{"id":15022,"date":"2015-12-03T07:14:16","date_gmt":"2015-12-03T12:14:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=15022"},"modified":"2015-12-03T07:14:16","modified_gmt":"2015-12-03T12:14:16","slug":"retrotopia-economics-by-other-means","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=15022","title":{"rendered":"Retrotopia: Economics by Other Means"},"content":{"rendered":"

Retrotopia: Economics by Other Means<\/a><\/h3>\n

This is the tenth installment of an exploration of some of the possible futures discussed on this blog, using the toolkit of narrative fiction. Our narrator catches a train for the agricultural hinterlands of the Lakeland Republic, and learns some of the reasons why the Republic is so hard to invade.<\/p>\n

***********<\/p>\n

The phone rang at eight a.m. sharp the next morning. I was in the bathroom, trying to get my electric shaver to give me a shave half as good as the one I got at the barbershop, and failing; I turned the thing off, put it down, and got to the phone on the third ring. \u201cHello?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMr. Carr? Melanie Berger. We\u2019ve got everything lined up for your trip today. Can you be at the train station by nine o\u2019clock?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSure thing,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cGood. Your tickets will be waiting for you, and Colonel Tom Pappas will meet you there. You can\u2019t miss him; look for a wheelchair and a handlebar mustache.\u201d<\/p>\n

The wheelchair didn\u2019t sound too promising\u2014I had no idea what kind of accommodations counties in the Lakeland Republic\u2019s lower tiers made for people with disabilities\u2014but I figured Meeker\u2019s people knew what they were doing. \u201cI\u2019ll do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ll be back Saturday evening,\u201d Berger said then. \u201cThe president would like to see you again Monday afternoon, if you\u2019re free.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll put it on the schedule,\u201d I assured her; we said the usual, and I hung up.<\/p>\n

It took me only a few minutes to pack for the trip, and then it was out the door, down the stairs, and through the lobby to the street to wave down a taxi. As I got out onto the sidewalk, a kid with a bag of rolled newspapers hanging from one shoulder turned toward me expectantly and said, \u201cMorning\u00a0Blade<\/em>? \u2018Nother satellite got hit.\u201d<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Retrotopia: Economics by Other Means This is the tenth installment of an exploration of some of the possible futures discussed on this blog, using the toolkit of narrative fiction. Our narrator catches a train for the agricultural hinterlands of the Lakeland Republic, and learns some of the reasons why the Republic is so hard to […]<\/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":[2,7],"tags":[3463,311,1758,8722],"class_list":["post-15022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-survival-2","tag-archdruid-report","tag-fiction","tag-john-michael-greer","tag-retrotopia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15022","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=15022"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15023,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15022\/revisions\/15023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}