Cory Doctorow - Walkaway

Jacob smiled and crunched his carrot stick and Hubert, Etc sensed he’d said the wrong thing.

Natalie looked grim. “You tell me. That factory we switched on last night. It was worth more as a write-off than it was as a going concern. Some entity that owned it, demanded that it sit rotting and useless, even though there were people who wanted what it could make.”

“If they wanted the factory, they could buy the factory,” Jacob said. “Then make things and sell them.”

“I don’t think those people could afford to buy a factory,” Hubert, Etc said, glancing at Natalie for approval. She nodded minutely.

“That’s what capital markets are for,” Jacob said. “If you’ve got a plan for profitably using an asset someone else isn’t using, then you draw up a business plan and take it to investors. If you’re right, one of them will fund you – maybe more than one. Then you sell what you make.”

“What if no one invests?” Hubert, Etc said. “I know a ton of zepp startups that died because they couldn’t get money, even though they were making amazing stuff.”

Jacob took on the air of someone explaining a complex subject to a child. “If no one wants to invest, that means that you don’t have an idea worth investing in, or you aren’t the right person to execute that idea because you don’t know how to convince people to invest.”

“Don’t you see the circularity there?” Natalie said. “If you can’t convince someone to pay to turn on the factory to make things that people need, then the factory shouldn’t be turned on?”

“As opposed to what? A free-for-all? Just smash down the doors, walk in and take over?”

“Why not, if no one else is doing anything with it?”

The talking-to-a-toddler look: “Because it’s not yours.”

“So what?”

“You wouldn’t be happy if a mob busted in here and carried all your precious things out, would you, Natty?”

With less than a day’s experience, Hubert, Etc could tell that Natalie didn’t want to be called “Natty.” Jacob knew it, was baiting his daughter. It was cheating.

“I wouldn’t mind,” Hubert, Etc said. “I don’t have much, most of what matters is backed up. I mean, so long as I could find a bed and some clothes the next day, it wouldn’t make a difference.”

“Natty’s got plenty more than a change of clothes and a bed here in her nest,” Jacob said. “Natty likes nice things.”

“I do. I want everyone else to have them.” Her look could have sliced steel.

“Let them work for it, the way we have.”

Natalie snorted.

Jacob looked at Hubert, Etc. “You were at the party last night?”

It was dusk outside the picture window, pinky-orange light sweeping down the ravine, staining the river’s rippling surface.

“I was.”

“What do you think about breaking into private property and stealing what you find there?”

Hubert, Etc wished that he’d pretended to be asleep. He was pretty sure Seth was faking it.

“No one was using it.” He looked at Natalie. “The hydrogen cells’d filled up, so the windmills were going to waste. The feedstock was worth practically nothing.”

Natalie said, “What’s the point of having private property if all it does is rot?”

“Oh, please. Private property is the most productive property. Temporary inefficiencies don’t change that. Only kooks and crooks think that stealing other property is a valid form of political action.”

“Only kleptocrats use terms like ‘temporary inefficiencies’ for wasteful abominations like that Muji factory.”

“It’s easy to talk about kleptocrats when Daddy pulls strings to keep the cops off your lazy ass. They’ll arrest a hell of a lot of people today, Natty, but not you or your friends.”

“Don’t pretend your political embarrassment is generosity. Let ’em put me away.”

“Maybe I will. Maybe a couple of years of hard work in prison will make you appreciate what you’ve got.”

She looked at Hubert, Etc. “He’s been threatening to send me to a prison since I was ten. It used to be those scared-straight places on private islands, until they were all busted for ‘corrective rape.’ Now it’s adult prison. Why the fuck not, Dad? You’re a major shareholder in most of ’em – they’d give you a discount. I could get inside perspective on the family business.”

Jacob gave a showy laugh. “Like I’d trust you to run anything. Business is a meritocracy, child. You think you’re going to walk into some fat job just because you’re my kid—”

“I don’t. Because there aren’t any ‘jobs’ left. Just financial engineering and politics. I’m not qualified for either. For one thing, I can’t say ‘meritocracy’ with a straight face.”

Hubert, Etc saw that one land. It emboldened him. “It’s the height of self-serving circular bullshit, isn’t it? ‘We’re the best people we know, we’re on top, therefore we have a meritocracy. How do we know we’re the best? Because we’re on top. QED.’ The most amazing thing about ‘meritocracy’ is that so many brilliant captains of industry haven’t noticed that it’s made of such radioactively obvious bullshit you could spot it from orbit.” He snuck another look at Natalie. She gave him a minute nod that thrilled him.

Jacob looked more pissed. Distantly, Hubert, Etc wondered how such a powerful man could be so thin-skinned. Jacob stood and glared. “Easy to say, but last time I looked, you two hadn’t done a fucking thing that mattered to anyone, and were depending on ‘bullshit’ to keep your asses out of jail.”

“There he goes with the jail stuff again. I suppose prison is one way to win an argument if you can’t think of a better one.”

“It’s traditional,” Seth said, lifting his face from the pillows. “Spanish Inquisition. USSR. Saudi Arabia. Gitmo.”

Jacob walked out, closing the connecting door with a dignified click. It was more pissed than a slam. Hubert, Etc felt victorious.

“This hotel is goddamned noisy.” Seth rolled onto his back, stretching to expose his hairy stomach, gone soft since the last time Hubert, Etc saw it.

“The room service is awesome, though,” Hubert, Etc said. “And you can’t beat the price.”

Seth sat up. “That’s your dad, huh?”

“I know that it’s a cliché to hate your old man when you’re twenty, but he’s such an asshole,” Natalie said. “He really believes that meritocracy stuff. Seriously believes in it. He’s one step away from talking about having the blood of kings in his veins.”

“The thing I’ve never understood,” Hubert, Etc said, “is how someone can be delusional and still manage to own half the planet? I get how having some delusions would be useful when you’re bossing people around and ripping everyone off, but doesn’t that break down eventually? It’s still capitalism out there. If your competitor brings in some person who isn’t delusional, wouldn’t that person end up bankrupting you?”

Natalie said, “There’s more than one way to be smart. People like my dad assume that because they’re smart about being evil bastards, they’re smart about everything—”

“And because they’re smart at everything,” Seth said, “that makes it okay for them to be evil bastards?”

“Exactly,” she said. “So people like my dad are good at figuring out how to take your company with its ‘smart people’ and get it declared illegal, poach its best ideas, or just buy it and leverage it and financialize it until it doesn’t make anything except for exotic derivatives and tax-credits. And the thing is, that’s not good enough for him! He wants to be the one percent of the one percent of the one percent because of his inherent virtue, not because the system is rigged. His whole identity rests on the idea that the system is legit and that he earned his position into it fair and square and everyone else is a whiner.”