The Ministry for the Future

81

Transcript Mary S/Tatiana V, phone conversation, secure line. M in office, T in safe house, location undisclosed.

M: How are you doing?

T: Bored. How about you? Shouldn’t you be in hiding too?

M: I don’t think anyone wants to kill me. It wouldn’t change anything.

T: Maybe.

M: So what are you doing?

T: Working. Telecommuting, like this. Advising our legal efforts.

M: Anything interesting?

T: Well, I think some parts are working.

M: What do you mean?

T: I think the bet that the super-rich will take a buy-out is turning out to be correct. For most of them, anyway.

M: How can you tell?

T: We’ve been trying it. Offer them fifty million they can count on, or endless prosecution and harassment, even a situation like mine, to stay safe. Many of them are taking the deal.

M: This is legal? It sounds like extortion.

T: There are legal forms for it. I’m just speaking plainly for your sake.

M: Thanks. So they don’t just shift their money into tax havens?

T: We’ve killed those. That’s maybe the best thing about blockchain for fiat money—we know where it is. There aren’t any hiding places left. If you do manage to hide it, it isn’t really money anymore. Only money on the books has any real value now. The older stuff is like, I don’t know, doubloons. Real money, we know where it is and where it came from.

M: Wasn’t that always true?

T: No. Remember cash?

M: I still use it! But it was numbered, right?

T: Sure. But once it got moved around a couple of times, it was just cash. There were lots of ways to launder it, and it couldn’t be traced. Now it can be traced, in fact it has to be to stay real. So there’s no place to hide, there are no tax havens. We blockaded the last ones, got the WTO to declare them a disqualifier, all that. No. For individuals, if you want to stay rich in the current moneyscape, it’s best to take the haircut and accept your fifty million and walk.

M: I guess it makes sense.

T: Yes. Fifty million in the hand is worth a billion in the bush. Maybe it’s the rich who are most like homo economicus was supposed to be. They have all the information, they pursue rational self-interest, they try to maximize their wealth. But if a maximum level of wealth gets mandated by society, fighting that isn’t rational. Especially if you’ve got something like twenty times as much as you need to be secure.

M: I don’t know about that. The kind of ambition that gets you a billion won’t be brooked. It’s a sociopathic thing. There’s nothing rational about it. It’s a man thing, most of the time. Although I’ve met women who feel just as entitled.

T: Of course.

M: So they’ll lash out.

T: Some of them, sure. You’re always going to have crazy people. It’s the system I’m talking about. If crazy people lash out in a sane system, they do some damage but then they end up in jail, or someone kills them. So it’s the system that matters. And that’s where I’m seeing results.

M: Is the Russian government on board with all this?

T: Hard to say. Maybe so. Soviet nostalgia is getting stronger. And Siberia is melting, which turns out to be no joke. Some people thought it would be a good thing, that we would grow more wheat and so on, but turns out we just get a bunch of swamps, and you can’t drive on the frozen rivers like they used to. It’s a mess. Also it’s releasing so much methane and CO₂ that we might make jungle planet. Nobody in Russia wants jungle planet. It’s too messy, it’s not Russian. So ideas there are changing.

M: So they’re coming around.

T: Maybe so. It’s still a battle inside the Kremlin, but the evidence is clear. And that Soviet regard for science still holds for a lot of Russians. It’s a Russian value too. And they think it’s funny that the Soviet way might save the world. It’s a kind of vindication.

M: Every culture wants respect from all the rest.

T: Of course. Now the Chinese have it, and India too. The ones still hungry for it are Russia and Islam.

M: So how do you get that respect?

T: Not by money. The Saudis showed that. They were fools. Obvious fools get no respect. In Russia we worry about that. We think we are always seen as fools. The great bear, dangerous and uncouth. Provincial.

M: Best novels in the world, best music in the world?

T: That was all czarist stuff. Then the Soviet Union, it had some respect for standing up to the Americans, and getting out there in the sciences, and standing for solidarity. Or so it gets remembered. Now we are just the great losers to the Americans. And with the whole world speaking English, that impression can never go away. Not unless we use Soviet methods to save everyone from American stupidity.

M: Or go back to the czar.

T: Yes, that’s the bad response. We saw that with Putin. But the Soviet dream is better. We assume our past, use it to save the world. Mother Russia saves the day.

M: I hope so. Someone’s got to do it. I don’t think America will.

T: America! They are the rich person who has to accept owning just fifty million rather than infinity. They’ll be the last ones to come around.

M: I guess I should go to San Francisco again.