{"id":13713,"date":"2015-10-22T19:09:09","date_gmt":"2015-10-23T00:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=13713"},"modified":"2015-10-22T19:09:09","modified_gmt":"2015-10-23T00:09:09","slug":"retrotopia-a-question-of-subsidies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=13713","title":{"rendered":"Retrotopia: A Question of Subsidies"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"post-title entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/thearchdruidreport.blogspot.ca\/2015\/10\/retrotopia-question-of-subsidies.html\" target=\"_blank\">Retrotopia: A Question of Subsidies<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>This is the seventh installment of an exploration of some of the possible futures discussed on this blog, using the toolkit of narrative fiction. Our narrator visits a streetcar factory, asks some hard questions about the use of human labor in place of machines, and gets some answers he doesn\u2019t expect&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>***********<\/p>\n<p>The phone rang at 8 am sharp, a shrill mechanical sound that made me wonder if there was actually a bell inside the thing. I put down the Toledo\u00a0<em>Blade<\/em>\u00a0and got it on the second ring. \u201cHello?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMr. Carr? This is Melanie Berger. I\u2019ve got\u2014well, not exactly good news, but it could be worse.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I laughed. \u201cOkay, I\u2019ll bite. What\u2019s up?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve managed to get everyone to sit down and work out a compromise, but the President\u2019s got to be involved in that. With any luck this whole business will be out of the way by this afternoon, and he\u2019ll be able to meet with you this evening, if that\u2019s acceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019ll be fine,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGood. In the meantime, we thought you might want to make some of the visits we discussed with your boss earlier. If that works for you\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt does.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCan you handle being shown around by an intern? He\u2019s a bit of a wooly lamb, but well-informed.\u201d I indicated that that would be fine, and she went on. \u201cHis name\u2019s Michael Finch. I can have him meet you at the Capitol Hotel lobby whenever you like.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWould half an hour from now be too soon?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot at all. I\u2019ll let him know.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We said the usual polite things, and I hung up. Twenty-five minutes later I was down in the lobby, and right on time a young man in a trenchcoat and a fedora came through the doors.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Retrotopia: A Question of Subsidies This is the seventh installment of an exploration of some of the possible futures discussed on this blog, using the toolkit of narrative fiction. Our narrator visits a streetcar factory, asks some hard questions about the use of human labor in place of machines, and gets some answers he doesn\u2019t [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[3463,311,341,1758,8722],"class_list":["post-13713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-archdruid-report","tag-fiction","tag-future","tag-john-michael-greer","tag-retrotopia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13713"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13714,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13713\/revisions\/13714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}