Nicholas van Rijn wants a ten percent cut in the supermetals wealth of Mirkheim. David Falkayn replies:
"'Sir, you don't need the money. You stopped needing more money a long while back. To you it's nothing but a counter in a game. Maybe, for you, the only game in town. Those beings aft of us, however - they are not playing.'" (p. 679)
That phrase, "...the only game in town...," links Anderson's Technic History to his Time Patrol series and also to other interesting places. See here.
"Those beings aft..." represent the many inhabited planets and entire rational species that are being left behind by the economic advances of Technic civilization.
"Lodestar," a turning point in the Technic History, identifies a crucial issue in human history. See also Interstellar Wealth.
Four Stages
no economic surplus
unequal distribution of a small surplus
unequal distribution of a large suplus
equal distribution of an even larger surplus or major conflicts
Unequal distribution was necessary when the surplus was small but is redundant when there is a technology that could make every living being rich, to quote Dominic Flandry's daughter. See the second link above.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Except I recall Chee Lan saying saying that the poorer planets should not expect to be given a free ride by the richer planets. For the simple reason that would be both impossible and lead the richer planets to think they are getting nothing back in return.
That said, I don't object to a consortium of the poorer planets using Mirkheim to obtain the capital they needed. The moral problem for FALKAYN was that he broke his fealty to van Rijn by not reporting Mirkheim's discovery.
Sean
Sean,
I agree that Falkayn had that moral dilemma but the dilemma arose from the contradiction between an economic system based on competitive accumulation and a technology that could potentially enrich everyone.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And that "enriching" needs to be done in ways that won't either fatally alienate the more fortunate or lead those being "helped" becoming addicted to a demoralizing, self defeating dole or "welfare." Fortunately, for as long as it existed, the Supermetals Company was designed to prevent that from happening.
Sean
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