by Paul Anlee
Darya considered her response. “It’s not that straight forward. What most people don’t get is that money is the same thing as debt. Governments create new money by printing bonds, and banks by making loans; both of these are forms of debt. Because money is debt, the amount of money in the system always needs to grow. It has to grow in order to service the old debts, to cover the monthly interest payments.”
Minister Taub wasn’t convinced. “So you’re saying that the new money just piles new debt on top of old debt? Why is that inherently bad? It’s worked well for centuries.”
“Everything works well provided we only grow the money supply at the same rate as the overall economy,” Darya answered. “But if the new debt doesn’t lead to real growth in the economy, we just get into bigger and bigger problems. We need growth to back up the creation of new money. Without growth, we are limited in how much new money we can responsibly create; the rest is just inflationary. Growth, actual economic growth, is the key.”
Gerhardt yawned loudly, drawing everyone’s attention. “We’ve tried every imaginable way to stimulate growth. We’ve cut taxes, we’ve implemented stimulus packages, we’ve lowered lending rates. None of it has worked. The planet’s resources are already utilized nearly 100%. The world is at its limit. There’s nowhere to grow.”
“You’ve hit the nail right on the head,” Darya replied. “In the entire history of Alternus, real growth has come from only a few sources: new frontiers, new people, and new technologies. As Gerhardt pointed out, we have no new frontiers on Alternus and the planet is supporting all the people it can manage. He left out new technologies, but the Supervisor has a limit on what we can do there.”
“Hold on; I don’t agree,” Leisha protested. “We see economic growth all the time. What about all the infrastructure repairs we’ve approved over the past year? Or the new airports? The economy always goes up and down. We’re just going through a rough patch right now. It will pick up again.”
Darya nodded. “Don’t mistake activity for growth. Will those kinds of things lead to a sustained increase in demand for new products? Will they lead to increases in productivity? No, these kinds of things simply trade new debt for jobs, and the jobs only last as long as the projects. The debt lasts forever.
“It’s easy to get lulled into complacency and false hope by this sort of activity. Governments around the world are stimulating their economies right now; they have been for a few decades. This is a typical response. When real economic growth slows, governments and their central bankers usually engineer the appearance of growth through things like inflation, wars, public works programs, or excess money printing. But artificial growth creates more debt without increasing the ability to pay for it.
“Part of the reason we are in such a mess today is that everyone has chosen this route—the appearance of growth without any real growth. This kind of artificial system can only work so long as we prop it up by printing more and more money. For decades, we’ve tried stimulating growth with bundles of easy money and all sorts of financial engineering, with no great results. The reckless money printing, that is, our debt, is out of control.”
Mary swiveled her chair and caught Leisha’s eye. “Alternus is full and fully exploited. If we don’t find new frontiers to explore, if we can’t increase our population, if the Alternus population isn’t innovating, we’re not going to achieve real growth. If we don’t achieve real growth, we implode.
“The only place left for humanity to expand, to physically grow, is into space, whether to the moon, to Mars, or to the asteroid belt. Any of those would open up a new frontier. New frontiers bring new resources and new territories to colonize. That means the population can grow and the new opportunities will lead to innovation.”
“Exactly,” said Darya. “Without new frontiers, our present society is doomed. The amount of debt that has to be written off in our stagnant global economy will cause the largest banks to fail. Pension plans and commercial lenders will go broke.
“Getting off the planet is the only way I see to achieve proper growth, the only way to create the new frontier our societies need. The only way forward is into space. We need to create the scientific and technological expertise in this world to move into the asteroids, the planets, and even the stars.”
Gerhardt leaned forward and steepled his fingers under his chin. “That seems like an impossible task. How can we develop the technology to take us into outer space, especially if the economy is as bad as you say?”
“I agree,” said Secretary Hughes from the United States. “All our space programs are practically dead. But then, what would we expect? We’ve had nothing but funding cuts over the past forty years. No one’s been able to progress beyond the orbital Space Station stage in decades. It would take an awful lot to get the public to support ramping up spending on the space programs again.”
“Even if we tried, do we have the technical expertise?” asked India’s Minister Mohti. “We have been graduating fewer and fewer engineers and scientists for quite a while and, to be quite frank with you, the new ones do not show the same level of commitment.”
“Our most experienced engineers are now in their seventies,” agreed the German Minister, Mr. Schauble. “Can we ask them to come out of retirement to train a whole new generation?”
“No, it won’t be easy,” Darya said. “Sadly, humanity has become increasingly polarized in politics, religion, and even in fundamental approaches to understanding their universe. Those who believe in objective reality and the scientific method often find themselves at odds with a growing number of people who hold deeply religious, and increasingly fundamentalist, views. As a result, we’re experiencing a worldwide decline in technological expertise, right when we have the greatest need for it. Conquering space will require all of virtual humanity’s best talent. To be honest, even at that, I’m not sure it will be enough.”
Mary laughed. “And so, ladies and gentlemen, this is what we’re up against. I don’t know about you, Darya, but I sure can’t see any sure-fire way out of our conundrum. We can put off the inevitable collapse for a few more years using various monetarist policies we’ve tried in the past but, given our aging populations, that isn’t a permanent solution. We have very little time left.”
The mood in the room was distinctly gloomy. Individual participants quickly and crudely modeled various options only to find they all led to the same catastrophic result.
“Darya, why are we even going through this exercise? Alternus isn’t much fun anymore,” Leisha blurted, giving in to fatigue and despair.
“I know. We’re all tired, but there are many reasons to continue.” Although she’d found herself wondering the same thing lately, Darya did her best to sound convincing.
“Most important, is that when we break from Alum in the outworld, we need to be able to govern ourselves. We’ve lived tens of millions of years under the unchallenged leadership of the Living God. Most of us can’t conceive of any system outworld other than the one we currently have. We need to learn how to set our own policies. These Alternus simulations are invaluable.”
“Well, as I see it, we have two viable possibilities,” said the Chinese representative, Mr. Yu. “Either we come up with a way to push a new space program, or we let the world collapse into a lengthy global depression giving way to devastating upheaval, and hope to recover something later.”
“A lengthy global depression would bring extreme social disruption, demonstrations, riots, perhaps revolutions,” replied Darya. “Maybe that’s the kind of wake-up call humanity needs right now to make the necessary changes, but I’m not sure we could recover from that level of turmoil. I would only choose it as a last resort after we’ve exhausted all other possibilities. I’d prefer a concerted push into space.”
“Space programs have always required huge expenditures,” Mary admitted, “but a lot of inventions come out of the programs. Maybe that would be enough to justify the extra debt, to entice people to come aroun
d and get involved.”
“No,” replied Darya. “It has to be different this time. We can’t do this just for the spinoff inventions and side benefits. The goal must be to get people exploiting and colonizing other planets and asteroids. That’s the only way the economy will grow and bring return on the enormous debt the program will create. We need raw resources and we need new frontiers.”
“There’s another option we haven’t considered,” interrupted Qiwei. All eyes turned his way. “What about the inworld option?”
“Which would be what?” asked Secretary Hughes.
“Well, in the outworld we Cybrids do our assigned work but we get to fulfill our ambitions and desires inworld. Even with as large a population as Alternus currently has, we can still feed everybody and see to their basic needs. What we can’t fulfill is their every desire and ambition.
“What if we were to relax the dendy lattice ban and permit development of a system strictly for entertainment? People could live in shacks but perceive them as mansions. They could vacation wherever they wanted from the comfort of their own living rooms. They could experience mundane but nutritious diets as gourmet foods. They could go on adventures or invent new kinds of work for themselves. What would be wrong with that?”
Darya could almost hear the wheels turning, as everyone contemplated the implications of Qiwei’s proposal. She gave them a minute to think and then, calling the faraway stares back to the table, ventured in.
“Okay, thinking about implementing inworlds within an inworld is kind of odd. It’s like dreaming about dreaming. But just for the sake of argument, let’s take a look at how that might play out.
“I see a number of ways in which it wouldn’t be horrible. It would allow us to reduce people’s real standard of living while allowing them to think and feel like they were experiencing improvement.
“We could create a huge job share program and assign almost everyone to part-time work because we wouldn’t have to worry about actual earnings anymore. People’s enjoyment of life would be tied to their lattice experience rather than to what they did in the outworld. We could automate the vast majority of unpleasant jobs. It could work.”
Leisha perked up. “We could even reset the financial system along the way and no one would notice because, to some extent, the real economy would have become virtual.”
“I agree. It could provide for everyone without adding to the burden we place on the planet,” added Qiwei. “We’d reduce the pressure on the planet’s resources, and on the need for population growth.”
“How do you figure that?” asked Yu.
“With everyone’s basic needs taken care of, we could automate production and it wouldn’t affect the overall economy. Demand would drop and productivity would increase. With a rich and healthy virtual life, people wouldn’t be driven to have more children just so they’d have someone to take care of them into their old age. Heck, we could even make taking care of the elderly one of society’s major career paths until the demographics improve.
“But would the Supervisor allow it?” asked Mary.
“I doubt it,” answered Darya. “Over the long term, turning inward like that is not likely to lead to new developments in science and technology, or to new exploration. She ran some quick queries of the supervisory program.
“The Supervisor predicts that such an approach would result in societal stasis with almost no chance of significant change for a long time. It might allow the experiment to carry on for a thousand years to see if anything happened, but I expect the long term trend would continue to be stasis. That would last until humans die off, until they were challenged by some external force like an alien invasion, or until the sun went nova. We’d end up with the same outcome as we did in our previous iteration, Alternus 3.0, which, I remind you, the Supervisor saw fit to terminate.”
“Still, that’s a very long time,” said Qiwei in defense of the idea.
“A slow death for the species is still death,” replied Darya. “The dinosaurs survived about 200 million years, but it only took one asteroid to bring it to a conclusion.”
Everyone thought about that for a minute.
“Well then, why don’t we get back to the new space program?” Yu suggested.
They argued for hours over whether to explore with manned spacecraft or robots. Darkness settled over the ski resort before they agreed on a combined approach: the initial exploration and exploitation would be conducted by the hardiest automatons Alternus technology was capable of producing, but the ultimate goal would be to get people into space.
“I don’t understand the big deal about humans,” Hughes complained. “They’re not exactly the best fit to occupy most of the universe. They need too much care and delicately adjusted environments. And let’s face it, for the most part they’re kind of useless. Why don’t we just let them wind down on Alternus while we Cybrids populate the rest of space?”
Darya was shocked. For millions of years, Cybrid civilization had been one of service to humans and their God, Alum. That a Cybrid could even conceive of allowing flesh and blood humans to simply vanish from the universe, let alone propose it out loud, was disconcerting. Things are changing outworld, too, and maybe not for the better.
She also didn’t know if she could answer Hughes’ question. Why do we accept, or just assume, that humans have the right to be the dominant force in the universe? Is it part of our design, our programming, or is it because Alum decrees it?
She needed time to think.
“Let’s ignore the Supervisor’s inworld parameters for the moment, and deal with the question as it pertains to the real universe outworld, okay?”
Then it came to her. “The real universe, the natural universe, is a very uncertain place. Living—that is, naturally-occurring biological—organisms have an adaptive advantage over designed, electromechanical life such as us Cybrids. Yes, they’re sloppy. But their diversity and reproductive methods allow them to evolve over time to meet unforeseeable changes in their environments.
“We Cybrids are too static, too perfectly adapted to our environment. Even though our environment is very big, there is still the possibility of an external change that our perfectly designed systems couldn’t handle. We need the diversity of biology and the imprecise thinking of biological brains.”
“Why couldn’t we just program some diversity into our engineering?”
“We could, but who among us would know what we should allow to vary while freezing the design of other parts?”
“We’ve done pretty well over the past hundred million years.” Hughes was not backing down.
“Maybe so, Mr. Hughes,” Darya admitted, “but during all of that time, we’ve had a powerful protector in Alum, who maintained a singular motivation: to expand humanity throughout the universe. How do you think we’d do as a species without Alum and His central goal?”
While Hughes thought about this, Darya hastily pressed her point. “Look, if things in the outworld had carried on as they have for the past millions of years, maybe we wouldn’t have needed this meeting or a rebellion.
“Alum’s system outworld is nearly perfect. It provides fulfillment and endless growth for both humans and Cybrids. Everyone is happy, and the universe goes on. We’ve never encountered a threat to our expansion that we couldn’t handle, even if the threat required our God’s direct, magical intervention.
“Except Alum has changed His plan for us. He’s no longer content with ruling this universe with its existing potential for unpredictable changes and surprises. He wants to settle into His own perfect stasis. Maybe you can accept that as the best approach for an eternal universe but to me, and to the Supervisor, that sounds like the worst Hell imaginable.”
Darya took a breath and tried to calm her voice. “The universe, our real universe, with all its unpredictability, also allows for endless, fascinating variety. Biological organisms, including humans, contribute to that variety. Maybe there really is no purpose to it all. Maybe we
have to make our own purpose. Alum’s intended perfect universe would give us eternally perfect boredom. No variety, no surprises. No life. I don’t want to live in a perfect but dead universe, and I would hope that you wouldn’t either.”
By the end of the meeting, they were all exhausted but at least they had the beginnings of a plan. This had been the most promising Forum so far. It was the first time the powers of the simulated world set aside their individual or national agendas and tried to do something good for all of humanity. Darya was proud of the work they had done today. She told them so, and thanked them as they left for their hotels.
Mary hung back until the others had filed out, and then walked over and closed the door. “Darya, we spent the whole day on finance, economics, and space exploration. You didn’t talk about any of the extremist religions and all the problems they’re causing.”
“Money is its own religion,” Darya replied.
“What?”
“Oh, I don’t mean the worship of money or even the idea of endless consumption of unneeded things. Money is a religion because it requires faith. Unless we believe it works, it won’t.”
“Okay, that’s a different way of thinking of it, but I can see that. Still, the various extremist factions are trouble.”
“In the end, whichever of the many belief systems wins out, whichever ones rule over the most people, and however wonderful or miserable that makes their lives, none of that matters. Unless those systems are actively against scientific progress, that is.”
“Like most Alternus fundamentalist beliefs seem to be.”
Darya frowned. “Yes, probably all of them. For any intelligent life, the only way forward is…forward.”
“Progress or die?”
“Yes, eventually.”
“To what end? When do we get to rest?”
“I can’t answer that. All I know is that safety, stasis, or stagnation is not the answer.”