Stimulating the Economy on the Backs of the Poor [published on David Frum's FrumForum]
Prose [Voice: Jane Austen]
The letter, held but faintly in her fingers, began to tremble. Her chest sucked in a quick gasp and she turned to look out over the recessing lawn that drew her attention, her very heart, toward the lane that led to Wold Upon Pumice and the pen that had so haltingly written this agonized letter just a fortnight before. How to respond to such lines? Had she the courage to open herself to this level of discourse, this realm of unbridled emotion?
Oh, but how silly! Such frivolous thoughts entered her mind too quickly to be considered! This letter surely required no such response, either from her own pen or from that of her aunt, for the man now residing in Wold Upon Pumice had, already, in the folds of his own memory, the firm convictions of her own promised position, knew the depths of her feeling on the matter of engagements and had, at one time, even agreed with them. Of this, young Penelope could be fully certain and, thus, unquestioningly and unequivocally silent in her reactions. She would send no letter on the return post, neither today nor in the weeks to come, as the damp and humid winds swirling through the stark tree branches of the coming autumn months would surely dissuade such movements of the brittle, dry papers on which such letters of love must be borne.
“I must, I think,” thought Penelope to herself, “lock these fascinations and imprudent fantasies within my own private bosom for at least a small time longer. A month is little to ask.”
When the door of the drawing room finally did creak quietly open, Penelope saw the form of her sister bent around its edge and peering in with timid eyes. She would be, without any doubt, approaching to announce the delayed but resigned departure of the only carriage that could deliver such a letter, the only carriage within 20 miles of Maudlin Manor with the only steed capable of such a journey into the moors and the mires separating her own gently beating heart from the bustle and clamor of the streets of Wold Upon Pumice and the man who toiled there under a back-bending burden of misapprehension and doubt. Penelope sighed and closed, with some finality, the drawer of her mahogany writing desk, dropping her furled brow on its long, black, empty ink blotter with a silent thud.
Prose [Voice: J.R.R. Tolkien]
Uachtarán coughed. “Prince Balor,” the waves of his booming voice bounced violently from several stone walls, “he plots to steal our wealth.”
The gathered knights shouted and pounded long plank tables supporting predictable steins of ale. A clanging ensued, as the threat of theft and lack fueled the emotions of the men. On Babda's back, her listening hairs quivered.
Uachtarán spread a parchment on the table’s center planks, requiring a pledge of fealty to their leader and the mission of their war. “If ye agree,” he ordered the men, “sign with the quill dipped in dragon’s blood.”
“Bad cess, that is, a dragon’s blood signatory,” Láidreacht announced. “Better we sign with our own!” Someone drew a blade across another’s fingertip.
“Nay, hold.” Mealladh stood. “The frogs of winter, then, told not of Balor’s attack, but your own.” The lairds stopped in their pounding and finger cutting and focused their attention on the Ugly Mouth. “We were warned durin’ the Feast of the Snows of invasion by the Prince!”
The men began a low muttering and the antennae atop Babda’s head flickered wildly. Outside the hall doors, Saoirse heard their voices dwindle down to near nothing.
“Twas not I who was charmed by these sightings of frogs,” Uachtarán spoke solemnly. “And twould do well to remember that I was the one insisting they'd simply hopped aboard a frigate.” A few heads nodded, remembering. “Be it known that my attack was not determined until the bank approached me, the Bonny Bank. Tis impossible for mortal men to know the workings of visions and omens and oracles, but know ye that such oracles always find their purpose.”
Saoirse, catching a few of Uachtarán’s phrases, was pondering a novel idea that the hearts of men weren’t located in their chests, but in their abdomens. Uachtarán’s words seemed to reach those hearts, the organs that would push and prod the muscles of warrior legs. In Uachtarán’s men, the abdomens grew firm. Chemicals of courage and anger flowed through their bloodveins, chemicals that can’t be swallowed in an herb, but must grow out from the constriction of the deep, black hole of an eyeball.
Poetry [Voice: Dr. Seuss]
Re: your errors in grammar, the ad possessed six
(and a sentence and phrase in the bullets don't mix).
Now, to answer your questions, my schooling was thus:
a degree earned in English, linguistics, and plus
all the work on my masters in writing creative
was straight 4.0 in its grade qualitative.
(But before I could finish my masters I strayed,
and that's why it's not listed, nor now resume'd.)
So, how much can I write every day or per week?
Full as much as required, as much as you seek.
I will typically write 750 per day
on the internet posts that inform or persuade.
What's my style? Oh, many; I once claimed to be
just a technical writer for AT&T.
But awards for my poetry, several I've won!
And my textbook on econ was cleverly done.
Now then, when can I start? Tout de suite! Anyhow,
that's to say, I'm available right here and now.
Prose [Voice: Douglas Adams]
The smattering of Silvidian eyes began to blink in a more relaxed rhythm but Brimp Inni, another reluctant Council member, sighed derisively in the direction of the Earth people. This meeting, an activity he despised, had been called because, in an almost predictable manner, the Earth humans had created a huge mess of things on a Silvidian moon. Brimp blamed these kerfuffles on the flawed nature of human brains. After all, the tricameral Silvidian brain was housed entirely in the head. Earthlings housed only the left and right hemispheres there, relegating the third “intuitive” brain to the bowels. “I keep all my grey matter up here,” Brimp was fond of telling them, while pointing at his temple. “Free from the poo.”
The humans didn’t much like the Silvidians, either, but their reasons had more to do with Silvid’s lack of theme parks. The frugal people of Silvid frowned on such frivolous ways to spend money and had invested their excess wealth in economic education camps.
Hrod was getting tired of the whole problem. “What do you Earthlings have to say for yourselves, anyway?”
“Well, Mr. Onk,” began the other Earthling, Brian. He took a breath and scanned the crevices of his intestinal brain for just the right word. “I guess it was frustration. We’ve gone along with this idea of, hey, let’s try socialism out, see for ourselves. But it’s been going on for almost 200 years now and none of them ever seem to notice the poor results.”
“Frustration, for sure,” added Mark, “but it won’t happen again.”
Hrod wasn’t convinced this problem would just go away and wondered if his brother, Hrid, might pull up the lawyers on screen.
“No, no,” Vawn said, sitting back in his chair. “We’ll just do what we did last time.” The statement caused the eyebrows of both Mark and Brian to lift. Last time? A third, quieter Earthing deigned to look up from her phone. Vawn shrugged. “You don’t think you’re the first frustrated Earth capitalists to send some socialists to re-education camp, do you?”
Nervous laughter erupted and the female Earthling returned to her phone. Brimp admitted the whole arrest scenario was actually fairly common and assured his colleagues that the three girls would wake up in their beds tomorrow with one hell of a hangover and a few faint memories of having their DNA sampled during a Xelian abduction event. Blaming everything on the Xels seemed a fitting solution everyone could live with and Hrid texted the attorneys to stand down.
Non-Fiction
At the time of Shakespeare, the world mostly operated under an economic system known as mercantilism, in which more value was placed on gold (as money) than on commodities or merchandise. This belief caused mercantilists to further believe their wealth was their money, an idea Adam Smith would eventually refute in Wealth of Nations.
But that’s getting ahead of ourselves because Adam Smith was writing 150 years after Shakespeare.
Because mercantilists believed gold was more valuable than merchandise, seen almost as worthless trifles, they were eager to export their merchandise to other countries for which they would be paid in gold. In fact, when articulating mercantilist policy, Sir Francis Bacon’s rival jurist, Edward Coke, is described below referring to such merchandise as “trifles.”
Francis Bacon, though, was often at odds with the mercantilist economics of his day. In Book 8 of Advancement of Learning, Bacon expressed an anti-mercantilist position when discussing the nature of money. He wrote that the sinews of fortune are not money, i.e., money is not wealth. He then elaborated, saying: “[I]t is not Monies that is the sinews of Fortune, but the sinews rather and abilities of the Mind, Wit, Courage, Audacity, Resolution, Moderation, Industry, and the like.”
A human mind, a human heart, and human action create merchandise, commodities, food (things of value to human survival and progress) and, as such, are a form of wealth. These aspects of the human being are known, in economic terms, as “human capital.” Capital in this form contributes to human survival in a way that money does not because money doesn't think and money contains no calories.
Bacon furthers this idea in “New Atlantis,” when the governor of the Strangers House says something revolutionary, in economic terms, to the voyagers: “As for any Merchandize you have brought, ye shall be well used, and have your Return, either in Merchandize, or in Gold and Silver; for to us it is all one.”
Somewhat similar to the function of the Templars Bank, which held gold for pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem, the Strangers House in New Atlantis is working sort of like a bank for traveling strangers, holding their merchandise for safekeeping. That merchandise would be well “used,” meaning the usury or interest paid to the travelers would be high, and the merchandise would be returned to them either in similar merchandise or in money.
This New Atlantean view of money was opposite that of mercantilism. The people of New Atlantis did not value gold money more than merchandise. They saw gold and goods as the same, “as one.” Two hundred years later, the French economist Jean-Baptiste Say would describe money in a similar way, as supply.
Here, Bacon is emphasizing the economic distinction that capital is an aspect of wealth, itself, while money is simply a measure of wealth and a measure of value. In “New Atlantis,” Bacon shows irrefutably that there is no greater value in money than in the merchandise it buys; in New Atlantis, money and merchandise are “all one.” Mercantilists, on the other hand, valued money higher than merchandise. They would rather export merchandise for money than pay money for imported merchandise. In "New Atlantis," imports and exports would both be understood as valuable and necessary.
