THE PHILANTHROPIST

"I bet you're one of the optimists," she says.

"Excuse me?" I say.

"Your book, she says with a dismissive wave. "I bet it's all about how great things are for people now that the shackles of capitalism have been thrown off."

"Oh, I dunno if it's about that," I say. "It's not really about anything, other than capturing what regular people are saying. Their stories. Their hopes for the future. That sort of thing."

THE PHILANTHROPIST leans in.

"And what is it exactly that 'regular people' are saying about the future? You think their voices carry some great truth. But nobody is more ill-equipped to predict the future than regular people."

Tell me, have you ever heard of the "resource curse?"

I shake my head, no.

It's a strange idea that comes to us from the economic sciences. Particularly the branches that are concerned with the development of poor countries.

For many decades, especially during the first half of the twentieth century, we believed that countries rich in natural resources would have a leg up on other countries. That they would become more rich, more powerful, more safe.

That sounds sensible.

It does. Yet the opposite is true. The more resource-rich a country is, the less likely it is to ever develop into what we used to call a "first world" nation. The data shows that the more extravagant your resource wealth is, the more broken your country will be. Oil wealth, as just one example, is one of the single strongest factors that predict whether your country will fall into autocratic rule.

The reasoning is actually quite simple. Let's say you're a warlord who has just conquered a vast territory. It comes to your attention that you're now in possession of some of the richest gold mines in the world.

This is fantastic, of course, so you set to work reorganizing the economy to direct labor toward the mines.

You're probably using prison labor for this, which is, of course, technically not slave labor. You know that western powers are unlikely to complain about this, least of all the Americans, whose precious 13th constitutional amendment only outlawed slavery "except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted."

All you need to do to justify slave labor is set up a criminal justice system that convicts adequate bodies to fill the mines. If you start running short on labor, you simply crack down harder on the most common crimes like prostitution, or drug use, or what have you.

Okay, so now you've got bodies in the mines, and they're yanking endless gold or diamonds or whatever out of the ground. Naturally, your goal is to safely export these materials onto the global market.

You do this, and the money starts coming in. You're feeling quite good about your leadership skills. You've gotten criminals, whores, and druggies off the streets and begun making money for your country, all in one fell swoop. Things are looking up.

The question now is, how do you invest your new income?

The first thing you do, of course, is make sure that the mines are secure. That means pouring lots of money into the military and other peace-keeping forces. You're also going to make sure the judges are happy with their arrangement, if you catch my drift. As your mining operation expands, you're going to need more bodies, which those judges provide.

Of course you'll also be investing in new expensive equipment to make your operation more efficient. If you're being a responsible warlord, you're probably going to reorganize your entire economy around ensuring your continued ability to keep hauling precious jewels or metals or whatever out of the ground. This means there are less opportunities for free market innovations amongst the local population. But, really, who gives a damn when there's money to be made in the mines, right?

One big thing to watch out for is the threat of democratic movements. Regardless of how many branches of government your country may have once had, you're probably going to want to cut it down to just one—the executive branch.

After all, if your citizens start using the power of the vote to increase entitlement spending on programs for themselves, it's going to get harder to run the mines at maximum efficiency. Not good.

Your incentives here are pretty clear: Work to prevent the development of democratic institutions that all of those absurd "first world" countries value so highly. Freedom of speech? Not what you need. A free press? Unlikely, unless all the typing and blabbering of the journalists somehow helps you run the mines more efficiently.

Any slip on your authoritarian control runs the risk of posing a threat to the mining operation that your country so desperately needs to get rich.

And that is the goal, ultimately, because you're a benevolent leader.

You want to make your country rich.

It's a good in-and-of-itself. Right?

Now, at some point, you're going to start thinking about what might happen if the mines start running dry. What then?

You've built a country whose entire economic fate rides on the back of one easily-extractable resource. If the mines go, things will fall apart.

The best course, naturally, is to pursue some sort of economic diversification. You know, get the money flowing in through more than one tap.

You are also a little worried about the people growing tired of your crime crackdown, so you decide it's time to win back some trust with some grand public works projects. You start investing in roads, and waterways, and maybe even some cultural monuments. Statues to your own greatness, of course, and if your country has any sort of heritage that involves widely-beloved mythical figures, you build those dudes some statues too. Then you put your statue right next to theirs. You're continuing their grand vision! Or something like that.

People really do eat this shit up, so by investing in big construction projects, you're creating jobs and earning back some love from the people. Again, you're killing two birds with one stone here, and you're really feeling good about your own ability to guide the country.

The only problem is, the infrastructure projects never seem to turn out quite right.

Your people have gotten quite good at digging up gold. But because you haven't yet invested in areas outside of your mining industry, you're hurting for talent in fields like architecture. So the roads you build as part of your big infrastructure investment are poorly made. Your waterways project is mismanaged.

Some of the other industries that you try investing in work out okay, but they're just not nearly as efficient or lucrative as your gold-mining operation.

As a result of all this, you're disincentivized from continuing to reinvest your gold dividends into more canals or roads or whatever it is you tried to do.

The statues are great, and your palace is obviously looking phenomenal, so at some point you decide to just settle in, mine the gold, and maybe attend to matters of state, when it strikes your fancy.

I'm having a bit of trouble seeing how all of this connects.

To what? Replicators?

Use your brain.

Listen to what I'm saying.

I'm telling you that when a weak society finds itself with access to a single, truly powerful resource, it reorients itself entirely around extracting the source of that wealth at the expense of democracy, of law and order, of any of the institutions that result in a society worth living in.

And reps are one such resource?

They are the ultimate form of such a resource.

The leader running a replicator-powered economy now has to worry about little more than securing his borders. He doesn't even have to bother with feeding the populace. The people can take care of themselves. All he has to do is check the print logs on his peoples' machines every day and make sure they aren't arming themselves for rebellion. With that concern allayed, he can focus on the extraction of the greatest resource his country has: humans with replicators, building things at his command.

You thought the old trick of using the prisoners as slave labor is going away just because food is free now? As if.

The people might have their bellies full, but the autocrats are still just as hungry as they always were. For power, for riches, for monuments to their own greatness. And now their prison slaves are just that much more efficient at building the things they want.

By the way, I've been using the example of a warlord, but a president or a governor will do just as well.

You really think this isn't already happening in this country?

Rep-enhanced slave labor?

What do you think they're doing, down in the state penitentiaries in Mississippi?

Or, hell, on Rikers Island outside of New York City?

Not stamping license plates, I'll tell you that.

The world's most valuable resource.

Now we're all cursed with it.