by Tom Baugh
Eventually, the organized shamans wound up going to war with the Izzites several times over many centuries. During these wars the organized shamans tossed the snippers around like bargaining chips. Or, the shamans used the snippers' artisanship, when appropriate for the cause. In time, the Izzites would come up with their own brand of snippers who could serve as whipping boy and charity poster child, or attack robots, as needed.
Throughout all of this nonsense, the shamans, of all varieties, overlooked one simple thing. And this thing was the need for somebody to be doing something to pay for all of this drama, as well as maintain the basics of life. Very few people, on any side, were doing much of anything to secure much of those basic resources or have any ideas, the latter being sufficient grounds for a stoning. Individualism was at an all time low. As a result, the world fell into an age of ignorance and poverty that lasted for about a thousand years. The barbarian kings, and their shaman servants, or masters, depending on your perspective, reigned supreme.
Throughout the early years of that millennia, Og and Pok's tribe was one of those that had not yet fallen to either the barbarians or any of these varieties of spiritualists. Fortunately for them, an accident of geography allowed the tribe to learn of the barbarian danger before more than a handful of scouts had raided their treasure. It was this early warning of danger that gave time, years earlier, for Mar and Cor to lead a counterattack against the forward forces of the most nearby barbarian king.
Fortunately for our tribe, that king was embroiled in battle with other kings. At this point in history, each barbarian tribe had expanded sufficiently to meet and vie for territory at their periphery, having consumed and destroyed all within their own interiors. And so, for now our tribe was spared, these kings having larger battles to fight and lacking the resources to chase our remote tribe through the intervening terrain. And the spiritualists had yet to arrive, either.
During this time, the miracle of selfish trade allowed the tribe to prosper. Meanwhile, evolutionary forces began to destroy the barbarians, but spared those who chose to live peacefully together. Similarly, the tribe had sufficient productive members to ensure that peace and self-interest were the unspoken ethos.
But that was about to change, and this time from within rather than without.
Chapter 8, From Force or Fraud
Not all individuals in a society learn the same lessons. Not all make good decisions, and not all prosper. Just as Og and Pok learned to trade with each other to mutual benefit, some did not. Just as Vin learned to ferment, others did not. Just as Tan discovered how to dip hides in acorn water, some chose to not. The intellect that Tab cultivated into creativity lay fallow in others. On and on, other members of the tribe, too numerous to name, failed to learn these skills at first.
Of these, many subsequently learned by watching and doing, and so became productive and happy, if not wealthy. But those who chose to use their minds and learn soon became well off enough to enjoy their days with their friends and loved ones, or to seek solitude if they chose. But others chose to not learn and instead envied their neighbors, blaming them for their own misfortunes.
Meanwhile, the very peacefulness of their culture made men forget that only a short time previously, the hand that snatched was often shattered by a club from the hand that held the prize. In those days, theft was a practice taken at the risk of the practitioner, and, typically, only the barbarian succeeded at this.
But this new brand of theft was different. This kind took advantage of the peacefulness and sense of fairness of the victim, that very peacefulness that was his strength in trade. And so, the productive victim measured the stolen rabbit or stick of wood against the life of the thief. In this balance the good man viewed this illicit trade against the model of fairness with which he judged his productive fellows, and chose to turn aside from his wrath. The thieves soon delighted in their discovery of this new and so very valuable treasure: the willing compliance of their victims.
Once started, without the natural primitive violent antidote and its attendant risks, the contagion began to spread quickly.
"Pok Jr. was bad to round up all the bunnies and trap them, there are hardly any left in the forest. We deserve to have some of them, too."
"Ahks found all of these great rocks and now they are just left scattered around his hut after he made them into edges. If he had left them in the stream bed we could have chipped them into cutting tools also. But, the rocks he left us are too hard to chip, he took all the easy ones."
"It isn't fair that Tab was born smart and can make all those traps. I remember when we were children he used to sit by himself and scheme about making us buy his toys. Why didn't he just play with us like the rest? Didn't we laugh with him when he tried to run after he got sick? You just can't trust smart people."
"Saved us? Mar didn't save us! He cheated us by pretending to stave off those barbarians. He's lucky we don't stone him for throwing his lot in with them to fool us into giving him and Cor so much of our work. He owes us, they both owe us, and we should take it from his trading hut. He has so much he won't miss it."
"Cor shouldn't keep all the chevals for himself. If I wasn't so busy around here, I could have gone and gotten them, too. He shouldn't get to have all those adventures, find that pretty wife, and then get all the reward from raising the chevals. They pretty much raise themselves, look how tame they are. Even little Mowneek can ride them easily."
The productive tribesmen were unsure of how to handle these opinions and the thefts to which they led. At first, they just tried to ignore the problem and each worked a little harder to make up the losses. Mar was more strident.
"These people are just as bad as the barbarians," Mar erupted one evening as he and K'ette were discussing a recent theft. "I should deal with them the same", he continued.
"No, they aren't as bad as the barbarians," K'ette answered, remembering the devastation that had been wrought on her tribe.
"You are right, they are worse," Mar replied, "at least the barbarians risked their lives and fought like men. These animals are no better than yapping dogs, asserting their needs and right to our work, and then cowering in the shadows when we catch them."
"But at least they don't fight," K'ette added, "yet."
"I wish they would," Mar insisted, "then nothing would hold me back from handling them as barbarians." He continued, "It is as if my own sense of virtue and honor holds me back, and they know this." Mar was right. The thieves, by their softness and lack of violence, avoided the precipitation of retribution. Their softness counted on men like Mar and the others to be unwilling to reciprocate fully for the crimes that were being perpetuated upon them on an increasing basis. One day the productive among them met under the same tree where the cheval enterprise had been started so long ago. Ken, who had been very close to Tith, told them of the ways of other lands that Tith had visited as a young man.
"As Tith told me, there are lands, particularly those of the Izzites, that will sever from the body the hand that steals. Other lands he visited seize from the thief three times as much as he stole," Ken said.
"But, as I recall, he also said that the men who judge guilt and innocence in these issues are often as capable thieves as those whose fate they decide," added Ahsee.
"I have seen these things for myself," interjected Cor. "During my last trip, and after two of my best chevals had been taken, I inquired how we might handle our growing problem," he continued. Cor went on to describe how in many of these lands there was little difference between the despotism of a barbarian tribe and the same autocracy veiled behind a gavel. To the man whose property is seized for the benefit of the clever man who can argue better before authority, the club that punishes defiance is just as real. "At least the barbarians are honest about their oppression," he lamented.
Nonetheless, all agreed that something must be done about the growing problem of theft. A single branch taken in the summer is of little consequence. But, let many tribesmen ta
ke a branch whenever they please and before long the original gatherer will freeze in the winter, his efforts stolen away piecemeal while his oppressors live warm in their huts. Recall that it was for this reason in our Old West horse theft was a capital crime.
The tribesmen agreed to form a plan for government, which they would present to the tribe for approval at the next berry festival. Over the next weeks and months they met several times at the tree and formulated a proposal, with the underlying principle of government that the individual tribesman was paramount. A tribesman could only have his liberty or his property removed from him to thrice the extent that he had taken, by force or fraud, the property of another.
In their plan, the government would provide a common means to protect the tribesmen from external attack or internal crime. With this protection it would ensure property rights for each tribesman. The work that Mar and Cor had done previously on an ad-hoc basis to protect the tribe from attack would now be formalized. Training and management of the defense forces and internal security forces would be an explicit responsibility of the new government. Also, the records required to identify which pieces of land were owned by each tribesman would be formally maintained and protected by that government.
The functions of the government would initially be conducted and managed by a manager, not a king. This manager, at least initially, was not considered by the tribe to be their leader, as much as he was actually their servant. He would be empowered only to the extent that his actions served the needs of the tribe.
The actions of the manager would be monitored by a council of tribesmen. The council was to be empowered to enact rules as needed to allow tribesmen to be protected from theft or other threats to their life, liberty or property.
The interests of the tribesmen, regarding both the rules of the council as well as the actions of the manager, were further protected by a chamber of elders. These elders were empowered to monitor, not the tribesmen, but the manager and the council themselves.
The government they envisioned was intended to serve all tribesmen equally. As such, the cost of government would be paid equally by each tribesman; man, woman and child. Tribesmen unable to pay his share could instead perform work for the tribe to maintain common areas, etc.
The details of the arrangement which the tribesmen proposed were too numerous to be considered here. But all of these details were specifically intended to limit the power of the government to be used against the individual. Mar, Cor, Tith and others had seen enough such abuses firsthand during their adventures, and wished to protect their own tribesmen from them. Instead, the government was established specifically to protect the individual against force or fraud, but otherwise to remain a transparent non-entity in their daily lives.
And so, with a few detractors and some haggling about one detail or another, the proposal was presented at the next berry festival. It was soundly approved by the tribe members, most of whom had suffered at the hands of thieves.
Their first experiment into self-government was born. For many years, this arrangement worked as desired. Smiling theft and the occasional fraud ceased to be a problem for the tribe. The thieves and cheats found it easier to work for themselves than to suffer the triple penalty of repaying their victims. And as long as the reason for the establishment of the government remained within the living memory of the governed and a generation or two hence, all remained prosperous and content.
But then, complacency began to sink in. Rather than the governed running the government, the tribesmen selected for the positions of authority too often began to see themselves as existing to be served rather than serve. Other tribesmen, generally the most qualified to oversee the functioning of the government, began to withdraw from service to seek their private fortunes. And in their vacancy they left the operation of government to those hardly qualified to do anything else.
Little by little, then, the tribesmen who participated in the government forgot from whence it came, and they began to realize the enormous power they were capable of wielding. And this power came through the power of taxation, and enforced submission to the will of the government, even when that will stepped beyond the bounds of its genesis.
The catalyst for their destruction came in the form of an elderly widowed woman. Her name is unimportant. We shall call her The Widow. The Widow had lived a life of happiness with her husband and two children. Eventually, the children moved away, and The Widow and Mr. Widow enjoyed their hut and tended the garden together. But one day, Mr. Widow fell ill, and died shortly after. The Widow was understandably griefstricken. Mr. Widow had handled so many affairs of the household that it was difficult for her to understand how she was to manage for herself.
So the next winter, The Widow showed up at the doorstep of the trading hut which had been built to replace the rotted hulk that had been the MarK'ette. But unlike Ploi, who you will recall had encouraged K'ette to hire him and his sister for K'ette's own self-interest, The Widow approached the proprietor with a different proposal. Ploison, who had taken over the trading hut after his father had managed it for years, greeted her as she came in.
"The Widow, I am so sorry to hear of your loss. Mr. Widow and I were glad to see each other whenever he came in. Is there something I can help you with?", Ploison asked.
"Actually, Ploison, there is something you can help me with," she said, clutching her leather pouch in front of her with both hands.
"As you know", she continued, "it is so desperately cold this winter, and Mr. Widow was too ill to gather much this summer. Could you spare some?"
"Sure, we have plenty," Ploison answered as he bent to check his account ledger for her.
"Don't bother checking that rock you keep behind there, we, I mean I, don't have enough anymore to matter. I was hoping you would just give me some for now," she scolded him lightly.
Ploison remembered the story of when his grandparents had died, leaving Ploi and Aunt Emma to fend for themselves. He also remembered the story of how his father, as a young orphaned boy, had approached K'ette with an offer to work for her and Mar. For his whole life, Ploi had been proud of himself for working up from just an errand boy to eventually running the entire trading hut for Mar and K'ette. He worked for them until he had saved enough to purchase the trading hut business from them. Ploison himself had followed in his father's footsteps, at first tending bunnies, then running errands and so on until he now owned the trading hut himself.
Ploison had an idea. "The Widow, I don't have to just give you some wood now, I can offer you something far better."
She brightened, "Oh really? What might that be?"
"Well," he answered, "you are friends with many of the tribeswomen, and so I thought it would be great if you were to work here and help me run things. You could help me manage the accounts and sweep the floor or tidy up here and there. Then I wouldn't be giving you the wood, you would be earning it yourself. Besides, during the day you would be here where it's warm anyway." He thought this was a grand idea, since she tended to do these things all day anyway. Not only would she not be lonely by herself in her hut, but now she could do these things in exchange for a fair amount of goods for the service.
The Widow was speechless. For a moment.
"I can't believe you are doing this to me. And after all the generosity your father and your aunt received from everyone over the years. Now, you are trying to take advantage of me. I knew your grandfather before he died, he would be so ashamed of you right now," she blasted.
"But, this way..." Ploison interjected.
"No, don't try to explain yourself. I know what you are doing. All you merchants are the same, just trying to squeeze everyone for everything you can. And now you are throwing an old widow out into the snow," she shouted as she ran outside, clutching her leather bag.
Indeed, she was friends with many of the tribeswomen. Over the next several days she visited most of them. And to each she told her tale of woe as she sat in their warm huts and drank their brot
h. By the end of the week at least twenty tribesmen and tribeswomen had expressed their displeasure with Ploison as they met him in the trading hut, or ran into him in the village. At first he tried to explain, but that only seemed to make things worse, so he stopped trying.
Had it gone no further, that would have been bad enough. But, at each opportunity for the next several weeks The Widow collared everyone who would listen.
"I just don't know how I'm going to stay warm this winter," she whimpered.
"That Ploison is such a disappointment. If he had to walk in his father's shoes, or mine, he wouldn't be so greedy," she despaired.
"There should be some way of taking care of us. So few have so much, and we many have so little," she preached.
Little by little, the tribesmen listened to her complaints. Each seemed deaf to the opportunity which Ploison had offered her. Their deafness sprang from their distance from subsistence thanks to men like Og and Pok and all the rest. This distance gave them the luxury of thinking that the miracle of trade, and its riches, was their birthright instead of the fragile thing it really is.
Two of her audience turned out to be on the tribal council. One of these men had been on the council most of his life, having done nothing else for a living. The other of the two had failed at previous attempts to run his own affairs, but turned to government service in desperation.
Both councilmen had worked their way through various low-level but necessary government jobs, road maintenance for one and as a deputy for the other. They rose from these jobs through supervisory positions in various limited tribal government positions as were available, and finally to elected office. Neither harbored any illusions about how successful their lives might be without the benefit of government credits. And so, both were keen to listen to the opportunity they heard in the voice of The Widow.
