Month: March 2001

June 7, 2059
WASHINGTON DC–Federal District Judge Lydia Peezer today handed down her much-anticipated Final Judgment in the landmark U.S. v. U.S. anti-trust case. As widely expected, Judge Peezer endorsed the Department of Justice’s complex divestiture plan, calling for the country to be divided into three independent geographic regions, each consisting of four autonomous “operational units.”

Speaking from the bench and citing the Findings of Fact she issued in the case last November, Judge Peezer declared that the “[United States] Federal Government has consistently abused its monopoly control of U.S. currency to the detriment of consumers, both foreign and domestic.” The 132-page Memorandum of Final Judgment cited in particular an earlier finding that U.S. control of worldwide wealth amounted to “monopoly power through market dominance,” and that the U.S. had abused that power by eliminating capital flows to competitive countries and industries.

“The U.S. has a long history of politically motivated spending internationally,” explains Edgard Tree, Director of FRONT, an international coalition of governments and non-governmental organizations. “There are better, more efficient governments and ideologies out there that get stifled because of U. S. control of international capital. New ideas can’t get any backing unless the U.S. approves, and nobody dares to break ranks for fear of retaliation.”

Analysts identify two key turning points in the three-year-old case: the emergence last year of a “smoking gun” report, and the evasive testimony of Senate Majority Leader Freddie Prinze Jr. The report in question, issued by the U. S. NSA, identified “transnational ‘gypsy,’ nomadic, and ‘open source’ social organizations” as the “most tangible present threat to U.S. political hegemony” and called for associated U. S. agencies to “cut off their air supply” by isolating the “vagrants” from world financial markets.

The complex divestiture plan calls for division of the U. S. into three new sponsored jurisdictions, the Microsoft Northwest, the GE Seaboard, and Enron MiddleAmerica. Governmental power in each region is further to be segregated into four units, each with independent representational structures and taxing powers. The four “operational units” include a Division of Labor and Correctional Services, an Inter-Non-Governmental Regularization and Exchange Bureau, a Ministry of Consumers, and an Intellectual Property Preservation Trust. At the time of the decree, Judge Peezer issued a stay halting divestiture pending appeals review of the decision.

Mainstream critics of the decision point to its impact on the “separation of powers” written into the U. S. Constitution. “What this decision seems to say is that the courts have the power to rewrite the Constitution,” exclaims DNC Chair Arthur Pile. “This is judicial activism of the worst sort.”

Others identify U. S. corporate interests behind the decision. “The ‘judicial activism’ thing is a red herring,” explains Julie Priest, director of the U.N. Project on Corporate Sovereignty. “It’s really more a question of executive pacifism. Why is it that the President is permitting the Justice Department to pursue a case like this? Well, Microsoft has been pushing this thing from the beginning, including unprecedented spending during the last election cycle. The break-up plan gives those guys what they’ve always wanted: their own country.”

U. S. citizens with questions concerning the divestiture should direct them to the Transition Office at the Federal Trade Commission in Washington DC.

Sept. 21, 2084
WASHINGTON DC–A special research committee convened by the U. S. Treasury Department, and including officials and economists from the General Accounting Office and Federal Reserve Board, released on Thursday its “Final Report on the Role of Money in the Economy,” concluding that “money is currently the single greatest source of inefficiency in the exchange of services and goods,” and recommending that Congress “take steps to phase out the public use of the U. S. Dollar.” U. S. Treasury Secretary Frieda Bootle welcomed the report, and simultaneously announced a proposed 23 step phase-out schedule for the beloved currency: “We’re pleased that the Committee has come to the same conclusion that a number of us have reached privately in recent years, and we’re prepared to take concrete steps to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the U. S. economy.”

Pointing to recent developments in valuation, bargaining, and proxy technologies, the Committee concluded that “alternatives of considerably greater efficiency and lesser transaction costs” could save a dollar-less economy up to 14.7 trillion dollars annually, including the costs of maintaining dollar-oriented accounting and financial systems. Discussing the potential savings, Secretary Bootle noted that “it is not entirely specious to say that, by eliminating the dollar, we will be saving, on an annual basis, the total number of dollars exchanged in a given year.”

The majority of the currency alternatives cited by the Committee are based on a computational technology known as an “eigenutil.” Eigenutils are dynamic, compressed descriptions of individual “utility functions” the function which translates an individual’s needs and desires into comparative valuations of the goods and services offered in the marketplace. Because eigenutils are computationally describable, they can be easily exchanged and compared over computer networks, enabling frictionless barter transactions of unprecedented complexity and efficiency.

“Money was always a dumb technology,” exclaims MIT economist Professor Jessup Hare. “A useful technology, but a dumb one nevertheless. An eigenutil economy is orders of magnitude more subtle in its ability to capture and fulfill the needs of actors in a market. Translating my needs into a dollar figure was always reductive. Sure, it was easier than bartering at every step, but that increased efficiency came at the cost. With eigenutils, we no longer have to make that trade-off.”

Using eigenutils, bartering bots and software proxies can automatically and efficiently negotiate the direct exchange of goods, including value exchanges between employers and employees. Instead of receiving money in exchange for labor, employees will, likely, receive a negotiated bundle of goods and services, which she can in turn barter for others in the open market.[p]
“At last, all goods in the market will be accurately valued,” notes Professor Hare, “and value will flow freely throughout the economy. The real difficulty with money was that it created an inefficient meta-need: the need for money itself. Resources were often expended solely for the purpose of accumulating money, which, in itself, is largely worthless.”

Among concerns about the move to a dollar-less economy are objections to the Treasury Department’s proposal to privatize the dollar as part of the phase-out process. “First, let me say that, during this transition period, it makes sense for us to get some value out of the dollar by spinning it off,” explained Secretary Bootle. “And we won’t spin it off until it clearly no longer has monopoly power over the valuation market.”

Additional concerns about the impact of the plan on the consumer savings rate will be addressed by “the development of futures bartering and related transactions,” notes Bootle. “This will be a brave, new economy, fueled by incredible technical solutions. The Fed, for instance, will be able to influence the economy directly by tweaking the eigenutil infrastructure. Once valuation technologies get smarter, so will our policies.”