areas where the use of Sprugs as a medium of exchange was prohibited, and general areas where everyone was free to indulge in using the raw power of the Sprug.
VII
The Gambling Problem
Because the people craved Sprugs, and gambling was a way to instantly accumulate a lot of them without bothering to produce anything, the Lilliputians used many Sprugs already in short supply in gambling. For this purpose the Anointed created a huge casino on the street next to the old south city wall where they used a lot of the nation’s Sprugs in highly organized and unproductive gambling.
In the casino they gambled on the success of new projects by investing in them – and in this capacity served an important role in the exciting game of chance that constituted the economy. But they also bet or “hedged and shorted” against the continued success of businesses, and this produced nothing. So many Sprugs, already in short supply in order to maintain faith and stabilize prices, were employed in non-productive activity.
Peasants were also invited to gamble on new and existing projects, and to bet or hedge that a business would not secede. This spawned a huge industry of “gurus” who claimed to know the future and charged great sums to bet for the public. They claimed to know this and that about the gambling odds, but usually the Anointed who ran the casino knew information months before the public or the “gurus,” so peasants rarely made any large winnings.
Another problem was that Devil Anointed would bet that a business or even a section of the economy would fail, and then secretly manipulate conditions to create the failure. Well planned, these illegal operations often caused the entire economy to “crash,” and then the Devils would compound their deed by buying up property and businesses they had nearly destroyed on the cheap like vultures.
It always tickled me how the Devils who had created a “crash” at the casino covered up their scam. They would tell the peasants that the crash was created by the peasants who had too many expectations and were living too high. The peasants, feeling guilty, would call in the High Heels to “cut government spending” to reduce their standard of living to make up for the Sprugs that they had carelessly “lost.”
The truth was, of course, that no Sprugs had ever been “lost.” There were just as many Sprugs after the “crash” as before. The so called “lost” Sprugs were actually in the pockets of the Devil Anointed that caused the “crash.” Most of the little people were aware of this, and once in a while would put a few Devils in jail, but generally they just shrugged and secretly admired the “business acumen” of the Devils.
The Low Heels knew unrestricted gambling at the casino was rigged and generally unproductive, so they wanted important things like pension funds, banking, insurance and medical funds be kept out of the casino. But the High Heels opposed them for they wanted all funds run through the casino to give the Anointed a crack at everything. The High Heels always had great faith that everything the Anointed did was beneficial to society.
In fact the little people so believed that gambling at the casino was such an important part of their economy, that they judged the health of their economy – not on how much was produced in the economy – but on how much was won or lost by a select list of Anointed in the casino. The economy might be producing an enormous amount of goods and services, but if members of this select list lost a lot of Sprugs, the whole island would become depressed.
HOW I WAS A WINNER; One of the biggest things gambled upon at the casino while I was there was my future whereabouts, because my comings and goings had an unlikely impact on the economy. Under normal conditions, I certainly would have had a negative impact since I tended to eat them out of house and home, and was often such a destructive nuisance. You’d tend to think my appearance in a town would have been met with dread, and my leaving with joy.
Remember, it took an army of grooms just to keep me clean, and another army just to carry away my waste and fumigate my outhouses, another army to grow my food and cook it; and entire factories to make and mend my clothes, tents, and bedrolls. My daily care employed the whole town wherever I stopped, and I consumed everything they produced.
Furthermore, I was an enormous nuisance for I was forever accidently stepping on their farms, roads and bridges, and my snoring often kept whole towns awake at night. And when I suffered gas, or the wind blew the smell of my outhouse the wrong way, they often had to evacuate their homes. But my arrival was never seen as a negative – instead it was seen as a positive and my arrival a great boon for a town.
You see the emperor paid the towns for my keep, so, instead of seeing my arrival as an economic tragedy for a town, my attendance was considered so valuable that betting on where I’d go next or where I wouldn’t go was the largest game at the casino. Fortunes were won and lost betting on my future whereabouts, and towns fought over who would enjoy my presence next.
In fact, my main job while I was on Lilliput was as a roving stimulus package. The emperor would send me to areas where the economy lagged for lack of employment and Sprugs, and leave me there until things picked up and then move me on. All during my stay towns on the islands would fight over my comings and goings, and you can’t imagine how many times they tried to bribe me into coming.
This reminds me of an incident. One day a little fellow came to me cap in hand, and introduced himself as the mayor of a small town to the east called Wagonville. He said his town was in tough shape because so many of the factories that made wagons had been closed. He asked me if I’d be kind enough to slip over and shit in the middle of his town square, report it as an accident, and have the Emperor pay the town to clean it up.
I thanked the Mayor and told him I understood his problem, but I was already committed to shitting in the town I was staying in. I admit that I often felt guilty being such a consumer and nuisance, and tried to eat less, wear clothes longer, and wade out to sea to relieve myself. But the townspeople would always plead with me to stop, for they desperately needed the jobs and the Sprugs they received for my care.
Of course, for the gambling to be honest and give an accurate measure of the health of the economy, my comings and goings had to be kept a national secret. However, I noticed that wherever I arrived, well-connected Anointed would already have set-up shop in anticipation of my arrival. So while I did provide jobs and some Sprugs to the little people of the towns, mostly I stimulated the pockets of well connected Anointed.
So, to conclude explaining the problems of life in the economic theocracy – there was this problem of gambling, the vexing problem of maintaining faith in the Sprug that required keeping Sprugs in short supply to maintain the norm of 10% unemployed and 30% living below the poverty line, and there was the problem of crime and corruption caused by using the raw power of the Sprug.
However, most Lilliputians believed these problems to be “modest,” and easily outweighed by the advantages – the simplicity of using the Sprug as a medium of exchange – the equal opportunity of the people to accumulate the imperial power of the Sprug and live royally – but most important the fact that they so enjoyed playing with the raw power of the Sprug that they were ready to endure any problems.
With that I’ll end my report of the quaint economy of Lilliput and move on to give a brief account of the equally quaint economy of the neighboring Island of Blefuscu. It follows a much different course, with lots of novel twists and turns, and, in passing, you’ll discover why I never felt welcome on Blefuscu, and why I stayed mostly on Lilliput.
VIII
The Quaint Economy
Of Blefuscu
As I explained in the beginning both Lilliput and its sister Island of Blefuscu were potential Gardens of Eden, and while I was there both operated their economy as a theocracy governed by the Anointed under the influence of the “invisible hand” of The Almighty Sprug. And, of course, both enjoyed the same advantages and disadvantages and were convinced the advent of The Almighty Sprug had led them out of a boring Garden of Eden into the best of all possible worl
ds.
However, because the channel between the islands was so full of riptides and fast currents and was practically impassable in their tiny boats, Blefuscu had sailed a much different course to become an economic theocracy, and on that different course had passed through a Golden Age of universal prosperity before tragedy led the Blefuscuians to abandon their Garden of Eden and adopt The Almighty Sprug and economic theocracy.
In the very beginning, because they worshipped the same Heavenly God and used the same Holy Book as Lilliput, Blefuscu had the same problem of too much production and the stinking tithe. And their emperor also tried all the same solutions. He expanded their bureaucracy, created a large army and navy and war materials industry, created incidents to engage in war with Lilliput, and ended with the same lack of success as had the emperor of Lilliput.
But on Blefuscu, when the emperor found these steps didn’t solve the problem of the stinking tithe, he didn’t introduce the Sprug as did the emperor of Lilliput. No fool, he was very jealous of his imperial power, and wasn’t willing to issue it into circulation. His spies had warned him how the clever Anointed on Lilliput had accumulated Sprug power, and used it to make