It Takes A Village...

Whether the Greeks realized it or not, they did not vote against austerity yesterday.  What they were really voting on was whether the terms of austerity would be dictated by outsiders.  The people in the village of Karataina, at least, knew what they were voting for: the austerity of self-reliance, something which they are prepared for.

Related articles

• Greeks Vote NO To EU-Imposed Austerity Paul Craig Roberts
• Analysts Predict Greek Referendum Will Not Resolve Crisis

Prototype for The City

It turns out my idea for a Domed City in Tales of an Exiled Citizen is not so fanciful after all; one town in northern Vermont seriously tried to get it built.  You can read more about it in Doomed Dome: The Future That Never Was.

Tales of an Exiled Citizen #5: A Life of Crime

Beginning of story
Previous Part

They had a saying in the Crazy Age: "Crime doesn't pay."  I realize most of you will just have to take my word for it.  Not many people know a lot about the Crazy Age, other than what has been passed down in whispers.  The main reason I do is because while most kids in the City would spend their Free Hour playing lazer tag or exploring the latest VR world, I would head to the Library.  That's what I truly miss about the City.  Thousands of books, lined up on shelves, filling an entire room.  I know, it probably boggles your mind.  And some of these books had hundreds of pages yet could still fit in your pocket.  Many of the old ones were locked up because the pages threatened to crumble at one touch.  I doubt I could have read them all in an entire lifetime.

Anyway, it was kind of ironic that they said that crime doesn't pay in the Crazy Age, because back then, it frequently did.  Indeed, towards the end, making money and committing crimes became almost synonymous.  They even were afraid to prosecute some of the biggest criminals for fear of collapsing the economy.

In the City, though, it is a completely different story.  They monitor everything you buy or sell, or even throw away -- and you are supposed to report every gift you give or receive.  If you throw something away that you are recorded as having bought and haven't reported as receiving as a gift, you are automatically suspected of a crime.  Similarly, if you bought an unusually large amount of something and didn't give it away, that was considered suspicious, too.

This seriously limited what kind of profit could be made from a criminal enterprise.  Anything durable would show up when it was put into the disposal units for recycling.  Anything too large would be hard to hide from the monitoring.  Anything that required a lot of raw materials to make would show up in the buying records.  About the only thing that was left was stuff like food and "personal services", neither of which could you really accumulate much of.

Until I found the Bean tree, that is.

Ultimately, the Beans were consumable, so they didn't show up in the disposal units.  However, their potency lasted for years, so they didn't spoil like food.  They were small enough and valuable enough that you could have a fortune in your pocket.  And since I got them from Outside, they didn't show up on any buying records.

In the end, that is what got me Exiled.  Being a drug dealer was bad, but for a brief while, I actually made crime profitable in the City.  That was my crime for which I got the ultimate punishment.

Part 6: In Morning

Tales of an Exiled Citizen #1: The Sentence

Exile.

No word is more frightening to a Citizen.

It is more than a death sentence.  For someone who has never been outside the safety of the Dome, it is the cruelest form of death possible.  In reality, only the worst offenders actually have the sentence carried out.  Most convicted Citizens, upon hearing that sentence, completely break down and beg for a quick, merciful death, and as long as the crime was not too heinous, it is usually granted.  Indeed, I think jurists tend to give the sentence of Exile quite a bit more often than they mean to, just because they enjoy seeing the spectacle.

I like to think my crimes were minor enough that had I given them that, they would commuted my sentence, too.  But maybe that is just my pride.  I certainly have struggled with that all my life.  Maybe had I been less arrogant, I would never have been caught.  No, even that's too boastful - I guess what I mean is they wouldn't have felt the need to make an example of me.  No, even as my blood ran cold upon hearing the word "Exile", I steeled myself and refused to give them the satisfaction of breaking down and begging for mercy.

Of course, that was not the only factor.  Unlike the vast majority of Citizens whose every breath from their first to their last was taken inside the City walls, I had experienced the outside.  I had found a secret way in and out.  Then again, I wouldn't have been able to commit my crimes had I stayed inside the city.  Not that it really matters, I probably would have run into trouble eventually -- after all in school I was voted "too smart for his own good".

That's why everyone was surprised when I chose maintenance as a career path.  Everyone expected I would go into research.  I finally convinced them that I enjoyed tinkering with things, and naturally my competence scores were near perfect, so they were happy to have me.  Very few people actually choose maintenance as a career; usually it is the only one they have passable competency.

Of course, they were right to be suspicious, because while I do enjoy working with my hands, that wasn't my primary motivation.  Maintenance represented freedom.  Most people are only authorized to go between their home and their work and the few public venues.  Maintenance workers have access to every part of the City -- even those places that aren't monitored.  Of course, you need to have a reason to be where you are, but as a maintenance worker, you get to see the entire City.  That is how I stumbled upon the way out.

All maintenance workers enjoyed that same freedom of place, though I'm not sure all of them appreciated it.  For me, though, there was an additional freedom: time.  Since maintenance workers were all over the place, including areas that were unmonitored because no one else went there, security didn't even bother trying to keep track of us in real time.  We just had to clock in and out, and long as we did the job we were supposed to in a reasonable amount of time, nobody bothered us.  Of course, we did have supervisors who inspected our work after it was completed to make sure it was satisfactory.  But as I said, maintenance generally didn't attract the best and the brightest, so I could get the jobs done in half what was considered a reasonable time, if not faster.  Of course, when I was in an area that was monitored, I took my time.  When no one was looking, I had time to explore.

Part 2: The Discovery

The Dark Side of the Sun

Hipcrime Vocab's Why Green Architecture is a Sham is more than just an expose' on greenwashing in the construction industry. It brings up the scary prospect that the whole project of sustainable technology is a way for the super elite to preserve themselves while letting the rest of the world go to hell.

Free*(?) Farm Help

The (Pennsylvania) Capital Resource Conservation and Development Area Council has just published a Guide to Internships and Employment for Pennsylvania Farms.  It "surveys legal requirements and provides an overview of legal definitions of intern and apprenticeships, wage and compensation details, and housing considerations. It is not a replacement for direct legal counsel but builds a strong foundation for farmers considering the hire of or already employing an intern or apprentice. "

Moped Rules in PA

At some point I'd like to have a velomobile, which would be classified as a moped, so I'll want to know the rules of the road for mopeds in Pennsylvania.

NWO Handbook

There isn't a conspiracy for global governance.  It's all out in the open.  Here's one of their handbooks:

Our Global Neighborhood : The Report of the Commission on Global Governance

Thank Obama...

Arthur Silbur from his latest entry in his Power of Narrative blog:

The only reason you aren't dead right now is because Obama hasn't decided to kill you -- yet. But he claims he has the power to do so -- and there are almost no voices of any prominence to dispute the contention.

So, have you thanked Obama today for allowing you to live?

The Evil Banana

From the Permies.com forums:

A Scary Thought

With the regard to the government, what if this is as good as it can get?  Or as George Mobus puts it on  Question Everything,

What If the People We Send to Congress ARE the Best We Can Find?

 This scary thought occurred to me as I watched the fiscal cliff negotiations proceed. I have been lamenting the brokeness of the political system and the federal government for a while now. And I am hardly the only one. But if my thesis about the lack of sapience is correct then we are not looking at a merely broken system. Maybe the system is working perfectly given the constraints on the capabilities of the component parts (we humans). We can't assume that somehow or another we keep sending incompetent or dishonest people to Washington and that one day that will change. 

How Obamacare Can Reduce Unemployment

Okay, follow closely.  Let's say you have some work that needs done that requires 120 person-hours a week.  Originally you might have hired 2 people to work 60 hours a week.  Then after overtime became an issue, you hired another person and cut everyone back to 40 hours a week.  Then came benefits for full time employees, so you went to 4 people working 30 hours a week.  Now with Obamacare, you would have to provide health insurance for people working 30 hours a week, so you go to 6 people working 20 hours a week.

Of course, this only works in jobs where there is a ready supply of new employees.  Those industries that can't hire readily just have to adjust to what they can afford, and those are the ones that publicly announce layoffs.  The hiring from Obamacare is more in low-skill service work, which goes relatively unnoticed.  Of course, there is no more money being paid to employees, so it's not really helping the economy, but it makes Obama look good.

So, the trend I expect to be reported over the coming months is a mild drop in the unemployment rate with a sharp increase in the underemployment rate, i.e., people who want to work full time but only have part time jobs.

Coming Soon: Gun Insurance

Eric Peters wrote a very interesting article on how they will incrementally make guns impossible to own for all but the richest among us: "Here's How It Will Be Done" (on his website).

Why I Voted For Ron Paul

"Every nation gets the government it deserves."  -- Joseph-Marie, comte de Maistre

If you voted for Barrack Obama because you love the guy, congratulations.
If you voted for Mitt Romney because you love the guy, I'm so sorry.
If you voted for either because you thought they were so much better than the other choice, I understand.

If you voted for either because they were the lesser evil, you suck.
If you didn't vote at all, you really suck.

I didn't waste my vote.  I voted for someone I actually thought could do the job.

As long as we keep meekly approving the crappy choices they give us, they will keep giving us crappier choices.

Americans deserve four more years of this government.  Maybe then they'll finally wake up and take some real action.

What if...

... the government wants all guns registered not because they want to control all the guns, but because they are looking to conscript people who are already competent with guns?

Bar Stool Tax Explanation

"Bar Stool Economics: A Simple Guide to the American System of Taxation and Distribution" by Mac Slavo on SHTFplan.com is a good explanation of how the tax system works in the US.

UN Arms Treaty Scuttled

Okay, I admit, I didn't see this one coming: "Obama blamed for failure of international arms-trade treaty" on TheHill.com

Hard Community Service

The article "Hang 'Em High" in the Doomstead Diner got me thinking.  Our prisons are overcrowded, and there is a lot we could be doing to make things better but don't because they don't give results before the next quarterly report or election.  My thought is we should not send people to prison for nonviolent offenses.  Instead of spending a year in jail, for example, give them 2000 hours of community service.  Of course, if someone is such a habitual offender that adding more time won't matter to them, then we'll need to do something else; prison might be appropriate then.

Health Insurance Mandate the Legal Way

Okay, I am not a lawyer, but given what I know about the tax code, they could have done the individual mandate the following way:

1. Impose a direct (per-capita) tax of $695 on everyone.
2. Make everyone pay an additional 1% tax on their income.
3. Give people who have health insurance a refundable income tax credit of $695 plus 1% of their income.

Each step is well-precedented and I believe constitutional, and by my understanding would generate the a little more income than the provisions in Obamacare.

Of course then it would have had to have been sold as a tax increase.