Costa interrupted, sensing an impasse. Once again, he felt his two friends were missing the wider picture.
‘Corporations go to great lengths to employ geniuses: technologists, designers, financial engineers, economists, artists even. I’ve seen it happen,’ he said. ‘But what have they done with them? They channel all that talent and creativity towards humanity’s destruction. Even when it is creative, Eva, capitalism is extractive. In search of shareholder profit, corporations have put these geniuses in charge of extracting the last morsel of value from humans and from the earth, from the minerals in its guts to the life in its oceans. And these brilliant minds have been used to cajole governments into accepting their raids on the planet’s resources by creating markets for them: markets for carbon dioxide and other pollutants – phoney markets controlled by their employers! Unlike the East India Company, the Technostructure does not need its own armies. It owns our states and their armies, because it controls what we think. The dirtier the industry, the richer and more despised, the more its captains have been able to tap into the rivers of debt-derived money to purchase influence and to blunt opposition. Previously they would buy newspapers and set up TV stations; now they employ armies of lobbyists, found think tanks, litter the Internet with their trolls and, of course, direct monumental campaign donations to the chief enablers of our species’ extinction, the politicians.’
‘Costa is right, Eva,’ said Iris. ‘The future is a fool’s wager and the greatest fools are those aiding and abetting a Technostructure betting on our future. A modern Prospero would have hailed the fate of fictitious wealth to “melt into air, into thin air”. In 2008 it was finance that melted down. In 2020 it was every market on the planet, except those for ventilators, sanitisers and toilet paper. By 2023 the point of no return from climate calamity had come and gone, with the world’s last glaciers almost totally melted.’
Capitalism-induced climate change upset Eva even more than it did her friends. Unlike them, she had a son to whom she felt she was bequeathing a dying planet. Except that she did not think that anything good would come from ending capitalism. To reverse capitalism’s catastrophic effects on nature and the planet’s climate, she believed, lots of cash is needed. Which means we need share markets guided to fund green investments, directed by a proper tax on bad stuff, for instance carbon dioxide and other threats to our habitat.
‘Have you forgotten, Eva, the old maxim that the house can’t be beaten?’ came Iris’s admonition. ‘No matter how many markets you design, or simulate, irrespectively of how many new taxes you introduce, once Capitalism Inc. bets on our future, we have no future. Why is human life unsustainable today? Because smart people like you continue to defend shareholding even though you know that the right to buy into a future profit stream reinforces the irrepressible Technostructure and dissolves all its restraints. Congratulations, sister. You have enabled them to double down on our extinction!’
‘Whatever you say about capitalism,’ Eva retorted, ‘every alternative is guaranteed to be worse. This is why capitalism is perceived by most people as inevitable.’
‘So was, once, the divine right of kings. Until it wasn’t,’ said Costa.
‘Sure,’ said Eva, ‘but do you really believe that flat management and single, non-tradable shares will do the trick? That they will produce a green revolution capable of saving our species’ bacon?’
‘I am not sure, Eva,’ Costa confessed, ‘but I trust that what Kosti is describing comes the closest to a realistic utopia worth fighting for.’
‘Do you know what my problem with any utopia is, Costa?’ Iris asked sternly. ‘Men! Like everything that has a potential to be beautiful, you men try to take it over and turn it into something vile. And, what’s worse, most women defer to you in the process.’
Eva remained silent.
The cafeteria controversy
Markets without capitalism was not a bridge too far for Eva. In fact, she liked the sound of it, even if she remained entirely sceptical about what it would entail in practice. But she had an ethical objection, too, which she now put to her companions.
‘Suppose you and I start a cafe. We put plenty of work and loving care into it, not to mention money. Then we need to hire some help, say a person to wait tables in the afternoons. Are you seriously telling me that it would be acceptable for the state to compel us to hand over an equal share in our cafe to some random waiter that we hire? That the state should have the right to hand this person decision-making powers equal to yours and mine? And can you please answer the question without first giving me another historical diatribe?’
Lest she be seen to be doing what she was told, Iris muttered something about ‘a widespread mental failure to recognize the unacceptability of thinking of people as bundles of labour for hire. But since you demand a yes or no answer,’ she went on, ‘I shall give you one: yes, I do think it is perfectly fine, indeed necessary, for the state to compel us to give the waiter equal decision-making powers. Put it this way. I agree, Eva, that you and I cannot be equal in any mathematical sense. Our contribution, talents and energy are inevitably unequal. And yet you are happy with the idea of sharing ownership of the cafe fifty-fifty with me, correct? If the shares can be divided between us perfectly equally, why not with the waiter too?’
‘Well, for three obvious reasons, at least,’ responded Eva coolly. ‘First, you and I came up with the idea of the cafe together and put in the hard work to make it a reality, whereas the waiter arrived on the scene later on. Second, we invested equal sums of money, unlike the waiter. And third, having invested so much less time, money and social capital in the whole enterprise, there is no way the waiter could possibly have the same commitment to it as we would.’
‘You and I might have come up with the idea,’ responded Iris, ‘and we might have done the initial hard work, but a business lives and dies day by day. The moment the waiter enters the scene, she begins to make a daily contribution that may be unequal to ours but is every bit as important. Besides, do we really want ownership to be determined on a first-come-first-served basis? What if the waiter ends up bringing in a whole load of new customers that you and I could never have attracted ourselves? Your second reason is more powerful, though, I admit. However, suppose we agree that shares should be distributed in proportion to the money a partner injects into the business – that they should be purchased, in effect – surely it is only right that we should also be able to sell them on, irrespective of whether we continue to work in the cafe or not? But the moment we allow someone who doesn’t work in the cafe to buy into it, it’s finished. It’ll close or end up as another miserable Starbucks, an appendage of the Technostructure.’
Eva’s third reason, Iris thought, was the most compelling but not a clincher either.
‘Even if the waiter was less committed,’ she went on, ‘you and I would still retain the majority of the cafeteria’s shares, allowing us to fire the waiter or to reduce the waiter’s bonuses. And if this means we take extra care when hiring a second or third waiter, to avoid a coalition of the unworthy, that would be only good and proper. The pressing question,’ Iris told her friend, ‘is not really who owns which shares. After all, equal shares do not mean equal rewards. But they are the only real way of acknowledging and dealing with what you have been saying for yonks: that it is impossible objectively to measure personal contributions to a joint endeavour. Isn’t this why when we publish academic work we opt for the convention of joint authorship and alphabetical listing of our names?’
‘I’m always glad to see lefties abandon the dangerous idea that persons are equal in any meaningful way,’ Eva said good-humouredly.
‘Right, so we need to refocus, away from the question of who owns how many shares and on to what effect that would have. The real question is: do we want the net revenues of an enterprise to be distributed by a workplace dictatorship, which is inevitable if shares are traded? Or do we want
the division of a firm’s loot to be decided by a workplace democracy, which is only possible if there are equally distributed and non-tradable shares?’
They had got to the kernel of the issue.
‘You’re right, Iris,’ said Eva. ‘I vote for capitalism and tradable shares knowing full well that it’s a vote for a dictatorship in the workplace – but it’s an internal dictatorship from which anyone can resign and the prerequisite for liberty at large.’
‘And I vote,’ said Iris, smiling, ‘for a democratic workplace – the only type that does not make a mockery of liberal democracy and a wasteland out of our planet.’
It was the closest the two of them would get to an alignment of views, and Eva was tempted at that point to step back from any further argument. But they had yet to address what was to her mind the Other Now’s vilest institution: the Socialworthiness Index and the Citizens’ Juries, which had the power to dissolve corporations if, in their estimation, they did not serve the public good.
‘Can you imagine a worse tyranny,’ Eva asked, ‘than living in fear of some random jury passing judgement over us and closing our cafe?’
‘I agree with Sartre: hell is other people,’ Costa stepped in to reply. ‘But of all the ways our life can be made hellish, such juries seem far preferable to credit-rating agencies, to markets dominated by an imperial Technostructure, or indeed to the surveillance of big tech, turning us, via our data, into its products.’
Iris thought it was the right moment to bring China into the conversation. ‘I gather that the Chinese communist party tells its nation’s business owners that their shares will be appropriated if they fail to serve society. I would rather die than trust any elected body, let alone a communist party, with that power. But in the end, no one has the divine right to own anything, so we have to decide somehow, and I’d rather a random selection of my fellow citizens made that call than anyone else. Indeed, I can think of no better check on power, public or private.’
And so the debate went on. Iris oscillated between playing devil’s advocate and arguing strongly in support of both the plausibility and the attractiveness of the Other Now. Eva maintained a fascinated hostility towards it. One moment she was enthused by the idea of central banks offering personal accounts and a universal income to citizens, the next she was poking fun at the idea that companies should pay tax on their revenues rather than their profits. Occasionally Iris would take aim at Costa and his unreconstructed egalitarianism – and on those occasions Eva could not help but agree with her. Costa, meanwhile, jet-lagged and content to turn spectator, dozed off on the couch while their battle of wits continued well into the night.
The sabbatical
In the morning, he woke to find Iris and Eva exhausted but still deep in debate. Over the next three days, they continued to meet and argue, and all the while Costa busily took notes, equipping himself with questions to put to Kosti upon his return to San Francisco. The evening before he was due to catch his flight, Eva and Iris had sat down with him to finalize the list of questions he would ask. But when the day of his departure came, as they sat sharing a last cup of tea, Iris and Eva told him they were not yet ready for him to leave.
In what was for Costa a precious show of unity, they confessed to having been energized by his extraordinary claims and the intricate thought experiment he had unleashed. Iris had relished revisiting some of the most contentious topics of her past, she told him. Eva, meanwhile, felt unexpectedly relieved to have been able to express her views on the deleterious impact of big business. ‘I owe a debt of gratitude,’ she said, ‘to the prankster who has convinced you he’s your alternative self.’
‘How can you be so sure that it’s all a hoax, though?’ asked Costa.
‘Besides the implausible physics? I just don’t buy it – that the masses could ever coordinate to bring capitalism down. Digital solidarity, your so-called OC rebellion, leading to a world-changing bloodless revolution…It all sounds great, but so does the idea of fairies at the bottom of the garden. Even so, we’ll be sad to see you go.’
‘The physics is entirely real, I assure you. As for the politics, well, no revolution seems plausible until it happens. But just think of what crowd-sourced action has achieved here in Our Now. There was the nurses’ strike in Portugal in 2019 – funded by tens of thousands of supporters until they won against the government. Before that, in Finland, thousands participated in a universal basic income experiment for two whole years, donating serious money to perfect strangers. In New Zealand, a group of hackers even planned to target CDOs in a very similar way to the Crowdshorters. Why, in the midst of the 2020 pandemic, a centenarian crowd-funded over thirty million quid for your NHS just by walking round his garden! Had any of those campaigns extended beyond helping the weak and actually taken aim at punishing the financiers responsible for the economic crisis, or the corporations for destroying the planet, or the governments for failing to protect us against disease – then I’d wager that anything is possible.’
It was clear from the look on Eva’s face that she was not convinced. Costa now startled both himself and his friends with a suggestion. ‘Why don’t the two of you return with me, to San Francisco, to interrogate your alter egos.’
As soon as he’d said it, it seemed the obvious thing to do. Cerberus’ security made it possible to exchange messages only between senders sharing the exact same DNA. Costa was therefore constrained to converse only with Kosti, who seemed exhausted by their exchanges. But there was no technical reason why Iris and Eva could not send questions to their counterparts, assuming they were alive and well in the Other Now and that Kosti could track them down.
‘I’m sure you have a million things to ask them that Kosti could never know,’ Costa said.
Eva turned to Iris, who stared silently at the kitchen floor for some time. When eventually she looked up and met Eva’s gaze, Costa knew their answer.
‘Maybe I could get Thomas to join us,’ Eva said quietly.
Thomas had been living in the United States for the last two years, since dropping out of school after his GCSEs, and Eva hadn’t seen him in all that time. He avoided contact, telling his mother only that he was trying to reconnect with his dad and ‘find’ himself away from her. Whenever his name was inadvertently mentioned, Eva could not help but sigh. But on this occasion she had mentioned his name brightly. Maybe she could interest him in a trip to Silicon Valley, a chance to spend time in a cutting-edge laboratory, perhaps even a peek down a real wormhole…
‘I should warn you, though,’ said Costa. ‘Stare into the wormhole and you risk seeing some hard, intimate truths.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Iris.
‘Just before I flew out to see you, Kosti referred in passing to someone called Cleo, saying he adores her. It turns out, she’s his daughter.’ Costa paused, took a sip of tea and let out a sigh. ‘The bastard has a life!’ Turning to his two friends, he added, ‘I hope you’re readier than I was for such surprises.’
6
MARKETS WITHOUT CAPITALISM
More personal than political
Agreeing on which questions each would send down the wormhole was easy. But coming up with a plan for introducing Iris and Eva to Siris and Eve, the nicknames Costa had given their Other Now selves, was not.
On his return to San Francisco, Costa had put their idea to Kosti, who had leaped at it. He had remained in close touch with his old friend Siris, and he had a good idea how to track down Eve, who, as it happened, was a prominent figure in the Other Now. In fact, Kosti had already begun to consider how he might bring them in on the secret. Inspired by Costa’s successful trip to Brighton, he said he would try it. A week later, he wrote to say that Siris and Eve were sceptical but game, though they would need much convincing that any of this was real. A week after that, at the beginning of June, Iris and Eva arrived in California, where they were now holed up in Costa’s lab, sharing a
spacious room two doors down the corridor from HALPEVAM’s main installation. They were now about to contact persons with whom they had supposedly shared a life until September 2008. The opening missives would be vital for convincing both parties that the wormhole was real and for establishing trust.
‘Before you ask any questions,’ Costa advised them, ‘make sure to mention something that only you would know, to establish credibility. It’s how I got Kosti to believe me in the first place, too.’
Eva liked it that her friends thought of Lehman’s collapse in September 2008 as her lowest point. It helped camouflage her true nadir – the end of her relationship with Thomas’s father, shortly after she had arrived at Princeton pregnant with his child. Financial ruin and the disintegration of her mind’s model of the world paled into irrelevance compared to the realization that she meant nothing to him, having thought she meant everything. It was a trauma she had shared with no one.
‘Do you still feel the loss of him as I do?’ she asked Eve.
While waiting for Eve’s reply, she grew aghast at how needy she must have sounded, and at how inexplicably desolate she had felt ever since he disappeared. When the answer came, Eva did not know whether to feel relieved or ashamed: Eve hardly remembered him.
Surprise turned quickly into sheer curiosity. ‘What of Thomas?’ Eva asked. Tears filled her eyes as she read Eve’s reply. There was no Thomas in the Other Now; but there was Agnes, her nine-year-old daughter. Iris was fond of reminding Eva of the 1970s feminist slogan, ‘The personal is political.’ Now it struck her that the opposite was true as well.
Another Now Page 10