Paul Kelly was not looking forward to the day’s work. He didn’t know why his boss made him attend the stupid convention and listen to the authors hawking their books. Normally his work as a literary agent was easy, read over queries and send a form letter rejecting them, as most lacked any semblance of originality. Now he had to listen to people and tell them why their ideas were crap.
The first author was a woman who looked about thirty years old. She had brown hair, green eyes, and light skin, and wore a red t-shirt and blue pants. She handed him a book that had a pink cover and the title “Fifty Shades of Late Capitalism.” They then shook hands.
“Hello,” she said. “My name is Michelle, Michelle Dodson.”
“Paul Kelly,” he said. He was intrigued by the author, though less by the book. I’d like to slap her around, he thought. But the book would probably be crap.
“So what’s your book about?” Paul asked.
“Economics.”
“And S&M?”
“No, just economics.”
Paul was confused. “Then why the title?”
“Look, if I gave it the title ‘New Perspectives on the Twenty-First Century Economy,’ nobody’s gonna pick it off the bookshelf amidst a hundred others with basically the same title. But “Fifty Shades of Late Capitalism?” That gets your attention.”
“I suppose it does,” Paul said. “So is ‘late capitalism?”
“It’s the period we are currently living through. Soon we will graduate to socialism, the inevitable end-state of human development.”
“Really?” Paul asked. “Because it seems to me that we’re farther from a socialist revolution than ever. Unionization in the private sector is the lowest it’s been in generations. Economic issues seem to be less and less important in politics, eclipsed by identitarian ones. Even many self-identified Marxists talk more about race and gender than economic class.”
“That’s all true. I have a whole chapter detailing the decline in union density.”
“Then why say we’re in ‘late capitalism?’”
“Because people like being on the winning side. Tell them capitalism is doomed and we appear ‘cool,’ ‘forward-thinking,’ on the ‘right side of history,’ etc. And anyway, capitalism can’t last forever. It might be thirty years or it might be fifty or even a hundred, but the revolution will occur. I mean, look how arrogant these bastards are.”
“Capitalists are mightily arrogant; you don’t have to convince me of that. But before we had modern arrogant capitalism, we had arrogant kings and emperors and generals and noblemen.”
“Well, whatever. Even if it isn’t true, it’ll help us sell the book. People look around and they see no sign of a communist revolution. So when we say one is around the corner, well, we must be seeing something they don’t. We must be very smart. And if they start seeing it, they can think of themselves as smarter than the unwashed masses ignorant of this truth. ‘I read it in a book, written by a credentialed economist, so it must be true!’”
***
The next author was a man who looked around thirty years old. He was dressed in a black hoodie and had pale skin and a slight, brown beard. He introduced himself to Kelly as Frank Donoghue. His book was entitled “The Effective Altruist Case for Shorttermism.”
“Shorttermism, what’s that mean?” Kelly asked.
“It's the idea that effective altruism should focus more on the short term. Most economists believe in the declining marginal utility of money. Effective altruists commonly accept the idea and take it to its logical conclusion, that the best use for the donor’s dollar is to help the person experiencing extreme poverty in the third world. Short-termism is another logical outcome of this idea. People in the future should be expected to be richer than people in the present. Ergo, we should direct more of our charitable efforts toward the present.”
Paul thought about it for a few seconds. “Okay, give me a concrete example. How should altruists behave differently, informed by this theory?”
“Many wealthy people plan to give their money away after they die. But consider this. In 1990, there were 2 billion people living in extreme poverty. Now, it’s 700 million. In East Asia, that number has gone from nearly a billion to almost zero. India’s making slower but still steady progress. By 2030, if you believe the forecasts, almost all extreme poverty will be concentrated in Africa. If Africa makes the same progress, by 2050, there may be nobody experiencing extreme poverty. So if you’ve got money you’re saving to donate, you should donate now, you are certain there are people in extreme poverty you can help, rather than save it for the future where there might be people you can help.”
“Convincing,” Paul said. “But then, I fear this may not be a very popular message. I bet many of those who say they are saving to donate are actually thinking, ‘I might donate, but on the other hand, this can also be my rainy-day fund.’ They won’t want to hear this message.”
“Right. But many will want to hear the next message, for it gives them a ‘principled’ reason for doing what they wanted to do anyway.”
“And what is that?”
“Consider carbon emissions. Now, I’m not convinced that the costs of a warming world will exceed the benefits. But even if they will, that doesn’t mean we are obligated to reduce carbon emissions. Consider this. Median household income in the US is around 70K a year. If you assume a real economic growth rate of 1.5% a year, our descendants a hundred years from now will have 4.4 times what we do. Suppose that reducing our carbon emissions would cost us each 2K a year. It will save our descendants 8K a year because they won’t have to ‘clean up our mess.’ Should we really go from 70K a year to 68K a year so that someone else can go from 300K a year to 308K a year? Seems like redistribution in the opposite direction, don’t you think?”
“But aren’t our descendants owed a non-polluted world? I recall a quote somebody said, ‘the planet is not something your ancestors have given you. It is something you have borrowed from your descendants.’”
“Borrowing implies an agreement made voluntarily by two sides. I never signed any such agreement. Of course, if we are giving them a horribly polluted biosphere, one in which they could barely breathe, then yes, that’s a real moral dilemma. But carbon dioxide is not that. At the still-minute concentrations we are spewing into the atmosphere, it has no negative impacts on human health. It makes the world slightly warmer and floods a tiny amount of beachfront land, which is hardly a problem considering how underpopulated the world is.”
“So what we owe the future is … not much?”
“Yes. Consider what happened when you were born. Did the world say, ‘welcome to existence, human being; here’s a basket of stocks and bonds and land?’ No. Of course, many do inherit assets from their parents, but we don’t consider it something they are entitled to. Why should we consider someone born a hundred years ago entitled to some beachfront land that we could cause to flood? Why is it important for him to have it, to go with his flying car, robot servant, and cancer cures? Seems like we ‘need’ it more.”
“I see a problem here. You’re only focusing on the developed world. Yes, our descendants may be fabulously rich. But what of people in the developing world? They are the ones who will be screwed by this climate change stuff.”
“Maybe. But consider they, too, will be richer than their grandparents. Rather than spend our money on green energy subsidies, why not send the money to people living in the third world now? Again, we may never again get the chance to help people in extreme poverty.”
“There’s no possibility for graft and crony capitalism with pure cash transfers.”
“Yes, but we could have the government buy things and then ship them to the third world. We could ally ourselves with big Ag, big pharma, and the fossil fuel industry. I expect Exxon to pay people to shill this book.”
***
The third author was an older man with tan skin and blue eyes who wore a blue and white dress shirt. His was a work of fiction entitled “Atlas Shrugged 2.”
“It’s a sequel to, and parody of, Atlas Shrugged. It takes place fifty years in the future. You see, the sons of the first generation of heroic capitalists are smart, but not as smart as their parents due to regression toward the mean. They then marry bimbos and give birth to total mediocrities who proceed to fritter away the money on designer handbags, woke political advocacy, and investments in startups that have something to do with “the cloud.” Our hero attempts to prove the Coase Theorem by grifting the money away from the mediocrities. At the end, approaching his fifty-fifth birthday, he is successful. Nevertheless, he wonders about the progress that could have been made had his talents been put to inventing something that actually benefited humanity.”
