Economic Science Fictions

Home > Other > Economic Science Fictions > Page 30
Economic Science Fictions Page 30

by Davies, William;


  * * *

  Somersault forward a few more years. Everything is a whirl, but you can pick out one or two details.

  Cryptocurrencies grow more mainstream.

  Cash doesn’t die out. But it changes. Following examples such as Brixton Pound and Bristol Pound, local currencies proliferate.

  Across Europe there is a small swing to the left, resulting in higher (and smarter) taxes on corporate profits, capital gains and inheritance.

  Elites start exploring alternative ways of storing value and doing business. Everything is in motion – constant motion.

  * * *

  One more hop forward.

  Across Europe that gentle, jazzy swing to the left has been followed by a staggering lurch to the right.

  There.

  And now imagine Laing.

  Laing is a journalist. Or, let’s say, what’s left of a journalist.

  Today Laing is working from home, covering monetary policy reform. Unlike some hacks these days, Laing has a real thing for evidence. She just loves the stuff. Laing’s journalism is scientific.

  Laing uses her usual scientific methodology: she feeds the story’s parameters into her Fourth Estate® robo-writing software and knocks back a bucket of black coffee, just like any fedora-donning 1930s newshound sniffing out a big scoop in a smoky bullpen.

  The Fourth Estate starts to procedurally generate Laing’s first draft. Of course, the software knows way more about the subject than Laing could ever hope to know. The software knows about every press release, every study, every thinkpiece. Above all, it intimately knows every loophole in the ‘“I said, I’M SORRY!”’ Act.

  As soon as Fourth Estate pings that the draft is done, Laing will begin to add her dash of panache.

  You know skim-reading? Well, Laing skim-writes.

  * * *

  While Laing prepares to skim-write about monetary policy reform, over at the Department of Health Laing’s boyfriend, Abiodun, is skim-developing policy.

  Abiodun’s policy is about introducing smart inflation into primary healthcare provision. Abiodun doesn’t really understand it at all.

  Technically, Abiodun is still an intern. For various arcane legal and financial reasons, Abiodun has been an intern for six years now. Abiodun is beginning to suspect he will one day retire as a very distinguished intern. Maybe set a world record! Who knows?

  Assuming he doesn’t get sick, or something like that.

  Abiodun has a headache. It’s all those sirens today. Why can’t they change the ringtone on those? Why can’t they be more soothing?

  * * *

  Today Laing’s story is about money. Every story is about money, but this one really is about money, in that kind of dry, abstract way that tends to make journalists’ hearts – or, let’s say, what’s left of them – sink.

  The Bank of England is facing its biggest shake-up since 1997, the year Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, gave the Bank operational independence. Under the proposed reforms, the Chancellor will still set inflation targets as per usual. The Bank will still manage growth of the money supply to meet those targets, as per usual. So what’s new?

  If the reform goes through, whenever the Bank increases the money supply the Treasury will decide where that money will appear. Essentially, the Treasury will be taking over a key function of the commercial banking sector.1

  So far, so good; but here’s where things get ugly. There are two proposals on the table.

  Today Laing has one job. Make option A, known as the QED Option, look like a whole bunch of bonkers. And make option B, known as the Apache Option, look like a whole heap of heaven.

  Ping. Laing’s eyes light up. Draft text fills the screen. Laing leans in hungrily. Clackety-clack.

  * * *

  Abiodun gazes at the screen, a little cross-eyed. He shuts seven tabs at random.

  Now the tabs know who they’re dealing with.

  Today is not Abiodun’s day.

  Today Abiodun has one job. In one of Abiodun’s tabs – er, hopefully not one he just closed? – is a policy that the Department of Health actually wants to implement. Abiodun’s job is to reverse-engineer the policy the Department will announce.

  * * *

  Laing’s Fourth Estate software has run through different head-to-head disputes between QED and Apache, modelling different trajectories along which sparks might fly.

  Unlike some hacks these days, Laing makes a point of at least doing some light reading around whatever story she’s writing.

  So Laing knows that the enemy option, ‘the QED Option,’ currently has greater public support. In the QED Option, instead of commercial banks choosing where to create money, by loaning it out of thin air to creditworthy applicants, a variety of actors will participate in money creation. The enemy have chosen a new specialised national investment bank, various accredited charities with experience in impact investment, plus some new and exciting purpose-built funding bodies, all under the supervision of the Treasury. The overall remit of this hotchpotch of organisations will be to finance social housing, transport infrastructure, green industries, resilience and sustainability initiatives and social innovations.

  The enemy also want a raft of regulatory reform affecting the retail banks and other institutions – for instance, protecting free access to payments services for people on low incomes, and imposing equity requirements and other prudential rules on banks that still want to offer investment intermediation services.

  The QED Option is, in short, technocratic, wonkish and a bit utopian. It has the feel of something designed by a committee. So far the press has hammered the QED Option for its jumbled brand identity – what does it even stand for? Nobody knows – plus concerns over loopholes, transparency, the likelihood of corruption and the red (red as in communist) flag it will flap at some currently fairly bullish global financial markets.

  Laing’s job today is to keep hammering. Think ‘nail in coffin’.

  * * *

  It is an increasingly open secret that the policies put forward, by just about everybody in the habit of putting forward policies, are not actually the policies they wish to see implemented. ‘Ask for the moon, and when the other fellow offers green cheese, settle for something in between.’2 With a little help from data-driven stakeholder engagement modelling techniques, Ronald Reagan’s folksy formula has grown into a monstrous new science.

  When Abiodun’s policy is eventually announced, there will be shockwaves. News segments. Petitions. Open letters. Crowdfunded ads. Demonstrations, maybe. Sly jibes in the Commons. Debates. Reputations rising and falling. Deep concern. Talking heads. Rolling heads. Rolling heads, still jabbering away. Heartbreaking personal accounts. Enclosed in this volume of complex pressures, the policy will shift and morph. And, when all stakeholders have acted, what will be left is the policy that his Department actually wants to implement.

  That’s the theory, anyway.

  More sirens outside. Abiodun rubs his temples. It’s the dead heart of summer, still light at 9 p.m. He peers vaguely towards the window.

  So many sirens today.

  Back to work. Where is that tab?

  * * *

  Laing’s article is supposed to cheerlead option B: the Apache Option.3

  Under the Apache Option, the Treasury will spend new money on the regalian functions of government. There is an altogether better-organised campaign behind the Apache Option, including a formidable open letter by a mob of eminent political theory academics, minutely regaling the government with what its ‘regalian functions’ actually means.

  The Apache Option boils down to this: Treasury expansions of the money supply will finance additional public spending on defence, the police, the courts, the prison service, GCHQ, MI5, MI6, MI7, MI20, MI21, the fire brigade, basically anything to do with the royal family and, for some reason, Battersea Dogs and Cats Home.

  As Laing types, clickety-clack, with all the ferocity of her fedor
a-rocking forebears, a sidebar displays virtual focus grouping analytics in real time. Laing has developed amazing peripheral vision. Like an emu, or whatever.

  * * *

  He has cracked it! Or at least, Abiodun decides, he’s made enough progress to call it a night. More modelling to do in the morning. But he’s so late, and it’s his turn to cook tonight. Abiodun touches his phone, ready to message Laing – but something distracts him. Abiodun glances furtively across the half-empty office. Then, rifling through his browser tabs, he takes one last peek at his guilty pleasure.

  Abiodun designs indie markets.

  He even puts his creations up on KickMarket, though just for fun, because he doesn’t really expect people to back his designs. Abiodun’s markets are whimsical artefacts, Excel spreadsheets glimpsed shimmering in the summer cumulonimbus. Abiodun stacks markets on markets, designs whole regional economies. He makes up churning cities where everyone can be welcome and fed and safe, and wise and healthy and happy and free.

  It’s just a silly hobby. They are just his silly sky-palaces of coruscating prism-light. Sometimes people leave him kind comments, and that’s enough for Abiodun, he guesses.

  One new comment!

  you’re a cunt

  BristolChris

  Abiodun breathes the still office air. He tips the laptop lid down. Technically, it belongs to the taxpayer. He shouldn’t really be doing personal stuff on it anyway.

  Abiodun taps the desk lamp off, grabs his coat.

  All stuff is personal, he thinks.

  In the distance, sirens, helicopter blades and dogs barking.

  * * *

  Laing’s stomach growls. Her monetary policy article is a yawnfest.

  Laing grunts, starts from scratch. Tries something new.

  Now Fourth Estate slowly trawls the complementary data.

  It is analysing all the public figures who are vaguely friendly with the QED Option, plus the public figures who are friendly with public figures who are vaguely friendly with it, plus anybody who’s ever mentioned it on social media, plus anybody whose social media history suggests that, given the right nudge, they might mention it. Because the British public loves a story with two sides. Laing has a theory that this has nothing to do with any desire for balance or fairness. The British public, prudent and parsimonious, hesitate to acknowledge any opinion till they have watched it shed the blood of some other opinion.

  Informally, users of Fourth Estate call this feature a ‘strawman search’. Laing feels the label is a bit unfair. After all, Fourth Estate isn’t just designing a dream opponent. It’s gathering up all the real flesh-and-blood people closely matched with the dream opponent it has just designing. Laing thinks of it as a ‘sacrificial lambs search’. The software also analyses which QED affiliates are likely to put up memorable struggles as they’re dragged to the altar. The best lambs are often lions.

  Ping. Laing laughs. Buried in the list of possible sacrifices is her very own Abiodun. How funny.

  She’ll have to tell him when he’s home. The bastard should be home already. It’s his turn to cook. She wants his lion hug. She demands it! Laing’s hand hovers on her phone, but something distracts her.

  * * *

  Outside the Department for Health, there’s the usual traffic gridlock, plus pedestrians dribbing and drabbing. A few drops of drizzle, but Abiodun doesn’t think it really means it. He’s delighted to see a familiar bike woven into the railings by the roundabout.

  Abiodun scans the QR code. Sure enough, the bike is part of the Internet of Things in Common. He uses his app to confirm the last user’s claim about the bike’s location and condition, giving just two stars for security, because that back wheel wasn’t separately chained up – and this is London, baby. He checks it out for his personal use – a large deposit parades out of his Common Credit account, escorted by a modest little transaction fee – mounts up and pedals along the grass, over the pavement and onto the roundabout.

  Actually, maybe this rain does mean it.

  On the roof of the shopping centre, a sniper unfolds a tripod.

  * * *

  Laing has run out of swear words.

  She’s just been fired.

  ‘Fired’ – that’s not the right word. There are no longer well-defined media organisations to get fired from, not since the ‘“I’M SORRY!”’ Act.

  But near enough fired: Laing’s subscription to Fourth Estate comes via her membership of Scribe Tribe, a well-respected pool of freelancers, and Scribe Tribe has just decided, by some opaque, automated process, that it no longer needs Laing on the books.

  And, just like that, Fourth Estate disappears behind a paywall. All today’s work has vanished, probably. Even if it’s still there somewhere, she’ll never sort this out in time to make her deadline.

  She blinks back tears as she rings Abiodun. Bastard isn’t picking up.

  Laing shrugs, slurps. A deadline is a deadline. These fingers have clickety-clack in them yet. For all she knows, this could be the last article she ever writes.

  Laing yells: ‘From the heart, Laing! From the heart!’

  * * *

  Where is he?

  He doesn’t know where he is. He thinks… He thinks something is very wrong.

  Hands are picking him up.

  * * *

  ‘From the heart!’

  She puts on music. Patti.

  * * *

  Someone puts a stretcher beside him. He is conscious of hands. He is not conscious of their touch. He breathes his blood. There is gauze, clotted and heavy, on and in his throat. He can’t breathe deeply and he wants them, please, to loosen the straps, but the straps aren’t on yet. He is aware of a voice asking him please to try not to move. They are putting a collar on him. Don’t worry, he wants to say. Because move is exactly what I was just trying to do, and I can’t. They are moving him now. They are putting him on the stretcher. Because I just want to move my shoulders a little. And I can’t. I can’t move a thing.

  * * *

  Laing is not sure it’s her best work. She has a right go at QED and everything, but she also strays into some weird territory – algocracy and democracy and opacity and transparency – real ‘Beware the rise of the robots!’ stuff.

  As she uploads, a bit nervously, Laing decides maybe to not mention about the whole revoked Scribe Tribe membership and Fourth Estate access and ‘From the heart, Laing!’ situation or the scraps of Patti Smith lyrics she’s pretty sure have slipped in there unacknowledged.

  Ten minutes later she sighs with relief. Her article is approved, online and, if the early metrics are anything to go by, on fire. What an insane day. Tomorrow she’ll have to…

  Laing’s phone shakes, and she smiles. Abiodun’s image glowing there. Poor bean. We both work too hard.

  But when she picks up, it isn’t his voice.

  * * *

  Nearly done now. Breathe, and, one last time, roll time forward.

  Laing’s article goes moderately viral. Its arguments are all over the place, but it sparks fierce chatter about public money, co-operatives and algorithmic democracy. Laing never notices any of that. Her attention is elsewhere. As the debate rages, some people gradually notice the original author doesn’t seem to have said anything. It’s as if she hasn’t even noticed.

  Laing’s attention is elsewhere.

  Roll time forward, slowly now. Try to see it all happening. It’s so hard – everything is moving all at once. Nothing is stable. What do you watch? Abiodun? He gets stabilised. Exploratory surgery is carried out the same night.

  Two days later a full operation.

  * * *

  Following a great number of concessions and additions, the Apache Option is passed into law. It is perceived as another setback for the progressives.

  * * *

  The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) launches an investigation into the quality of the investigative response by police to a pote
ntial terror-related incident outside the Department for Health’s Skipton House offices.

  * * *

  Aggressive marketing of digital payments technologies, by companies such as Apple and Visa, leads to the extinction of cash.

  * * *

  The IPCC concludes its investigation. The gist is this: lessons have been learned but no one is to be charged. On the day in question the Metropolitan Police’s data-driven Serious Near-Incidents Proactive Emergency Response System generated a rare false positive, and several even more rare flukes in unrelated systems ensured that this false positive was not flagged up as it normally would have been. In view of the available information, the Authorised Firearms Officer acted appropriately. The tragic event was the result of ‘a perfect storm’.

  Laing, and her supporters, vow to continue the fight for justice for Abiodun.

  * * *

  The eventual extinction of cash leads to a proliferation of alternative means of payment, interacting in complex ways with emergent tech phenomena such as designer markets and micro-targeted smart inflation. Instead of disappearing, the ‘shadow economy’ shrugs off its last vestiges of stigma, thrives and diversifies. Between the white market and the black market, soon there shines every shade of market in between. Eggshell markets and corn-silk ones, slate markets and dove-grey ones, ebony markets and charcoal ones.

  * * *

  Imagine. The not-so-near future. The ultimate impact of the Apache monetary policy reforms has been – unexpected. Not that there is an ultimate impact, or some moment when everything stands still, and lets you take stock, and say: ‘Now I am outside history, and see what was wise, and what was foolish.’ Everything is in motion – constant motion. Value is. Society is. The sky is, and the sea. The sea especially, these days.

  Laing is still a freelancer these days, though less and less a journalist, exactly. Abiodun is still an intern. And he still has his hobby, and now he devotes a lot of time to it. And he still hasn’t moved those shoulders. The two of them are as happy as can be expected. As far as can be expected, they are fed and wise and safe and healthy and happy and free.

 

‹ Prev