VOLUME VI, CHAPTER 3
A New Order for the Economy
The last chapter did education. This chapter is about the economy.
Look at it from the root, and the names that people have quarreled over for a hundred years, peeled open, are all the same one thing. Settling people. Giving a person a place to be, food to eat, a way to live and to live steady. So to weigh an economic system, do not ask what name it flies, ask one thing only. Has it settled people, or not?
This chapter sets out to save the slave, the laborer, the one who lives on capital, and the hand at the very top, the one clutching a mountain of gold and locked the tightest of all. It saves no one by bringing anyone down. It saves them by seeing clearly the lock on each person's head, and undoing it, one lock at a time. And that lock takes four things at once to undo. Culture to warm the person, politics to cut off the power propping it up, law to set the rules straight, and productivity to make the pie big. Once the pie is big, what a person earns by his labor stays his own, and the share no labor produced returns to the public, which is to say the people.
Contents of This Chapter
One. The Four Systems, at Bottom, All Settle People (Part One)
Two. The Four Systems, at Bottom, All Settle People (Part Two)
Three. Saving the Slave: Slavery Changed Its Skin, and the Lock Called Debt
Four. Saving the Slave: AI Makes New Slaves, and Letting the Slave Out
Five. Saving the Laborer: To Live by Your Labor Is the Most Honorable Way of All, So Why the Fear
Six. Saving the Laborer: What Labor Earns Goes to the One Who Labored, and There Is Enough
Seven. Saving the One Who Lives on Capital: The Capitalist Is You and Me and Him, and Saving Is No Shame
Eight. Saving the One Who Lives on Capital: Bringing Down the Capitalist Is a False Target, and That Cursing Is a Blame Borne for the Hand
Nine. That Hand Is Not a Monster, There Is a Lock on His Head Too
Ten. The Old Woman Who Died in Pain Guarding Her Money, and Not Bringing Him Down
Eleven. One Lock, Undone by Four Systems at Once, and Culture Goes First to Warm the Person
Twelve. Politics Cuts Off the Hand That Props It Up, and Law Sets the Rules Straight
Thirteen. The Communist Dream Was Good to Begin With, and the Old Road of Grabbing Was Wrong
Fourteen. The New Road: Make the Pie Big, the Non-Labor Share Returns to the Public, and the Root of the Lock Rots on Its Own
Fifteen. In Closing: The Four Return to Their Places, Back to the Real World, but the Door Stays Open
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.