New York 2140

by Kim Stanley Robinson

Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.

Widening income inequality is the defining challenge of our time. We find an inverse relationship between the income share accruing to the rich (top 20 percent) and economic growth. The benefits do not trickle down. noted the International Monetary Fund years later

And it wasn’t that hard to invent new derivatives, as we had found out, because the floods had indeed been a case of creative destruction, which of course is capitalism’s middle name. Am I saying that the floods, the worst catastrophe in human history, equivalent or greater to the twentieth century’s wars in their devastation, were actually good for capitalism? Yes, I am.

And investors being so hungry for opportunities, the IPPI was performing well if judged simply by the number of bets being made on it; so well that it did even better, in the classic sort of bandwagon jumping that drives the markets and maybe our brains too: it was doing so well that it did better.

then sell it to people and watch it go long, knowing all the while that it is turning into a bubble; and all the while you can short it in preparation for the time that bubble pops. Spoofing? No. Ponzi scheme? Not at all! Just finance. Legal as hell.

But it seemed like a moment of extreme simultaneous global badness was coming, and more and more I was shorting the very bubble I myself had helped to start in the first place.

People stopped burning carbon much faster than they thought they could before the First Pulse. They closed that barn door the very second the horses had gotten out. The four horses, to be exact.

In the immortal words of whoever, “History is just one damned thing after another.” Except if it was Henry Ford who said that, cancel. But he’s the one who said, “History is bunk.” Not the same thing at all. In fact, cancel both those stupid and cynical sayings. History is humankind trying to get a grip. Obviously not easy. But it could go better if you would pay a little more attention to certain details, like for instance your planet.

Because the bailout of banks following the Second Pulse crash was huge. They always are. The bailout of the 2008 crash, which served as the model for the two that followed it, was calculated by historians at somewhere between 5 and 15 trillion dollars. One careful guess said it was 7.7 trillion dollars, another 13 trillion; both added that this was more than the cost (adjusted for inflation) of the Louisiana Purchase, the New Deal, the Marshall Plan, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the 1980s savings and loan bailout, the Iraq wars, and the entire NASA space program, combined. Conclusion: wars and land and social programs must not be very expensive. And compared to rescuing finance from itself, they’re not.

So, laws are made by lawmakers. We elect them. But, you know, companies pay for their campaigns, so they say they’re going to work for us, but once in office they work for the companies. It’s been that way a long time. Of the companies, by tools, for the companies.” “But what about the people?” “You can either believe that voting lawmakers into office means they work for you, so you keep voting, or you can admit that doesn’t work, and quit voting. Which doesn’t work either.”

“What I mean is, if you use the currently existing legal system to vote in a group of congresspeople who actually pass laws to put people back in charge of lawmaking, and they do it, and there’s a president who signs those laws, and a Supreme Court that allows they are legal, and an army that enforces them, then—I mean, is that a revolution?”

Well, once upon a time, there was a country across the sea, where everyone tried their best to make a community that worked for everyone.” “Utopia?” “New York. Everyone was equal there. Men, women, children, and people you couldn’t say what they were. All the various skin tones, and wherever you came from before, it didn’t matter. In this new place you made it all new, and people were just people, meant to be equal, and to treat each other respectfully at all times. It was a good place. Everyone liked living there. And they saw that it was a beautiful place to begin with, incredible really, the harbor, and from east to west it was just one beautiful place after another, with animals and fish and birds in such profusion that sometimes when flocks of birds flew overhead they darkened the day. You couldn’t see the sun or the sky, it was so full of birds. When the fish came back up the rivers to spawn, you could walk across the streams on their backs. That kind of thing. The animals ran in the millions. There was a forest that covered everything. Lakes and rivers to die for. Mountains you couldn’t believe. It was a gift to have such a land given to you.” “Why didn’t anyone live there before?” Jeff asks from out of his sleep. “Well, that’s another story.

Every ideal and value seemed to melt under a drenching of money, the universal solvent. Money money money. The fake fungibility of money, the pretense that you could buy meaning, buy life.

Maybe now it’s the idea that more is better. That’s the rule that underlies economic theory, and in practice it means profit. That’s the one rule. It’s supposed to allow everyone to maximize their own value. In practice it’s put us into a mass extinction event. Persist in it, and it could wreck everything.

Pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.

People are pissed off. They’re scared for their kids. That’s the moment things can tip. If it works like Chenoweth’s law says it does, then you only need about fifteen percent of a population to engage in civil disobedience, and the rest see it and support it, and the oligarchy falls.

No huge need to keep a conversation going; they had already not said all the things they weren’t going to say. It was painful to Vlade.

“And the rating agencies are still kissing ass, so you won’t get any warning there. They never saw a bubble they didn’t triple-A.”

So that’s when you tell her to nationalize the biggest banks and investment firms. Bail them out by buying them out. At that point the American people are in control of global finance.

Also you can aim finance at solving people’s real problems. Congress can reform the financial system based on laws you write for them to pass, and you can quantitatively ease the American taxpayer instead of the banks. Print money and give it out to the bank of Mr. and Miz Taxpayer. It will be the biggest judo flip of power since the French Revolution!”

But after every crisis of the last century, Charlotte thought, or maybe forever, capital had tightened the noose around the neck of labor. Simple as that: crisis capitalism, shoving the boot on the neck harder at every opportunity. Tightening the noose. It had been proved, it was a studied phenomenon. To anyone looking at history, it was impossible to deny.

There weren’t many protocols for moments this out of control, except Don’t get killed or kill people just to stop them moving somewhere, now the standard first rule in every cop’s education.

There was a dank vegetable jungly smell in the air, and many people on the water were wearing white face masks. Mr. Hexter snorted at this. “Little do they know they’re depriving themselves of needed nutrients and helpful microbiome teammates.”

“Yes I’m running, and it’s a pain in the ass, but someone has to. Our much unloved Democratic Party has betrayed us yet again with the mayor’s craven response to the hurricane, she’s not even saying the right things this time, and she’s doing the wrong things as always. I know I haven’t played the game, I haven’t climbed the ladder that the party requires of people to make sure they are fully housebroken before they go down and join the clusterfuck in the capital.