Soul Bound

1          Soul Bound

1.2        Taking Control

1.2.4      An Artful Carnivale

1.2.4.35   We may only be allowed to sit in puddles of mud, but we're free to choose the best one!

Increasing numbers of curious fish surrounded the air bubble, until Kafana could feel their gaze like it were a weight and felt brief fellowship with animals in zoos and goldfish bowls, unable to escape the crowd of watchers surrounding them. Silly to think in human terms like power moves, but she couldn't help be reminded of the sort of man who kept staring obviously at a woman long after it was clear their gaze was unwelcome, in order to show they had the power to get away with doing that. Not that she suspected these fish were particularly evil but, even though they were probably not paying attention to anything these human invaders were saying, being watched made Kafana feel a need for privacy so she continued to talk with Tomsk on the direct voice channel that, thanks to Wellington, their tiaras were diverting away from the dubious privacy of the game's own servers. Tomsk started to answer her question, in a measured voice.

Tomsk: {To reduce the desperation, you first have to understand how it increased, or the problem will just reoccur. Take a person who is surviving, who is safe, who is accepted as part of a group and has status within that group. Not only isn’t he desperate; he will also have energy to spare to care about abstract long-term threats to the future of his society, such as reduced safeguards against tyranny and corruption; increasing inequality and environmental damage; poor education and political misinformation, etc. All the things Nadezhda cared about.}

Had she cared so much about having the freedom to choose whether people paid attention to her, before Alderney's broadcasts and her divine aura had left her feeling it was under threat? No, probably not. Was that her being lazy or bad at looking ahead? Or perhaps most people did the same thing? Maybe it was both physical objects and abstract freedoms that people didn't properly value until lost or threatened? Not relevant right now! She sat cross-legged in the mud like a primary-school pupil and tried to focus on Tomsk and his words, keeping her gaze on his eyes and face.

Tomsk: {Now put him out of a job, sow distrust among his peers, send him into grinding poverty and take away his safety nets. What does he care about now?}

Kafana: {Survival. He’s afraid and wants hope. He may be looking to blame someone and he’s willing to vote for a strong but corrupt leader, if he believes they’re his best chance at getting his safety back. Or at least that’s what Bungo was arguing.}

Tomsk: {He wants his job back. If he can earn good money, he can provide for his family, build up a safety nest egg, hold his head high, and gain entrance to another group.}

Kafana: {Is money a good proxy for happiness? I’ve known some rich singers who were stressed and unhappy, and some who just busked on the streets until they had enough for that day’s meals who lived as free as birds.}

Tomsk: {Did you know more such happy homeless buskers than you knew rich successful singers who were content, and homeless singers who were miserable?}

She shook her head.

Tomsk: {On average, money is pretty useful stuff. Maybe you can’t buy love and happiness, but you can use it to avoid quite a bit of being looked down upon and hardship. You can’t buy health or extra years of life directly, but on average those who can afford a balanced diet and to visit a doctor if they even suspect they’ve got a small cancerous growth, tend to do better on life expectancy. Or, you know, just not having to live in a high pollution zone, or where gangs hold daily battles.}

The shadow of a coast-crawling galley cut off the light, leaving the glow from Kafana’s skin the main illumination and drawing fish to nose at the skin of the bubble.

Tomsk: {Which isn’t to say money is a direct proxy for happiness. Let’s see if I can remember Aminat’s objections. Firstly, we aren’t designed to be happy; not long term, anyway. Happiness evolved as a reward intended to motivate certain sorts of behaviour. The steady state is contentment. Happiness is earned by ongoing success, on a daily or weekly basis; by improving your state.}

Kafana: {So there’s no magic number that, when you reach that level of wealth, you can tell your boss what to do with his demands, quit your job, and remain happy ever after?}

Tomsk: {Not for most people, no. They are happy for a bit, but after a year of just sitting on their thumbs they’re back to mere contentment. To be happy they have to find a new way to achieve; if not gaining additional money each year, then something, such as improving their ability to make sculptures, or doing better at spending time with their kids. That’s humans - always have to be doing something, can’t just stand still. Or mostly. Remind me another time to tell you about Aminat’s solution.}

Kafana: {Sounds like evolution doesn’t care for us very much. It’s more like a trainer teaching their filly a new trick. When the filly learns the trick, she earns one carrot. But she won’t get one carrot for every time she performs that same trick in the future. To earn more carrots, she has to learn more tricks.}

Tomsk: {Exactly. Which brings me onto Aminat’s second objection to using money as a proxy for happiness. When you’re poor, going from 100 semark to 110 semark is a great feeling. Five years later, going from 10,000 semark to 10,010 isn’t nearly as intense. The richer you are, the bigger the gains have to be in order to produce the same amount of extra happiness. Which makes sense, in a way. The richer you are, the easier it is to make 10 semark. If the same increase had the same effect, regardless of your wealth, then rich people would be insanely happy, like Better-Than-Life addicts - doing nothing except watching interest accrue in their bank accounts until they starved to death at their desks.}

Kafana: {I’m thinking Scrooge McDuck here, swan-diving into piles of gold coins.}

Tomsk: {Closer to King Midas.}

Kafana: {Either way, I agree that’s unrealistic. So your wealth isn’t a direct linear proxy for your happiness. Nor are gains in wealth. What was the third objection?}

Tomsk: {Once someone has enough money to survive and feel safe, other factors become more prominent in their motivation. You know what σ-GINI is, right?}

Kafana searched her memory: {GINI is a measure of income inequality, where in a society with 0% inequality everyone has the same, and in one with 100% one person has it all and the rest none. Isn’t σ-GINI the variant where they look at post-tax household income, normalised for people’s ages, and include the financial value of non-monetary income such as substance and barter?}

Tomsk: {Something like that; I never studied it. Anyway, in developed countries they found it correlates with an amazing number of things. Average levels of stress, poor mental health, poor physical health, lower life expectancy, obesity, drug use, child abuse, teen pregnancies, illiteracy, violence, crime and pollution. The list goes on.}

Kafana: {Is there anything not correlated with it?}

Tomsk: {Hair colour. Oh, and some things are the reverse. For example, on average, the smaller the inequality in a society, the larger the fraction of its GDP that the society is likely to donate in foreign aid.}

Kafana: {Ok. So you’re saying that, other things being equal, if you take two countries that are equally wealthy, the one with mild inequality (call it “Communia”) is likely to have less misery in it and more happiness than the one with outrageous levels of inequality (call it “Competia”)?}

Tomsk: {There are exceptions. Countries at war or hit by natural disasters. Countries with other sorts of inequality, such as a strict caste system or racial segregation. Maybe factors like religion or weather can affect an entire nation’s temperament. But by and large, yeah.}

Kafana: {Sounds plausible. But you know what?} she raised her voice {I still don’t know what your proposed solutions are to the problem of more and more competent desperate people and more and more ways they could destroy the world.}

Did nobody give her straight answers anymore? At this rate she should buy a set of thumbscrews and put up a sign saying, “Solve the world’s deepest problems for me, in under one minute, or else!”. She took a calming breath.

Tomsk laughed. {I’m doing my best. I’m having to dredge up 20-year-old memories, and put them together as we talk. You didn’t exactly give me a lot of advanced notice. Besides, I enjoy spending time talking with you. Are you hiding information about a better puddle of squidgy mud that you’re in a rush to get to?}

Tomsk splashed his feet, kicking free a shard of pottery that some sailor had dropped overboard.

Kafana tried to scowl but failed. Tomsk always could jolly her out of a bad mood.

Kafana: {Nope. As puddles go, this is the best in town. Possibly because of the company. By which, of course, I mean the pretty fishies.} She waved at them.

Tomsk grinned as a particularly vicious-looking stumper swam past: {Of course.}

Kafana: {What about economic growth? If Communia pays people at above the market-value of their work, won’t they be unmotivated? If capital isn’t distributed efficiently to those who can get the best rate of return from it, won’t the country’s GDP growth slow down compared to Competia? Meaning, in the long term, won’t most citizens of Competia who’re poor by the standards of their peers end up being richer in absolute terms than even those citizens of Communia who were accounted wealthy compared to their peers?}

Tomsk: {You’ve been talking to Wellington, haven’t you?}

Kafana: {Yeah, I spent some time discussing the Basso Renewal project with him, and how to get the biggest impact for the amount of money invested.}

Tomsk: {Not necessarily. Competia probably has to spend more on prisons due to higher crime levels and on dealing with days of work missed due to treatable illnesses going untreated. It may see less cooperation between citizens; and it isn’t as nice a place to raise a family, so it has to pay more in order to retain top talent. When you try to hire someone like Alderney, it isn’t just the salary - non-monetary factors such as the freedom to work on your own projects, having a meaningful job that benefits others, reduced bureaucratic management, even having pleasant offices and colleagues plays an increasing role. She’s already surviving and safe - she wants belonging and status, individuality and meaning. When you were singing, did you accept every single gig offered to you that met your minimum financial requirements?}

Kafana: {I see what you mean. No, there were some people I wouldn’t work with and places I wouldn’t perform in, for any price. But I wasn’t a minimum wager back then, and the money I earned was what the market offered me. If we’re talking about reducing desperation, what effect does it have when you pay people on a minimum wage more than what the market values their labour at?}

Tomsk: {Oh! I remember Aminat talking about an example of that. Some rich geezer decided to double the salary of his minimum wagers, just to find out what would happen. There were the obvious effects, like lots of people applying to work there and employee turnover decreasing. But he also saw the quality of applicants increasing and people trying harder at their jobs just out of loyalty. The company’s profits actually increased rather than decreased. The employees were happier, were less tired. They could afford to buy houses rather than rent, and moved closer to the office to cut down their commuting time. They brought gym memberships and healthier food, losing weight. Instead of squandering the money like they might an unearned windfall, they felt they earned it so they used it wisely. They paid off debts and increased pension fund contributions. They were able to afford to have babies while younger, when they had more energy to look after them. In short, they stopped being desperate. Stopped being the sort of people who, under the wrong influence, might be tempted to destroy the world. However...}

Statues: “What is the cause?”

A paired voice interrupted Tomsk’s explanation and he cut off abruptly.