money for nothing

Last week the boys came up with some type of non-WTO/non-World Bank sanctioned goods and services, free enterprise, give-and-take economy. I suspect it won’t be long before Paul Wolfowitz gives us a call and inquires about exactly what monetary regulation we are, or are not, following in our little Park Drive commonwealth. It began one evening when H. began describing to G. how he would distribute points called “gabepoints” (referred to as a gPt – and very good marketing by calling the H-printed “notes” by Gabe’s name) that could be used to purchase goods and services also provided by H. I think the driving premise behind the idea was that H. has fried egg cooking skills that are much admired by his younger, oft snack desirous, brother. So, like any good service provider, money printing entity, and price-setting entrepreneur, H. decided that by controlling the currency he could parlay this idea into something spectacular. From what we can tell the menu of services available for gPts are:

Egg 1 gPt. / egg
Crepes 1 gPt. / batch
Playing Bionicles 2 gPts.
CL (no idea) 3 gPts.
Doing Laundry (we think) 5 gPts.

We were talking this morning about how I think there will be some serious adjustments and WTO arbitration in the near future. Any nascent economic power and across the border trading partner are going to need some outside faction to adjudicate problems – but that will only be after they have given self-determination a good go. I think H. is going to decide that his distribution of gPts. to G. for things such as carrying in a sled or getting him a glass of H2O is far too generous. Once the removal of G.’s ability to earn money, or to control fair income raises its head…we’ve got problems. Even though the powerful nation-state (H.) and the small migrant nation-state (G.) are happy with the current plan, I don’t see it holding. G. is basically the worker standing on the corner looking to earn money and is perfectly happy as long as there’s work and a paycheck. Once the owner/operator (H.) sees how the levers of power can be manipulated then there will be some discourse that Alan Greenspan will have to resolve. It’s a classic case of the lower tier eventually rising up to fight the man. If it weren’t just G., there’d be unions. I might end up supporting the union if necessary.

All very interesting to watch.

Peace.

T