kinds of resources and people willing to work -- for us to stop production just because we don’t have pieces of paper or no one to lend us some is not healthy. I’ve been in towns where the roads are almost impassable, with schools falling down, bridges ready to collapse, and while we have all kinds of teachers and workers sitting around with no jobs, we don’t put them to work repairing the roads, the schools or the bridges because we don’t have little pieces of paper.
“As long as we limit our production to the amount of Sprugs available – we’re doomed to have poverty because we can’t print enough Sprugs to allow everyone to prosper without inflating prices. And it doesn’t matter what the High Heels, Low Heels, or All Heels do, because the problem is not mismanagement. Our problem is we try to run an economy based upon faith in a paper god, and we pay the price.
“Running a society based on faith has always proven undependable, and there are always those in the rigging ready to take advantage of the faithful. Ultimately, if we continue to use this primitive system, it will collapse of its own accord, and the signs of collapse are already among us. Our middle class is rapidly disappearing, Sprug power is accumulating in fewer and fewer clever hands, and interest on our ever growing Public Debt is bankrupting us.
“Perhaps the next generation can compensate by reducing government spending and reducing the prosperity of the people, but one day,” she said, “as sure as the sun rises, a future generation will have to turn to the same solution that has always been used in the past. It will have to call on the All Heels to rob or kill the Anointed and redistribute their Sprugs, cancel the Public Debt, and close the casino; and then, having cleared the deck, the All Heels will sink the ship.
“Then our people will call on the High Heels to “privatize” and restore the Anointed to power, and we’ll start the cycle all over again. This is the pattern we’ve followed ever since we adopted the Sprug and converted to a theocracy, and it will go on forever as long as we continue. The only way to break the cycle,” she said, “is to limit the power of the Sprug and return to using the limited power of the Chug.”
LIMITED ROLE OF ECONOSCIENCE; “But,” she admitted, “we’re under no illusion that this will happen any time soon. Our society truly loves using the raw power of the Sprug – we love accumulating it, we love spending it, we love counting it, we love talking about it, and we even love reading about it. It’s the love story of our lives, topped only by our love of sex, eating, and drinking, and Lilliputians may never want to give it up for they love playing the game of economics.
“The problem is people forget it is only a game and that some people aren’t good at playing. Handling the raw power of the Sprug causes even the best of us to lose our humanity and want to play the game for keeps. So they may only be playing a game for the excitement of the chase, but they allow others to go hungry and homeless simply because they lose a game. This is inhuman.
“And it’s our fault,” she said. “We blundered on Blefuscu. We thought we we’re gods producing prosperity and leisure in the belief everyone would want to live in a Garden of Eden. We heard people complaining that working in a Garden of Eden was boring, but we had only one goal to get more production in a shorter time to give workers more free time away from the job.
“This was so wrong headed. Most of us little people are not searching for prosperity and leisure. We want excitement. We crave the thrill of joining in the chase and the dangers of the kill, and the chance to show off and strut about with trophies on our belts. Getting everything we need, and lots of free time without struggle spoils a lot of us rotten and we’re still not happy without excitement.
“The same goes for the marketplace. It should be an enjoyable social event where people who make things can meet the people who will use them. But instead of recognizing this reality, we were efficiency experts who tried to turn our people into machines to produce things in the least time and go home, and eliminated all the fun. And we paid the price with failure.
Then, after a pause, the voice sighed and said sadly, “I guess it won’t be the last time that science puts a means of mass destruction in the hands of an unprepared society, but we econoscientists have been wearing a hair shirt ever since. And now it’s too late to go back and try again because our society is “hooked” on using the raw power of the Sprug, and maybe they will never want to stop.
“Today,” she said with a sigh, “we confine ourselves to working for the Anointed, engineering vital areas to improve production for products and services needed to survive, and, of course, to make the Anointed richer. But even that doesn’t really help our society, for the more we improve production in the vital areas, the worse things get.
“I just came from a factory where they make wagon wheels. Before we went to work there, the factory employed 100 people. Now, with our improvement in organization and technology, they produce twice as many wheels with half the workers; and the rest have been laid off work and have no income. No wonder people hate us and our econoscience!
“What we should be doing, as scientists, is operating experimental colonies and test all our ideas that we have developed from our failures, but the Anointed won’t let us. They see such behavior as a serious threat to their power, and any such experimental colony would be quickly sabotaged and the econoscientists running them blacklisted and worse. Today our hands are tied and econoscience reduced to developing efficiency.
“There is, however, one crusade that we are working on that we’re sure will improve social conditions on Lilliput. We’re trying to convince Lilliputians to declare their Parliament a vital area, like on Blefuscu, and outlaw bribery of its members. We shamed the Low Heels into passing a law outlawing some of the bribery, but it has all been undone for the Supremes ruled bribery of Parliament is protected by the Freedom of Speech clause in Lilliput’s Charter.”
Then the monologue changed to a plea: “Captain Gulliver, it was to further this crusade that I’ve taken this dangerous chance to talk with you. You’re a big man on Lilliput, and we’re hoping that you might put in a word for us in high places, and help us with our crusade to get Parliament declared a vital area.”
I didn’t respond, but I thought to myself: “Sister you’re hailing the wrong vessel. My life on Lilliput depends on the continued use of the Sprug, and the goodwill of the Parliament, and I’m certainly not going to torpedo my own life boat for your crusade.”
XIII
The Rumor of
Prosperous Island
Then the voice said something that caught my attention. She said that a century before a group of econoscientists and laymen, those with the desire to return to a Garden of Eden and its Golden Age, had provisioned three large ships, and set sail for a third deserted island rumored to exist to the north that was supposed to have the same resources as Lilliput and Blefuscu.
She said they planned to experiment with a new organization of the economy using the Chug as a medium of exchange, and make the economy an integrated part of the social structure. People would join the economy as a small child, and grow up being educated, not in some dry schoolhouse, but as a part of the economy, learning to master new technology as it is developed, and remaining a part of the economy as long as they wish.
I was all ears and anxious to hear more about the plan, but, suddenly at that point, a full moon broke over the horizon. “I’ve got to go,” she said, “but I’ll leave you with this note. The official word is that the rumored island didn’t exist, and that the expedition perished at sea. But,” she added, “the unofficial rumor has it that the expedition found the island, and created a modern Garden of Eden.”
The lady then vanished leaving me quite excited about the rumored island. The next day I began studying the currents and winds, and watching birds fly north to return with full bellies, and concluded that there could very well be another island just to the north. I couldn’t see an island when I stood on a hill, but one day I saw a mirage of an island to the north, and foolishly began inquiri
ng around about the rumor.
My Undoing: I know now I acted foolishly, but, since I received such festive welcomes as I travelled about Lilliput, I had come to believe that I had nothing to worry about and could stay as long as I wanted. And because every moment I spent on the two islands with the little people provided something new and interesting I was in no hurry to leave and had no inkling how quickly things could change.
After all, hadn’t I often opened my eggs on the wrong end when in High Heel territory; and did the same when in Low Heel territory; and all they’d did was laugh at my ignorance. Such political indiscretions didn’t really matter to the Lilliputians for they all knew politics was a sham and that the Anointed ran everything.
But I found this didn’t apply to the economy. Any real or imagined threat to the use of The Almighty Sprug got a very quick reaction, and spies were everywhere ready to report suspicious behavior or loose talk or negative comments. So my innocent curiosity about Prosperous Island quickly put me on their watch list, and quite soon I was summoned to appear before an Investigating Committee of Parliament.
It was a terrible experience. I was accused of being an All Heel “sympathizer” who
The Almighty Sprug: Gulliver's Eyewitness Account of the Quaint Economy of Lilliput Page 10