VOLUME VI, CHAPTER 1, SECTION 6

VOLUME VI, CHAPTER 1, SECTION 6

The Fire Has Already Started, but There Is Still Time

This is the last section, so it is time to send you out the door. You came in covered in fire. Before you go, tuck these five things away, and do not drop a single one.

You will not die. The law protects people, and that means you. You are a person, and you deserve to live, not because you are useful. You are a champion, one who won out of hundreds of millions, who has carried through every hurdle in this life. There is a road, there is enough, and it is not the only road. And you were not laid off. You were let out of a prison called work.

Tuck those five away, and the fire on you should be all but out. Tonight you can sleep. What is left, said plainly, will settle your heart.

You probably still want to ask, so what comes next? There is enough, fine, but how does the enough get divided out fairly to my hand, so that I not only pay less for things but live steady? How does this road actually reach my feet?

Hold that how it gets paved question a moment. First let me settle an old account with you. Once it is clear, you will know why this road has to be walked, and just how hard it is.

Machines replacing people is not new. This is the fourth time. The first three, I laid out for you in the second chapter of the first volume. The first time, the steam engine roared to life. The second, the power lines went up. The third, the computer arrived. Every time, the machine suddenly grew mighty, and the work of a great mass of people was taken, and they fell idle. And every time, that idle mass, with no income, panicked, and burned. And every time, the ones with money in their fists and machines in their hands feared this crowd of idle people would come out to grab, and they found ways to ship them off to war, to burn one another up on the battlefield.

How many were burned up? The first time, fifty million. The second, seventy million, and China's stretch of it was too terrible to look at. The third is not finished even today, ten or twenty million. Three rounds together, something close to a hundred and forty million people, went down.

And here is the spot to hold onto above all. All three times, when did the system get adjusted? Only after the people were already gone.

The machine grew mighty first. People had their work taken first, fell idle first, panicked first, rioted first, went down by the fifty and seventy million first, and only after the blood had run deep enough, after the dead had piled high enough, did the ones left alive sit down and remake the rules, redivide the goods, rebuild a system. The system is always half a beat behind. Always after the fact. Always bought with lives.

Think how unjust that is. Those fifty million, those seventy million who fell, did not fall because they deserved to die. They fell because no one, in the moment the machine grew mighty, hurried to change the rules for dividing things. The rules could have been changed sooner. But the people sitting in the seats either did not see it or did not want to, and they waited until the idle had panicked and rioted and gone down in heaps, until the mess was too big to cover, before they would sit down and touch the rule. And by the time they touched it, half the people were already gone. That is not a natural disaster. That is dragging what should have been done early into a thing that has to be paid for in lives. I am not telling you this old account to frighten you. I am telling it so you see clearly: the system running half a beat late has a record, a real one, and it was paid for with a hundred and forty million lives.

And here is the cruelest stroke. Each of the three rounds was narrower than the last. Every time the rules were remade, the opening for dividing things did not widen, it drew tighter. The rich grew richer, the poor grew poorer. After the first round, the gap opened a notch. After the second, another. After the third, wider still. And today, the wealth of the whole world piles up in fewer and fewer hands, while the great majority get a thinner and thinner slice. That is the script of the first three rounds. Machine grows mighty, work is taken, people go idle, they panic and riot and fall, and only when the casualties are enough is the system remade, and the remade system is narrower, and the poor are worse off. And then the next time the machine grows mightier, the whole thing runs again.

Now the fourth round has come. This one, the one you are living through, this wave of AI.

Let me give you the most honest bottom line, one the last five sections held back from saying too heavily, but now, at the door, has to be said clearly. The fourth fire has already started. Not about to start. Already started. The whole first volume was this fire. That you got burned is not me frightening you. The fire really has already reached you.

So I cannot hand you some pretty line about how we will build the institutions in advance and everything will be fine. In advance is already too late. The fire has started. What advance is there left to speak of? To say that would be to lie to you. And this book, from your very first step through the door, promised it would not lie to you.

So is there still a way to save this? There is. But not the easy, in-advance kind. Another kind. Racing to keep pace.

What does keeping pace mean? The first three times, the machine ran out ahead and the system trailed slowly behind, and it never caught up, it only caught up after everyone had already fallen. This time, what we fight for is this. The machine runs, and the system runs alongside it, adjusting as it runs, straining to match its stride. Not waiting until people are idle enough to panic, panicked enough to riot, rioting enough to fall, and only then turning back to remake it all. It is to move fast while the fire has only just started, before it has spread into casualties everywhere, to let the system change on the run, and to turn this round through peacefully.

Here is a picture you will get at once. The first three times, the fire was already in the room and people were already dropping from the smoke before anyone slowly remembered to go hook up the hose and fight it. This time, what we fight for is that the fire has only just poked its head up, only just licked the corner of the wall, and someone sees it, and someone moves, and before it builds into a blaze, they press it down. Same firefighting, but a step early against a step late, and the difference between them is a houseful of lives. Keeping pace fights for that one step early. That one step early is hard, because the fire is already up and time is tight. But that one step early is worth everything, because what it buys is not having another hundred and forty million people fall.

I will not make you any promises. I am not saying this will surely work. Whether it can be won is very hard to say, and there is no certainty in it. The fire has started, the time is very tight, and the thing is very hard.

But there is one great difference between this round and the three before it.

The first three times, people were swept in blindfolded. The machine grew mighty, and people did not know what had happened. They fell idle and did not know why. They panicked and did not know whom to blame. They were shipped off to war and did not know what for. And in a daze, they were gone. A hundred and forty million of them, the vast majority, right up to the moment they fell, never saw how they had been swept onto that road of blood.

This time, you have seen it. This book you are reading, from the first volume to this section, has been doing one single thing. Laying that road of blood out, whole and plain, so you can see it. Letting you see clearly why the machine replaces people, why people fall idle, why the idle get shipped off to war, why the system is always half a beat late, why the opening narrows a little more each round.

And once you see it clearly, everything changes. A road you walk blindfolded, you can only stumble down to its black end. A road you have seen clearly, whose destination you know, gives you a chance to turn before it runs black.

Do not make light of those two words, eyes open. Those hundred and forty million were not unwilling to live. They simply had no idea what kind of road lay under their feet. The machine took their work, and they thought it was just their own bad luck. They fell idle with no food, and they thought it was just a hard fate. A slogan and a flag stirred them up and shipped them off to war, and to the very moment they fell, they still believed they were dying for some great cause. Blindfolded, they walked the whole road of blood to its end. This time is different, because this book has shown you the road from one end to the other. You are no longer the one with the blindfold on, pushed along from behind. You have seen how the machine replacing people works. You have seen how the idle get stirred up and sent away. You have seen why the system is always late. You have seen it. And because you have seen it, you can turn, on your own, before the road runs black.

That is the one thing you have that those hundred and forty million did not. A pair of open eyes.

The first three times, everyone wore the blindfold. This time, as long as enough people see clearly, there is a chance, for the first time, not to walk blindfolded into casualties everywhere, but to make this turn with eyes open, early, and in peace. No one falls, and the system is turned over steady and whole. Is it hard? It is. Is it certain? No. But it is the one road that does not need another hundred and forty million people to fall. Hard as it is, it has to be fought for. Uncertain as it is, it is worth fighting for.

How to fight it, how to walk it, that is not for this chapter. This chapter is firefighting, first getting you alive, getting you steady, getting you out the door. The details are laid before you, chapter by chapter. Turn ahead, and the second chapter is about the human heart, about the root of being a person, about how one generation hands what matters most to the next. The third is about how, once there is enough, that share reaches you fairly, and it is the third chapter that answers the knot still in your chest. The fourth is about who holds the power to divide the goods and run things, and it will tell you first that it should be held in your own hands. The fifth is about setting the law back into its place of protecting people, so that the ones in the wrong seats can never wreck it again. And the last chapter is about how all of these fit together and turn smoothly, so that people can live at peace with one another.

What this book can do for you ends here. It is only a small oil lamp. A gust of wind puts it out. Without oil it goes dark. It cannot light the whole road, only the small circle under your feet, enough for you to see where to set your next step. The road beyond that, you walk yourself, step by step. The walking is yours. And the fighting is yours, together with the millions of others who have also seen clearly.

If your heart is steady now, straighten your back and come along. If your heart is not yet fully steady, it is fine to go back and finish the first volume first. This door is open both ways, come and go as you need. Wherever you go, remember this chapter. The fire has already started. In advance is too late. But this time, your eyes are open. And with your eyes open, there is still time, before the road runs black, to make this turn in peace.

This chapter, bucket by bucket, has put out the fire on you. From you will not die, to you are a champion, to you have been let out, to this last one: your eyes are open, and there is still time to turn. The fire is out. Your breath comes even. Your eyes are open. It is time to set out.

The fire is out. Stand up. I will see you in the next chapter.

Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.