"Apeshit"
George was restless. All the enemies of democracy had been conquered. The benevolence of free market capitalism had been proselytized and propagated, with some military assistance, throughout the planet. He searched vainly for pockets of socialist recidivism or terrorist resistance to the rule of the rich�s law. He couldn�t find even a clan of aborigines that hadn�t been conquered by right thinking corporations. How could goodness grow better?
Rule, from the court-attended throne of the corporate domain, grew tedious. As boredom mounted, an expansive idea began to take shape in his easily muddled mind. He saw clearly, only that he wanted to be perceived as a messiah again. At first he had little confidence in the notion. His was all invested in the status quo. And why not?
Low wages, for all but the select, and high profits for the ruling corporations have always been the winning combination. If the workers can�t buy the products they make, they can borrow. More money will be made on interest. But some alarmist crackpot economists had suggested that profits on the sale of money would exacerbate a recurring problem. When they�re saturated with debt, people need cash to consume. Without it there�s no way to fuel the economy. The interest on existing loans has already bankrupted them. Without new consumers, to replace the debt-ridden populace, or higher salaries for the majority, markets can�t expand. Raising wages and salaries flies in the face of conservative economic theories and principles. The moral dilemma seems to be without an acceptable resolution.
That high profits and low wages could be a problem, confused George. Money to buy things has never been an issue with him. He�s never had to borrow, except short term loans for fast, high profit deals. That debt would surely exacerbate consumer difficulties and preclude economic recovery, was incomprehensible to him. For that matter, he didn�t understand why Marie was considered naive for having said, "let them eat cake." For him, there is a disconnect between money and the material goods it represents. He doesn�t understand that money is an abstract invention, not a real thing in itself. He doesn�t really know what abstractions are. He knows that it feels good to be the world�s hero and he wants to feel that way again.
When some of George�s supporters began to become nervous about the Adam Smith - expanding market thing, he started wondering. After thousands of questions and much mental struggling, he began to understand. There were no people left on Earth who had not been brought under the sway of capitalists. There was no new market to exploit and the existing consumers had no money. None of the Earth�s human populations had money to buy goods. With no reason to produce things on a large scale the economy must collapse.
He didn�t really understand the line of reasoning. Dick told him the solution was to find another market place. He trusted Dick, though none of his useless advisors could tell him where to look for new sources of demand. But he was determined to save the world and be a hero once again. That�s why he�d wracked his mind for months and months. The futility of the process had begun to depress him. He�d nearly given up. Then he caught George of the Jungle on TV. The inspiration finally came to him.
It had all started as a reliving of past conquests, a means to obscure from consciousness the harsh realities of the suffering caused to most people by corporate economic terror and greed. Then it became a fantasy, which gave form to the desire for a new heroic venture. He didn�t control it. Self discipline has never been as attractive to George as has been the ordering of the lives of his servants. When the inspiration finally came, he could hardly contain it. It was the first variation of an old idea that had ever occurred to him spontaneously, as far as he could know. What was George�s algorithm for expanding his interests and those of his loyal constituency in America? He bought a mountain and valley in Africa.
George hired an MBA or two to organize a banana business but they wouldn�t communicate with the clan of gorillas who would do the actual work. They felt it was beneath their dignity. G. had to personally manage that portion of the deal. He had a talent for striking sympathetic intellectual chords with those he was constrained by ideology and greed to believe to be beneath himself. It was the greatest challenge of his life to convince the silver-back to acknowledge that the clan�s communal territory was now George�s property. In the end he succeeded by bribing the patriarch.
The natural leader was made the CEO of the production subsidiary of the retailing parent corporation, which was owned by the holding company, with which George had no visible connection. [It should be noted that this may be the first time in recent history that a natural leader has been allowed a position of real, if somewhat limited, power.] When the gorilla had realized that he�d no longer have to gather his own bananas, he went for the deal. Testosterone prevented him from seeing that his family would be his slaves. He and George alike, thought with their Dicks. Neither had an idea that their prosperity rested on a system of slavery... that to have others do your work for you is evil. George had no notion of the damage, the pain, suffering and death, this system caused to the gorilla [or human] species. It was no time at all before a thriving business was creating huge profits for its organizer.
In pre capitalist gorilla society, each member of the clan, regardless of position in the simian hierarchy, had gathered about ten pounds of bananas per day and had personally consumed them. George immediately identified that as the heart of hated socialism and evidence of a poor work ethic. He set about to show the group a better way to live.
George, having set the patriarch up as CEO, had him recruit two strong male gorillas to be CSO [Chief Security Officer] and CBO [Chief Banana Officer]. The ten remaining apes continued to gather bananas but they no longer ate them immediately. The CBO took all gathered fruit, with the aid of the CSO when lazy cousins resisted the new system, to the CEO who sold them to the parent entity for five cents per pound. The gross income, after deducting three cents per pound for salaries and expenses, was turned over to George, the sole stock-owner of the land and holding company, The Apeshit Corporation.
The silver-backed CEO immediately understood the spiritual, philosophical, biological and moral superiority of the new system. So did the CBO and CSO. The soon to be elite patriarch and his middle class officers [wannabees] no longer had to work. They hadn�t to so much as to pick a single banana. To command loyal service, they had only to coerce their lazy family by threatening them with starvation. The leaders soon came to believe the servitude of others to be their right and due. Labeling the rest of the family as lazy, immoral and irreligious was a ploy of psychological conditioning suggested by one of George�s hired advisors. It wasn�t clear whose minds were being crippled. No one saw the irony.
Of the three cents/pound retained by the gorillas from the sale of the gathered bananas, the CEO kept half for himself. The CBO and CSO got one fourth cent each. The remaining penny was divided equally among the ten worker apes. The workers knew they�d each have to gather more fruit to make up for management�s lack of production, euphemistically labeled overhead. Until they went to the supermarket [another installation of Apeshit] to buy bananas to eat, they didn�t realize how devastating to their livelihood the economic system had become.
The pre free market economy of the clan had, as previously stated, consisted of gathering and eating about ten pounds of bananas per day per gorilla. At the supermarket bananas cost ten cents/pound. At one tenth of a cent per pound gathered, a gorilla must produce 1000 pounds per day to sustain life. The CSO found it increasingly necessary to assert his authority to quash the grumbling of uncooperative malcontents. The new system had some problems.
The worker gorillas found it impossible to earn enough money to survive. The problem was exacerbated when George began charging the clan rent to live and work within their territory. The next bond of slavery was created by charging interest on the money lent to the apes so they wouldn�t starve. That move resulted in the final destruction of the simian economy. The workers had seen it coming for some time. Only owners and management are foolish enough to believe in the pyramid schemes they impose on us, to enrich themselves, while avoiding real work.
The gorillas snapped. They rose up and killed their worthless, lazy leaders. It was their only hope of survival. Their battle cry was, "To hell with capitalism! An idiot can see it doesn�t work for the majority of apes!"
George was unruffled. He quickly invaded the gorilla homeland and had them all assassinated as suspected terrorists. Then he sold robotic machinery to himself, paid for with working class and lower middle class tax money, which was approved by congress to rebuild American interests damaged by the war for the freedom of capitalists in the former gorillas� land. The profits continued to mount and the world was again safe for the elite. It wasn�t long before all the gorillas on Earth had been replaced by George�s and his emulator�s machines. Monkey see monkey do business.
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Greg Kaiser
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A G Kaiser