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A Grim Fairy Tale
II
Mundus Vult Decipi was sitting in his garden with his dog, Vivat Rex, when the summons came from the king. Mundus often sat like this with Rex for hours on end. He liked the dog better than he liked most people, because Rex would obey Mundus' commands without question.
The king had requested Mundus and the other advisors to convene only once in the past year. That was shortly after Mundus had created the plan to acquire the balance of the kingdom's gold for the king. The meeting was just to explain to the king how the final phase of raising the price of gold, would bankrupt the mines that had cooperated and sold forward large portions of their yet-to-be-mined gold. That explanation was a little challenging, for the king did not have a great command of things financial. Mundus tried several simplified explanations but the one that seemed to connect for the king was the following:
Several mines, largely those that had deep mining operations, sold their future production above the current market price, but only at, or slightly above their cost of production. When the king's bankers rapidly forced up the price of gold, those mines could not economically produce the promised gold. One reason was that the cost of production (particularly labor) usually rose with the increase in the price of the gold. They couldn't buy their way out of the promised delivery, because they did not have the cash to buy the gold at the new, higher prices. Therefore, they would be producing gold at a greater and greater loss. Voila! Mines ripe for takeover by the king's bankers.
The king was so impressed by the plan, and Mundus' explanation of the mechanics of the final phase, that he named Mundus Chief Econo-Mist. Econo-Mist was a title revered by all of the king's advisors. It was derived from the ancient language, and it meant "one whose explanation of things financial creates a fog around its true meaning."
When the advisors convened that afternoon the king explained the new problem. All of Mundus' suggestions had been followed so that the people would work harder, and yet the king would remain almost in total control. He had set them free, but also instituted income taxes, regulations, and mis-educated them about the meaning of real money. However, something was still wrong. Some people were not cooperating with the kings tax agents. This was so despite all of the education programs, created by his university professors, to instill in citizens a feeling of duty to give up what they produced. Aside from wanting to keep what they earned and produced, they were actually suing the tax agents who treated them badly. This greatly slowed up the cash flow into the treasury. It was most embarrassing, for the king had obligations to people. He had to send his courtiers to visit foreign lands. To be sure these trips were only for state business. He also had to give some portion of the taxes to quiet the populace who didn't wish to work, and had developed something called "an entitlement to other people's money". It was all very annoying.
This was quite a vexing problem even for an Econo-Mist of Mundus' intellect. Finally, after several days of contemplation while sitting in the garden with Rex, he had the solution.
The whole problem could be solved with three minor adjustments in the law. When the king had set the people free he had promised them several things in writing that guaranteed, what someone had foolishly called, their "natural rights." Why it was as if people had rights other than what their king deemed those rights should be! The mistake that caused this particular problem was that one of the written promises said that citizens could not be judged without the king's agents proving that they had done something. All the king had to do was exempt his tax collectors from that law. It was a silly law anyhow, based on the notion that you couldn't prove a negative, so that the burden of proof must be on the accuser. Relieved of this ridiculous constraint, the agents could then accuse the citizens of hiding money, and the citizens would have to come up with evidence proving their innocence. Most citizens would probably give in and pay because of the cost and stress of defending themselves.
The king, however, had to be assured that a citizen's move to appeal the agent's decision would not stop the collection process. A second slight adjustment in the law had to be made. Once the agents made the accusation they could, with written notice of course, immediately take a citizen's bank accounts and property. Then the citizen, if he could prove that he didn't do anything wrong, would then have to file a form to get them back. We all know how long the king's bureauracrats take with such matters!
Finally, using a smidgen (a very small unit of legal measurement) of that old concept "divine right", Mundus created a statute that made it virtually impossible to sue the king's tax agents. The citizen would have to prove deliberate, intentional harassment by the king's tax agent. Mundus and the king both knew that this was an almost impossible legal burden for the citizen.
The king, of course, was amazed. His Chief Econo-Mist had done it again. The flow of money to the treasury would not be slowed down at all with this new arrangement. In honor of the new arrangement he renamed the tax collection agency the I(nfernal) R(ip-off) S(ervice). This name of course was only used among the advisors, and never in public.
Harry J. Clawar Ph.D.
HJC@angelfire.com
November 23, 2000
