David Gerrold - A Matter for Men

The bell rang then. We'd used an entire ninety-minute class period. As we started to gather our books, Whitlaw held up a hand. "Hold it. Stay in your seats. You're not going to your next class today. Don't worry, your other instructors have been informed. They know not to expect you. Does anyone need to pee? Okay, take ten minutes. Be back here and ready to go at eleven-forty."

When we resumed, Joey Hubre was the first to raise his hand. "When do we get our money back?"

Whitlaw looked at him severely. "Don't you understand? You don't. The government always plays for keeps."

"But ... but ... but we thought this was-"

"What? A game?" Whitlaw looked a little angry. "Weren't you paying attention? This was a tyranny! Would you have overthrown the government if you thought I wasn't playing for keeps? Of course not!"

"All I want is my money back-"

"It's part of the national treasury now. And even if I wanted to give it back, I couldn't. I've been overthrown. It's up to the new government to decide what to do with the money."

The classroom was getting tense again. Janice stood up and said, "Mr. Whitlaw! You were wrong to take our money!"

"No, I wasn't-as soon as I declared myself a government, I was within my rights. You were wrong for letting me get away with it. Every single one of you. You!" He pointed at the first student who had handed over a casey. "-you were wrong for handing me that first coin. Why did you do it?"

"You told me to."

"Did I tell you I was going to give you anything in return for it?"

"No."

"Did I tell you I was going to give it back to you when we were through?"

"No."

"Then why did you give it to me?"

"Uh..."

"Right. You gave it to me. I didn't take it. So why are you telling me I'm the one who did wrong?"

"You had an army!"

"Not until after you gave me the money to pay for it." He said to the whole class, "Your only mistake was your timing. You should have rebelled when I declared myself your government. I had no right to do so, but you let me get away with it. You should have demanded accountability then-before I had enough money to hire an army."

He was right. He had us there. We all looked a little embarrassed.

"Well, what do we do now?" wailed Mariette.

"I don't know. I'm not the government anymore. You overthrew me. You took away my power. All I'm doing now is following orders. Your orders. I'll do anything with this money that a majority of you can agree on."

It took less than thirty seconds to pass a resolution requiring the disbursement of all funds collected in the recent taxation.

Whitlaw nodded and opened his desk drawer. He started counting coins. "Uh, we have a problem-there are forty-four of you in this class. But there are only thirty caseys here. If you'll remember, the former government spent eighteen caseys on an army."

Four people stood up to author the next resolution, requiring the return of funds paid to former members of the Imperial Guard. Whitlaw vetoed that. "Sorry. Doesn't that fall into the realm of confiscation? Remember the five-casey note I took unfairly? You just had a rebellion because you didn't want a government able to do that. Now you're setting up a new government to do exactly the same thing."

"But this is different-"

"No it isn't! Confiscation is confiscation! It doesn't matter who does the confiscating-the person still loses something!"

"But ... then how do we redress previous wrongs?"

"I don't know either. You're the government now. You tell me."

"So why can't we just take the money back?"

"Because the army was fairly paid. They did their job and they were paid a fair wage for what they did. You can't take that money away from them now because it's theirs."

"But you had no right to give it to them!"

"Yes, I did! I was the government!"

Hank Chelsea was standing then. "Wait a minute, sir! I think we all understand what you're trying to teach us. We have to find a fair way to do this, don't we?"

"If you can, you'll be a better man than I am. In the eleven years that I've been teaching this class, not one session has ever found a way that was both fair and legal to take money out of one person's pocket and put it into another's." He motioned for Hank to sit down. "Let me give you this to think about: a government-any government-is nothing more than a system for reapportioning wealth. It takes money from one group of people and gives it to another group of people. And when it happens that enough people decide that they don't like the way the wealth is being reapportioned, that's when that government will be replaced by another one more to the people's liking. As has happened here! But you cannot use the new government to redress all of the wrongs of the previous government-not without creating far more problems than you'll ever clean up. You'll end up with a government entirely concerned with past events and not present ones. That's a sure way to set yourself up to fail. If you're going to win at this game, you have to deal with circumstances the way they are, not the way they used to be or the way you'd like them to be. In other words, only operate on those events you have control over. That's the only way to produce results. The real question, then, is, what do you have control over? We'll probably spend the rest of the semester tackling that one. Right now, let's handle the immediate problem." He opened his desk drawer. "There are forty-four of you and only thirty caseys here. If you don't reimburse the six members of the Imperial Guard, you're still going to be eight caseys short. And one of you is going to be at least four caseys short because I took a fiver off him."

It was moved, seconded and approved to return four caseys to Geoff Miller to bring his loss into line with the rest of ours. This left the national treasury at twenty-six caseys. We were now short twelve caseys if we wanted to return the money equally.

One of the former members of the Imperial Guard stood up. "Here, I'll give back the extra two caseys that Whitlaw paid me. I don't think it's fair for me to keep it." He poked his buddy, who also stood up. "Yeah, me too." Two more former soldiers also chipped in then, but the last two just sat in the back of the room with their arms folded.

"We earned it fairly. We're entitled to it."

"Well," said Whitlaw, "that brings the national debt down to two caseys. Not bad. Now all you have to do is decide who gets the short straws."

"This isn't fair!" said Mariette again.

Whitlaw agreed with her. "You're beginning to see it. No matter how hard we try, the government cannot be fair to everybody. Cannot. The very best that it can do is treat everybody equally unfairly."

The immediate classroom problem was finally resolved when John Hubre realized that the casey isn't indivisible. Thirty-eight students, each of whom had paid one casey in taxation, were repaid ninety-four cents each. There was twenty-eight cents left over. Whitlaw started to pocket it, but Hank Chelsea said quickly, "Sorry-that's the national treasury. We'll have one of our own hold it, if you don't mind."

Whitlaw passed it over with a grin. "You're learning," he said.

"ALL RIGHT," said Whitlaw. "Obviously, there was a point to that little exercise. No, put your hands down. I'm just going to give you this straight out. There's no such thing as a government."

He looked around the room. "Point to it. Show me the government. Show me any government." He waved our hands down again. "Forget it. You can't. You can show me some buildings, and some people and some rules written down on paper, but you can't show me a government. Because there's no such thing in the physical universe. It's just something we made up. It exists only by our agreement that it does. You just proved that here. We agreed that we wanted some stuff managed and we agreed on some rules for how it should be managed. The agreements are the government. Nothing else.