Showdown in the Economy of Good and Evil Read online

  “As I said,” Evan said, turning his attention back to Aria, “you’re welcome to cut hair in Meryl’s classroom in the evenings. She’s already offered it up.”

  “Aw, hell no,” Aria said, flaring her sheering scissors in the air. “I ain’t askin’ people to sit through that chicken shit stink. How’m I supposed to cut hair in a place smellin’ like that?”

  Evan noticed that Smiley didn’t bother trying to ask Aria to can it with the language. Give the guy credit—even after all he’d endured over the years, he could still be intimidated.

  “Well then it seems to me that you and Valence have opposite problems,” Evan told her. “The classroom isn’t available when he needs it to be, and when it is available, it smells too foul to cut hair in.” He paused to see if anyone would chuckle at his play on the word “fowl,” but obviously no one did. Maybe that’ll get edited out, he hoped. “So I’ll tell you what I’ve been telling you from the beginning. If we need more indoor space, then we need dollars coming in from outside so we can make the money we need to construct that indoor space. The plan’s the same. When the Circus is full, we open to the public.”

  “The hell we supposed to do in the meantime?” Valence interjected.

  Evan shrugged. “What you’ve been doing. Keep earning. Keep saving. You two are both on your way. Your day will come.”

  Both the theater owner and the hair stylist visibly swelled with pride. For the second time that day, and the first since Nora for some reason accepted his invitation to go on an honest-to-God date with him, Evan’s heart took flight.

  “What do you mean outside money coming in?” Fred asked, his investigative tone ripping Evan’s heart right back down to earth.

  “We’ll talk on the way back to the admin building,” Evan suggested. He looked to Valence and then to Aria. “We good?”

  The two entrepreneurs offered hugely conflicting expressions in reply, but Evan decided he could live with that.

  With Fred clinging to him like an anxious housecat and the 60 Minutes team taking it all in from behind, Evan led the way through the remainder of the IKEA maze. At every turn, someone called out to greet him or ask him a question or file some overblown grievance. Evan shook them all off as efficiently as possible, because he realized that the longer they spent in here, the more likely it was that Stephen’s camera would capture something unflattering. For now, he pretended to be so caught up in all these distractions that he’d forgotten Fred’s question.

  Unfortunately, Fred didn’t forget it. He asked it again the moment they’d exited the tent and stepped under the suddenly rain cloudy but still outrageously hot morning.

  “Outside money?” he said, one of his pencil-thin eyebrows hooked to the sky.

  Evan clenched his fists and decided to just approach it head-on. “We’ve already seen signs that the public is interested. Word’s out about what we’re doing. But you know that. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.”

  “So you’re going to be accepting money from the public?” Smiley interjected.

  “Something like that. The plan is to get the Circus at full capacity, then start in with publicity. We’ll invite select people from Savannah to join us for a free dinner at Nora’s. Then, for ten dollars, you get ten Farm Bucks to use on anything you want in the tent.”

  “The exchange rate is ten US dollars for ten Farm Bucks?” Fred asked, his forehead working in a way that suggested he was taking mental notes.

  “That’s how it is for now,” Evan said. “It’s part of what makes this system so strong for us. People here can live on three Farm Bucks a day. So when they sell a massage or a bouquet for one single Farm Buck, that’s an outrageously good price for the general public, but at the same time, it increases the seller’s income by 33 percent for the day. And that’s just one sale. Meanwhile, the public gets a massage for a dollar—and a good one.”

  “What you’re describing sounds an awful lot like the way the Chinese manipulate their currency,” Smiley said.

  Evan nodded. “Except that we’re not actually manipulating anything. There’s nothing nefarious here. We’ve just found a way to live simply. This Farm can produce goods and services at a much lower cost because we don’t have to compete with the high cost of living in the real world. On this Farm, it’s only a dollar a day while the cost of living in Savannah is, what? A hundred times that? What’s it even cost to live in a decent home or apartment and eat in a restaurant for dinner every night? A hundred dollars a day? More?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Smiley allowed, and given his two-million-dollar annual salary, that seemed likely.

  “Well, however you want to frame it, the exchange rate is pretty killer. Every resident on the Farm being able to live on only three Farm Bucks a day makes the Farm Buck’s value incredibly high compared to the comparatively watered-down dollar. Where a service in Savannah might cost fifty dollars, here, you can get it for the Farm-Buck equivalent of two dollars. Given that the goods and services on offer also happen to be of a personal-care-and-hand-crafted quality, I’m afraid we won’t be able to keep up with demand, once word gets out.”

  “And what happens when word gets out?”

  “We’ll have all the businesses set up and some stuff for kids to do. If it goes well, we’ll make it a regular event. Then we’ll open to the public all day, if we need to. Next step after that is finding space in Savannah proper to set up a flea market, so then we’re bringing our goods and services into the city instead of asking the city to come to us.”

  “Why not let them keep coming here?”

  “Energy conservation,” Evan said.

  Smiley gave a thoughtful look that asked him to elaborate.

  “Rain and sun, right?” Evan said by way of explanation.

  No reply. Smiley was a good interviewer.

  Evan took a deep breath to clear his head. “Okay, so, remember we talked about how we’re trying to create a more natural system? Well, if you think about natural systems, they all trend toward that same principle.”

  “Which is what?”

  “Everything in the natural world is going to take it exactly as easy as it’s allowed to take it.”

  Fred scratched his balding head. Evan could imagine the viewers of 60 Minutes doing the same. So he kept after it.

  “Leaves spend a great deal of effort to grow to where they have the maximum surface area exposed to the sun. Then they stop and drink it all in.”

  This did not appear to resonate.

  “A horse is perfectly engineered for maximum speed at most efficient output,” Evan tried. “If its legs were longer, it wouldn’t have the proper balance. If they were shorter, it wouldn’t have the quickest stride. It would be exerting itself too much for the speed it seeks.”

  Nothing.

  “Why do you think all hurricanes are the same shape as galaxies?”

  Crickets.

  “When you roll a ball down a hill, it eventually comes to a stop.”

  Now Fred’s eyes widened, if only slightly.

  “Ah!” Evan said. “Okay, so, that’s the point. The ball rolling down the hill. The horse. The leaves. The galaxy. Lots of energy and exertion up front, but eventually, everything in nature—and I do mean everything—is going to fall into its minimum-energy state. Why? Because energy is valuable. Because conserving it is beneficial.”

  Fred looked at his shoes for a long while. When he finally picked up his head, it was wearing a wry smile. “Look, if I’d come here for a physics lecture, I’d’ve asked for it. What I want to know is why you think you should bring your flea market into the city instead of just leaving those nice people alone.”

  The first reaction that jolted into Evan’s mind was offense. The notion that these were somehow nicer people that would be bothered by the presence of his employer’s economic experiment—to say nothing of the good people that made it possible—was more than a little insulting. But to hell with it. And to hell with the camera. This dweeb needed an educ
ation.

  “This whole Farm is about creating a more natural system that follows this law of conservation of energy,” Evan explained. “Why do we want to bring the flea market to them? Because people are just like leaves, like horses, like galaxies. They’re going to exert the least amount of energy they have to in order to get what they want.

  “Let me ask you this. If you lived on a mountainside, and you knew you had to walk to the other side of the mountain to get to a town that sells something you need, how would you get there? Would you take the ten-mile road around the mountain, or would you take the shortcut that’s only a mile long through the pass?”

  Fred didn’t bother answering.

  “Everything about what we do—not just the notion that we want to bring our goods to the people who would buy them—centers around that conservation of energy principle. In the real-world, modern, 2016 United States economy, here’s how things work: Say you and your wife bring in a combined $200,000 per year. That’s a nice income for just about anyone. But the problem is, you’ve already got all this debt sapping it away, and you want to live in one of those McMansions in the suburbs. How do you get that done?”

  Smiley didn’t bother answering. He seemed to have decided to retreat to the background and allow the economist and IRS agent to duke it out. Evan supposed this would make for either compelling television or look like the lamest nerd fight ever committed to high-definition video.

  Fred shrugged. “Loan.”

  “Exactly. You take out a loan from a bank. A massive loan. So now you can move into this house you wouldn’t have been able to afford otherwise. Nice deal, right?”

  Fred nodded.

  “Is it efficient?” Evan asked.

  Words escaped the auditor.

  “No,” Evan said. “It isn’t, Fred. It’s incredibly inefficient, in fact. Because you’re taking out a massive loan for a house that’s ten times bigger than you need. Meanwhile, down the street, there’s a homeless shelter that costs more to run than it cost you to build the McMansion. You see what I’m saying?”

  With a sigh, Fred admitted that no, he did not.

  “The system is completely inefficient,” Evan said. “You’re building luxury homes for people with no actual money to pay for them. Meanwhile, you’re building these sprawling shelters to care for people with no money and no means to obtain credit. It’s all just completely out of balance. Can you imagine anything else in nature behaving this way?”

  “I guess not,” Fred said.

  “So how is the Farm different?” Evan continued hotly. “It doesn’t create work through loans. Work created through the distribution of money isn’t for the purpose of paying back a loan. It’s for the purpose of allowing people to have the bare minimum to get what they need. Money created for paying back a loan is an absurd inefficiency. It’s also why nobody can predict the economy.

  “Conversely, when businesses like Aria’s and Valence’s grow, it’s because the system is predictable. On the business side, Aria and Valence know that they are guaranteed a certain amount of income every day. This allows them to more predictably grow their business. On the economic side, with predictable data, we can create our own horse. We can help this economy grow as fast as possible and make these businesses as successful as possible.”

  Fred nodded.

  Now Smiley decided to jump back in. “Would you say this is something of a trickle-down economy?” he asked obliviously.

  “Just the opposite,” Evan said. “The US is still working on trickle-down, but the Farm is a trickle-up economy, where the laws of conservation of energy apply again because we’re relying on the efficient behaviors of individual people instead of the inefficient behavior of profit-seeking banks.”

  Smiley held up his hands. “Hold on now, Evan,” he said in a tone of voice that suggested this was for their benefit and not for the viewers and would therefore be edited out. “Let’s stick to layman’s terms, okay? Not many of our viewers have high-level econ degrees.”

  Evan calmed himself. “What do we know about oxygen?”

  “We need it to breathe,” Smiley said.

  “Right,” Evan said. “We need oxygen to breathe so that we can create energy—human energy.”

  “And oxygen is everywhere,” Fred added.

  “Exactly,” Evan said, pointing to Fred. “It’s everywhere. Just like economics. The economy is like the oxygen that creates human energy, which in this case is money. Money is what propels us to work—it is applied human energy.

  “But here’s why the trickle-up part of our economy is making the businesses in this tent so profitable: there is energy everywhere, and so there is the potential for work everywhere. There is infinite work potential, but also an infinite amount of work available to do. And just like oxygen, we don’t need a huge amount of money to create the energy to do that work. You only need a minimum of money. And it’s why our system of economics is such a no-brainer. The best way to build a satisfying, comfortable life is the easiest way. Further, if you’re guaranteed that satisfying, comfortable life, striving to do something more with it also becomes easier.”

  Fred looked back at the tent.

  “Everyone here is working more efficiently than everyone out there,” Evan said, referring to the world at large. “It’s why this is going to be such a successful endeavor.” He took a deep breath, wondering if he should go this route but then thinking, Screw it. America is going to believe what they want to believe. Plus, one of the most attractive women I’ve ever met agreed to go on a date with me today, so why not just say it? “And it’s why you’re here, Fred. Whoever sent you is concerned. The banks would have everyone believe that the economy is unpredictable. But it’s not. It’s only unpredictable because it currently runs on loans.”

  “But you just said you’re also going to offer loans,” Smiley said.

  “We’re offering loans with the express purpose of growing businesses,” Evan corrected. “Banks in the US only give loans out of self-interest. They’re happy to loan out money because it makes them more money. That system is about the rich trying to get richer. In here, it’s about energy conservation, predictability, and hard work getting rewarded.”

  For a discomfortingly long time, the other three men retreated into themselves—or at least Fred and Smiley did so; Stephen just retreated into his camera.

  “We’re getting way into the weeds here,” Smiley said. “Maybe we should go find Justin.”

  Evan could not help but agree.

  “Anyway, I’m here for one reason only,” Fred said. “To find out whether you’re ducking taxes. Fine, you have your own currency, and taxes operate differently in that sense. But you’ve also told me that you’re already accepting US dollars from the public and intend to solicit quite a bit more. So, what exactly are you doing with those US dollars?”

  Evan experienced a sudden loss of words, at least in part because Fred’s tone proved remarkably unsettling, coming from such a small man. Surely they would look discordantly threatening when aired on television.

  “I don’t think you’re going to be allowed to keep doing this,” Fred said.

  With a desperate glance into the black eye of the camera, Evan realized that he had allowed this situation to become far more combative than he’d intended. Not for the first time, he didn’t much like Fred Rogers. But for the first time, he genuinely feared him.

  Chapter 7 Money for Nothing

  Basic income tries to take a large piece of a shrinking pie in order to make a bigger pie. There seems to be a math problem there . . .

  —Justin Wolfe

  As a billionaire who made his money in the dot-com boom, then essentially doubled it with the recent sale of his holographic technology company, Justin Wolfe couldn’t remember ever feeling quite so helpless. Maybe when he was a kid in Cleveland, the doughy little dweeb who would sometimes have no choice but to submit to a swirly. But that was decades ago, and he’d spent the better part of those decades using h
is doughy body to conquer the fucking world.

  “I just don’t understand how you’re even entertaining this,” he spouted over the phone to his longtime girlfriend, Connie.

  From her silence, he could practically see the righteous indignation she’d’ve had blooming on her face. He’d encountered the look more and more lately. Shit wasn’t going so well.

  Kristen, the makeup girl CBS had sent over to tend to Smiley and who had arrived to touch up Justin’s face prior to another on-camera interview, chose this moment to reach out with her powder-pad thingy and start dabbing at Justin’s cheek.

  He pulled away, and finally she got a hint to take a powder of her own for a while.

  “Look,” Justin said into the phone, “I get it. Your career is on the rise. And fine, you wanted to work for a heartless senator’s campaign, sure. I can see bending your ideals a little to grow the profile. But, Connie, this guy’s a populist. You really want to throw your hat in with a possible Nazi?”

  “It’s just a meeting,” she said.

  Justin chuffed. Connie didn’t just take meetings. She was too decisive to beat around bushes. Besides that, she was one of the most remarkable political minds of her generation—someone so compelling on TV that she could sway an entire campaign with a single turn of phrase. Hell, she’d coined more than a few phrases already that were still making the rounds on Fox News nearly a full year later.

  He’d met her on one of his speaking tours. She’d been a grad student at Columbia back then. And Jesus, had she been a starry-eyed idealist. That hope she’d used to hold for the future was hot as hell. But now. Now Justin had rolled some of his fortune into an experimental Farm staffed completely by homeless people bussed in from around the country. Now Justin was giving these people direct deposits and encouraging them to use that money to better their lives, better the Farm, and start businesses that would raise the standard of living for everyone. And meanwhile, Connie was following her destructive career path from a Tea Party douchebag to a philandering, mealy-mouthed, half-witted bankruptcy artist—and all because of the asshole’s weirdly strong poll numbers.