CHAPTER 17

EMPTY DEBTY

   So Boris stood up and approached the big egg on the wall, and the nearer he approached it, the more and more human it became. Boris thought that this egg looked a lot like the nursery rhyme character his father had created to teach him about the financial world; he called it, appropriately, Empty Debty.

   Now a real incarnation of his Father's thought processes had materialized in bodily form--well at least in egg form--before Boris; very strange thought our young hero.

   Boris noted that this eggy creature was currently sitting on top of a high wall--such a narrow one that Boris wondered how it could keep its balance--and as it didn't take any notice of him, Boris thought that it must be a stuffed figure after all. Nevertheless, Boris decided to address it.

   "Good day, sir, I am Boris Harte. And what may I call you?"

   "Oh my! It's a mosquito," declared this creature. "Get away, get away."

   "I'm not a mosquito! I'm a boy!"

   "I never did see a boy so small.  You most certainly look and sound like a mosquito."

   "Oh, I am sorry. I'm at present too little for you to notice me. Just a minute."

   So Boris drank from the red, or was it the blue, vial, and was soon his normal size, but this was still small compared to the large creature on the Wall.  However, he was now big enough to be noticed by it.

   "Oh, how do you do, sir? You are now in the august presence of Empty Debty. You may now hand over your offering."

   "What offering?! You are fat enough already and I'm certainly not giving you any offering."

   "Then what are you doing here if you don't have any business with me?"

   "Can't people interact in ways that have nothing to do with business."

   "That's impossible. All interactions between creatures are some sort of business transaction."

   "That's not true," remarked Boris.

   "If you think about it for a moment, and go through all the examples of the many types of relationships in life, you will see that this is true; take marriage for instance: it's simply a contract between a man and a woman for each to procure something from the other: sexual pleasure, for the man, in exchange for economic security, for the woman; both parties of which, by the way, can, now, at present, procure these commodities using other means."

   "It is not that simple."

   "It is; one must not over-complexify things. Remember Occam's Razor."

   "I know of no Occam, and I certainly have no idea where he keeps his razor: I didn't lose it!" said Boris, who, indeed, knew of Occam's Razor, but who didn't want to give this creature before him the upper hand.

   "Oh, some people have no more sense than a baby."

   Boris didn't know what to say to this; it wasn't at all like conversation, he thought, as Empty never said anything directly to him; in fact, his last remark was evidently addressed to a tree who Empty had now given the privilege of handing over an offering to his own very august and round person (and speaking of round, one certainly had a hard time seeing all the way around this figure)--so Boris stood and softly repeated to himself:

Empty Debty sat on a Wall:

Empty Debty had a great fall.

All the King's Purses and even the King's Pen

Had to put Empty Debty together again.

   "Excuse me, Mr. Debty, but don't you think you'd be safer down on the ground?" Boris went on in his good natured anxiety for the queer creature. "That Wall is so very narrow!"

   "Oh, I don't think so! Why, if I ever did fall off--which there's no chance of--but if I did, the Chief Tweedle has promised me--ah you may turn pale, if you like--the Chief Tweedle has promised me--with his very own mouth to--to--"

  "To lend all his Purses and even his Pen," Boris interrupted rather unwisely. "And who do you think has to refill that Purse..."

  "Now, I declare! You've been listening at doors--and behind trees--and down chimneys--or you wouldn't have known that!"

    "I haven't, indeed!" Boris said very gently. "It's all in a book. It's called Tragedy and Hope by Professor Carrol Quigley."

    At this, Empty turned his attention once again to the tree in an obvious act of spurning Boris; but Boris would have none of this impolite behavior, and so, looking intently at this Empty Person, he said, "What a beautiful Belt you have on! At least," he corrected himself on second thought, "a beautiful Tie, I should have said--no a Belt, I mean--I beg your pardon." Empty looked terribly offended and Boris thought to himself, "If I only knew what was Waist and what was Neck!"

   "It's a most provoking thing when a person doesn't know a Tie from a Belt," said Empty. "What do they teach you in School these days?"

   "It's very ignorant of me," said Boris. "I also can never figure out the difference between a Future and a Commodity, or between an Equity and a Leverage; I'm ever so dumb."

   "That's OK. We don't want the brains of our people getting too over-heated, do we; as long as their pockets, and not their minds, are open; then we'll all be happy. There's glory for you!"

   "I don't know what you mean by glory," Boris said.

   "Of course you don't--till I tell you. When I use a word it means what I chose it to mean--neither more nor less."

   "The question is," said Boris, "whether you can make words mean so many diifferent things."

   "The question is which is to be the master--that's all. In a nutshell, I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That's what I say!"

   "What does that mean?"

   "It means that we've had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you'd mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don't mean to stop here all the rest of your life as you don't seem to have much to offer me."

   "That's a great deal to make one word mean," Boris said.

   "I often make one word do a lot of work, as I make my money do a lot of work--for the same bills go round and round paying for more and more things all the time in a whirlind of trading and selling and buying."

   "But shouldn't the money be tied down by something hefty--perhaps some shiny metal paperweight or some commodity---so that it will not fly away so?"

  Empty objected,  "But then we can not make our economies work backwards, you know."

   "I am not sure what you mean. I am familiar with memories working backwards--though I am still not sure how that works completely--but I have definitely never heard of economies working backward, though I have heard of backward economies."

   "Why,  it’s the very same principle.  First the people buy the commodities, then they work to acquire the money to pay for it, and then after a while they pay for it--all done on easy terms; why anybody can do it."

  "But then there are always more things made than people have money to pay for."

   "That's not a problem."

   "But what if the people, at one point, are not able to work and therefore they can't pay for the things that they have already bought."

   "Then we just write off the loss."

  "But somebody has to pay."

  "The King's Purse and the King's Pen will."

  "But that comes from the very same people who have lost their jobs and who, therefore, have no money to contribute to the Purse."

   "Then we get some money from another land, and then the people can pay them later."

   "But what if the the people still have no money in the future to pay the other land."

   "Oh it's the money itself that is troubling you; why, that's no problem: we simply print more of it."

   "But unless the people get jobs, this will only make the little money that they have, even worth less. There will be less money to spend on commodities and therefore the commodity makers will lose their commodity making places and then there will be less and less jobs, eventually causing a big fall."

   "But then the Kings' Purse and the King's pen..."

  "We seem to be going in a circles here."

  "Why, you finally get economics!"

  "But the circle we'll be now entering is an ever spiralling downward one; that is, unless we can get our economy on a good footing based on solid creation of real commodities and services, don't you think?"

   "Yes, we must certainly tighten our belt."

   "Or is it Tie? Ha! But seriously folks, what does it mean to tighten our belt?  This tightening only seems to apply to certain parts of the economy and that surely can only mean, as always, that the poorest--and some of the middle class that don't play ball with the snakes--will have the belt tightened over them, so much so that they will be strangled to..."

   "Remember, Impenetrability is the word. We must not get too involved in finding things out. Oh, it's not too good for us."

   "Uhh, but..."

   And Empty once again turned to the tree, but Boris had more questions and so he persistently stood his ground, and therefore asked this Empty person another question, "Well, you seem very clever at explaining words, sir. Would you kindly tell me the meaning of the poem Jabberwordly?"

   "Let's hear it. I can expain all the poems that were ever invented."

   This sounded hopeful, so Boris repeated one of the verses:

Secure the right

To sexual and reproductive health

With special concern

For women and girls

  "Sexual health surely is the ability for Pigeons, male an female, to be healthy and ready for each other and Reproductive Health can mean none other than the freedom to have their eggs grow to proper maturity. Obviously, the more better Pigeons the better, for then they can make more and more offerings to me!"

   "That makes sense."

   "No, it doesn't," said a third voice coming from somewhere above Boris, and who turned out to be Mister Walter Pigeon; he now landed on the shoulder of Boris and continued on with his objection, "It really means Egg Stealing on demand of the Tweedles with no interference from parents, as the Global House of Congregation stated in its Paper on the Status of Small Fry which it intends to enforce with a World Law." 

   "Oh my!" exclaimed Boris.

   "Who invited you, sir?" said Empty in a very demanding voice. "You have been very deliquent of late in making your offerings to me!"

   "You will not be getting any more of my offerings, you snake!"

   "Oh, Mister Walter," interrupted Boris, "but I am confused, for I do not see a snake before me."

   "Oh, sorry, my dear good friend, but you seem to have come into an already ongoing conversation between Empty and I; let us bring you up to speed, if you will be so glad to aid me, sir Debty?"

   "No, problem," said the Big Egg, "as long as I get equal billing."

   "No, problem," said Walter. "You can start, my dear august sir, by explaining your statement 'the more better pigeons the better.'"

   "Yes," said Empty, "I will begin shortly, but first I must take some pills to put down a bit of indigestion."

   As Empty popped the said pills into his mouth, Boris thought he saw the head of a small snake wriggle out of the corner of his mouth for a short, stolen moment, but soon it wriggled back. Boris thought he imagined the whole thing, until he saw  Empty's entire outer shell start wriggling and bubbling like there was an entire den of snakes under his skin. However, the pills seemed to work and these epidermal undulations slowly decreased until they disappeared all together: perhaps Empty was telling the truth about having indigestion, but his digestive ailment did, indeed, have a serpentine quality to it.

   Then  Empty finally proceeeded, "Thank you, my dear Mister Pigeon. Well, my dear Boris, we, indeed, want more and more Pigeons, but obviously we also want more and more Pigeons of the better kind, for who wouldn't want to be healthy, and who wouldn't want to grow up to be a proper contributing member of a well ordered society. In addition, this will help us avoid that downward spiral you were talking about, boy. Mr. Pigeon."

   "We avoid economic collapse of a certain sector," thought Boris wryly, "by simply getting rid of that sector. I see, said the blind man."

   "Well, my dear Boris," said Walter now taking the floor,  "this is what he's really proclaiming: first, he only wants rich and prosperous Pigeons to mature who will have the abilty to make their periodic offering to the great August Sir; and second, that only means a certain number of Pigeons can indeed reach proper maturity, for only so many can truly prosper, at least, so as to meet the high standards of the great Debty; and three, this obviously, means that this land has no room for your average, let alone poor, Pigeon. Do you concur, my dear opponent?"

   "I do," concurred Empty, "for anybody who has done any lick of research into the status of the land, knows that there are only so many resources out there, and, therefore, the land can only sustain so many Pigeons at an acceptable level."

   "That is pure bunk!" rejoinded Walter, "There are  enough resources in the land to sustain many more times the number of Pigeons presently in the land. This is a very big subject and I will not go into it now, but you can research this question yourself, Boris, for there are many books that prove this point and you must do this work yourself. "

   Then Walter spoke many times into the ear of Boris: it sounded to him  like "Coo¹, coo², coo³, coo⁴, coo⁵, coo⁶..." but these words really contained--in a coded and packed form--much useful information on the so-called Limits to Growth question.

   Then Walter continued in a normal mode  of speaking, saying, "But I will say this for now: know that the availability of resources depends not on the land, but on the people who manage it: that is, on the health of the economic system, which, in turn, depends for its health on the political system, which, in turn, depends for its health on the ethical and religious system, that very system which is governed by the rules and edicts, and the very person, of Catlan himself!" 

   "Now, that's pure bunk! Who, in their right mind, these days, can even contemplate the possiblility that  there are no limits to growth in our fair land, and that we must do everything in our power to restrict uncontrolled growth."

   "Like 'controlling' the growth of Pigeon eggs through the stealing of them by the snakes."

   "Oh, dear, dear, dear, Mister Pigeon, you really do over-dramatize things, don't you?"

   "No, I don't! You simply represent the culture of death so prevalent in this serpent-ruled land."

   "Well, let's see what our very own Catlan has to say about the issue," interpolated the very fat Egg.

   "You mean Catlan is near!" excitedly exclaimed Boris.

   "You betcha!" said Empty, "But first you must pick out the real Catlan."

   "What! I do not understand," said the confused Boris.

   "Well, nearby, there are three very August Personages who all claim to be Catlan, but only one is the real deal and you must pick the right one, Boris."

   "Huh?!" ejaculated Boris.

   Then talking to some folk to the side, Empty announced, "Now, my dear associates, open the curtain so that we can play TO TELL THE TRUTH!"

NOTES

1. This link goes to a article that is perhaps somewhat moderate in its opposition to the so-called Limits to Growth problem, but it shows that even moderates do not wholly subscribe to the Malthusian Mania rampant in today's culture.

2. Again from a somewhat dubious source (N.O. Catholics).  However, it powerfully shows the true link between the abortion issue and the so-called limits to population growth, with this article dealing with concrete stats from a  specific country (The Phillipines)

3. Rather extremely conspiratorial, but seems to get the issues right in a general way (though some details might be heard to prove.)

4. Rather intellectual and formidible, but hang in there until the end; you can skim over some hard and possibly unnecessarily hard paragraphs.  Deals with the false dichotomy between Absolute Endless Limits to Growth through Invisible Hand Economics versus Environmentalistic Zero Growth Despairism; instead this article proposes a true model of realistic growth based on man's God Given gifts of Reason and Morality.

5. Although from quite a unique source (a Muslim) this article is quite erudite and comprehensive and presents a unique perspective on the issue of overpopulation with connections to the issue of abortion.

6. Although from a Protestant perspective (who bad mouths St. Jerome as a eco-fanatic: obviously a typical protestant error) it is quite fact filled and moving, especially on the subject of China. Also contains some good links.  Note: if you know of good sites on the issue of over-population please email me about them.