THE LOBBYIST

"I was an absolute leech," he says. "That's why I'm so fucking fat. I sucked all the blood out of our political system." He laughs heartily, and rubs his massive belly. "But you wanna know the only difference between me and all the politicians?"

He pauses, for effect.

I take his bait. "You're going to say that 'at least you knew what you were,' right?"

He laughs. "No. They know the game too. The difference between me and the politicians is that I stayed rich even after the crash." 

Capitol Hill is always a shitshow, but the weeks after the Kobek demonstration were especially awful. 

It all really began to gel together in early June, shortly after the markets closed the final time and just before Bastille Day II took over the news cycle. The senate majority leader called together the entire house for a "day of debate." The idea was, different factions within congress would nominate speakers to put forward policy ideas for where we should go next. By this point it was understood, even by the stodgiest members of the house, that the reps represented an existential threat to "the way things were done." So for once, the idea went, we ought to give good old fashioned democracy a shot at solving things. 

I was there on the floor of the house that day. The company I represented had paid for the re-election campaigns of just about everyone who spoke that day, so of course I had a great seat for it. 

The surprising thing, to me at least, was how quickly folks organized into more or less coherent camps. You know, the usual crap you get when some junior congressman is trying to secure an earmark with extra budget for a local project—none of that was happening. Instead, folks were thinking bigger and organizing not around party, but around more or less recognizable ideological principles.

The first group I'll call the neoliberals. "Centrists," is what they like to call themselves. The neoliberals were primarily concerned with upholding "the post World War II order," which basically meant keeping global trade and more-or-less friendly international relations going at whatever cost. Their basic argument was that global trade kept the nations from going to war with each other by encouraging diplomatic exchange. This school of thought has been dominant since the moment the dust settled on Berlin and Hiroshima, so it was no surprise to see its representatives here. But it quickly became apparent to most in the room that—besides preserving global trade—few of them had ideas about how to properly deal with the emergence of the replicators. 

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Because these "mainstream" right and left-wingers were unable to put together any sort of coherent policy package proposals, their voices tended to be drowned out by the voices of their respective radical elements. The last of the "conservatives" re-emerged as either strict nationalists or as libertarians, with both groups (the line between them got really blurry) emphasizing the need to preserve individual freedoms. These people tended to see the emergence of the replicators as a way to fulfill the Jeffersonian idea of a bunch of yeoman farmers. They argued that to survive the transition period, we needed to immediately embrace the replicators and accept that global trade was dead. They wanted to close borders to all trade of physical goods and, of course, strictly limit immigration. None of them seemed to have a clear idea of what the policy should be toward the naturally globalized digital world. Could a studio in Hollywood still sell TV show content in Europe? If so, their insistence that global trade was doomed seemed like a half-truth, at best.

And then there were the left-leaning liberals. They'd already begun to disappear over the course of the previous decade. It became clear within just a week or two that this was their last run in the sun. They would soon be either absorbed into the socialist wing of their parties or admit their true colors and join up with the conservatives, with whom, after all, they agreed with on every issue save the centrality of religion to The Good Life. 

The socialists, which of course includes all of the closeted Marxists and most of the Leninists, came forward boldly with proposals for exactly which industries should be nationalized, and which should be left alone for the time being. "Imagine Stalin's ideal, without the bread lines!" One of the house members actually said that shit on the floor of the goddamned house. Of course, "nationalization" requires a nation-state, so the socialists found themselves somewhat at odds with the internationalists on a number of issues, including immigration. 

My favorite speaker of the day was Roeman Bruck, a sort of Silicon Valley type who came forward to earnestly advocate for "accelerationism" as a political movement. He said that the primary concern for many of his colleagues was keeping technical research and advancement going. In the 20th century, he argued, much of this work was funded by government agencies, like the American DoD, which funded the creation of the internet. In the early 21st century, international corporations had taken on the mantle of fundamental research. By funding their endeavors with massive advertising or cloud services businesses, companies like Google and Amazon had been on the forefront of the development of technologies like A.I. 

Of course, he said, the ultimate goal of creating general artificial intelligence was still at least a decade away. His pitch was that with the collapse of the market for physical commodities and the generalized collapse of the economy, it was no longer viable for companies to fund this research. Therefore, they'd need sponsorship from the government. 

After his speech, I saw several folks from the various state-level delegations talking to him excitedly. Same old earmark-style politics, after all. 

It was incredible to me how the eco people got sidelined. Their keynote speaker was, of course, the young woman who has been making so many waves for the past five years. Not American, but now trapped in America because of the border shutdown. She conceded that the collapse of global capitalism and the replacement of almost all farming activity with energy-powered food replication would naturally cause global carbon emissions to shrink dramatically. Her main concern was re-opening borders—or at least certain types of travel—and using reps to improve the infrastructure in third world countries. With America out of the supply chain, a lot of people were starving. Everyone listened politely, but the impending threat of complete anarchy and governmental collapse meant that her cries went, once again, unheeded. 

Nobody ever gives a fuck about the bleeding heart environmentalists, do they?