Apparently my post defining what’s harassment and what’s (mere) rudeness or boorishness caused much consternation in some quarters, because half of them insisted on reading me as saying I was all right with sexual ASSAULT.  This lack of reading comprehension concerns me.  It’s sort of like the idiot who thought that the post “If You Don’t Work, You Die” referred to my wish that the unemployed and those who simply aren’t fit to work should be killed.  As opposed to its being a point of macro-economics about how much energy a society can divert to non-work-work or work that destroys work before it becomes utterly non-functional. (No one disputes that a sane society looks after those who can’t work in a humane way.  Cave men were doing it.  It is always the regimes on the left that come up with the idea of eliminating the non-functional. We find an inherent value in human life, productive or not.  Hint, Death panels oh, I beg your pardon, cost cutting commissions who determine when you’ve been treated enough are a thing of the OTHER side.)

I’m not absolutely sure whether these kiddies (of whatever age) have the functional reading comprehension of a six year old (and not my six year olds who were both better than that) or choose to be blind for ideological reasons.  Of course, it’s possible that their reading comprehension fuels their political opinions.  If any sentence more complex than See Spot Run needs explanation and interpretation from their betters, it would also be very easy to tell them what they should think.  Also, of course, you’d have no danger they’d read history for themselves and realize that the bright new way of doing things their betters are “trying” has been responsible for more deaths, poverty and misery than any other bright idea in the history of mankind, including but not limited to the hundred year war.  I wish I could tell you that our schools are teaching better reading than that, but I’m afraid no.  Mostly they’re teaching compliance with interpretation from on-high, if the few times I’ve come in contact with recent graduates is any indication.

Which brings us to the topic of sexual harassment and how the seeds of the current insanity were seeded long ago in schools.  (I’ll pause here so those not on low-carb diets may pop popcorn and go grab a beer.)

I first realized that schools were doing something very weird to the relationship between boys and girls when Robert got sent home with a letter from Kindergarten commanding that he absolutely stop making little girls uncomfortable and hinted if he did this when older, he would be subjected to sexual harassment charges.  What was his awful crime? It appears he had made a poem to a girl and compared her eyes to stars.

Now, I come from a long line of men who made poems to girls, though Robert might be a little precocious.  Most waited till fourth grade or so.  The poems were received – from stories I’ve heard, all these men being older than I – with varying delight, some resulting in the lady fair screaming and running away and some in the boy’s first kiss.  None before this had resulted in a threat of legal action.

I thought well… we live – then – in hippieville USA, and we got some slightly crazy person (it wasn’t his teacher who sent the note, and now I don’t remember who it was.)  I told Robert that he shouldn’t write romantic poems until he learned to spell and that his meter sucked raw eggs (I made it a point of never praising the kids’ work when it didn’t deserve praise.  By and large this means that when I praise something they know I’m serious) and sent him off to play Magic School Bus.

Nine or so years later, having moved to a saner area of the state, I’m in the dentist’s waiting room, and the receptionist says there’s a call for me.  Let’s give props to the kid for remembering that I was going to the dentist that morning and also what the dentist’s name was.

I grabbed the phone.  Listened to the principal of younger son’s elementary school, and realized I’d let through a long sentence laced with profanity when I saw the expression on my dentist’s receptionist’s face (she’s a devout Christian) and realized the rest of the waiting room was staring at me.

At that point I put down the phone and said “I beg your pardon, but they just told me they’re going to charge my ten year old with sexual harassment and that he’s already confessed.”

The receptionist and the other people waiting in the room all stared at me aghast, for completely different reasons, and then the receptionist, who knew my son, said “But your son can’t PRONOUNCE sexual harassment.”  (Which at the time was true. I understood him fairly well, but his sensory issues meant that he had speech issues because he didn’t HEAR properly.  Once that was semi-fixed, the speech fixed itself.  He still goes into these modes when he speaks too fast and you have to tell him to slow down or you don’t get a word, but that’s different.)

I hadn’t driven, because the dentist is a few blocks from our house and has a tiny parking lot.  This meant I had to run ten blocks in the other direction.  I arrived out of breath and asked them what in the name of Sam Hill they thought they were doing.

They said I was threatening, and called the school guard.  (Yes, I was also shaking trying to keep the berserker in.  I can’t help that.)

After I reassured them that I wasn’t going to kill them all with my bare hands and a purse (well, I might have, but they couldn’t KNOW that) we went into a conference room and they bring in my crying son.

His terrible crime was as follows: He had this game that he had been playing with his brother since the younger one was able to talk.  They called it the space game.  In it our entire family were explorers in a spaceship (the house) tasked with exploring and charting new worlds.  The cars were away pods, the places we visited were various planets (a trip to the aquarium was made fascinating for the whole family by listening to them!) cons were trips to administrative planets… you get it, right?

Apparently younger son had devised an addendum to this that involved school – aka “explorer’s academy” – and taught it to a select group of his friends.

One of his friends happened to be a girl.  The other two were absent for whatever reason.  Younger son had a great lack of tolerance (back then) to the world not working according to his plan.  He wanted to play the space game.  His friend (who happened to be a girl) was talking to other kids.  He stood on the periphery and tried to get her attention.  Nothing.  So he reached in and tapped her to get her attention.  Twice.  On the behind.

The girl turned to talk to him, but it was too late.  A playground guard had seen them.  She grabbed both of them and dragged them in to the principal, where they SOMEHOW managed to get my son to admit to “Sexual Harrassment.”

Now, I’m not going to tell you that ten year olds aren’t interested in sex, though I’ll say mostly the sex-part they’re interested in is finding out why adults think this is so much fun.  I’ll even admit some ten year olds (mostly girls) are developed enough at that age to have some embryonic interest, though normally nothing much unless they’re in an abuse or inappropriate environment situation.  (Say watching a lot of inappropriate movies.)

I won’t even beg you to believe me that at that age my son had no inkling yet of what makes the world go round and what makes pretty girls smile.  It’s true he didn’t.  A mother knows this stuff.  His brother sort of did at six – or at least he liked to make pretty girls smile.  My younger son… not so much. The drive came in two years later, when he grew a foot over summer and his voice dropped two octaves.

BUT even if he’d had a rudimentary drive – note he touched this girl on the butt.  Look, guys, my son would have no clue anyone considered the butt “sexual.”  He wasn’t that far off his years when that area was mostly concerned with “did you clean yourself properly?”

If he’d been intent on “sexual harassment” he’d have touched her between the legs, maybe, or FAR MORE LIKELY kissed her.

That a touch, twice, on the behind could be interpreted as “sexual harassment” at that age boggled the mind.

That  was bad enough.

More fun is what they proposed to do about it.  They were going to put him in detention and notify the police of his “record” (I don’t remember the exact term for this) so they could be on the lookout for him in the future.

I should draw the veil of decency over the following scene, but I won’t.  Since they had the guard standing there, to prevent me, you know, from strangling the principal, the school psychologist and the secretary (curiously the play ground guard who had started this was never brought in.  So much for confronting the accuser) with my purse strap, I had to resort to other means.

The means I resorted to was sarcasm. First, I questioned my son and had him explain why he’d touched a little girl on the behind – TWICE —  Then I asked him to explain why touching her there.  “It was the place I could reach.”  Then I asked him to tell me why he’d confessed to sexual harassment.  Well, because they told him otherwise they’d expel him.

I finally pointed out to them that I was a writer and I was sure I could get a national magazine (Reason, for sure) to take an article about this.  I took out a notebook and told them to spell out their names, because I was going to make sure they were the laughing stock of the nation from sea to shining sea.

They started scooting back.  They’d just put him in detention.  It would be in-room detention.  Truly, they wouldn’t do anything except make him write out that he wouldn’t sexually harass people.  No, really, they didn’t mean anything bad, they…

I got a full recanting and the whole matter dropped.  (Except that as I write this I wonder if the Harassment By Employee Children, Using Complaints Of Harassment was a late hit revenge, since personnel from both schools mingles freely.  I’ll note once he was out of that system he had absolutely NOTHING bad reported against him EVER even though by then he was a teen and more likely to harass if he ever had been.)

He went back to his class.  I went back to the dentist.

However, before leaving, I gathered that the little girl had been gathered up into the arms of officialdom, and would be in counseling for some weeks, to get over the terrible trauma of having her behind touched – TWICE (they were very insistent on this) – by a ten year old boy.

Look, adults tend to read too much into what kids do.  That’s always been so.  For instance, when I was caught at six playing doctor with my cousin Johnny, I couldn’t understand the fuss and boderation.  I was fifteen before – reading something about “playing doctor” in a book – I realized my parents and his had thought it was a sex game.  Nothing could have been further from our minds.  Johnny was in fact very lucky we were interrupted, because I was going to cut him open, being far more interested in what was inside him than outside and having no clue it would hurt or that I could kill him.  We’d agreed to take turns.  (It might have been his idea.  He’s now a neuro-surgeon.)

Adults, of course, know about sex, and tend to interpret quite innocent actions on the part of children as precursors to sex drive.  Freudian theories didn’t help.

HOWEVER though my parents and Johnny’s made a big fuss and botheration, and told him never to take off his shirt (!) when alone with me, they didn’t threaten penalties upon him or console me for horrible trauma.  (Well, I was fully dressed, but I had the – old, used – razor blade.  I got rid of that, of course, unnoticed because we weren’t allowed to play with them.  A good thing, since otherwise my parents would have been appalled.)

There is such a thing as appropriate measures, particularly on the part of officialdom.  It might be too much – as it was too much my aunt scolding me when at nine I took off my bikini top at the beach because it was uncomfortable – to even have told him “Don’t touch her there.  It’s not nice.”  But it would probably have been okay.  After all, it’s bad manners, and kids DO need to learn manners before they learn morals.  Manners are there to prevent huge problems before kids understand things.  Manners are fine.  A scold and telling him to stand by the fence the rest of recess would have been fine.

BUT to deploy the entire machinery of officialdom and threaten him with a record, and put her in counseling (without telling her parents) when she hadn’t complained and it was obvious he hadn’t known he was doing anything wrong, was a piece of insanity.

I was told this was driven by “policies” from the “district.”

Because the district is unable to tell the difference between a middle aged teacher and a ten year old boy, in the same way it can’t tell the difference between a toy gun and the real thing.

If I knew then what I know now, I’d have taken the kid out of the system right then and there.  I’d also have understood the trouble we were headed for.

When I told the principal and the assembled illustrious company that in my day if a  boy touched me anywhere and I thought he was getting fresh, I punched him.  They told me oh no no no no no, violence never solved anything.

But apparently bureaucracy does…

These kids are now entering young adulthood.  I suspect the trouble goes up five or so years older than them.  So up to twenty six or so.

The system has taught girls they’re fragile flowers who need a massive bureaucracy to protect them.  I mean, really, if a ten year old boy touching their behind can merit weeks of counseling, imagine what a boy telling them he loves them would do?  The trauma might never pass!  They’ll have to go to counseling the rest of their lives.

It has also taught boys it is completely irrational, and arbitrary punishment and accusation will come out of a clear blue sky for no reason at all.  Which is why boys are choosing to disengage in record numbers.

And this, hitting professional organizations and market places will bring everywhere the fun we’ve been having at SFWA.

If you have kids, and you can get them out of school.  If you can’t, make sure you de-program them at home.

If you have daughters it might seem to you that all this is concern for their safety and empowerment, but look really closely at it.  Most of the time, in most places, what they’re being taught is to be fragile flowers who scream for nanny and then cry about it.

Unfortunately, the world we’re leaving them is not a playground, not even one supervised by neurotic playground guards.

And they’re going to need to grow up.

Like our debt, this is a problem not of their making, but one they’ll have to solve nonetheless, if civilization is to go on.

*I will probably be back to fully operational status — as much as I ever get — by tomorrow, but for now, enjoy:*

The Not-As-Dark-As-Advertised Ages (At Least North of the Alps)

A Guest Post by our very own: Alma Boykin

As everyone knows, when Odoacer deposed the Roman Emperor Romulus Augustalus in AD* 476 CE*, Western civilization disappeared, learning stopped, and life came to a halt, especially north of the Alps. Until Charlemagne’s coronation as Holy Roman Emperor in 800, darkness lay upon the land, barbarians roamed free, pirates plagued the Atlantic and Mediterranean, and the few people still alive sat around lamenting the Fall of Rome. Then came the Carolingian Renaissance and the sun rose, flowers bloomed, the three-field rotation and use of manure were discovered, literacy appeared, everyone began speaking Latin again, a sudden urge to build tall churches with lots of colored windows filled the land, and there was much rejoicing. Yeah.

At least, that’s sort of what historians in the 1700s, 1800s, and early 1900s thought. They had a few good reasons for calling the period between the Fall of Rome and Charlemagne “the Dark Ages,” and some not so great reasons. The good reason was that if you only have text sources to work from, then there is very little one can know about that time, especially north of the Alps and east of Britain. Obviously, if no one wrote anything, that must mean that no one was around to write, or who could write, which means no civilization (by the historians’ definition). And what sources did exist painted a pretty dim picture of the world, metaphorically and as it turns out, literally. Several centuries passed before Europeans began producing art and poetry that rivaled the styles of the Greeks and Romans. For historians who viewed Rome as a, if not the, pinnacle of culture and learning, what came after looked pretty darn dark.

Now, these historians missed a few things, as we historians are prone to do. First, the eastern Roman Empire, aka Byzantium, lasted until 1453 and produced a magnificent culture that can still be seen in scraps and bits here and there. Second, the fall of Rome did not happen in an instant, unlike the great series of paintings by Thomas Cole suggests. Third, daily life does not depend entirely on marble sculptures and flights of rhetoric. Fourth, there were plenty of bits of Rome still around, but the historians did not know where to look. Today we do, and the picture of life between Romulus Augustalus and Charlemagne is rather different. Empires don’t fall down in a puff of dust, crushing everything beneath them. They crumble, leaving foundations and inspiration.

So, what really happened when the “lights went out in Rome,” as Kipling put it? North of the Alps, the lights had been flickering since the Marcomannic Wars of 166-180, if not earlier. After that little bout of civil strife, massacre, arson, and looting, the area north of the Alps was reorganized, defenses beefed up, and populations shifted around. In 233 another round of Germanic tribes rushed the Limes, the borderline, and a few years later another, and another. These are the same peoples who would become the Lombards, Franks, Saxons, Bohemians (not the long-haired French kind, but the beer-drinking kind) and other modern inhabitants of Europe. When that flickering light in Rome finally went out, the people who had already been defending themselves continued defending themselves. They also kept farming, worshipping, trading and building.

Archaeology, anthropology, and climatology can fill in what historians can’t find. And once you start digging around, literally, you discover that the Dark Ages, or as they are now called, Late Antiquity, were not quite the nadir of European existence. The 350 years between Rome and Aachen do not mark a period of ease and longevity, for a number of reasons, but trade continued, learning continued, and the light of civilization kept burning. The Germanic, Slavic, and Asian tribes that pushed into Europe added their beliefs to the Roman foundation that remained. Roman ideas about law, organization, and religion endured, forming a framework for what came after. The people of the Great Migration (Volkerwanderung) recycled and built on ideas just like they recycled Roman stones.

Although their populations declined, the Roman cities and towns that are now Trier, Cologne, Frankfurt, Orange, Mainz, Augsburg, Regensburg, Kempten and others did not vanish. Much of their stone was recycled, timber and metal re-used, houses rebuilt upon over and over. New towns and strong-points appeared as new peoples moved in and settled, or moved through (like the Vandals and Huns). To this day, if you go to Vienna, Regensburg, and other cities, you can spot the Roman roads and city outline under the modern town. And under is the correct word, because as wattle-and-daub or wooden houses decayed, collapsed, or were burned down, people rebuilt on top of them. That’s one reason the 19^th century historians couldn’t find a trace of Roman glory in, say, Vienna. They’d have to go down into the cellars and sewers to see it, and let’s face it, I just don’t see Gibbon or Toynbee as the crawl-through-sewers type. And where you had groups of people, you had commerce of sorts, and trade.

Trade continued, to the extent that Chinese silks have been found in Bavarian tribal members’ graves dating to the 6^th century. Gemstones from India and Afghanistan found their way up the Rhine and Rhone, while amber, furs, and slaves went south and east. Now, the trade did not reach the scale of the Empire at its peak. Even if population shifts had not affected the “European” economy, the weather shifts in the late 400s and after 526 made life much harder on everyone. No more wine from Britain or up around Mainz, no more wheat exported from the Low Countries to Rome. But archaeologists find trade. And they find continuity.

People lived in the same places (or very close), farmed the same things, worshipped, buried their dead, and tried to carry on as they had before Roman power receded from northern Europe. Clothes did not change that much, for example. Archaeologists find the same style of pins, called “fibulae,” used by women in central Europe for a thousand years. Styles changed, the pins got bigger or smaller, fancier or plainer, as time passed, and different locations had their own designs, but the basic shape and function lasted for a millennium. Germans, Slavs, Magyars might pass through or settle, but women held up their pinafores and decorated their dresses with fibulae until the Middle Ages. People grew wheat, rye, dinkel (aka spelt), barley, oats, apples, pears, and peas, raised cattle and pigs and sheep, and fled from wild boar, wild cattle, and bears and wolves, just as they always had, even though their taxes went to the local strong man, instead of Rome.

The top layer of Rome had vanished, but the ordinary, tax-paying people remained, just in fewer numbers and more scattered. One reason for this, one that remained unknown until the 20^th century, was a massive weather disruption. The climate had already changed, starting in the 5^th century, as precipitation increased and temperatures declined in northern Europe. Shorter growing seasons and wetter soil, combined with population migrations caused in part by the worse weather, were not conducive to rapid population growth. And then in 526 the sun went away, dimmed by volcanic ash. Crop losses led to hunger which made plague spread more easily. These were the years of the Volkerwanderung, the population shifts that gave us the Lombards, Bavarians, Burgundians, Franks, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and other names, some of which linger on maps to this day. Tribal structures replaced provincial government but the ideas of Roman organization survived, if only in an attenuated form, and from this came the Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire and its descendants.

So what, you ask? Well, for one thing, political and economic collapse did not mean Road Warrior with chariots. It happened gradually as Rome abandoned the frontiers, then the provinces, and finally could no longer administer most of the Italian peninsula. People stepped up to try and fill in, for better or worse. A wild card in the form of a volcano that made Krakatoa look small caused problems even the Romans at their peak would have had trouble dealing with. Individuals such as Boethius, Alfred of Wessex, Cassiodorus, monastic chroniclers, and other people whose work has not survived kept ideas alive. Latin was not a dead language, although it staggered (see Jan Huizinga for details). The light of learning flickered but did not die, because enough people remembered what had once been done, and thought about trying to recreate or improve it, that out of the “Dark Ages” came chivalry, Chartes Cathedral, the Niebelungenlied (it’s not what Wagner makes it out to be, really), and other things. The Late Antiquity, while not an era of sweetness and light, wasn’t as dark as it once seemed.

 

* I’m not going to argue dating systems. If Undead Gaius Iulius Caesar wishes to use years since the founding of Rome, he is free to do so.

 

*Marshall, who is slowly being dragged to the writing side, started writing this for fun a couple of days ago, and I saw it and said “I want it for my blog.”  It ended up turning into a short story, so I’m putting it here as a preview thingy, and in a week or so I’ll take it down and put up just the beginning and a link to buy it for 99c or something.  (He has written others and more complete stories, but since he wrote them under word count restrictions for school, he now needs to expand them.  If you groan loudly enough maybe he’ll actually get on that ;) *

DaVinci’s Facebook

I have spent a lot of time recently thinking over story ideas, and of the many, one of them involves the reincarnation of several key persons from history, through DNA manipulation. Obviously I won’t go into the details of this story idea, but while toying with it, it suddenly occurred to me: What if da Vinci were one of these resurrected great people? Even more questionably, what if he somehow got access to some of the modern technology that exists and got sucked into the void that is social media sites? For the purpose of amusement, recorded from his last days in the labs, to his last day on the internet, here’s what I suspect it’d look like if Leonardo da Vinci took on the modern world and updated everyone on his adjustment to it.

Day One
“Hello there! I’m Leonardo da Vinci! The scientists here finally let me use the ‘computer’, after winning a bet that I could learn English in a week. Little do they know, that I took aardvark of them, so I could learn more about where I am.”

“Opps, I meant ‘Took advantage of them’, apparently my English still needs some work.”

“I don’t know why everyone is calling me a ’lame fake’- Really, I am who I say I am! But ‘Leonardo da Vinci’ was already taken, oddly enough. I don’t understand why some many people think I’m impersonating myself, it’s very odd.”

Day Two
“Scientists just gave me an update: Apparently I’m a clone of a famous artist and inventor- Which confuses me, because I’m nearly certain I *am* the famous artist and inventor.”

“They’re releasing me to a paid-for living space tomorrow, they say I get to do anything I want, but for obvious reasons I’ll be under close observation, starting the minute I leave this facility.”

“Apparently I don’t get to do just *anything*. Scientists discovered I am using this site to interact with the world. They’re not happy. Will keep the world informed of any new developments.”

“Update: They’re yelling a lot. It’s really starting to interfere with my research into the world.”

“Update: Apparently I’m not allowed to multitask. They’re taking my computer away for a while until I listen to their ridiculous speech, will be back.”

Day Three
“Got the full speech last night, I’m allowed only limited research; they will be monitoring my use of the ‘internet’, as they like to call it. They release me soon, and announce my existence to the world. Apparently I’m a big deal or something.”

“So much has happened! There was a huge crowd waiting for me once I got outside. Some kindly gentlemen in black suits lead me to a long, black metal contraption. I couldn’t quite tell what was going on once I got inside, but it was some sort of cart of carriage, because when I got out there stood a large white house in front of me! It has very odd architecture. Not even sure this house is safe to live in- the roof is slated in two directions. If I die because those scientists put me in a death trap, you know who to blame.”

Day Four
“Woke up to discover that one: Now, just because the *scientists* told everyone I was really who I said I am, I’m getting thousands of followers and friend requests. And secondly: I have been given what they call a ‘Cell-phone’. They said it will allow me to contact whoever I want. But judging by the name, I think that ‘Whoever’ has to be in a jail cell first.”

“Just got food delivered to me- Awful, really, it’s the same sort of food I saw all the time back in Italy. I gave the nice gentlemen in black suits that delivered it to me a formal letter to the scientists letting them know I’d be going to the a nearby market and purchasing food for myself. They seemed very confused why I was giving them a letter to deliver.”

“I’ve thrown that cursed ‘Cell-phone’ into the garden. Damn thing kept moving about sporadically on its own and producing God awful imitations of church bells. I hope to get a letter back soon from the scientists explaining why they gave it to me.”

“I just got back from the market. Awful experience, wasn’t able to trade for any food- I even offered the fancy watch I was provided with by the scientists, but apparently the vendor wasn’t impressed by the wrist-bound contraption. I expect to hear from the scientists on this as well.”

Day Five
“Got a visit from the scientists this morning. They further explained the rules of modern society to me. For one, apparently that possessed contraption I threw in the garden the other day was supposed to act like that, and was the scientists way of contacting me. They also explained that if I insisted that I buying food at the market, I must have money. They instead gave me fancy paper. I don’t know why.”

“This device is wonderful! I can update everyone from it! It’s like a computer in my pocket! Amazing!”

“At the market currently- This is far easier, I can now convey my thoughts on a more active basis!”

“I’m trying to barter with the vendor again, this time using the fancy paper I was given. Apparently they only give you discounts on sales, and there’s no negotiating prices any lower. Pah, I refused to buy lettuce at such a high price.”

“I still have no idea how this fancy paper works. I just threw all the paper I had at him and walked off with my supplies. He wasn’t complaining, so I guess that’s how you pay for things.”

“I can’t find the cooking pot in this place. How the hell do I cook my food? Pah, I’ll just start a fire in the front yard and cook it there.”

“The ‘Fire Department’ apparently wants me to starve- Probably hired by the damn scientists. They sprayed my food and fire with some awful tasting white stuff, a seemingly endless amount coming from such a small red container. I will have words with the scientists about this tomorrow.”

Day Six
“It’s early in the morning, and I’m in another meeting with the scientists. They said something about using the large metal box in my kitchen the next time I want to cook. No clue how it works, and having opened it up, I don’t know where you light the fire.”

“Just asked, apparently you don’t throw wood into the large compartment of the metal box- Which I’ve just been told is called a ‘Stove’- You turn the knobs and fire magically arises from the metal plates on top. I asked that they send me another stove so I can further study the mechanics. They seem confused.”

“I’m getting settled in, starting to get back into the rhythm of things and have begun to peruse my hobbies once more. I’ve been given copies of my old notebooks and journals- They missed a few, but I guess they spent several centuries *not* checking under the floorboards of my old home.”

“Just got visited by the fire department again- You’re not supposed to throw wood on the fire produced by the ‘stove’ either, it would seem. The scientists are very unhappy, it would seem.”

Day Seven
“Daily meeting with scientists as usual- And as usually, very boring and unpleasant. I can’t wait until they leave so I can start tinkering again.

“Made something new today! It’s a redesign of my flying contraption! I’m going to revolutionize the world with this, it’s a completely new approach to transportation!”

“Opps, just found out that apparently someone beat me to it, just saw what was either a giant bird or a large flying contraption above my house. Will have to looking into its inventor.”

“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_history Wow! Turns out that there are loads of these flying machines around! Who would’ve thought it’d come this far?”

“Update: I’m totally mentioned in the last link I sent. You’re welcome, modern flight.”

“I should find a way to capitalize upon my fame. Use it to advance my scientific needs and interests. Will figure out a way to utilize this tomorrow.”

Day Eight
“I feel very inspired, and I’ve got a new idea- It won’t advance my scientific progress, but I can still capitalize upon my fame with it.”

“Just talked to the scientists once more. They told me that they’d have a man come by later and install a ‘camera’- which they conveyed to me as a way to watch me without a person actually being there- and that it’d be installed up on the ‘telephone pole’ outside my house. I’ll have to deal with that later.”

“Standing in my yard right now, with a helpful sign I made from shelf of one of the bookcases, advertising the ability for people to be painted by me in exchange for a modern scientific book. Feel free to stop by.”

“Well, no one stopped by, except for the ‘Police Department’. There seem to be a lot of these departments. Apparently, other than some odd charges, I need some sort of license to do what I was doing. I’m a bit steamed, so I’ll stop by the store to pick up something to deal with that ‘camera’ issue I mentioned in a previous update.”

“The police stopped by again tonight. The darn wooden ‘Telephone-pole’ looks like a tree, but I’m still not allowed to cut it down. This society makes no sense to me.”

Day Nine
“Just got an update from the scientists: Tomorrow will be the last daily meeting, and then it’s limited down to weekly meeting. Thank God. Next, I hope it moves onto simply being no meetings.”

“Taking advantage of the change in meeting times- I’m working on new project to get me a bit more freedom.”

“Apparently the scientists read this stuff. I don’t know why they’re worried, I’m just inventing some new stuff- I thought that’s why they wanted me to be brought back. J”

“Need one of those carriages for my new project. The large metal ones, they keep rolling past my house. I will attempt to purchase one from someone, I just got more fancy paper from the scientists.”

“Just jumped in front of one of those carriages. The rider seemed very angry, for whatever reason. I threw some of the fancy paper at him in attempt to purchase the vehicle. Apparently he doesn’t understand why the paper is so valuable either, he just started laughing.”

“Purchase was unsuccessful. The ‘Police Department’ stopped by again, though. They seemed very unsurprised, this time. The gentlemen in black suits had to come and sort everything out for me, they’re very kind, but I suspect the scientists hired them, and that makes me suspicious.”

Day Ten
“In the last meeting. Apparently not supposed to be using my phone while they talk, they want me to pay attention to just them. My word, they are self-centered, aren’t they?”

“I requested one of those metal carriages, or car, as they call it. I’ll be having one delivered within the hour. Hopefully it’s large enough for me to store my equipment, and easy enough to study.”

“Luckily, it is indeed large enough. They call this particular version of the car a ‘van’… My word is this thing fascinating. It all works on a combination of simple machines, aerodynamics, chemical reactions and this odd stringy metal stuff, bundled in some odd material. Looking into the source of the metal strings now.”

“Found the source. I should’ve turned the machine off first, though. I touched the metal part of the large box the metal strings seemed to be getting their sparks from, and my word did that hurt! Not to mention that my clothes caught on fire.”

“The fire department stopped by again, and this time gave me one of those metal canisters I saw before. Apparently they think something else will catch fire in my presence. Either way, had a lovely discussion with a couple of the firemen while the other put the fire out on my workshop, one was even kind enough to direct me to a van with a red cross on the side, so I could get some new clothing. Knowing how this works, they’re the ‘Clothing Department’ or something.”

Day Eleven
“I’ve been up since last night researching these cars and how they work- I’ve got a couple of ideas of how to improve upon the system of the machine, and better yet, I’m getting a better understanding of what is apparently called the electrical system of the car.”

“Ouch, nope, need to remember not to touch the black box again.”

“Ooohhh, I think I’ve discovered a way to negate these electrical systems. It’s probably been done already, but I bet no one has done it using a car radio before!”

“Just turned on the radio to an interesting song, “Electric Boogie”- especially considering the irony in the fact that the button next to the ‘on’ button turns *off* all electrical system within a certain radius.”

“Scientists still read this, apparently. It’s just in case I start fires, should turn off the oven from a safe distance. J”

Day Twelve
“My project is almost done. Just need to find a large market to pick up some supplies from.”

“At the market I got my food at. The vendor there seems terrified of me. He sent me away- Probably for the better, can’t see anything that’s not food there. “

“After asking around a bit, I’ve come across this place called ‘Walmart’. Gigantic market, really. I asked one of the many men in vests to get me what I needed off my list, but he instead directed me to where to go. It’s going to take me a while to find what I need.”

“Well, I need that… But it’s a bit high up. I guess you have to climb for what you want on the higher shelves’. I better get some of the price knocked off for having to fetch these things myself like this.”

“Apparently *now* they’re willing to fetch me what I want. They got very panicky when I started climbing the shelves, for whatever reason. Ah well, at least I have the parts I need. Just need to get a couple of more things than throw my fancy paper at the vendors near the front.”

“Project is complete! You’ll all being hearing about tomorrow, and I think the scientists especially will be interested to know what I’ve accomplished.”

Day Thirteen
“It’s a good morning indeed. I will unveil my project later on today, but first, a celebration of my accomplishments! I’m off for a lovely walk and hearty lunch!”

“At lunch. Having trouble ordering wine. I’m trying to get wine passed around to everyone in celebration of my achievement, but I’m apparently not allowed to buy alcohol for miners. I had no idea mining was such a big deal in the modern world, the poor workers are forced by society to stay away from alcohol so long as that’s their profession.”

“Clarification: Apparently they mean ‘minors’, which classifies people under 18, but apparently you’re not allowed to order alcohol until you’re 21. This society has some funny ideas of when people should be allowed to drink or not.”

“Well, Good news and bad news. The good news is that everything seems to be working fine. My van is modified and ready. It has everything I need and then some. The bad news is that this will be my last post. When the scientists created me, they intended to release me to the world and see what great works I might produce. And trust me, I’ll still do this, and I have many inventions in mind, but I’ll be doing so on my own terms. This car is equipped with some of my greatest works yet, and ultimately, once I leave my workshop in this machine, I’ll be untraceable and lost to those damn scientists. I can’t say where I’m going or what I’ll even be doing, but I can never log back in and post here, because I know they’ll be watching for that. So farewell, my many readers, I’m off to change the world without a watching eye keeping me from true progress.”

I either have severe bronchitis or walking pneumonia.  The con crud seemed to get better, then it suddenly got much worse last Saturday.  I thought it was stress — you guys (well some of you) know what’s been going on, because stress in me often causes throat aches and upper respiratory distress (probably related to the fact I had asthma as a child and it kicked up with stress, just as my eczema does.  Both are auto immune.  I haven’t had asthma in more than two decades, but the upper respiratory can come from stress.)

My fans who are always like family, somehow, have been nagging me via email and pm about getting my sorry carcass to the doctor and I’ve been ignoring them because I was sure it was psychosomatic, but by yesterday afternoon I was aware that my breathing (and thinking) is severely impaired.  I’m very congested, but not coughing nearly enough.  I don’t think it’s ALL psychosomatic, and it’s highly likely it’s walking pneumonia, because it feels like when I had it before.  This time I’m not waiting till I collapse and end up in ICU for 11 days — because you guys would kill me if I don’t feed you for 11 days.  (Yes, it’s all for you, really ;) ) Also, because my sons and husband would be very upset.

My doctor has no openings, but said come on down and camp in his waiting room and he’ll work me in.  So, going now.  I’ll be back when I’m back.  If a chapter of Rogue magic has to wait till tomorrow, so be it.

I’ll take the tablet and answer comments while waiting.

 

UPDATE: It’s bronchitis complicated by severe asthma (likely stress induced.  I HATE the way my body cracks up under stress, but I’d like anyone who thinks this is a sign of weakness to know that when stress gets this bad I become a carrier as a means of relieving it.)  I’ve had some stuff, I’m breathing a little better, head is clear by comparison to what it was, and I realized I have edits due at rayguns and OMG my non fic piece at PJM.  Which comes down to “Not today” for chapter.  Sorry guys.  As is I’m likely going to nap before this other stuff.

(Or the tragic story of Ogg, Mogg and an innocent rock.)

So, once more I’m late – this time because I actually got new glasses, but the guy who was supposed to cut the lenses came in late and… — but yay, I can see.  No, seriously.  Being able to see whether I just typed in an e or an a, and whether the punctuation I put in was a period or a comma is a great relief.  Maybe I’ll get headaches less often, too.  (No, not that type of headaches.  Those remain.  Kate Paulk has suggested – because someone took the name Sarah the Slightly Mad for art, that I should fly under the flag of Sarah I Just Get These Headaches.  I will not comment on that.)  Tomorrow – for those who are nagging me via email – I shall go see the doctor, because I have at least bronchitis for sure, and I’m afraid of walking pneumonia.  I’m almost sure it’s not strep, because the throat ache followed by my voice going away just happens as a reaction to stress anyway.  So if you meet me at a con and I rasp at you, it’s probably a sign I’m holding it all in to keep the brown stuff from hitting the air-moving apparatus, and it’s a good time to either stand (way) clear or gleefully join in.

As for what specific kind of mustard got up my nose this week, that is a long, long story and instead…

Hey, let’s talk contracts.  No, not anyone’s contracts in particular.  However, I came across a bizarre notion that got up my nose in a curious way.  There was a comment left at a friend’s blog to the extent that if she expected a fair contract out of a publisher she was living in a “socialist dream paradise.”

Oh, wally, wally, wally – where to start?

Is that what they’re teaching in school these days?  That only socialism can make contracts “fair”?  Because let me tell you that’s the sort of bunk that bunk washes off its shoes after cleaning the bunk’s septic tank. It is also particularly pernicious if this is what writers believe going into a career.

First let’s talk about what a contract is, why it exists, and why it was established by humanity at all.  A contract is a written instrument to record an agreement for an exchange between two parties – because  human memory is fallible, and humans are mortal, but chiseled stone is forever.  Okay – these days we don’t chisel it in stone, but while paper isn’t forever, properly kept it is still more durable than human memory, human intentions or human life.

I always read all my contracts carefully, and determine if there’s something in them I can’t live with.  These days, I run them by my lawyer, too.  I think at this point I’ve indentured my kids to look after him in his old age, he’s helped me so much (and I can see him running away screaming if he reads this.  He’s met my kids.  Come on.  At least Robert will be nice and ALMOST certainly not experiment on you!)

Do I remember all the mental compromises I made, in every contract, at this point?  Oh, heck no.  In fact, at least one contract still extant, I SWEAR I read completely differently, d*mn it, in case you wonder why I’m not continuing the musketeer vampire series.  Ah well, I didn’t have a lawyer at the time, and this will have to be dealt with, or endured.

BUT that’s why I have stuff written down.  And they have stuff written down.  That way we know what we agreed to.

The earliest contracts were in baked clay tablets.  But you can look up at that stuff yourself.

Let’s continue exploring what a contract is – or what a deal is, since a contract is the hard-copy expression of a deal.

A deal is when you want something from someone and someone wants something from you and you decide to exchange one thing for another.  Say in prehistory Ogg had a pretty rock, and Mogg had a rock-polishing fur, and Ogg got Mogg to polish his rock in exchange for letting Mogg hold the rock now and… Hey, stop that, minds off the gutter.  This is a goram family blog!

Sometimes of course a contract is not for an exchange but for something you’re starting together.  (Leave Ogg, Mogg and their rock alone, right now.  Some privacy, please!  What happens in the stone age, stays in the stone age.)  A partnership in a business is a deal, solidified (if you’re smart) by a contract.  If you get together to sell gadgets, and one of you brings the money and the other the gadget expertise, the contract sets out what worth each of your contributions have, and how much you should get of the proceeds of the business.  A marriage is also a contract, though the proceeds you divide might not (in the sense that both of you might work and keep finances more or less independently.  I never knew a couple who kept separate finances and stayed married, but that might just be my experience) be monetary.  They might be “mutual companionship/comfort/trust.”  Or they might be raising kids together.  And though we don’t think of marriage as a contract, it certainly is, one so common that there are established forms for it. (Yes, it can be a sacrament too, but at its most basic, legalistic, secular sense, it’s a contract.)

Now I know what the feminists have to say about how marriage oppresses women and what the heck, but like most of what they say these days, they have hold of the wrong end of the stick.

Is it possible to be coerced into a contract?  Oh, brother, let’s talk about it sometime.  I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.

Is this a direct condition of capitalism, making fair contracts a “socialist dream”?  Pfui.  And bah.  Also snort.  It is a condition of capitalism gone bad.  The reason I ended up signing some really bad contracts was that publishing was an oligopsony, i.e. a form of market where the sellers are many and the buyers are few.  I won’t say this doesn’t occur in a free-market capitalism.  I will say though that usually when it gets to that point there are influences that require the market be not-quite-free and the society too.

And yet I signed those contracts of my own free will, judging the benefits of signing them – getting my work into print and in the hands of readers – worth the hair-of-the-dog clauses, the uncertain financial reporting, and all the rest, as well as taking 97% of the proceeds.  The fact that at the time it was take that or never be published doesn’t mean I was coerced into it.  I could have walked away whistling and put the manuscripts in the drawer to wait a better time.  (And if I’d known indie was coming down the pike, I’d have done just that – I’d have submitted ONLY to Baen.  Ah, well.  One of you invent a way to send a message back in time.)  I signed that deal because I thought the benefits of signing outweighed the benefits of letting my work rot in a drawer.

If I remember, the gentleman commenting on my friend’s blog also went on about publishing being a business.  Indeed it is.  In fact, it was the form of business known as an oligopsony, which is a symptom of a business in its terminal stages of divorce from demand, so that what it’s supplying is not wanted – which usually leads to the death of the business.  The beautiful thing about capitalism is not that it always creates fair situations, but that really bad business models tend to crash.  Now this is not fun for anyone involved in the crash, but it clears the air wonderfully.  The market usually finds a way to go around constipation, if you will.  The resultant eruption might smell bad and look worse, but it might also save the economy.

The whole point is that publishing is a business and, if it’s working properly, it is not an oligopsony, because while there might be a million writers, they’re not all widgets.  I.e. they’re not all alike.

When I ran a magazine in a very small way, I only bought stories I liked and thought would improve my business.  That is, I only paid for what I thought had value.  I didn’t buy stories blinding off the slush pile.  (And it’s amazing, btw, how few stories were both good enough and suited our concept.)  That means it was in my interest to pay the best I could and to treat my writers decently, so more good quality writers would submit to me and my business would flourish.

And it was in the interest of the writers to send me good stories and not to cheat on the contract by selling me plagiarized material or material they’d already sold elsewhere.  This way they avoided taking my business down and doing themselves out of a market.

That’s how a deal works.  Win/win.

The late extant oligopsony (I like that word.  Deal) instead thought of themselves as not a business but an instrument for changing the world.  So they ignored what the readers wanted to read and published what they thought would be good for the readers to read “take your medicine” being the operative word.  This is, to put it mildly, the road to ruin.  In the process they abused writers whom they viewed as interchangeable widgets provided the “right” opinions were expressed.

What remains of the oligopsony is still playing that sort of games.  “If you want to get published give me the rights to everything you’ll ever write, and throw in your first born.”

I suspect the gentleman who left the comment on my friend’s blog was of that mindset and came up through that system.  And no, the cure for that system wasn’t socialism, ie. A third party that will not suffer any consequences of the contract inserting itself in and telling you what you might agree upon for your mutual benefit.  Those tend to end in tears.

However, whether the gentleman knows it or not, the oligopsony is more or less dead or dying.  (Ask not to know for whom the oligo opsonies, it opsonies for thee!)  For one it is no longer an oligopsony, since you can just publish your stuff yourself or choose from an array of small or micro presses offering a dizzying array of possibilities.

So this idea that a contract would never be fair to a writer – which seems to hinge on the idea that what the writer does has no value to the company, an idea dying with the controlled market of the oligopsony – is not only insane, but pernicious if you’re the writer.

You have options.  You have alternatives.  Anyone who tells you that you don’t is not only selling something but the something is not worth having.

In the end, what you’re doing when you sell a story is licensing your copyright in exchange for certain benefits.  Look carefully at the benefits offered and make sure they’re worth the story copyright.

I’m not your mother.  I’m not going to wipe your nose for you or make sure your feet are dry.  You think through what you want and what each contract gives you.  Keep in mind that the inventor of monopoly got a pittance.  But then balance that against the fact that had he not sold the rights, it might have been kept in his drawer all his life and he might have got even less.

There are no easy choices in life – most of the time – and no one pays a fortune for you to come over and eat ice cream, unless there’s a chance the ice cream is poisoned.  Value for value remember?  You’re selling a copyright in exchange for something of value.

Just always remember that if your copyright didn’t have value, no one would be offering to buy it.  Value your work and take some pride in it – if not, what’s the point of doing it?

And always make sure you don’t give away more than you can afford to lose.

After all, if Mogg polishes Ogg’s rock to a nubbin, what does Ogg have.  (Okay, that.  Never mind.)

Go forth.  Value your work.  Always read the fine print.  Remember contracts are for when the worst happens, not the best.  And don’t take any wooden nickels.

I’m sorry to be so late.  First of all this is all my younger son’s fault, as he was doing a guest post for my blog.  However, it seems to have morphed into a short story, so…

I have a guest post from Colonel Kratman, but my stupid computer won’t let me open it.  This leaves me stuck writing by myself.  I thought I’d go back to Copybook Headings by Kipling, because someone has to.   This is going to be a very short post because I have throat ache from heck.  This con-crud might not be.  My eye doctor said he had something similar but it just kept getting odder and odder and lasted about two months.  Let’s hope not.  I don’t mind the pain or the TB level cough that means I must medicate to sleep (which I hate—yes, even cough meds) but I DO mind the low-grade fever.

So, The Gods of the Copybook Headings by Rudyard Kipling…

What’s shocking about the poem is that it is so astonishingly modern.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

This is one of the most tiresome lies told to civilized man.  “if you disarm, the police/the authorities/the powerful will look after you.  Bad people can’t get you.  There will be peace.”

But the powerful have a really bad record of doing what’s good for anyone else, the authorities that are supposed to protect you always turn on you in the end, feudalism is a beautiful system but only for the feudal lord, and the peasants in their undefended huts are prey to all sorts of evil marauders.

And yet, we still get it, in this day and age we still hear it, “if you just give up your weapons, you’ll be safe.”  “If you just shut up, we won’t attack you.”  “If you are a good boy/girl, we’ll be kind to you.”

The Jews rounded up by Hitler went quietly, civilizedly, because they were appalled at what they were being accused of, afraid that they’d be called worse things, afraid of being thought a disturbing element.

And besides, what could happen?  The German people were SO civilized.

If you aren’t defending yourself, if you’re counting on someone else to defend you, realize that no one – no one – has the right or the duty to keep you alive.

And that “desert” is another name for “peace.”

Completely different post over at Mad Genius Club: Whirlpools.

 

Good government is sort of like unicorns and fairies.  We all know what it’s supposed to look like, we just have never seen any.

That said, though government is something that can go wrong very easily, due to the normal pressures of the human makeup (and even their rouge) there are degrees on how bad a government can get.

Arguably, the founders tried to create good government by surrounding it with internal pressures designed to keep it small.  What they counted without was semantic wizards capable of turning “interstate commerce” into laws over everything including what type of food you can grow and how much and what kind of cars you can drive.  They certainly didn’t count on the power to tax meaning that you’d have to submit your possible treatment to a panel of bureaucrats.  Or perhaps they knew it, and they thought if they could establish a government that worked for just a little while…

Most government is mildly bad – would that it were indifferent, but that would require the people who get into administration jobs to be sort of like me and believe that telling people what to do is too much work and they’ll figure it out, anyway.  Most people who do that are, in fact, the type of person who thrives on power and telling you what to do.  This is why in our modern fables, greed is the worst sin, but love of power isn’t even mentioned, even though most of the time wealth is just a means to power.

What this means is that most governments tend to wish to acquire (and mostly succeed) the most power possible over the most people possible.

Right now you’re squinting at it and thinking of a prison state, with people strictly regulated, with police taking you in for anything even mildly bad, with uniforms and goose stepping and you’re thinking “We’re rid of that at least.”

But you forget that the State has two means of force: one is force as we understand it, the blunt trauma of (increasingly militarized) police, of guards, of physical violence; the other is the power of the purse.

Once a government has the right to seize someone’s income (were you under the impression taxes were something else?) and redistribute it, or even the power to regulate contracts between individuals to where it can say they can happen or can’t, and if they happen it has to be on these terms, and your plant must be built this way, and you can or cannot use this fuel: once that happens, the government has power over you, even if you never see a soldier or policeman.  They can step in and stop you making a living by declaring your backyard a wetland, or by decreeing that the child’s toy that has made you rich is “dangerous” and can no longer be manufactured.

Worse, they can make it so the only rational choice is for you to take “government services” which means most people will then fight to keep those services, because they can’t imagine surviving without them.

One of the things people tended to yell at me about was “How come you don’t like government but send your kids to public school?”

I was talking to my publisher (at Baen) Toni Weisskopf at Liberty con and after three pieces of business (one of them was Basset’s antho, and yes, I will post an announcement on that by this weekend.  Sorry.  I’m still getting over the con crud and it seems to be mutating instead of getting better) we started talking about the “interesting times” we live in.  It started with stuff like how it seems to us all of our colleagues have taken a running jump off their rocker and the insanity is so universal that we sit and stare and go “surely, the money is coming in, I’m doing well, it can’t be that my model is wrong.  But then why is everyone else doing this other thing and screaming?”

Of course, us being us and insanity being mentioned, we had to talk government. Part of it came down to the type of thing like sending your kids to public school.

See, I would gladly have continued teaching the younger boy – at least – at home, until I could put him in his dual college/high school program, where he was at last at least semi-happy.  BUT teaching him cost me eleven thousand a year and that was without hiring a math tutor, which I’d need to do if I’d kept him at home, because he outstripped my math when he left Algebra II.  (Yes, I took pre-calc in 9^th grade, but even the notations are different here/now.)  (I’m not, by the way, saying these are the normal costs of homeschooling, but they were the normal costs for a child who “ate me out of home and curriculum.”)

Of course “it’s for your kid.  Why wouldn’t you make a sacrifice” etc.  Yes, indeed.  The problem is that we COULD’NT.  We couldn’t afford that 11k and pay our mortgage, and that was with me delivering six books (half of them were mystery, which is to say 5k books) that year.

How come?  Are we driving gold plated cars? While goldplating would be funny on my 20 year old SUV and Dan’s 35 year old mustang, no.

Periodically we decide we need to reduce our expenses and we sit down…  Other than the house – which in retrospect was a bad idea to buy, particularly since we did it for the schools, but which even now is well below what we qualify for (though that doesn’t count maintenance, natch) – our most onerous expense is… taxes.

That year that I could barely afford 11k to teach my kid, I paid 14k in taxes from my own income.  (And before you think I must have made a lot – I made around 28k.  Of course, it goes on top of Dan’s income, but Dan’s income is already depleted by taxes.  There’s also, of course, self-employment stuff, also known as “paying for the privilege of not having job security”.)

At that point Toni said, “Yeah, you know how progressives always say ‘you’re against big government but you take disability, or social security, or—’?  That is because the government forces immoral choices on people.”

I’ve been thinking about that.  It is immoral, of course, to take from other people for your own good.  I mean, if you do it you’re called a thief and put in jail, right?  Why is it legal for the government to do things you can’t?  And why would it be moral for you to take money from others, if you use government?  (Is it armed robbery if you use the army, instead of a snub nosed Saturday Night Special?)

Does the government force you to take money?  Does the government force you to take advantage of its regulations?  Well, of course not, but the incentives are very strongly towards making you take the immoral choice.

It uses your best instincts: you’re supposed to look after yourself and yours, right?  So, what kind of parent, what kind of person would you if you turned down that which made you or others that depend on you better off?  What kind of person would you be if you lost your house instead of taking unemployment?  And, at the same time, by taking from you the means to provide for yourself – through taxes, social security excise, unemployment insurance, the myriad bites out of your paycheck – the government makes that choice inevitable.

A system designed to seize and redistribute money is going to make the individual, rational actor take advantage of it, no matter what the person really wants to do.

This is why I don’t judge conservatives who are on disability or unemployment or supplemental income.  What their political choice means is that they see that government is buying their soul piecemeal and binding them up with velvet shackles, and they’re trying to change the system so that others (many of these people are now older or infirm and there’s no hope for them) won’t fall into that trap.

Glenn Reynolds is fond of saying “They’ll turn us into beggars because beggars are easy to please.”

I wish it were only that.  But as regulations on our health, on whom we’re allowed to hire, on what use we can make of our own property multiply, I think what the government is actually trying to do is turn us into children.  Adult children, in our parents’ basement, kept away from real choices and real freedom, and supposed to be grateful they let us live here.

This is something I worry about with my own kids.  We’re trying to do college on the cheap and either without debt or with as little debt as possible (without debt depends on my writing doing well.  There are two of them, after all.)  This means the kids are living at home.  They’re generally good kids, and they have chores and stuff.  But we feel guilty, because it’s not the same thing as their living on their own.

I remember with vivid tones the terror I felt the first time Dan and I came up short while on our own.  I’d been living semi-on-my-own for a few years: I lived in my parents’ house, but I kept independent finances.  HOWEVER it was not the same.  When I had an extended period of unemployment, I had to walk from the train to college (an hour on foot at a good clip) and I couldn’t buy books or food while I was out.  But I could raid mom’s fridge, my bed was still there, and no one was going to turn the lights off.  There is an amount of growing up that doesn’t happen until you come face to face with that “if you don’t work, you die.” (Or at least you’ll go without light, water or a roof.)  That is when you learn to make decisions like “We can’t go out to eat tonight, much as we want to, because that’s half our grocery money for the week.” Or “I’ll wait for that book from the library.”

But our present government turns us into that sort of adult children, living in their parents’ house.  “Never mind having catastrophic health insurance; it will be there when you get very ill.  Meanwhile give us all your money, we need to buy candy for your siblings, because they’re crying.”

The government as constituted, what some have called The Blue Model turns our finances public and private into a tragedy of the commons.  That is – for those who never heard of it – they make all our wealth whether public or private a public resource, which you must use or someone else will.

As we continued our discussions in email Toni told me: If you undermine the institutions that foster virtue, do not be surprised when the people do not act virtuously.

I don’t know what she means by virtue.  I don’t think she means religious – it’s possible she does, but I don’t think so, since her religion is almost as complicated as mine – I think she means the civic bourgeois virtues: pay your own way, work to support yourself, look after your own, do the right thing.

Our government not only undermines them, in many cases it penalizes them.  It’s bad enough when people like us, who pay the mortgage we agreed to pay, who work even when we don’t feel like it, who raise our kids to be productive are forced to subsidize the lifestyle of people who do none of those things.  Worse, we’re attacked and belittled – you didn’t build that! – while the people receiving are considered saintly and victims, because they “are in need,” and never ask how they came to be in need.  And successful, productive companies subsidize corporate welfare for pipe dreams that will never pay off (Solyndra!)

The essence of a middle class life has become things, and the government seems incapable of believing that things do not make the lifestyle and the very virtues they undermine with redistribution and handouts are the ones that would make the “victims” free.  Or perhaps they know it and it’s intentional, of course.

But worse than that, there is the power it gives government to alter political discourse.  Take the Tea Parties and the IRS.  I keep getting people who say “why did the tea parties apply for tax exempt status?  If they’re anti-government, why apply to government for goods?”

Note that most – if not all, I don’t know – tea parties didn’t apply for TAX DEDUCTIBLE status (that was what was delayed for a couple – yes, only a couple – of progressive groups) which is the ability to have people deduct their contributions to you as charitable.  No, all that the tea parties wanted was for the person collecting the money for tea-party use not to be taxed on it as personal income.  Why did they want that?  Because otherwise it becomes a serious pain in the neck.  Take it from me.  I’ve never run anything as large as a tea-party, even a local one, but I dealt with finances for cons and local groups (long ago, before the kids) and if that money is falling into a bank account you control, it’s YOUR money, and you have to declare it.

So, to create a group that fights back the encroachment of government, you have to apply for tax exempt status, which means you give government the chance to curtail your activities.

Not only is government behaving like it’s the parent and we live in its basement – it’s an abusive parent who yells at us for not doing the dishes and makes us late for an interview, which means we can’t get a job and move out.

More than that, the government and the er… media industrial complex promote the idea that if you try to work for yourself and better yourself you are somehow doing something wrong: “You didn’t build that” and “We belong to government” and the whole thing about the role of government being to help the less fortunate (which in government parlance – no, not in reality – is often those who are UNWILLING to help themselves.)  If to be considered virtuous and worthy you have to stop exercising the bourgeois virtues that made this country great – restraint, foresight, self-care – and if those virtues are ridiculed, why would you even try to live a “decent, bourgeois” life?  (And note how bourgeois has become an insult, though what it really means is “not born to power and striving for self-sufficiency and decency.”)

As I was pondering this article, I came across this article from Powerline where Raoul Castro, younger member of the most notoriously and murderously rapacious family in Cuba, berates the Cubans for their lack of civic morality.  He yells about children born out of wedlock, and graffiti and public urination.

Well, Raoul, if your government extols – at least from the lips out – the virtues of those who have nothing; if you make business a sin and profit a bad thing; if you make everything bad that happens in the isle, and the fact that your economy has been below life support for years someone else’s fault: mostly the US embargo’s and “imperialists” – why would you expect your subjects to take action to better themselves?  Wouldn’t that make them “imperialists” and “greedy?”  While if they fail, it’s someone else’s fault.  (It might also not have been a good idea to become the USSR’s lap dog, provider of mercenaries and tit-sucker.  Just saying.  The USSR was not known as a bastion of morality for about the same reason you’re not.)

My father used to tell me that a weak leader makes a strong country weak.  Perhaps.  I’ll add that an immoral government makes a moral country immoral.

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as “bad luck.”- Robert A. Heinlein

And that bad luck is aided and abetted if government gives you incentive for all the wrong choices.  That’s a bad government.  It might even be evil.

So, what is good government?  I’ve never seen it in my life, since, since long before the sixties (when I was born) government has seized on charity as a good way to get more power to itself “for the children” and “for the poor” and thereby has been destroying civic virtue and that which allows civilization to exist.

But if I had to make a guess, good government would be something like this: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Strangely this same document foresees (talks about – I mean they were facing one) governments that have strayed from this purpose, and advises a remedy: That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

It is not one to be undertaken lightly, and I’d rather we undermine and under-build government so when it collapses we’re ready for it.  It’s possible that technology and the complete mess government has become make undermining and underbuilding a reasonable choice.  But to manage that, we must remember what is our natural disposition and inclination and what are the immoral choices forced on us by government.  We might conform to those choices while they’re there, since it’s our duty to stay alive and look after ourselves and ours by any means possible.  But we should remember at all times this is not the government’s house.  This is our house.  We’re not children.  We did build that.  We can come out of the basement and into the light anytime we choose to.  And it is our duty to try.

 

 

 

I had planned on a different and far more complex post today, but I woke up at six, went back to bed and woke up at nine thirty.  This used to be a normal time to wake up in summer when I was a kid, but now it’s decadent and strange.  It threw everything off.  I’ve been running around getting caffeinated, etc.

Only I was reading your comments, and I thought there’s another aspect to “If you don’t work you die” which Kipling might or might not have thought about, but which to me and people like me is as important as the financial/productive side.

I don’t know how widespread this is, or whether it’s a human characteristic.  As I said, I have friends who would gladly not do anything the rest of their lives, given a modicum of money to live on.  BUT this seems to be true of me and a lot of other people.

I’d rather work scraping crap off shoes than sit still day after day, watching TV or whatever.  Part of this is that I like feeling like an adult, and it’s been dinned into me since an early age that adults take care of themselves (and their own.)  Forgive the crude image, but that’s the most offensive job I could think of.  I suppose you could also say cleaning septic tanks.

When I was very young and had no work history in the states, I worked as clerk at a store that was like a discount pier one.  The worst part of that job?  It was boring.  I mean, really rock bottom boring.  They wouldn’t let me write, either, which I thought was dumb.  I could stand behind the counter, writing on a composition book and put it away when the customer arrived. We were not allowed to read.  And we could only straighten/clean if there were more than two of us there.  If we had only two, one was supposed to stand behind the register, waiting, and the other was supposed to go walk around the store to … well, to prevent gay couples making out behind the baskets.  (No, I never understood the attraction, except that it was very private behind the basket shelves.  Eventually I became friends with a gay guy who lived behind the mall – and was the first other writer I ever met – and he’d cheerfully go and roust out “the people back there” a couple of times a day – he came in to talk writing, which made it easier – because it embarrassed me.)

As a result, I was tortured with boredom.  There’s only so much I can make up stories before writing them down.  BUT the money I made allowed us to buy groceries, so it was all good.

(I eventually got permission to polish the brass from the very tarnished brass shelf, while behind the register, and that allowed me to not go insane.)

My next job was as a multilingual secretary; after that I was a freelance translator, and I’ve been a writing bum ever since with brief intervals of teaching at college.  What this means in practicality is that if I come on hard times and I can’t find an opening to teach in a nearby college or community college, I will be “unskilled labor.”  The thing that scares me most about this is the boredom.  Which is why I’m working on my sewing skills, my carpentry skills and my cleaning skills.  If I need to, I can do stuff that will pay as much as minimum wage labor.  Because I don’t like being bored.

But I keep hearing people say things like “I’ll stay unemployed the rest of my life rather than work minimum wage.”  Well, minimum wage would seriously suck.  If both Dan and I worked minimum wage, we might JUST survive, just.  We’d need to take all sorts of assistance (and more on that later because it was the point I was going to write about today, in that longer, more complex post.)  We wouldn’t starve (when Dan was last unemployed we joined a food buying cooperative.  We’ve since left, because most of it carb intensive, but we know of other programs.  It reduced our food bill to about $50 a month.)  We might have to rent a studio apartment in a bad part of town.  None of these compare to doing nothing and JUST living off charity.  Why?

Well, first when you’re out there, no matter how menial the work you’re doing, you’re meeting people and sooner or later someone will say “Hey, you know, if you could do x” which either leads to another job or a supplementary contract type work.  My international secretary job came about because a secretary who was working with me, (she took a second job after hours to pay debt) said “Hey, you know, we’re looking for—”  Second because it’s not insanely boring.  You’re doing something, no matter how futile it might seem, like me polishing brass.  There is the possibility of something happening.  You’re still alive and still struggling.

I’m not putting down the plight of anyone who can’t find another job (these days if you’re over a certain age they don’t want to hire you for beginning jobs) or people who are disabled, or people who have to take assistance.  I’m fifty not fifteen.  I can imagine circumstances in which the best I can do is stay home and take public assistance and/or charity.

As far as that’s concerned, that’s a legitimate use of ‘aid’ though I still think it’s a function better not done by the government.

HOWEVER even if, G-d forbid, that happens to me, unless I’m seriously ill in a mind-or-mobility reducing sort of way, I’ll be doing something.  Why?  Because I have to.  Because otherwise it will be boring.  Now the something I do might be knitting baby shoes, but at least it won’t be nothing. Even if I give the shoes away.  (Of note, Robert volunteers at the hospital.  A lot of the other volunteers are young, single mothers on public assistance.  If that’s not a requirement in CO – x number of volunteer hours might be – at least these women are trying to do SOMEHING.)

What I’m trying to say here is what Jerry said in 08: learn another trade, learn another skill, take another job, do something.  If everything else is barred, start cleaning your house and make it really clean.  It will take your mind away from how much trouble we’re heading into, and it might give you another skill that helps you survive.

My other advice would be “don’t be proud.”  Yes, I felt terrible, coming from a Latin country with its ideas of honor, with the equivalent of an MA + in my pocket, going to work as a clerk.  I felt it was “demeaning.”  (One is a fool at 22, okay?)

I no longer feel that way.  Demeaning would have been sitting at home waiting for something magical to happen.  (Starvation is pretty magical.)

Working retail took nothing off me, and it helped me a side of the culture I would not normally run into.  It also helped me realize at an early age that intelligence, ability and employment are NOT covalent.  Some of my co-workers were dumb enough you wondered how they tied their shoes.  Some were brilliant.

You are not what you do.  If circumstances close it off (and we’re living in a time of catastrophic change, so it’s almost guaranteed)  you might have to pick up at a much lower/much weirder/much different job.  You do it, and you move on.  And you try to improve your lot every time.  Flipping burgers or drawing coffees will not reduce your “Status” because that’s internal, it’s who you are.  You do what you have to.  What will reduce your status is failing to look after yourself and yours.

We have this idea of people getting a job with a company and staying there fifty years.  Maybe this happened at one time, but probably not over most of the time, in history.  For most of history people had work collapse under them and move, and learned new skills. And the high-performers were always those who jumped from job to job, bettering their lot.  The ones who stayed in the same line assembly job for life might be secure.  They were also, usually, stuck.

Yes, I know, it’s preposterous to think of starting again at fifty or sixty.  But honestly, that’s a function of how long we’re living.  We can now pick up a new career at fifty and work at it twenty five years, easy.  This used to be impossible.  I’m glad to live now, not then.

It’s good not to be old at fifty, and if I have to start again, I will.

Now, keep in mind this applies to me only marginally.  Unless both traditional AND indie collapse, I should be able to write for money TM.  And if they both collapse, I’m in more trouble than having to start a new career.  BUT if my income falls below a certain level, I’ll have to find a way to supplement, so it also applies.  (It might require a tardis, of course.  I’m already full-up.)  In my old age (ah!) I am writing non fic at beginner prices.  And if you don’t think that’s a different art… let me tell you.

I hear so many people say “I was working, then my job went away, and I didn’t know how to do anything else” and I wonder if that’s true, if those people really exist.  I can’t imagine one of us doing that.  Because doing nothing is boring.  If you don’t work, you die – inside as well as for lack of sustenance.  And while there’s life, there’s hope.

We do, we try, we learn.  And if the rug gets yanked from under our feet, we dust ourselves off and we go on.  While there’s life, there’s hope.

 

By which I don’t mean death.  I mean, that happens too, and it’s of course important (for one, it’s fatal) but it’s not what I’m talking about.

I mean normally I’m doing 2100 things and a half, give or take the half all at the same time, with another dozen things at the back of my head clamoring for admittance.

But sometimes life stops.  It stops completely, as something more important than all the rest seems to rob my personal world of breath and focus.

This happened many years ago today when older son was born.

People talk of transformative events.  As writers we write a lot of them.  Mostly that’s poppycock.  It’s an artifice, a trick, us pulling a rabbit out of the hat, because there is no time in the fictional world to raise bunnies and watch them grow.

In real life, to quote the Eagles

But things in this life change very slowly,
if they ever change at all

I’ve seen humans change completely, just about, in their character, their interests, their ideals, but it’s usually not sudden, barring major physical trauma or consuming passion for someone on the other side (one of the reasons why good ol’ Charlie’s (not Martin) transformation so transfixes those of us who used to hang out at his blog.)  Even my transformation from fire eating to the extreme right? Left? Of libertarians to what I’ll call for lack of better words a Constitutionalist, came so slowly I didn’t see it happening.  It started on 9/11, but I wasn’t aware of how far I’d come till I wrote A Few Good Men, or till I tried to read the Magical British Empire books with a view to clean them up for publication (yes, that’s happening.  And Witchfinder.  See that 2100 things.  What I need, of course, is a secretary.  Someone local, who can mark physical pages.  Never mind.  I’m dreaming, okay?  That’s allowed.  Over all the problem is that if I don’t want to give up sleeping there’s simply too much to cram into one day.) And that’s a transformation that even from moderate left would appear to be a change without a difference.  Other people who have undertaken much larger political transformations have either realized, in a Damascus Road moment that they’d been ambling towards it for a long time so that the moment is more a realization of what had already changed, or the transformation, whatever the precipitating event, takes very long.

And that’s politics.  Other changes – breaking your habit of doing this or that – might never be fully completed.  There is a reason alcoholics try not to even smell liquor after they give it up.

Things in real life, in real people, in real society change very slowly, if they ever change at all.  Which is why command politics and economics usually end in mass graves.  People who think society is infinitely malleable and the human being not only perfectible but perfectly ductile rarely understand the resistance they meet with is not from political enemies but from reality itself.

There is however a couple of exceptions to that “no sudden changes” and I’m not even sure how to describe them except as the flipping of internal switches.

One of those changes is death.  Not your own, others.  Whether you learn anything from your own or not depends on whether you believe in the after-life and/or conscious zombiedom.  But something changes the first time you lose someone close to you.  To me, it came at 14, when my dad’s dad died.  It was … odd what it did to me, internally.

I am not stupid.  And I read Heinlein.  And Shakespeare.  I was/am aware that life is a fatal condition, blah blah blah.  Right.  But knowing intellectually that one day you too will die, even seeing beloved figures in the village die meant nothing really.  They were at the periphery of my life, not in it.  When my grandfather – someone in the inner circle, the person who taught me to appreciate stout beer, the person who told me stories of his world travel – died, a switch flipped in my head.  Before that I “knew” I was mortal, but after that I knew it in my bones.  “Remember you’re dust…”  No need.  It was there.  Weirdly other deaths, including that of my other grandfather and of my paternal grandmother, arguably as close to me as a mother, had less effect.  Other than the fact that now and then I stop and wonder if grandmother can see what I’m up to, which keeps me more honest and decent than anything else could.  The effect of going “Oh, yeah, this is real” had already happened.  The other deaths brought grief, and not a day has gone by in the last 23 that I don’t wish I could at least pick up the phone and tell grandma something cute the kids or cats did, or tell her how worried I am about something or—just babble at her, really, and hear her reassuring me.  And I’d give years of life to go back, just once, to the home of my childhood and sit and have tea with her.  But that’s missing her– not that first startling realization that I am mortal.

Giving birth was another such moment, a place where you could put a bright red line.  Before it I was one person, after that another and completely different.  It’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t been there (and I will say right now I’m in no way discriminating against adoptive parents, I’m saying I don’t know if it happens for them, if holding the kid is the same as being wholly responsible for his/her existence.)

Yesterday we were talking to a friend who has two little kids (elementary age and toddler) and he kept being interrupted by the kids, and being really patient about it.  And my older son said “I don’t think I can ever have kids.  I don’t think I can ever be mature enough.”

And I told him “It comes.  It comes when you become a parent.  It just happens.  I know for some people it happens WITHOUT kids, but for me, I matured only when I needed to.”

No, being pregnant didn’t give me a clue.  I’m actually one of those rare women who HATES being pregnant.  Both times, I tolerated it only because the reward was so large.  For men and those who’ve never experienced this, it’s exactly like having another person inside you all the time.  This might seem tautological “But Sarah, of course it is.” But no, you don’t understand.  At first it’s just flutterings, and it could be indigestion or something.  But at around, oh, 25 weeks? (I counted painfully to 24 weeks each time, because at that time there is a chance of survival even if you miscarry.  Considering that’s my particular form of infertility, I became a little less anxious once I had passed that mark.) you recognize the movements as those of a full human.  You can feel him (both of mine were) turn as though he were in a bed.  You can feel him stretch and yawn.  You see a handprint against your belly.  Yes, it’s endearing, but it’s also freaky for this reader of science fiction.

Despite my habit of hugging half of SF fandom and a quarter of the writers, I’m not otherwise “touchy”.  I don’t like perfect strangers touching me.  Unless I’m punch drunk – which I always get to towards the end of a con – I don’t hug anyone I don’t consider part of my ersatz fandom family.  H*ll, I think despite my having more or less adopted Kilted Dave as a third son at LC, I never hugged him.  I think.  (The punch drunk thing.)

Feeling someone LIVING in me, as though I were his living room just felt ODD, a total violation of my space.

But at the same time, he still wasn’t out, and I didn’t need to change things for HIM.  I mean, sure, I was on bed rest, but that could be any sickness.

However, after 3 days of labor, they did a caesarean, and then …  And then I slept for almost twenty four hours, and woke to find I was a mother.  I looked at him, and he looked suspiciously back like “Who are you, and what are you selling?” (Those who’ve met him are laughing now.)

And suddenly it hit me, at the bone level “this is mine, and I’m responsible for him.  He wouldn’t be in this world without me.  Not only is the easing of his path by teaching him how to get along in the world my privilege, but I’m responsible for what he does and what he fails to do.  Because he wouldn’t be here without me.”

And while I’m aware – more so after #2 son – that they come preloaded with programs, that they’re their own person as much as your son (and in #2’s case a reasonable facsimile of his maternal grandfather whom he’s spent maybe a month of his life total with – it’s all right.  I missed dad anyway.) the fact remains, they wouldn’t be here without you.

It’s a terrifying responsibility.  You find yourself both trying to protect the world from them (Yes, I hear the laughter.  Yes, some of you HAVE met my sons) and protect them from the world, or at least try to make the world better for them.

Over the last few months a lot of people have tried to persuade me that I should stop fighting, that I should accept the inevitably of history, etc.

First of all, I’m really bad at accepting “inevitability” – time and again in my life, doctors – good doctors – told me something was inevitable: my being sterile; my imminent death; the fact I’d be impaired my whole life.  And time and again I decided that was not acceptable and changed it.  No, I don’t think I can do that to everything and yes, I do realize one day the final call WILL come for me.  But when it does I intend to go kicking screaming and gouging eyes as I go.

Second, I can’t accept that I’m to be a mere “recorder of the apocalypse.”  I can’t because I have children.  I’m supposed to pass on to them a country in as good an order as I received it circa 1988 when I was naturalized.  Fortunately it was not pristine, we’d been on the road to heck for a while.  If possible, I’d like to pass onto them, say circa twenty five, a BETTER country, one on the way up towards life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for every individual.

Yes, sad to say, I’m a mother (duh) and I’m doing it for the children.  MY children, specifically, not some amorphous “do it for the children” mostly invoked by childless politicians.

Can we succeed?  Bah.  As Grandma would say “While there’s life, there’s hope.”  Well, I’m alive, and I’m not going quietly into that good night.  In my experience deciding to fight is half the battle.

And while the person I was on July 6^th 1991 might have just gone to ground somewhere isolated with her books and her music and waited for the collapse; the person I became the next day has something bigger than herself to fight for: she has two pledges to the future, two people who must continue living after she is gone and for whose life, liberty and – definitely – pursuit of happiness, she feels a strong responsibility.

So, while there’s life, there’s hope.  And while there’s life, I’ll fight.

I was reading a Nero Wolfe book the other day and there is a man we’re obviously supposed to dislike going on about how it’s stupid to try to feed all the hungry in the world.  It puzzled me how this could be even disputed, much less a bad opinion.  Given the different kleptocratic kakistocracies around the world, trying to feed all the poor is in fact to support dictators and evil men. Trying to feed individual, targeted poor is different, but then you can’t feed “all the poor in the world.”  Of course, this was a time when the power of governmental organization and “scientific governance” were considered forces for good. (This man is also referred to as a Nazi, even though he’s clearly against all forms of socialism, national and otherwise.  Never mind, Rex Stout is dead and his time is not our time. Perhaps he was referring to someone who actually existed and there was stuff about this man I can’t now know.)

My grandmother, who was normally very shrewd had a blind spot a mile wide.  When I was little, we got door-to-door beggars.  (One would like to believe that was stopped by greater prosperity and better programs to help the poor.  One would also like to believe that pigs can fly.  Actually downtown in the city has as many beggars as ever, but the crime rate is so much higher that anyone begging door to door is likely to starve.  People don’t open the door to strangers, anymore.)  Grandma had real trouble not giving to beggars.  Mind you, she rarely gave them money (she rarely had cash money on hand, other than needed to run the house.)  But she’d give them sandwiches, eggs, bread, lengths of fabric.

This drove my mother nuts.  I even understand why, since at the time in Portugal there was an (unofficial) beggars guild and families of hereditary beggars, many of whom mutilated their own children to make them deformed/blind so they could beg.

When we all lived in the same house, more or less (well, mom and dad’s home was a shotgun apartment built out of what used to warehouses along the east side of the house) mom would follow my grandmother to the door when the bell rang “to act as her spine” if the pitch was obviously stupid/false.  Though it will tell you the sort of household I grew up in when you consider that both women agreed you should too give a generous amount to the guy who told the most ingenious, if obviously false story – and also to the guy who could not lie and therefore begged with “Please give me something, for neither my mother nor my father are blind.”  Mom and grandma spent the morning giggling and dissecting his pitch.  “Maybe he means since his parents aren’t blind they see how ugly he is and have cast him out.”  And then people think I’m strange…

Sometime a few days ago, I was reading a book about dinosaurs and it referred to how a dinosaur “probably earned his living.”

Yes, there is a point to all of this.

The other day in this blog, a commenter asked me about the Gods of The Copybook Headings by Rudyard Kipling.

These are supposed to be the lessons of the fables in copybooks, and you write them at the top of the copy, in your fairest hand, to show you got it.  (I will note I was raised on Aesop’s fables.)

And they are – yes, all of them – true even those I wish weren’t.  Anyway, the Copybook headings are a great way of getting a spine when faced with reasonable begging pitches.

How reasonable?  Well, pitches about feeding all the hungry in the world.  Who wouldn’t want to do that.  As someone who did have times of hunger now and then (which is not the same as times of appetite) I very much would like it if it were possible for us to feed, clothe, house everyone in the world – if that were the base level to work from. It’s not possible.  It will never be possible no matter how much our science advances.  The flaw is not in our science but in ourselves.

Someone at the panel on transhumanism spoke out against extending life because “we already don’t have enough food to feed everyone.”  I couldn’t beat that one down, of course, because it went into politics and policy, into the governments people choose, into how redistribution is always redistribution of famine.  I couldn’t go into it because it had nothing to do with technology of life extension.  It had to do with Old Adam.  Or perhaps Old Cain.

There is no such a thing as a lack of food in the world.  And when there is in a particular region, at a particular time, it is usually the result of a truly craptastic government.  Anyone who looks at the two Koreas can’t but conclude that the fault is not with lack of food but with a government so constituted that it makes it impossible for people to “earn a living.”  (Anyone but our president, who, having been thoroughly indoctrinated in Marxism likely thinks that SK steals from NK.)  Anyone who knows the history of Rhodesia can’t but realize that Zimbabwe is poor because its government chooses not to let its people earn a living.

In fact, it is normally the governments who ignore the gods of the copybook headings and decide everyone must eat, whether they work or not, who bring that sort of ruin and famine to their people.

There is a reason for this.  It is fashionable in the US to talk about people who are on welfare and don’t work.  That is not precisely true.  Yes, there are people on welfare who neither have a regular job nor look for one.  But what might not be understood is that these people are working: they are navigating the labyrinthine bureaucracy and making sure they meet all the guidelines to keep the money flowing.  That is work.  It is just not productive work.  It is a work that is the result of perverse incentives.  These people have become convinced that’s the only thing they can do to survive – so they do it.  And the government functionaries who derive power from their “service” want as many of them as possible under their sway.  So they teach more people how to work at getting money for “free”.  And they put more barriers in the way of those ever wanting to leave that condition.

Then there is minimum income.  We do have the ability to give every adult a certain minimum income, I think.  Or at least we did before we ran the presses at melting speed.  Heinlein in his Fabian socialist days envisioned this as a way to get the economy going.  If every adult has some tiny income, enough to live on if you have three roommates and live on Ramen noodles – say 10k a year – then everything you make above that is in a way disposable.  Not only is there no need, but there is more disposable income to stimulate the economy.  (To understand the appeal of this to Heinlein you have to understand that his most frequent contention with his sister was that they only had a pillow between the two of them.  It’s poverty we now can’t begin to imagine.)  Also, one presumes, since breathing and over eighteen was the criteria, we might spend less on that that on our current welfare system.

And maybe it would be.  Except we hit up on the snag of human nature.  A wise man said “The poor, you shall always have” and He seems likely to be right.  First of all, poverty is relative.  When that man walked in Galilee being poor was usually a fatal condition.  You simply didn’t make enough to eat, or to keep off the cold.  You might not be able to reproduce because you couldn’t support children.  It was a condition of terminal failure.  Unless you somehow clawed up, you’d die of it.

Nowadays, our poor are likely to live in air conditioned houses.  They often – if they’re on assistance particularly – have more children than the very wealthy, and the children have toys and clothes.

Nothing wrong with that, but they’re still considered “poor” – they’re poor in relation to people like me, who are not on assistance, and who live in larger houses and own more stuff and/or who can buy a book just because.  Just like I’m poor in relation to those people who can afford to take European vacations or even who own a mountain cabin to hole up and write in.  (Okay, most people don’t write in mountain cabins.  I don’t know why not.)

The point is that humans are not angels.  This is both good and bad. We’re built on a frame of the great apes, and the great apes are social creatures.  This means they’re also creatures of status.  What we consider poor is a matter of relative status, which means it keeps changing.  If our government doesn’t succeed in Zimbabweing us and we end up in a future where houses clean themselves, where you can have anything you can dream up and order t-d printed, there will still be the “poor”.  They might be those who lack the imagination to have their… replicator create really nifty things, but they’ll still be poor.  They’ll lack status.

The good and bad of the status seeking in humans is envy.  Good?  How can envy be good?  Envy is good when it makes you want what the others have, and instead of this leading to you organizing the community to steal it from them or – alternately – leading a communist revolution, it makes you work harder to “get there”.  Many an Horatio Alger worked so hard they forgot what they were working for and when they got there they couldn’t enjoy it.  BUT many more made it and enjoyed it, and all of them contributed to the wealth of society in general and building that.

There are, however, a group of humans with very low status envy.  Possibly a very large group.  In the seventies, Denver experimented with a minimum guaranteed income scheme.  So did other places.  The results were always the same.  No matter how low you set that income – even if it’s at a level like 10k where you really have to make a crazy effort to survive on it – the majority of people will live on it and stop trying to work or find work.

This might be an evolutionary trait.  The idiot hunter who went off and felled mammoth after mammoth was not only wasting food because his tribe of fifteen could barely eat a mammoth before it spoiled, much less ten – he was also depleting the mammoth herd and ensuring future starvation for his people.

So, the survival trait we inherit is “get enough to live on with minimal work, and don’t strive for more.”

Some of us are broken.  We were given both envy and high principles.  We can’t even contemplate bringing others down to level things, but instead we work madly to increase our status.  (No, it’s not how I think about it, but it’s probably what’s going on in the back of the monkey brain.)  Most of humanity however is functional.  Give them enough to eat, and a place to live, and no matter how unvaried the diet and how small/terrible the place, most people will stay put.

“But Sarah,” you say “Where are the gods of the copybook headings?  Even you say that it’s possible, if we arranged it that way, to feed most people so they don’t need to work.  Why shouldn’t we?”

We shouldn’t because the gods of the copybook headings in fire and terror return.

Government produces nothing.  It doesn’t build that. It doesn’t build anything.  It can’t.  Government is force.  It can, on threat of that force, seize enough of what someone produced to give to someone else.  Even when it “builds” roads or power plants, it does so with confiscated wealth and at the expense of what the owners might have done with that wealth.  (They wouldn’t have?  How do you know?  Remember status.  Throughout history humans have funded research – often in useless stuff – and paid for innovation.  How do you know left to its own devices private capital wouldn’t have created neighbordhood-sized nuclear plants?  Or who knows what?  The one thing we know is that nothing done by government has ever come in on time or under budget.)

When governments start thinking in terms of “feeding the hungry” which in our day becomes “giving things to the continuously redefined poor” what it is actually doing is reducing the number of people working in the productive sector.  Between the bureaucrats working to redistribute wealth and the people working to keep getting the handouts, a huge contingent of people is removed from the productive sector.

When that number reaches the point where the productive sector can’t keep up, a crash ensues.  An Earth-shaking Kaboom, you might say. The “you” in the poem is collective in this case.  “You” individual might survive for a time, without working, given a very wealthy society.  But no society can remain wealthy when it doesn’t “work” – ie. When it produces nothing.  And eventually the gods of the copybook headings, in fire and terror return.

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit Readers, and thank you Glenn Reynolds for the link!