The Almighty Sprug: Gulliver's Eyewitness Account of the Quaint Economy of Lilliput Read online

Lilliput’s emperor their puppet.

  Instead, the emperor of Blefuscu assembled the Anointed of their Heavenly God, and ordered them to reinterpret the Holy Book’s passage about tithes. After this pressure and much prayer, the Anointed of the Heavenly God declared that the tithe was not an offering to the emperor, but was a votive offering to the Heavenly God. Thus the emperor and his Lords and Ladies didn’t need to store the tithe in their castles as on Lilliput.

  So, as the peasants of Blefuscu dutifully delivered their tithe, the aristocracy and the Anointed of the Heavenly God skimmed off as much as was needed to support themselves in the regal splendor they deserved – and, of course, to support the large government bureaucracy, the army, navy and war material production, and their wars – and, in an elaborate ceremony, the balance of the tithe was ceremoniously dumped out at sea to the hallelujahs of 100 naked choir boys singing from the rigging.

  THE ORGANIZATION; Where Lilliput only organized its vital areas as a Sprug free business corporation, and allowed the “invisible hand” to direct the rest of their economy; Blefuscu organized its whole economy as a Sprug free business corporation. Although there was a concerted attempt by The Anointed to later destroy the evidence, a description of the organization during that time survived, and I’ll relate it as best I can from memory.

  Basically the emperor owned the entire island, and leased out shires of the islands to his Lords, and they all lived by skimming the tithe. The Lord lived in a manor on the highest hill in the shire, and his peasants lived in a town below the manor. Each shire would appoint a Board of Directors with the responsibility to determine what was to be produced, how much, and who was to head production.

  There was also a Board of Directors for the whole island with a member appointed by each shire to coordinate what was needed by the island and to make rules and regulations to improve organization and development of technology. This allowed the little people to use their natural pride in workmanship, sense of duty to society, and their joy of cooperating on mutual trust to drive the economy and produce what was needed most efficiently.

  Because each shire had different conditions and resources, each became famous for some product or services, and was named for them. There was Fishtown, Irontown, Bathtown named for its mineral spas, and etc. And in the beginning each shire took its goods and representation of services to well organized markets staffed by three monitors with the power to settle any disputes, and trading was conducted by barter.

  But eventually the economy became too complex to use barter, and a more flexible system of exchange was needed. After much trial and error the clever little people invented a system or medium of exchange that worked quite differently than the Sprug, so let me describe how it worked for it was a very unique invention that had all the advantages of the Sprug, but none of the problems.

  IX

  The Lowly Chug

  The Lowly Chug was a very unique medium of exchange that had all the advantages of a Sprug and few of its faults. Each shire would deliver its production to the various imperial markets, and the emperor’s monitors would judge the value of the goods provided by the shire; and issue the manager of the shire an amount of fully certified Chugs representing the present appraised value of their total delivery.

  The Chugs would then be distributed by the manager to those who had created the goods based on the value of their individual contribution. Every able bodied worker and supplier received a base salary of Chugs to provide his family basic food, housing, and clothing for the period; but workers could and did receive more based upon the value of their contribution to the corporation for the period. The disabled and retired workers in the shire also received a base salary.

  The workers would then use their Chugs to purchase goods at the different market places; and to purchase goods and services from private sources – for example a visit to a spa or to hire a maid, etc. The people providing the private services would then use the Chugs they received to purchase goods at the market places. So as a medium of exchange it worked not much different from a Sprug. But in every other sense the Chug was very different.

  First, it’s important to note that production didn’t depend upon available Chugs. Chugs were issued based on the production after it was produced. So there was never a shortage of Chugs. The value of Chugs in circulation each month and the value of production each month always agreed. So production depended upon available resources, available labor and available organization and technology all of which were plentiful, and Chugs depended upon what was produced.

  Second, the Chug did not represent raw unlimited imperial power like the Sprug. The Chug’s power was limited because it expired one month after issue, and had to be used during that period or be lost. Thus, every able bodied person had to participate in the economy every month to get his share of the Chugs for the month, and, since Chugs couldn’t be accumulated, there were no corrupt Anointed controlling the economy. It was directed by managers and Boards of Directors.

  However production that wasn’t used during a month, if durable goods, was simply added to the production of the following month and new Chugs were issued on the combination. So goods that remained from unused Chugs weren’t wasted, they simply carried over to the next month. In this way they could either use more the next month, or reduce production and take a day off.

  Third, since Chugs didn’t represent unlimited power, using them didn’t alter the personalities of the people as much as Sprugs. So, the people’s natural sense of pride in their work, sense of duty to society, joy of cooperating with mutual trust, and compassion were never completely overwhelmed by greed to distort and corrupt the economy as on Lilliput. The Chug was just a useful medium of exchange to facilitate trading, and was never considered a God, or led to poverty, corruption or gambling.

  THE GOLDEN AGE; As organization and technology improved on Blefuscu, with scientists and inventors developing fantastic windmills and complex canals and waterfalls to speed up production, prosperity on Blefuscu increased so rapidly that quite soon the people had to work together only a few days a week to produce all Blefuscu’s society needed. This gave everyone lots of leisure time that was used quite differently by different parts of society.

  About a quarter of the people used the free time most constructively. They went to school to study favorite subjects, invented wonderful new things to make life easier or more interesting, wrote amusing stories, histories, poems, plays, composed music, and designed and built wonderful new edifices and cathedrals that were still admired on both Blefuscu and Lilliput as classics when I arrived.

  Another quarter of the people were happy with their new free time. They had no desire or talent to write or invent things, but they passed their days in peaceful and useful tasks among family and friends. So about half of the people on Blefuscu were very happy living in their Garden of Eden, thankfully gave their tithe of 10% every day to their Heavenly God for the bounty, and enjoyed their wonderful leisure time.

  But the remaining half of society proved quite a problem. These people had never been really happy in what they complained was a humdrum and regimented Garden of Eden. These people craved excitement and had always envied the Lilliputians who had transformed their economy into an exciting game where common peasants had the chance to accumulate the raw imperial power of the Sprug and live like aristocrats.

  And now that they had all this free time, they became doubly bored and, craving even more excitement, made a lot of trouble for themselves and the rest of society on Blefuscu. They began filling their hours drinking, smoking, and listened to demigods whipping them into frenzied riots over imagined wrongs. In short they were spoiled rotten by Blefuscu’s prosperity and doubly spoiled by the leisure.

  I know exactly how that goes. On long voyages a ship’s captain is kept busier keeping his crew occupied than sailing his vessel. You need to keep them tying knots, furling, unfurling, changing and mending sails, scrubbing the holds and decks, and to dream up all sort
s of jobs just to keep them busy, or you take a chance on boredom and mutiny on long voyages.

  But what proved to be even worse, this half of the population began to eat from boredom, until half the population on Blefuscu was obese, weighing three times their normal weight, and weakened by all kinds of sickness and scurvy. The Lilliputians, who wanted nothing to do with the boring economy of Blefuscu, made fun of their neighbors, predicting that someday Blefuscu would sink into the ocean from the weight of its unhappy people.

 

  THE TRAGEDY; But what actually happened was even more tragic and not funny. One fall, just at harvest time with Blefuscu’s fields full of grain, a typhoon blew up out of the southwest that must have been even worse than the one that sunk my ship. The people on Blefuscu hid in caves and cellars and survived, but the typhoon blew off course a flock of geese migrating from Australia to the warmer climes in Sumatra.

  To escape the storm, the big birds landed on Blefuscu; and, with everything so plentiful, none bothered flying on to Lilliput, but stayed on Blefuscu eating and crapping. Then, a few days later when the typhoon quieted down, to the great relief of the people, the birds took off to