1 Soul Bound
1.2 Taking Control
1.2.3 An Enchanting Original
1.2.3.23 Leverage
Dinah paused a moment, to let the bad news sink in, before continuing: [I suggest sending back a new version, *construct*, and an emotion of gratitude if you can manage that. Quickly.]
Kafana sent the altered construct. Sending gratitude was harder, but visualising the spirit as an eager young puppy helped.
Kafana: *good boy*
They waited. Nervously.
Three minutes later, the rain on the peak eased off, and the circle around them was illuminated by an uninterrupted beam of sunlight, while all around them remained dark. Bungo, never one to miss a moment with dramatic potential, drew a sword with a flourish, and stood tall, arms raised in a Y-shape, shield in one hand and sword upright in the other. He flicked his head, sending water flying from his hair and shouted.
Bungo: “There can be only one!”
Kafana broke, sobbing in helpless giggles, the tension broken. She used her amplifier to send a final emotion *oh who’s a good boy, you’re a good boy, yes you are, yes you are!* before cutting off the link.
Kafana: {Thanks Dinah, good support. I think I’m going to leave weather experimentation there for the day, however.}
Hmm, she still owed Bungo a song for his adoptive father. Bungo was a big Queen fan. Why not? She set up her normal amplifier spell, and wished she had a way to do multitrack recordings. No matter, she could play it twice, and then ask Alderney to splice it. She got out her violin and played “Who Wants to Live Forever”, using her imagination to fill in the other instruments, but leaving out the vocals.
Kafana: “Bungo, what is your tiara’s expert system called?”
Bungo looked a little defiant, like this was something he was used to being criticised for, and was done feeling apologetic about it: “Futura. The name’s from Metropolis - the first person ever to be transformed into a machine.”
Kafana: “Cool. Ok, I’m going to ask Minion to contact Futura and play that sound track back to you in time with my own, while I add vocals. Are you ready to rock?” She struck a pose.
Kafana: {Minion, you heard the plan. Hit it.}
She started off sweet, but when the song turned she cut loose, letting her voice swell and putting some bite into the vocals. She went with it, throwing her whole body into the performance, the world laid out below as her audience. Bungo, not to be outdone, threw his shield aside, and whirled his way through a fancy sword kata that ended with him standing absolutely motionless, exactly back in the position he’d started from, at the very top of the peak, timing it to arrive there as the last note faded away.
Kafana: “Ok with that, or do you think we’ll manage better if we do another take?”
Bungo half laughed: “Better? Not in a million years. It couldn’t be improved upon. Let’s take a break before we head back.”
Kafana: “Sure. Do you want some cold pizza? I can check my stash, see if there’s any left over from lunch.”
Bungo: “No! Anything but that.”
After they’d laid out a blanket over a flattish rock in the little circle of sunshine, and she’d put some bread, fruit and cold meats out, he continued.
Bungo: “I asked Bulgaria about those numbers at lunchtime while we were getting fitted. He explained to me that it mirrored how net wealth is currently distributed in arlife. Actually, it is worse than that, because the poorest 10% of the population is in debt, but he couldn’t allocate a negative amount of pizza to the last monk.”
Kafana: “Net wealth?”
Bungo: “The value of their pension, their bank account, any business they own or hold shares in, their paintings, their car, their house, their land, the shirt on their back. Everything. Put it up for auction and sell it off, then pay back any loans to mortgage companies, universities, banks or loan sharks. What’s left is your net wealth.”
Kafana: “What about your health, your reputation for honesty, your kindness, the favours you’ve done for others, the work you’ve put into keeping your community alive.”
Bungo: “Apparently if you can’t auction it, it doesn’t count. Though I hear some nutters in America are pushing for healthy body organs to count as part of a person’s assets, that a bailiff can claim if you fall behind on loan repayments. It is already legal there to sell them or to put them up as collateral, though debt slavery is more common. The rich prefer the dependability of organs from clones.”
Kafana: “And the richest 20% control 92% of the wealth and power?”
Bungo: “Not precisely. According to Wellington, the richest 6 families between them own more than 80 trillion CFF, which is a shade under 12% of the financial wealth held by every person on Earth or off it. More than the wealth held by the poorest 80% of the population put together. But ownership isn’t the same as control. They leverage ownership of that wealth into controlling far more than 12%. It is lucky they compete with each other so much, because basically anything they all agree upon, they have sufficient control between them to get. That’s why they’re untouchable.”
Kafana: “Why haven’t I heard this before?”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Bungo: “Well, I only know because Wellington has fantastic access to financial information, and is very good at finding this stuff out. It isn’t common knowledge. Basically, inequality has never been this high. Not in the 1920s, not even just before the French Revolution.”
Kafana: {Rizah, I’m going to be busy today and tomorrow, but I’ve got a day off on Friday. Do you think you could study the information from Wellington that Bungo’s referring to, and cross reference it with any information you can get without looking suspicious, about what those dynasties want and how they relate to each other? I have a horrible feeling I’m going to need to know this stuff, if we’re serious about changing society.}
Rizah: {I’ll talk with Robin and Melchior, then prepare a briefing you can schedule at your convenience.}
Kafana: “How do you leverage your way into control?”
Bungo: “Take democracy as an example. You’d think a politician would need to win the vote of 50% of the population to win an election, but that’s not the case. 24% of the population are too young, and another 9% aren’t eligible for other reasons. 16% are eligible but not registered, and another 12% are registered but rarely bother to vote. Of those who do vote, most keep voting for the same party, election after election, which tends to cancel out and means they can mostly be ignored. Less than 4% of the population are at all likely to change their vote from one candidate to a different candidate. Even when you take into account those who switch between voting and not voting, having control over the correct 12% of the population is sufficient to gain control over 100% of the country.”
Kafana grinned. “You just got those numbers from Futura, didn’t you?”
Bungo: “Well yeah, my memory isn’t as good as Wellington’s. But here’s an example that doesn’t need numbers. Remember I mentioned Jiang Aristotle? What do you suppose happens at an art auction if he bids on a painting?”
Kafana: “I’m guessing people know he can out bid them, so his enemies will bid the price up high in order to cost him money, in the sure knowledge he’ll pay the higher price anyway.”
Bungo: “Nope. People don’t want to be mistaken for being enemies of his. Those wanting to curry favour with him might even have the competing bidders killed, just to impress him. He only bids once. Whatever he considers to be a fair price. And nine out of ten times, if someone outbids him, it is in order to give him the painting as a present. The price of any paintings by the same artist go up, because they get bid upon by others seeking presents for him or wanting to display fashionable taste. If he later sells the painting, he invariably makes an enormous profit on the transaction.”
Kafana: “That’s got to be an anomaly.”
Bungo: “Not at all. The more money you put in a bank account, the higher the interest rate you get offered. The richer you are, the smaller the fraction of your wealth that is tied up in your personal home and the transport you need in order to get to work, so the greater the fraction you have available to sit in bank accounts or otherwise invest. When you’re rich, you can afford better accountants and lawyers and investment advisers, which means you pay less tax, and are better positioned to take advantage of investment opportunities and changes in the markets. When you’re rich you can set up trusts, off-shore accounts and holding companies with preferred stock. When you’re rich you can club together with other rich people on private investment opportunities with a minimum buy-in, and you are more likely to hear what other companies are up to before they announce their quarterly results. If you are golf buddies with the advisor to the man who sets policy for the national bank, you can use derivatives to short the currency. There are hundreds of ways that being rich makes it easier to become even richer.”
Kafana: “That sounds broken. So leverage is always evil?”
Bungo: “I hope not. We use it too.”
Kafana: “We do?”
Bungo: “We started off with a small advantage over other players arriving at Villa Landi, and leveraged that into getting a majority of the reward for completing the quests. Then we used that advantage to rock our encounter with the bandits, and leveraged our freeing the captive from that into being the first to claim a big chain quest in Torello. We’ve then used our resulting contact and reputation with the key NPCs in Torello to gain a following, who have helped us with additional quests pushing us yet further ahead of the pack. Look at what you did just now. You’re the first player to control the weather, but you couldn’t have done it without your amplifier spell and a funky artifact. You wouldn’t have learned the amplifier spell without help from Flavio and Wellington, and you wouldn’t have gained the artifact without a whole load of players helping get the sword back from Kullervo and the backing of 4 or 5 high level key NPCs doing magic on your behalf. Leverage.”
Kafana: “Ok, so not always evil. But if taking advantage of available leverage is a natural thing to do, and isn’t good or bad in and of itself, how do we decide when to oppose it? Do we just go on how someone gained the leverage and the use they put it to?”
Bungo: “I think there’s another factor that matters. Supposing the people running those 6 dynasties were all benevolent, or at least neutral and stayed out of politics. Supposing they just used their wealth for researching space travel, medicine, art, or whatever interests them, but didn’t do anything to stop politicians voting through a one-off extraordinary levy that removed half their wealth and spent it on completing the world-spanning superconducting energy grid that was planned but never finished. Would that be a stable situation?”
Kafana: “Human nature being what it is? No. If their wealth could be grabbed, it would be. The temptation is simply too great.”
Bungo: “Exactly. A status quo is only stable when those at the top of it are willing and able to defend their position at the top.”
Kafana: “That reminds me of something Bulgaria said yesterday. That sort of situation invariably results in everything but the struggle for survival getting chipped away. If those at the top don’t exercise every means to stay there available to them, their place will be taken by those who are willing to use every means.”
Bungo: “What a depressing thought. I don’t think it is quite that bad. If someone has a unique advantage, one that others can’t easily copy, then they may be able to compete and hold onto their ranking, without descending to the very lowest depths of moral depravity.”
Kafana: “Control over a limited resource, such as that Rhodium asteroid or a key patent, might work, but most business owners won’t be like a castle owner sitting safely behind a moat. They’re going to have to take advantage of all the leverage available to them, or be replaced by someone else who will.”
Bungo: “And ‘all the leverage available’ will include authoritarian followers.”
Kafana: “Are they really that bad?”
Bungo: “The sort of follower who gives unquestioning support to a leader just because the leader is strong, is also more likely than average to hold a negative view of people in general - to believe that everyone will lie, cheat and steal if given an opportunity to avoid punishment for doing so. They obsess about their position in the ranking, and are more likely than average to be violent to those they consider to be inferior. They tend to favour their own ethnic group and be prejudiced against multiple groups they don’t belong to, whether categorised by ethnicity, religion, gender or sexuality. They tend to accept simple answers and engage in binary thinking. They like any status quo in which they rank above some others, and they are likely to see social inequality as being morally justified.”
Kafana: “In other words, these authoritarians are dangerous, prejudiced, easy to bamboozle and too useful for a leader to reject the support of unless they already have a sufficient grip upon power to fight off any challengers.”
She shuddered. Not what she wanted to think of human nature, even if only a few people were like that. But evolution doesn't care about being nice. If a mindset is survival positive in a common enough circumstance, there's likely to be some people with a tendency towards having that mindset. "Nature, red in tooth and claw" indeed.