Robert A. Heinlein by For Us The Living

Author:For Us The Living
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-06-29T22:57:58+00:00

Have a labor leader organize the workers and stage a strike. Get a lot of bank credit passed around and then make a run on the bank. Issue stock and watch it fluctuate in market price. Declare war and put industry on a war basis.

Inflate the currency. Deflate it. Save your profits to expand your business.

Cut prices to meet competition. Get squeezed on your lease. Start out from primitive barter, work up the present system with the dividend, the discount, and the National Account. Do all of those things, but be sure to observe the rule of duplicating the structure of the real world. It’s fascinating and you will teach yourself more about money and economics than anyone else can possibly teach you. Bear in mind the fundamental theorem that we formulated about the necessity for new money for capital expansion. If you find any situation which appears to contradict it, or any of our other conclusions, go back and do it over, writing down each step in detail. If you don’t find your error, give me a call. But I’m sure you will.*

[*Several typical problems have been worked out for the benefit of the reader and appear as an appendix at the end of the book. A typical modern cycle is given showing the dividend and discount in operation. Especially interesting are examples of twentieth century economics showing the ridiculous impasses into which our forefathers fell simply through failure to understand the nature of money. The Author]

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Perry followed Master Davis’ advice and spent several days making up problems to play out with his economic tin soldiers. He drafted Olga and Diana into the game, and they solemnly played through various combinations of financial and economic situations. At first the women played simply to be agreeable, but they became fascinated by the strange possibilities of early day finance. Olga developed remarkable skill in stock market and commodity manipulation, and amassed fabulous fortunes on paper. Diana protested this and maintained that it obviously would be illegal for anyone to do such wicked things with the necessities of life. References to history left her only partly convinced. Diana liked to run factories but was a failure as a banker, as she could not see any sense in interest and was reluctant to clamp down on a debtor. Both of them admitted that they had not understood the operations of finance and industry before, and had rather taken the economic regime for granted. Perry found himself in the pleasant position of being able to instruct natives of the new America in the workings of their own environment.

In due course he felt that he understood fully the workings of both economic systems, the old and the new, and felt capable of analyzing correctly any possible economic system. Nevertheless he found growing up inside a curious distaste for the modern system. He now understood the mechanics of it, true, and realized that its mathematical theory was correct, but notwithstanding it did not suit his taste. He decided to call Davis and discuss it with him.

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