The Probability Broach, chapter 5

Dizzy and baffled, stumbling through an unfamiliar world with no clue where he is or what’s happened to him, Win spots something he recognizes:

…lower and wider than I was used to, with tinted panes in a wrought-iron latticework, and a fancy Kremlinesque spire pointing skyward:

TELECOM

Whatever that meant. Nothing orients you faster in strange territory than browsing through the phone book. There wasn’t any door. I took two steps down into the booth and the street noises went away.

…No phone book. Just like back home. No telephone, either: just a simple matte-finished panel like sandblasted Corningware. Underneath was a keyboard. I plunked myself down on the broad upholstered bench and abruptly the screen had letters on it:

—NEED ASSISTANCE?—
The Grand Combined Director of Greater Paporte!
Gray, Bell, & Acme Communications Systems

As we tour this anarcho-capitalist fantasy world, one way to spot the authorial sleight of hand is to keep an eye out for what’s missing. This is a good example. This phone booth is far too neat and clean. Where’s the graffiti?

The impulse to make your mark is as close to universal as it gets. People from every era find it an irresistible temptation: whether it’s rude remarks directed at your rivals, boasts about your sexual prowess, fond memories of the dead, or the simple desire to leave something of yourself for the future.

Humans have put carvings and paintings on the walls of caves, on the stones of temples and cathedrals, and on the trunks of old trees. There’s graffiti on the walls of Pompeii and Herculaneum, inside Egyptian pyramids, and in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, left by Christian crusaders.

Graffiti persists despite efforts to stamp it out. In an anarchy where there are no police and private property is only a convention, it should be omnipresent. Every surface should be covered with it.

Win pecks at the keyboard, and an animated avatar appears on the screen (“a pleasantly stereotypical old-timey operator, crisply pretty in a high-collared blouse and headset”). He’s a little startled to be talking to a cartoon, but he takes it in stride:

“Could you give me Long Distance? The Denver Police… This is Lieutenant Win Bear.”

“One moment, please Lieutenant Bear.” The screen blanked, then she reappeared. “I’m sorry, we have no records for a Denver Police in either local or trunkline memories. Are you sure you’re using the correct name?”

That stopped me. “What do you mean? Try ‘Denver, City, and County of.'”

Her face registered good-natured exasperation. “I’m very sorry, sir. I’ve accessed 36,904 listings: but no ‘Denver, City and County of.'”

Win is sure there must be an error in the phone system. He asks the animated operator what her directory covers:

“Sir, we list over seven billion individuals and organizations currently contracting with some twelve thousand telecommunications companies on this planet, the Moon, Mars, and Ceres Central. I am confident to sixteen decimals that there is no ‘Denver, City and County of’ in the known solar system. May I be of further assistance, or would you prefer a live operator?”

These interplanetary colonies are alluded to several times in this book, but L. Neil Smith never tries to justify how they can exist. Who on earth footed the bill for them?

A government, which marshals and directs the productive capacity of millions of people, can build something huge, complicated and costly – like a pyramid, an interstate highway system, or a space program, or a lunar colony. But there’s no realistic way a private individual could finance this, unless there are plutocrats so gigantically wealthy they might as well be kings.

In a libertarian world where money reigns supreme, everything has to be done for the sake of profit. There might be philosophical reasons for establishing a colony on the Moon or Mars – scientific curiosity, a belief that our destiny lies in the stars, a desire to spread out so humanity won’t go extinct in case of planetary catastrophe – but there sure as hell isn’t an economic reason for it. There’s nothing on another planet that we can’t get more easily on Earth.

Win is starting to form a hypothesis about what’s happened to him. Given the high-tech look of everything (“some artist’s conception of Tomorrowland”), plus the mention of space colonies, he concludes that this is the future. He wonders if the explosion he survived was the first nuke of World War III, and the force of the blast flung him through time. Or was the unfamiliar gadgetry in Vaughn Meiss’ lab a prototype time machine?

He looks up Otis Bealls, wondering if the man or any of his descendants might be alive. There’s no one by that exact name in the directory, but:

The cursor dot slide-whistled up and down the page uncertainly.

Then, in the right-hand column across from the Beallses, it caught me, right between the eyes:

BEAR, EDWARD W., Consulting Detective
626 E. Genêt Pl.		ACMe 9-4223

Win is dumbfounded to see his own name and his own (“more-or-less correct”) profession in the phone book of a strange futuristic city. Driven by irresistible curiosity, he punches in the number.

The machine displays a prompt: “PLEASE INSERT ONE TENTH COPPER OUNCE”. Win doesn’t know what kind of money that is, but he rummages through his pockets and finds the silver coin he took from Meiss’ lab. He puts it in the slot, and the machine accepts it.

There’s something that’s missing in this scene. It’s subtle, but look again at this seemingly innocent transaction. How is it possible that the phone booth only accepts one kind of coin – which, conveniently, just so happens to be a coin of the kind Win has on his person?

As we’ve discussed, this sort of thing should be a massive problem in an ancap society. There’s no central bank, no treasury, no government with a money-printing monopoly. Anyone who wants to coin their own money, can – and there’s a powerful incentive to do so, namely seigniorage, the power to profit by creating money on demand.

There should be dozens, if not hundreds, of currencies in circulation. There should be competing coins in different sizes and combinations of precious metals, as well as paper notes, gemstones, IOUs, electronic cash, carved stones, wampum beads, and more esoteric valuables. (In a later chapter, Smith does indeed say that there are competing private currencies, but we never see this.)

Trying to do business in this place would be a logistical nightmare. Imagine trying to buy something at a store, but being unable to, because the Venn diagram of currencies the merchant accepts and currencies you use has no overlap. Imagine having to check a hundred wildly fluctuating exchange rates every time you want to buy groceries.

Imagine how hard it would be to tell if an unfamiliar coin or bill is counterfeit – or, even if it’s not, whether its issuer has the reserves it claims to back the currency with. Imagine your life savings suddenly wiped out because the issuing bank went bust and your money is now worthless. Even coins of precious metal can be debased with less-valuable alloys.

Not least of all, imagine workers trapped in a cycle of exploitation and debt slavery because their employer pays them in company scrip that’s only accepted at its own overpriced stores. Again, under anarcho-capitalism, there’s every incentive to do this and no regulator that can prevent it.

L. Neil Smith never considers these problems because, like most libertarians, he doesn’t grasp that the economy is a construct of society. He thinks all the rules and norms he’s used to just arise naturally – like rivers and rainclouds. He can’t fathom that they come from the government he despises.

New reviews of The Probability Broach will go up every Friday on my Patreon page. Sign up to see new posts early and other bonus stuff!

Other posts in this series:

• The Probability Broach