So strangely, in this new utmost financial crisis, people, ordinary people en masse, as the material manifestation of “the public,” now seemed to hold the ultimate power. When push comes to shove, it’s always humans looking at humans; and when a thousand people stand looking at one person, it’s clear who has more power. So it was a matter of realizing that, then acting on that realization. Maybe that shouldn’t have felt strange, but it did; it felt like free fall. Inventing the parachute after leaping off the cliff.
Which meant it had to be arranged fast.
Thus the shadow government devised by the Ministry for the Future in Zurich, Switzerland, became one template for a new plan. Not completely new, of course. In fact it was a rearrangement of various elements of old plans, in many ways. Mondragón, Kerala, MMT, blockchain, Denmark, Cuba, and so on: all the elements had been out there working all along. Which made the new methods easier to implement. Not complete revolution, no ten-day weeks with new names and so on, no dive into that revolutionary euphoria that tries to change everything at once. Just ownership adjustments. Numbers. Representations. Reversals in some valences of value. Improvisations. The sun still rose, plants kept growing. But people lived in ideas, so despite the sun in the sky and so on, things felt crazy. It was a panic spring.
But as it became clear that the central banks were stepping in to keep things stable and liquid, certain markets calmed. Bakeries kept baking. The US Congress got very busy adopting new laws. Chinese people ended their demonstrations and went back to work, with a different standing committee in charge. Kurdistan secured its borders and signed treaties with every nation and organization that would co-sign. People began to look for ways to earn a carbon coin or two. Only a few of these would be a lot in the local currencies. Surely sequestering a hundred tons of carbon couldn’t be so hard. DIY DAC became a vibrant side activity, like growing a truck garden for food; and sometimes the two were even the same thing.
It was quite a month, then quite a year; a year that became one of those years that people talk about later, a date used as shorthand for a whole period. A tectonic shift in history, an earthquake in the head.
76
I joined the US Navy out of high school. I wanted to get out of town. See the world kind of thing. From Kansas this seemed like a good way. My mom was worried but my dad was proud. The Navy needs more competent women, he said. You’ll show them what for. I love my dad.
So I put in eight years. Parts of those years were messy, mostly relationship stuff, I’m not going to go into that, everyone is the same, we all fuck up until we get lucky, if we do. Then if you’re smart enough to see your luck and act on it, things can work out. They have for me. But this is about the US Navy. When I joined I was paid about 25 grand a year. It doesn’t sound like much, but I was also given free room and board, and educated in a number of different jobs, so I was free to bank most of my salary if I wanted to, and I did. Eventually it adds up. More on that later.
The main thing I want to say is that being Navy was something I was proud of. This was not at all uncommon among my fellow sailors. We had good esprit de corps. I don’t know if it’s the same in the other branches of the military, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was, although we often made fun of them for being stupid compared to us. Not unusual I know. The thing is, the Navy is well-run. I have the impression it’s one of the more widely respected and well-run institutions anywhere. Among other things, we’ve run 83 nuclear-powered ships for 5,700 reactor-years, and 134 million miles of travel, all without nuclear accidents of any kind. I lived within a few feet of a nuclear reactor for three years, no harm no foul. My dosimeter showed just the same as yours would, maybe better. How can that be? Because the system was engineered and built for safety, whatever the cost. No cutting corners to make a buck. Done that way, it can work. Probably the Navy should run the country’s electricity system, I’m just saying.
A couple more things about Navy: now that pebble mob missiles exist, none of our ships could survive an attack by hostiles who have such systems. It just wouldn’t work. Nothing can stop those. You don’t have to have gone to Annapolis to figure this out. The upper brass don’t talk about it, no one talks about it, because it would be too mind-boggling. Would you just throw in the towel, say Whoops, we are now like the cavalry, or flint-tipped spears or a sharp rock in the hand? No, not right away you wouldn’t say that. So what it means is that the submarine fleet is all we’ve got in a real war. Since the threat from submarines is nuclear, as in atomic end of the world kind of stuff, hopefully they won’t ever be used. So in practical terms, until the subs re-arm, maybe with pebble mobs of their own, I wouldn’t doubt that that has even already happened, as a military force the Navy has been taken completely off the table. All navies have. In any real war, the whole surface fleet would soon be on the bottom. Not a happy thought.
But so think of the Navy in peaceful times, and given these pebble mobs, maybe peaceful times are what we’ve got now, very fucked-up peaceful times,
