April 3: The Middle of Nowhere

by Mackey Chandler

  "I've got to get started on that," Gunny admitted. "Before I look the part."

  "I've recently begun some treatments. We have a fellow on station now who can do all the basic treatments. Another friend of April's by some coincidence," he said smiling at her.

  "Everybody seems to be April's friend," Gunny scoffed.

  "Except for the Chinese guy in Medical's cooler," April pointed out.

  "Yes, there are a lot of folks down on the mudball that don't like you. And if they are smart they'll stay down there," Gunny said gruffly. It was the first time April heard him say mudball.

  "Thank you again," that prompted Eddie to say, shamefaced. "We very badly misjudged the hazard we were exposing you to in North America."

  "That's the main thing I wanted to talk to you about," April said, seizing the moment. "I don't feel I accomplished much, I certainly planned to stay much longer. I know my grandpa said if I didn't use any funds to keep the balance, but I felt it went so badly I should offer you a refund if you were not satisfied with my performance."

  Eddie looked at her, mouth open a bit, which wasn't like him. "My thought was you might be going to chew me out for sticking you in the middle of such a mess. If you asked for a hazard pay fine for my having such bad judgment I wouldn't have argued. Just like we pay a premium to the lock guard on our ships at dock. No, keep the funds and more than welcome to them. I didn't expect you to have to shoot your way free to come home," he said, grimacing.

  "We're square then?"

  "Maybe for money, but if you ever need me to man up and travel into hazard I owe that."

  "Let's try to avoid that for both of us," April said.

  "Maybe Heather's real estate project will be an easy one for a change," Eddie hoped. "It's so far away from the other lunar bases, way off in the God forsaken middle of nowhere really. I can't see how anybody can object to it."

  "You two certainly don't sound like typical hardcore businessmen, determined to see every nickel extracted that your contract says you are owed," Gunny observed. "I'm used to seeing companies suing each other in the news so often that it seems more important who wins in court than what they actually do or make."

  "That sort of behavior made a sort of sense once," April said. "At least down on the slumball, because they have so many other businesses and people jammed elbow to elbow you could write any one off and survive. Even on Earth the rise of internet reporting of crooks and scams on social networks and business rating boards was making that sort of behavior hard to hide."

  Eddie nodded agreement. "The community above the atmosphere is really limited. We don't even need net boards to spread the word if somebody is a shyster. As April says I can't afford to have anyone unhappy with me. If one of my customers or suppliers has a failure that isn't even my fault I might take a loss to help him stay in business if I can, rather than take advantage of his misfortune. You can have a situation where there may only be three proto shops that can fabricate certain sorts of items. Losing one of them is a tragedy to the business community. You lose irreplaceable expertise and the others do not just absorb his workers and machines and keep offering the same services at the same price. I may need his services for a different one of my businesses. I can't imagine how long it will take to fill the solar system with so many businesses that reliable vendors become disposable like Earth."

  "I can see that," Gunny agreed, looking thoughtful. "And maybe you can afford to act that way easier when you aren't taxed down to razor thin margins," he guessed correctly.

  "But it means that good, honest businesses can hold customers longer too, April said. "Used to be if a business lasted a hundred years it had to have three generations of good proprietors. Soon it will be one. A single owner consistently managing a business two or three hundred years may be something we'll see in our lifetimes. It's going to concentrate customer loyalty and concentrate wealth and make it much harder to break into any sort of venture that has other established vendors. The volume of business is going to grow faster than the number of suppliers. I want to take good care of my business associates so we have stable long term relationships," April said.

  "The shop Eddie and I use to build ships will call up their supposed competitors and share out work if they get a sudden load they can't handle. I can't see that happening among Earthies."

  "Gary Chalmers," Eddie said to April. "Prime example of shooting self in foot."

  "Oh yeah! Gunny, this fellow Chalmers was secretly working as an agent for North America back when we had the war. He thought he was going to be running the whole habitat for the USNA soon, so he stopped making any pretense of being polite. For example, when one of his customer's sons sat at the cafeteria table and tried to talk to his daughter he very rudely separated them since the kid wasn't a proper Christian to dare speak to his daughter. You can imagine how that went over with the boy's father," she said rolling her eyes.

  "He alienated all the dozen or so people he could do business with by stupid stuff like that in a matter of months and had to shut down his business. His guys all went off to other companies. What was even worse, he had moral objections to life extension and wasn't shy to say so. All these other owners looked at him and saw any business they had with him as temporary, because all the other guys were buying extension treatments. See how it works?"

  "Indeed, I see I better get treated if I want customers. Is there no medical privacy up here? How does word get out whether somebody has LET or not?"

  April looked surprised. "Gunny, you've been living down on Earth. I bet you haven't seen a dozen people with LET face to face. Up here over half the population has it and we've seen the changes when they went through it. You see it in their face and hands, the little wrinkles disappear and the voice changes, even how they walk changes sometimes."

  "Oh."

  "It's different, but you'll figure it all out and fit in soon," Eddie promised.

  "I'm making more tea," Gunny announced, getting up. He looked like he had absorbed as much different as he could for now.

  "Would you bring us a bunch of those cookies too, please?" April requested.

  "Are we operational now on the new ships? I have to become involved in that again. My grandpa must be sick of dealing with it."

  "Your grandpa is good at delegating. He hired Jed Allison who worked for Dave at Advanced Spacecraft Services. He's tired of doing the nut turning and ready to try his hand at administrative work. He's been doing most scheduling and even some sales. Your grandpa has just been reviewing what Jed does. We have a couple new guys coming in for flight crew too."

  "Well, if that is working, fine. I'll leave it alone. I have enough other things to keep me busy. I have to see what condition all of Bob's old companies are in and decide if I want to keep them or sell them. I have some ventures with both Jeff and Heather and of course Heather's moon thing," April explained.

  "We have the Happy of course, Home Again and Eddie's Scooter. Eddie's Rascal and Eddie's Folly are functional, but still missing some systems," Eddie counted off on his fingers. "Hopefully the Earthies can't tell they are not in full fighting trim. We have Eddie's Fortune on the rack, but we are building it slow because of material shortages and because we don't want to build any more of that series. Call it a spare. We are stretching the market for fast couriers. I'm making them pay for themselves in order to have them for our defense, but I think we could actually make more money running two fewer ships and charging higher rates."

  "You take lower priority loads to keep them busy?" April guessed, interested.

  "Exactly and I don't want to drive any of the older outfits out of business. Having more eyes at other docks and more Home ships in flight at any time is good for us. You'd be amazed what an informal intelligence outfit Jon has made of all of them. He has them bringing him video and recording of local radio chatter everyplace they stop."

  "I've invested more in Heather's venture than I planned, pushed the money at her actually. I simply made more on my invest
ments than I expected and had to put it somewhere." He looked slightly embarrassed at his good fortune.

  "It isn't something I expect to continue. The economy is heating up. Some things look to be building to a bubble. We kind of put a damper on it with the war temporarily, but a lot of my so-called wealth will disappear overnight if there is a recession. I'm trying to convert paper wealth to tangibles, but it is a very difficult thing to do. Even buying land is uncertain because one of the first things countries in trouble do is nationalize the holdings of foreigners."

  "At least you shouldn't have that trouble on the moon." April stopped and looked worried. "Does that mean they might take my house in Hawaii?"

  "If we end up shooting at each other again, yeah, that might easily happen. The fact that we didn't do that with Mitsubishi-3, with the actual physical habitat, was a bright spot of modern politics. But whatever dollar value we refrained from stealing it was certainly worth the support it gained us from Japan and Tonga. And I think it only could have boosted the investment we see now, because people see us as a stable and safe place to invest instead of waiting to see how our government acts and if they will go crazy nationalizing things."

  "It was all your money that bought my house. You might not think I'd value it, but I went out and picked furniture and colors and really got attached to that place even though I didn't get to live there," April admitted. "I just don't get politics at all. I agreed to study economics now for Jeff, because we're starting a bank. But what good does it do to understand how an economy works if some politicians can just change all the rules and steal your stuff ? How can you plan anything? I intended to ask you about that today. You have so much money now I figure you have to have learned something about economics. Or maybe you've hired an economist by now?"

  Eddie closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He had his hands wrapped around his tea mug like he was warming them. His lips were unhappy and April was starting to think he was going to refuse to answer her when his eyes popped open again. He got in his case and pulled out a wallet and laid a USNA hundred dollar bill on the table.

  "How did this come into existence?" he asked her.

  "Well I don't know much about printing, but I think you are asking more than that."

  "Yes, you're a bright young woman. I should say what is the basis upon which it was created?"

  "Well I understand it isn't backed by tangibles. I've read several times it is backed by the full faith and credit of the USNA. Do I have that right?" April asked, afraid of sounding silly.

  "Yes. Now consider what that means. The government still has considerable land and it has all sorts of stuff on the land. Courthouses, agency buildings, bridges and airports, the roads themselves and all the things in museums and gold reserves and things like vehicles and patent rights. It can parcel out the rights to oil and gas and metals under that land. Those things are all capital assets. If they wish they can put up a toll booth and charge you to use the road. They can charge you to go in and use the national parks or land on their runways, right?"

  "Okay I'm following you," she agreed.

  "Yet they chose to base the money on their credit. Not that I can blame them. If I want to have money loaned to me given a choice between putting up the Home Boy as collateral, or being given the same money just on my word I'll repay, I'll take the unsecured loan any day," he said. "So why should you trust the government to repay more than me?" he asked directly.

  "Well, I know you're rich, but the government is so much bigger. I can see you going broke if you make enough stupid mistakes, but they are hardly going to go out of business!"

  "And what is their business?" Eddie asked.

  April looked uncertain. "Making all those airports and stuff?" she guessed.

  "No, any of those things could be done privately. There are private airports and bridges and even toll roads. No, the business of government is to tax. They have an unlimited right to tax the future earnings of their entire population to meet their obligations. And that right to tax is backed up by force. They can send armed men to put you in prison if you refuse to pay your taxes." He waited and let April think about that.

  "We don't do that," she finally said.

  "Indeed, we are currently the only nation in which payment of taxes is voluntary. Some make the claim but when you examine it closely it is a lie. The only effective way to pay no taxes down below is to not make any money," he assured her. "Being able to tax means they can also borrow money against those future taxes and that is the source of more problems than I even want to get into with you today. If Home wanted to borrow money right now people would be insane to lend it. We have no assured mechanism for paying them back. No port fees, no entry fees, no tariffs, no income tax. When you get right down to it all the Earth governments are just as much a protection racket as any my relatives run."

  "Ouch, that seems a bit harsh."

  "Yes, it is, but think on it a few days and see if isn't true. Can you opt out?"

  "Well, Gunny is opting out. He's moving up here and is going to take up Home citizenship."

  "Did he get all his money out?"

  "He got some help to get his cash money out, but he has real estate he wants to sell and he is going to pay the exit taxes so he is free to visit again if he wants."

  "And if he didn't pay those fees to buy himself free?" Eddie asked.

  "Yeah, I see what you mean," April agreed. "He could never go back."

  "He already paid tax on all the money he saved back when he earned it, so why does he owe them anymore? I bet it's a good chuck too isn't it?"

  "About three-hundred thousand. A pretty good sized chunk, yeah, of what he owns."

  "See, that tax is not on what he earned, it's a fee because he is removing that future income from their taxation. Hey, they have already borrowed against it. It's spent."

  "Wow."

  "Wow indeed. And you will never see an economics textbook explain it that nakedly."

  "It does sound pretty ruthless and ugly, the way you explain it."

  "That's why I don't have much use for professional economists. If you were going to hire an economist how would you chose one?" Eddie asked her.

  "Just like a pilot or a fabricator. I'd want to see their certifications and schooling and trade experience."

  "You might find somebody with a degree in economics, but there are no certifications, no professional organization to issue them like engineers or architects. In reality a lot of people working as economists have degrees or experience in mathematics or computer science or even as working farmers. You could call yourself an economist and go into the predictive side of the business if you wanted and nobody could stop you."

  "How did you come to know this stuff?" April demanded.

  "My mafia uncles explained economics to me when I was your age. But they couched it all in their own business terms. It translates quite well believe me. A lot of the conflict between my family and government is simple competition for resources, not morals. The government used to oppose gambling of any sort for example. Now almost every state has casinos and lotteries. What is amusing is, the Mob would give you better odds of winning than the state."

  "So what are you saying about economics? Not to bother studying it?"

  "Not at all. It's good to know the language of economics and the history especially, but be skeptical. Don't fall into the trap of embracing a particular school of economics like it is a religion. Jeff is very smart. Ask him which school of economics he thinks you should study. I bet his answer will be educational all by itself," he stopped and thought a minute.

  "I'd like you to look up how money is created. All money now is debt. If you go for a loan to buy a spaceship say from a USNA bank, the money is created right then. It isn't paid out to you from other people's deposits. There used to be requirements that the banks had to have funds to back what they loaned out. That has been nibbled away until it is just token amounts. And one last idea I want you to understand. Credit spends th
e same as capital. Make a note of that on your pad even. In time you'll see why it is important. It spends the same but you have to pay back the interest too. There is all the systemic difference in the world and lots of really smart people don't see the difference."

  "Thank you, Eddie. I'll do that," she said taking notes."Maybe I'll look it all over and come up with my own theory of economics and gather disciples," she teased.

  "Disciples? Make any sense of it and I'll hire you."

  "Tell me what you think about Heather's moon project. Are you going to go there yourself?"

  "Do I look crazy? They will be roughing it for months. I like hot showers and pleasant breakfasts in the cafeteria, not sani-wipes and boxed rations. But let me tell you about the rovers we found the Russians want to sell…"

  Chapter 8

  The Chinese military aide stationed at ISSII was startled at a rapping on his hatch. Most people did business over the com and he had very few visitors to his work space. He liked it that way. "Just a moment!" he called and looked over his desk and shelves carefully to make sure nothing of a confidential nature was visible. Then he shut his computer completely off. Turning just the monitor off didn't mask the emissions this machine could give off, betraying its activity.

  When he answered the door his section chief was standing there with a Laowai right in their secure cubic. He bristled at the sight, staring, but was neither reprimanded for his failure to control his face nor given any apology for the foreigner's presence. His boss apparently had bigger troubles today than what upset him or if the White Ghost would be offended at his visible rage.

  "Song Zhang, if we might have a moment of your time, do these have any meaning to you?" He thrust forward a multi-pane printout of tattoos. They were oddly distorted in a way he'd never seen, but still legible. He looked at the White Ghost, unwilling to speak what he knew in front of him.

  "We have need of your knowledge. Be assured you will not endanger anyone by telling us what these mean. The body on which these were seen is beyond the concerns of the living."