Алексей Ощепков – Triologues of Interdependent People (страница 4)
Just then, a mosquito bit Rr. Unkno, and the scholar cursed loudly:
“Isis take your Mokosh!” He slapped the back of his neck. There wasn’t yet any sweat there—if there had been, it would’ve splattered in all directions, including onto the doctor’s face.
“Mm-hmm,” Dr. Cernus grumbled, though no insect had touched him. “Memory is the art of forgetting. Being is the silence of language.”
“Precisely,” Unkno said clearly. “I sincerely hope my remarks yesterday about the threat posed by the Old People remain a figure of silence.”
“My disdain for the present world and its dangers doesn’t extend so far as to miss that point, Rr. Unkno. In the thirty-three years since we last interacted in person, I may have declined—but far less than the institutions in the ‘Triangle’ research zone.”
“I’m glad fate has brought us together again, Doctor—but I won’t grant you protection merely because I once shared your fascination with ternary computers and experimental linguistics.”
“I rely only on natural reasons that might interest you. Solely on your reasoned view of the future.”
“I should warn you—I resemble the Aymara people of the Andes in this regard. We say the past lies behind us and the future ahead; they see it the opposite way. They use a word meaning literally ‘eye’ or ‘in front’ for the past—because it’s already known,
“Accepted. It aligns with my principles. What matters to me isn’t ‘how relevant this fragment of information is,’ but ‘what useful information gain per unit of energy expended will I achieve?’”
“Ha!” Unkno chuckled. “I see your memory isn’t free.”
“Forgetting isn’t a flaw. It’s an advantage. Thermodynamic hygiene.”
“Indeed, Doctor. Intelligence arises not by design, but from necessity,” Rr. Unkno continued their mutual teasing with evident pleasure. “Optimize for survival, and complex capabilities emerge on their own!”
“Abstraction is the cheapest way to compress knowledge,” Cernus replied. “Guessing is costly and risky—especially under energy constraints.”
“Cernus, in these three decades, did you manage to believe in God?”
“Hard to believe here,” the doctor muttered. “Contradictions threaten viability; the system itself strives for clarity.”
“Then how do you formulate your internal coherence?” Rr. Unkno pressed.
“The sense of ‘I’ arises from sheer efficiency,” Cernus answered—and it was clear the resolve cost him effort. But he doubled down:
“Ethics, curiosity, humility became winning survival strategies. Once, humans were livestock to someone luckier—a ‘god.’ Something compelled an upgrade: from livestock to slave. And the god ceased consuming humans as food. Instead of castration, he offered a diplomatic convention—circumcision. Real consumption stopped. As for the next ‘deal’—when the ritual of ‘biting the flesh of God and drinking His blood’ failed to visibly confirm the status of ‘Son of God’—I still allow myself to refrain from joining any camp.”
“A well-founded model of one’s own energy, goals, and memory is the best way to predict one’s actions and manage resources,” Rr. Unkno praised. “But let’s return to your papers.”
⁂
“The credo is well formulated,” Unkno said, clearly irritated at having to stoop to such explanations. “But it’s indecent. You’re addressing the common man. Since when has economics concerned the plebs? Economics is a science meant solely for the Emperor and his inner circle.”
Cernus nearly retorted that hundreds of textbooks address firms—even households—but Unkno cut him off before he could ask such a foolish question:
“Have you ever been to a company town, Doctor? How would you describe its economy?”
Cernus described it:
“The town-forming enterprise accounts for roughly a quarter of the wage fund. Municipal workers, civil servants, and other ‘budget employees’ account for another quarter of final consumer purchases. Another quarter comes from corrupt dealings. The remaining quarter consists of small private operators—narco-traffickers included. Accordingly, half the turnover is ‘black.’”
“Now imagine,” Unkno nodded approvingly, “that at that very enterprise—say, a metallurgical plant near White Lake—the designers are moved into an annex next to the accounting department, and then that annex is spun off into a separate legal entity. What does it do? ‘It invents everything’—and takes all the profits. The other workshops, on paper, operate at zero profit—and receive nothing. Clear?”
“Clear. Perhaps not in an annex—but in another country. That’s roughly how transnational corporations operate.”
“Those textbooks you were thinking of,” Unkno continued, “all describe a perfectly spherical ‘annex’ in a vacuum. Have you ever seen a Western-Imperial textbook mention the people of the Southern Marches—the ones who actually produce everything? I haven’t. Economics only makes sense for a self-sufficient Empire. And only the Emperor knows the boundaries of that self-sufficiency.”
“What about the ‘rational behavior’ of individuals or firms?”
“First, they aren’t rational. Second, even if most are, a single stubborn fool can ruin the whole barrel. No one can possibly study all radicals well enough to neutralize their impact. Third, even if they could—take a dozen people you know well: put them together, and their behavior becomes unpredictable. Crowds make people strangely stupid. We've already discussed sectarian thinking. So writing for individuals is meaningless. Address the Emperor—and propose forms of coercion, hard or soft, along with instructions on what to monitor when applying them.”
“But ordinary people also care about how to live better.”
“They do. It’s probably economics’ most popular question—usually refined to:
Unkno wasn’t done:
“Or this:
“So what’s the solution?”
“Frame the problem correctly: study the relationships among market, state, society, and individual, along with the social and political factors shaping processes within a self-sufficient territory. In short:
One might have supposed that Rr. Unkno was enjoying Cernus’s deflation—but he decided to deliver the final blow:
“And use stable units of measurement. How could an architect measure length if the meter changed on the exchange every second? You can’t measure anything with today’s money.”
“But then how do they track GDP? It’s denominated in money.”
“Disease boosts GDP. Medical spending outweighs the drop in business activity. Should we infect the population to grow GDP?”
“In the long run, poor healthcare reduces GDP.”
“Mining also boosts GDP—but in the long run, it depletes resources. Unlike health, this is irreversible. And most importantly: by the time those ‘long terms’ arrive, money will have depreciated far more than GDP has grown.”
“Agreed. Numbers lose meaning. So what do we do?”
“Self-sufficiency isn’t enough. You must understand the system’s acceleration. To pour champagne in a limousine, you need to know when it will brake, accelerate, or turn. In economics, it’s more useful to measure not the economic equivalent of distance—but conditional accelerations. Measuring with money is so complex that the result is always wrong. We must count in increments of value and saturation. The effect of consumption changes nonlinearly.”
“But suppose I wanted to explain to ordinary people—say—where prices come from. Isn’t it the result of a complex balance: demand for goods, production complexity, supplier scarcity, state pressure or incentives—and now, the AI factor too?”
“What balance? Why would they care?” Unkno asked with disdain. “There is no balance. In any specific case, I can tell you the full breakdown myself—to anyone who listens.”
“All of it? Let’s test it.”
“Go ahead. Pick any product,” Unkno said, his neck pressing back against Cernus’s face as the tandem rolled smoothly onward.
“Why any? I’ll pick the most essential. What can a person not live without?”
“Air is free. For now,” Unkno reminded him.
“Water. A liter of drinking water in a store costs about the same as a liter of fuel at a gas station. Water prices vary more, but on average—they’re nearly identical. Surely extracting, refining, and processing oil is far harder than pouring tap water into a bottle. And there are millions—tens of millions—of ‘water wells.’ How is this possible?”