Starving the Monkeys: Fight Back Smarter

by Tom Baugh

  Tract had long ago realized the benefit of belonging to Luth's congregation, seeing the large numbers of recently displaced workers who gathered there. Tract then, making a big show of modest donations to Luth's larder, employed some of the displaced there to build the huts. "God has answered your prayers," Luth cried, hugging Tract in front of them as he thanked the young man for his donations to his larder. Luth knew that this act of marketing had benefitted them both, and declared, "soon the turned-away shall have homes."

  With his new workforce of the faithful, Tract split the lands and built the huts. He split large lots of distressed land into many smaller ones, each qualifying for the land tax exemption. In the process Tract was able to profit many times over on the price he could charge for each lot. He also yielded an additional profit for each hut which his workers built identically, as if by machine.

  And soon the younger tribesmen, instead of waiting until they had made their fortunes before taking brides and huts of their own, began buying these hut lots before they would have otherwise. Despite the triple and higher profits available to Tract, the use of the lien allowed the payments to be spread out into many decades into the future.

  Few of these naive fully understood the enormous sums which would be paid to Tract's venture over time. Some, unable to bear these costs, defaulted. At each default, Tract merely took the hut and lot back, and sold it anew. A few complained, and some even to Luth. But Tract's generous donations to Luth's larder made sure that only the most glowing praise for the young entrepreneur came from the mount. He reserved that venom to spew at the productive who chose to withhold their bounty from his clutch.

  From a tribal perspective, Tract's venture presented many benefits. The creation of a specialized builder vocation made huts in Tract's lots much cheaper than they would have been otherwise. And yet, these new artisans were essentially a captive worker class. Any who tried to leave to create their own enterprises soon realized that without the access to information and funding which Tract possessed, they could only build more expensively, and thus less attractively. Unlike Tract, the individual builder could not purchase a large enough block of land to help the distressed owner very much. Nor could they take advantage of his ability to buy the timber and the thatch for dozens or hundreds of huts at once, and thus command lower prices for these. Many also fell prey to an effect which the taxation, and more importantly its collection, soon caused throughout the tribe.

  As each full moon dawned, over a period of a few days each the tribal collectors swarmed the valley. They spent only a few minutes at a poor tribesman's hut, but as many as hours at a merchant's. For the individual workers, these visits were truly more or less friendly conversations as the collector, knowing there was little to take to begin with, assayed their meager belongings. For the merchant, however, these visits became more and more intrusive, with the collector understanding the far greater treasure to be found in the merchants' hands.

  Collectors soon learned that the more time they lingered in the merchants' and artisans' huts, the more they might find. On these days, then, the merchants found themselves hosting an unwelcome, and often hostile, guest. Not only did they resent the intrusion, as any free man might, they had to spend the hours with the collectors as they rummaged about. But also, each productive man so disturbed also required a certain cooling-off period after the collector left.

  The bubbling resentment before and after, and time lost both directly from the inspection and indirectly from the resentment, cost the merchants valuable time. This loss of time was, in effect, yet another tax on them. The merchants soon found that as many as two days per month of productive effort could be easily destroyed by the collection itself. This tax was far higher than the one part in a gross of the collection.

  A typical merchant worked each day of the lunar month, but lost two of these days to the collection process. Then, as much as ten parts per gross of their time was wasted, ten times the actual tax itself. Even if only the few hours of the collection were wasted, a psychological feat available to only the most hardened merchant, then this still represented a loss of as much as twice the actual collection.

  So, the resentment of the collection tended to tax most the individual who cared the most about liberty. The more callous merchants, who saw nothing wrong with the intrusiveness of the collection process, saw this as a necessary part of life in a collective. And so were damaged less. This resulted in a separation of the froth of the merchant class, the more collectivist damaged less, the more individualist damaged more. Ever so slightly, the collectivist, weighted less by the intrusion, prospered more, while the individualist prospered less.

  Similarly, the poorer workman, if he cared nothing about his liberty, but instead thought that the tax inspection was worth his time and attention, fared no worse than his fellows. But the workman who resented the intrusion, seeing his liberty as supreme, was more harshly treated by the collectors, who reflected his indignation back onto him. In some cases, the collectors goaded the individualist workman into violence. Reacting, he was arrested and punished for his crime of defiance. His crime was punished sternly as those in the government progressively saw themselves as the masters of the tribesmen, rather than their servants.

  "Live as a peaceful citizen in the tribe," Luth preached from the mount. The congregated collective nodded in righteous assent. Each of the righteous saw the individual who would react so harshly as more of a threat to them than the state. Each vowed their support of those who stamped out these threats on their behalf.

  Then, another separation between the individualist and the collectivist tribesmen began to become apparent. One might view the merchants along a continuum, as is normal for a snapshot of any segment of society at any point in time as their respective fortunes rise and fall. In this light one might find wealthy merchants on one end, and struggling merchants on the other. Some of the wealthy merchants and artisans decided that the best way to manage the intrusion of the collection was to employ the services of an agent. These agents' specific responsibility was to inventory their holdings. And then work with the collector to make the process as smooth as possible, relieving the principal of the process entirely. These agents, who swarmed over the accounts of merchants like insects, soon became known as Account-Ants.

  The most wealthy merchants were able to hire these agents with ease, amortizing the additional cost, effectively an additional tax, across their entire enterprise. As this practice allowed them to return their attention to their business, they, like the callous merchant, suffered less from the collection, and prospered more.

  The most struggling merchants were unable to afford such a luxury, and had to bear the entire cost of the collection inspection by themselves. The least of these, already teetering on the edge, were unable to tolerate the lost days and simply chose to close their businesses.

  In the middle between these two extremes were those who could hire an Account-Ant to assist, but only on a part-time basis. The individualists in this middle group found their days chewed away and prospered less as a result of their inclination to rely on their own efforts and industry. On the other hand, the collectivists in this group, not resenting the additional gaping mouth of the account-ants, prospered more by their employ. And so, the individualist was biased to sink, while the collectivist was biased to rise, or at least not sink as quickly. Either perspective led to a separation in prosperity.

  And in the process, the account-ant became an entirely new profession which produced nothing, but merely mitigated the costs of the tax collection. Not a single grain was produced by them, nor a single stick collected, nor a single tool crafted, nor a single gourd hollowed, a hide preserved, or a fruit fermented. They only consumed.

  The account-ants knew their bread was buttered not so much by their employers, but by the tax collection process which necessitated them. They found their allegiance swayed toward ever more complicated collection rules and inspections, rules which would fatten their larders
as their employers suffered. Indeed, some of these account-ants drifted easily back and forth with employment as collectors themselves. A few were so bold as to advertise their experience as tribal collectors to validate their skills to their merchant and artisan employers.

  The account-ants soon learned to attend meetings of the tribal council, and mingle about the congregation of the shamans. At each meeting they urged each group on to levy and demand, respectively, more and more complicated exceptions and special cases to taxation. As pure collectivists, deriving their incomes solely from the actions of the blind, unthinking and self-righteous demands of the electorate, they too contributed to the shamans. In turn, the shamans held them up as good men, thinking only of the needs of the people, and whose concerns should be enacted. Luth and the others needn't have bothered, the congregations were already primed to throw their weight behind any proposal which punished the producer while helping themselves.

  In the meantime, the effects of the reduced sowing, and harvests, and intrusion of the collection began to accumulate. As did the removal of previously fertile croplands, pastures and orchards as Tract converted them into hut lots. As the tax base shrank, both for the inventory and the land assessments, the tribal council decided to simply raise the assessments to make up the shortages. Meanwhile, they employed ever more collectors, and more enforcers for the sheriff, and more road workers to build roads out to the complexes of huts, as well as maintain the roads which already existed.

  No one in authority seemed to care that the produce of the tribe itself was shrinking, and along with this shrinkage a reduction in the quality of life of each tribesman. All that mattered to the collective, council and shaman alike, was that less was making its way into their hands, and into their constituency. Less for the tribal council meant less power for them, and less for the electorate meant less in the shaman's larder.

  Their solution was as simple as it was inspired. "Increase the assessments on the wealthy, while keeping the assessments on the poor low," argued one account-ant to the tribal council. As he spoke these words he imagined the complications which might make him indispensable.

  And so the assessment grew, from one, to two, to three parts per gross on the wealthy. The struggling merchants at the bottom gave up their enterprises and sought employ with the wealthy. As the did so they competed for work with their former hires, abandoning their individualist ethic in exchange for the practical expedient of eating. Meanwhile, the account-ants grew ever more indispensable. And the separations between the individualist merchant and the collectivist grew.

  "Verily, the poor suffer greatly as it is," countered Luth, seeing his donations decline as fewer merchants employed them, and smaller merchants gave up. Before, five small merchants might employ three workers each, for a total of fifteen. But a larger merchant, for the same work output, might employ only ten. Such was the nature of the advantages of scale in the face of the collection (our tribe had not yet discovered automation, which represents a different economy of scale altogether; more about this later). Artisan for artisan, woodcutter for woodcutter, the same per-man output is equivalent regardless of the scale of the enterprise. But only the intrusion of the collection, and the need for the account-ant, tipped the balance in favor of the large. These large might have otherwise suffered from the additional layers of supervision to direct them all.

  "Save us from this privation," the poor cried out to all who might listen, as the declining output of the tribe struck them most of all. Their garden lots had not produced nearly the bounty they had expected. Tending these by hand began to seem too much like work, and they couldn't employ the herds of cheval as did the master planter. Og and Pok could have taught them that, but it never occurred to the poor that the master planter had become wealthy by saving them the effort. Or that their previous job was far easier than sweating crops from the ground. Jobs such as tending the chevals for the planters, jobs which they had hated into extinction as the planters sought to reduce their holdings.

  "Then shall we increase the assessments on the wealthy even further, and pay the poor from the larder of the tribe?" asked another account-ant? "Yes!" shouted the tribal council, who knew this would ensure their hold on the populace.

  "Yes!" shouted the account-ants, who knew this would increase their hold on the merchants.

  "Yes!" shouted the shamans, who knew this would increase their larders.

  "YES!" shouted the poor, their very number and need being their primary value to the tribe.

  And so collections on the poor ceased. These collections were replaced by disbursements as the tribal council established huts throughout the valley where the poor might gather to receive their unearned goods. In a mockery of the accounting which Tab had invented, tribal workers, hired for the purpose, checked off each man, woman and child as they arrived to clutch at their reward for existence and for their vote. In return, the poor, relieved of the necessity of work, grew in number. The collectivists, wealthy and poor alike, smiled at each birth, welcoming another of their own.

  Meanwhile, the assessments on the wealthy increased to four parts per gross. Not all paid this, however. The most clever among them had hired the best of the account-ants to qualify them for exceptions which had been created for the purpose. Only the individualist merchants, for the most part, paid the full share, they not having hired the account-ants to save them. And so the separation increased in intensity, driving more individualists toward poverty, and more collectivists upwards, their inventories spared.

  For the most part, throughout this time the winters remained mild, the springs wet, and the summers long. Despite this declining production the tribe had yet to suffer the payment for its foolishness. Foolishness caused solely by the demand of the collective, whether poor worker or wealthy account-ant or exempted merchant. Or, the least to blame, by the tribal councilman who merely created the laws the electorate demanded.

  The next separation of the individualist and the collectivist came about as some of the merchants and artisans, like the woodmen before them, reacted to assessments which seemed to rise without end. These merchants and artisans sought also to divert some of their property away from the hands of the collectors. Before long, the more dishonest of them actively hid their goods from sight, particularly the smaller, more valuable items such as tools. In so doing, the dishonest prospered more, while the honest prospered less.

  As this latest separation took hold, the wealthy became more and more what Luth had claimed from the mount that they were, the evil rich who stole from the tribe. He neglected to point out that it was his very flock who had created the conditions to make them this way. After all, this served his purpose, too, as did the actions which were soon to follow.

  The tribal revenues continued to decline, when measured against the number of tribesmen, as the productive output of the tribe continued to contract. The council, as they had so often done, concerned themselves not with how to correct the contraction. But instead, they considered how to extract more revenue from what was left, this being the only way to satisfy the electorate who demanded more and more from the council with each passing month.

  At the same time, the account-ants were unsatisfied with the work they performed for the merchants for the week around the full moon collection. They wanted to be employed each week of the month rather than fending for themselves the remainder of the time.

  And from the mount, Luth, who found himself becoming more and more subject to the whim of the greedy monster he had helped create, reflected the ethic of the faithful. "See how the rich hide their goods from the tribe. They buy and sell, but pretend they are poor while the truly poor starve," he told them. And feigned ignorance of the role that the account-ants, his best benefactors, and his congregation played in this.

  The people, in their unsatiable envy, demanded that the tribal council act to stop this theft. Theft which they had enabled by the array of exemptions which they, the tribesmen, had previously demanded.

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bsp; The merchants themselves participated in the next destruction, as they complained about the tax on property itself. "To satisfy my customers, I must maintain a certain inventory, otherwise I shall have nothing to sell in the lean months. It makes little sense to take more from me month to month. If you must take from me, take from my profits when the transaction is complete," they argued, directly and through their accountants.

  The tribal council considered these points of view, and then decided to reform the tax structure. At first, they considered a tax on each transaction, one part in ten. This would have been far less than the forty-eight parts per gross, or one part in three which would have been accumulated during a year of the inventory tax, they thought. Trade twenty sticks of wood for ten hides, and two sticks of wood and one hide would be surrendered to the tribe. Upon initial consideration, this change seemed fair and reasonable to the council of men who had never lived by their own efforts. And who hardly understood the magic of trade or even math, evidenced by their distance from it.

  "But wait, Father," Tract told Gage as the council debated. "I use in my business wood from the woodman, who uses axes from the toolmaker. The toolmaker wraps the heads with leather from the tanner, who purchases acorns gathered by others. These acorns are sent in gourds hollowed out by still others."

  Tract continued, "Along this chain, I pay the woodman in grain. Yet my grain has paid for wood which has paid for axes. These axes paid for leather which has paid for acorns. The acorns have paid for gourds to carry them. But trade works in two directions. Accordingly, the gourds are paid for by acorns paid for by leather. This leather is paid for by axes paid for by wood paid for by my grain. If each exchange is taxed at one in ten, I will receive only," he paused to shuffle the numbers in his head, "about one part in three of wood for my grain. This tax would be twice as bad as the current inventory tax."