Creature From Jekyll Island by G. Edward

some of their dollars into tangible assets or income-producing securities—what few that remain—where they are somewhat protected from the effects of inflation. For the vast majority, however, inflation hedges constitute but a tiny fraction of all they have earned over a lifetime.

And so we find that, in The New World Order, inflation has been institutionalized at a 'modest' level of five per cent. Once in every five or six generations—as prices climb higher and higher—a new monetary unit can be issued to replace the old in order to eliminate some of the zeros. But no one will live long enough to experience more than one devaluation. Each generation is unconcerned about the loss of the previous one. Young people come into the process without realizing it is circular instead of linear. They cannot comprehend the total because they were not alive at the beginning and will not be alive at the end. In fact, there need not even be an end. The process can be continued forever.

By this mechanism—and with the output of work battalions—

government can operate entirely without taxes. The lifetime output of every human being is at its disposal. Workers are allowed a color TV, state-subsidized alcohol and recreational drugs, and violent sports to amuse them, but they have no other options. They cannot escape their class. Society is divided into the rulers and the ruled, with an administrative bureaucracy in between. Privilege is now largely a right of birth. The worker class and even most of the administrators serve masters whom they do not know by name.

But serve they do. Their new lords are the monetary and political scientists who created and who now control The New World

Order. All of mankind is in a condition of high-tech feudalism.

HIGH-TECH FEUDALISM

Inflation is not the only aspect of economic chaos that is now under control. Booms and busts in the business cycle are also a thing of the past. Like direct taxes, there are no business cycles any more. Now that the government has firm control over every economic check point, business cycles simply are not allowed.

There is no speculation in the market, because no one has funds with which to speculate. There are no expansions of inventories or capital goods in order to maximize future profits, because inventories now are determined by formula. Besides, profits are also A PESSIMISTIC SCENARIO

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determined by formula and, although they are just large enough to keep pace with inflation, they are guaranteed.

Chaos in the economy is now impossible because it is not

tolerated. Neither is a depression. Yes, there are hundreds of millions of human beings living under conditions of extreme hardship, and thousands die of starvation every day, but depressions are outlawed. No politician, no author, no one in the media would dare to suggest that the system was a failure. Each month the government releases new statistics showing in some obscure way or another that the economy is steadily improving. Although people are starving everywhere, hunger does not exist anymore.

Although work battalions are crammed into flimsy barracks and tents, and although older homes and apartment buildings are falling down for lack of maintenance, forcing more and more families to share their tiny, unheated dwellings—nevertheless, the housing shortage is officially being eliminated. There are no more problems in the economy, because they now are illegal.

VOICES F R O M THE PAST

There is a message flashing on the front panel of our time machine. It reads: Duplicate sequence in memory bank. Check years 1816, 1831, 1904, and 1949. That tells us that the on-board computer has found a similarity between what we are now viewing in the future and something that was recorded in the past. We had better check it out. On your keyboard, type: Send data to printer and press the key labelled Execute.

The first item is coming out of the printer now. It is a warning.

In the year 1816, Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to Sam Kercheval in which he said:

We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessities and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements,... our people ... must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give our earnings of fifteen of these to the government,... have no time to think, no means of calling our mis-managers to account; but be glad to obtain sustenance by hiring ourselves out to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers.... And this is the tendency of all human governments ... till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery.... And the forehorse of this frightful team is 554

THE CREATURE FROM JEKYLL ISLAND

public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.1

Here is the second printout. It is a political commentary and a prophesy. In the year 1831, a young Frenchman, named Alexis de Tocqueville, toured the United States to prepare an official report to his government on the American prison system. His real interest, however, was the social and political environment in the New World. He found much to admire in America but he also observed what he thought were the seeds of its destruction. Upon his return to France the following year, he began work on a four-volume analysis of the strengths and weaknesses he found. His perceptivity was remarkable, and his work, entitled Democracy in America, has remained as one of the world's classic works in political science.

This is the part that our computer recognized:

The Americans hold that in every state the supreme power ought to emanate from the people; but when once that power is constituted, they can conceive, as it were, no limits to it, and they are ready to admit that it has the right to do whatever it pleases.... The idea of rights inherent in certain individuals is rapidly disappearing from the minds of men; the idea of the omnipotence and sole authority of society at large rises to fill its place....

The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives.

Each of them, living apart, is a stranger to the fate of all the rest; his children and his private friends constitute