? What about our projects? Our projects supersede the personal, productive projects of private citizens. Our projects come first because they are so much more important than any ...
Senators
We have all agreed that it is "unfair" for any group or for any individual to have projects, no matter how grand and magnificent, which supersede the projects of others -- thereby allowing that group or individual to effectively shut down the creative productivity of others. When your project is deemed more important than that of others, it effectively demands that they work not for their own projects and their own future, but for the projects that were deemed important by the group or individual. An individual's time and energy is important, and it is not fair that individual has to spend it on someone else's project or goal.
Leader of Egalitaria
Do you mean that people are now free to engage in any kind of productive project that they feel like, without interference from us?
Senators
Yes. There is a flat user fee for services we provide the citizens but, after that, with regard to building up your personal hopes and dreams -- citizens are on their own power, and on their own unobstructed will, to do as they please by rearranging the material of the earth in order to build up wealth and prosperity for themselves, their families, friends, or even strangers (as they see fit).
Leader of Egalitaria
Well, what about this business of citizens working together, like Dookie and Jeb? Certainly we should not allow them to freely associate like that, effectively forming some kind of a corporation of like-minded productivity. We should be picking winners and losers. People should have to come to us for approval, before they should be allowed to consensually work together with each other for their own shared goals and creative endeavors. There should be central planning and control of economic activity.
Senators
No, for two reasons. After the drought, we will not accept anything that is guaranteed to take down future economic output -- and central planning and control is guaranteed to take down future economic output. All of our lives are at stake when you do that. The very survival of Egalitaria is at stake when you do that. It simply does not -- nor could it ever -- bring the greatest benefit to the greatest number of citizens. Also, as we discovered after looking at the issue, it's just wrong to force others to work for us -- or for what we want, or for what we need, or for what we "feel" is most needed by "the country."
Leader of Egalitaria
But this is no fun anymore. Before, I could control things. I was the big kahoonah. I was the MFIC. I could have as many apples as I wanted. I could throw apple parties and waste apples and nothing and no one could come in here and stop me.
Senators
Well, that's all changed now.
Leader of Egalitaria
Fine, then I quit!
Senators
Good riddance!
--------------------
The End
|
|
