Taxing transactions in the knowledge economy

By way of Introduction.
 
Your Excellency will note:
 

As previously mentioned, When we reached this part of the Jonker Memorandum Podcast cyber serial, we decided that we would leave this section out of the story because of its sheer philosophic complexity; and would only include it as an annexure for those who enjoy a puzzle.
 

The piece should be read in conjunction with the reading of Episode 75. Or not: as you wish. Kompiler.

 

Footnote 13

The reconstruction of the Tax system.

 
It is possible that at this point some listeners/readers are beginning to wonder where this is going. After all you have hung on through many episodes of fairly intense herstory
Why? You may ask.
 
The reader will remember that a number of information-based items were found on a recent expedition to Urdos, where substantial deposits of Olivine were found and mining commenced giving rise to the discovery of the documents..
 
The reader will also remember that the items contained what have come to be known as the “Testimonies of an Enumerator”. It will also be remembered that these items represent our sole knowledge to date about what is, seemingly, to all intents and purposes, a desert planet, albeit liberally resourced with Olivine.
 
There are a number of key testimonies that reveal much about the daily life of the former inhabitants who, if the ancient legends are to be believed, may have been our ancestors. These testimonies refer to a sequence of events that apparently took place, some one hundred odd of the time cycles called years, after the series of disasters, described in the various information footnotes as “The Ringing”.
 
These [so-called], Further Testimonies, apparently follow on from this story of a so-called ‘Revolution’ effected by the person known only as Korinth Starr [the elder].
 
The detail of the critical changes made by her provides a point of reference against which we can evaluate some of the contextual elements of both the Yonka Memorandum [aka Jonker Memorandum] and the later Juno Konspiracy [which follows on from this presentation].
 
Respectfully yours:
Kontributor.
The story continues…
 
The Testimonies of an Enumerator: Starr the elder.
 
“Taxation of earnings from labour
is on a par with forced labour.”
Robert Nozik: Anarchy, State and Utopia

 
“Taxing people’s labour and the fruit of that labour creates a moral flaw at the profoundest heart of modern society.”

 
This was the basis of Starr’s opening address to the reconvened parliament that gathered at new temporary headquarters at Kallaters Estate, Midtown in Zone 1 in February of 2017.
 
Given the nature of the disaster, and the loss of life following the catastrophe of 10/1 [known in offshore territories as 1/10: ie 10th day of 1st so-called “month”. ]
there were a surprisingly large number of members present. It was eventually admitted by all the parties that they had made up their numbers in accordance with their pre-disaster allocation. Since the now deceased members were, for the most part, faceless when around, few had noticed the differences.
 

This was okay, they all agreed, although some in the media took the usual contrarian positions, now that things were beginning to come back to normal. There were calls for a new election but the solidarity of all the parties at the reconvened parliament was to forge ahead in a spirit of multipartisan agreement and not waste time with petty squabbling. For all anyone knew, disaster might strike again at any moment.
 

Starr’s announcement that she had decided to abolish the [then] present tax system had electrified the nation, caused consternation on top of catastrophe, and, a general lift in morale. The morale hopped about a bit when she told them she wasn’t actually abolishing tax per se, just radicalising the way in which it was to be collected. (“Tax remained inevitable and certain.” She said at a press conference days after the “Sjambok solution” story hit the press and hysteria resulted).
 
She was going to replace most forms of taxation with a micro-levy to be charged to every transaction passing through the national payments system.
 
The idea that she was going to keep the tax system in a different form created instant anxiety, because people instinctively distrusted the intentions of their political bosses. Headlines in the media predominated around the cliché about a so-called “thin edge of the wedge”. This meant it was automatically assumed that once Starr began shaving a tiny percentage ‘levy’ off every transaction taking place in the banking system rather than taking a huge bite out of everyone’s pay every month, the shaving would gradually become a bigger and bigger one, until the State owned all the money and turned all citizens into the slaves of some emerging despot. There were a wave of knee-jerk headline responses to the effect that the State now owned all the citizens. “So much for freedom”, some shouted.
 
There was certainly something of the despot about Starr. If she didn’t get her way everyone felt her wrath… She was, a “Diva de luxe”* screamed the Sun. [we are uncertain of the meaning of this term: K]
 
“The core action, of our present tax collection system,” She said, “is the confiscation of wealth without option, and therefore all persons in pursuit of wealth have to become dishonest to keep their own money.
 
This pollutes the State’s moral certitude at the most elementary core of its being.”She continued. “We have always regarded it as inevitable. This doesn’t mean we cannot review the manner of its collection, as the technology permits.”
 
Both parties: the private sector that owns the money, and the public sector that disburses collections in order to manage the affairs deemed appropriate to the State by the citizen, will jointly manage control of the collection instrument, with safeguards against misappropriation by any party.
 
This was unheard of. No one had ever made such a statement in parliament before… The House became quieter than had become customary.
She ignored their expectancy and continued with her prepared speech:
 
“We have been able to observe empirically now, over some three decades since the time of the “Velvet revolutions*”, that citizens who are free to spend their own money are more generally creative at generating further wealth than the State is. We have not always been prepared to concede that because it would be contrary to our vested interests as regulators.” The house was discomfited.
 
Because the citizen is more creative than we are prepared to concede then we must accept the following position. Due to the nature of current tax collection policy, and its rationalisation, together with its implementation, the State either over or under performs according to the perceived benefit of the tax collecting system to the participants. Part of the purpose of the current philosophy is to redirect wealth from those who create it to those who consume it. This is often confused with the idea of taking from the rich to give to the poor.
 
[*Velvet Revolutions: According to Koz this term refers to a series of popular revolts against State control in certain parts of the planet, some period of time prior to the great floods referred to throughout here. K.n.]
 
“However,” she paused and dropped her voice for maximum dramatic effect, “if we are to be brutally frank… the taking from the rich and giving to the poor has only shifted the nature of the rich, Her voice now rose to a crescendo. And done little to alleviate the condition of the poor.
 
Fortunately we have a tool available today, that allows us to directly inform the citizen and equally directly provide relief directly to that person, and by this I refer to the power of electronic transfer.
 
The house shifted uncomfortably. It was well known that most, if not all the members were baffled by technology. “We have to bypass the middlepersons;” she continued, “those barriers we have ourselves erected to service the wealth we confiscate and impede its journey to those who need it most: the poor, and thereby prevents the growth we seek: by default.
 
On the other hand” She raised her voice against the murmuring of confusion. “Too many citizens never achieve fulfilment because the notion of forced labour implied by confiscatory taxes on the fruit of allegedly voluntary labour, militates against effort. We cannot afford this loss of effort.”
 
“What!” someone had interjected.
 
She continued to say that in effect: in a world in which the basic instrument of State finance is inherently oppressive, the State itself could never achieve the ultimate democratic ideal, of living in a rights based society, in which the overwhelming bulk of the citizenry lived in collective harmony.
 
This could never be achieved, she thundered. Worse, she said, it provided a basis for the corrupting of State officials and breeding a class of citizen who entered public service for purposes of self-aggrandisement rather than serving particular needs in society.
 
Anxiety took root. Sinecures seemed under threat: were under threat.
Rumours of prospective ‘hits’ against her life circulated.
 
At the same time there had always been considered to be no other way for the State to get the money, than by simply confiscating it from the citizen’s earnings.
 
Convention dictated that the State needed the money, in order to effect democratically agreed policy objectives: like social upliftment and the controversially defined “redistribution of wealth,” which, along with some outstanding land claims dating back to the 20th century, mostly related to the distribution of basic pay.
 
Basic Pay you will remember was the system introduced by Starr and had over time come to work most effectively, having had a stabilising influence on society.
 
However its effect was now well discounted, the anticipated surge in productive effort believed to lie in wait for those thus disbursed had not materialised and so the cost was rising and a way of accounting for it needed to be found.
 
In effect a way had to be found to boost overall output by a much-needed six to ten percent. This holiest of grails had never yet been achieved over the preceding decades, and each year the financial writers postulated that it may happen “soon”. And each year it didn’t, for plausible reasons that most forgot instantly.
 
It also didn’t help that the State power utility began to run out of constant energy supplies by the late part of the decade prior to her accession; with difficulties in the water supply following soon afterwards. Partly this was due to maladministration and partly to the general looting of random fixed metallic resources by desperate scrap metal scavengers:power lines, cables, structures… fixtures: whatever.
 
One way, it was held, to boost overall output, was to divest the State of much of those things that the State did, to competing private sector entities: to deregulate the economy, in effect. Plus there was the truth that in places where the State had divested itself, the outcome had been less than satisfactory as new oligarchs arrived to cream off the fat of society, and the benefits to society proved to be illusory or of short duration.
 
There was overwhelming evidence favouring this course of action but curiously for Mzanzi all efforts to streamline and liberalise the economy had somehow had a contrarian effect, much to do, some said, with an excess of rules and procedures.
 
The sub-text of economic regulation was the elimination of the so- called ‘fly-by-nights’. These were entities that violated the rights of ignorant workers by embarking on ventures for which they were less than well equipped. They were as it was said: daring to BE.
 
Routinely most burned out.
 
The more the regulations, the more the cost of doing business, the more they burned out, leaving only powerful oligopolies in their wakes.
 
Eventually the supply of new surviving ventures simply ceased. This was not surprising to any in the commercial classes, albeit it puzzled the regulators: and the officially approved commentators. Political figures that were in denial about the reasons for the decline in employment opportunities bewailed the death of new employment opportunities and called for “Job Creation” with the same unawareness of inconsistency, or what was termed ‘moral ambiguity’ as were those moral re-armament politicians who had, in earlier ages, called for the making of babies.
 
They could not accept that ‘jobs’ had been legislated out of existence by a century of allegedly ‘irrational’ [the majority called it rational], anti-competitive rules. And this had left the economic environment dominated by self-serving oligarchic structures that inevitably crowded out employment.
 
Furthermore, the confiscation of the wealth of those who had it (whether via productive effort or good fortune or … ) in order to give it to poor and hungry citizens, had the effect only of breeding a middle bureaucratic layer in society, who fed comfortably off the proceeds.
 
The poor and hungry tended for the most part to grow, or at best stabilise at statistically acceptable levels [there were apparently some exceptions but as we know an exception does not disprove a rule. K.]. It was also empirically obvious that the middle bureaucratic layer had a vested interest in the maintenance of the system, and that solving the problem of the poor and hungry and unemployed, could render them [the middle bureaucratic layer] unnecessary and hence also unemployed.
 
There were many who remembered with horror the ending of the age-old “Struggle” for democracy in Mzansi, which left many without income support when the change came. There was a jockeying about process for years afterwards as different “Struggle” heroes [and anti-heroes] searched out the most comfortable post-struggle sinecures.
 
One of life’s most important rules, they would say, was to find the most comfortable means of survival possible at any time. Morality, if there was any, was satisfied at the tax gate. “I pay tax, why should I give a bone about the poor and the hungry… go eat my tax!”
 
And of course for all of known time there had been no routinely effective alternative to the confiscation known as ‘tax’. Even its most hardened critics had to concede that this fundamental violation of citizen rights was arbitrary yet necessary. It was rather in the same class of violation as the compulsory “schooling*” of children.
 
However just because something has become habitual that doesn’t mean it is either right or the only way, especially in a world where technological advancement creates the opportunity to change some of the mechanisms of society and effect a moral transformation in the process.
 
[*“Schooling”: Children were Peepil in a pre-cognitive state. Since they were not particularly useful, they were forced into places at a young age where all their natural curiosity was squeezed out of them; and gradually replaced with a glossfully useful patter of day-to-day routine behaviours, dedicated to the performance, or non-performance, of socially useful activities when they “grew up”. Ref: – Koz Ibid P742]
 
“The children received a ten- year compulsory “prison” sentence [without the option of having committed a crime], during which they were force fed a whole load of information that gradually turned many into arguably useful and productive citizens. The entire process had many flaws but it served a socially useful function; and because the children’s rights were being inherently violated, punishing transgression was, almost, proscribed. This largely referred to an era before selectively programmed new humans were produced in so-called “baby factories” [see Koz ibid page 42-47] K.]
 
So, Starr said, she had come to see this truth in respect of Tax. She had discovered what the press called the ‘Sjambok solution’ and what ‘Mr Sjambok’ himself called something else.
 
“If Peepil were simple complexities what was the purpose of the State?” She asked the gathered assembly and the extended television audience beyond, most of whom had no idea what she was talking about.
 
“If the State was the extension of the Peepil then did not the technology of the present permit the return to direct democracy as practiced by the ancient Villages*”. [We do not know what these “Villages” means and assume it, for the present, to reflect a romantic vision of an earlier era that may or may not have existed. Kontributor.]
 
The Sunday Lines, a journal popular at the time, observed later of Starr that, like Erhardt before her, she had been the right person at the right moment.
They [The Sunday Lines] quoted an economist called Hayek who had commented: [about Erhardt] “The whole economic problem is really a problem of utilizing widely dispersed knowledge which nobody possesses as a whole…. It was a lucky moment when the right person in the right spot was free to do what he (sic) thought right, notwithstanding that he (sic) could never have convinced anybody else that it was the right thing”. F. Hayek.
 
It was certainly true that Starr’s actions were completely out of character for an age, when even if the newly democratised leaders of States had foregone their traditional right to abuse their citizens* [previously known as subjects, because they were subject to the whims and fancies of megalomaniacal leaderships, of varied ideological persuasions.] in many thousands of ways, then a vague shadowy ‘system’ had come into existence.
 
The “system” comprised invisible networks of co-existing vested interest contexts and mutual support structures, propped up by tax disbursements, all facilitating the ability of the well connected to prosper at the expense of the working masses and the unemployed remainder.
 
As Peepil became better educated in Mzanzi over the decades since the original liberation, a brooding cynicism had set in. A sense that everyone had (Including the politicians strangely enough) that no matter what was promised the outcome never varied, the benefit always seemed elsewhere and Peepil remained dissatisfied.
 
Starr had affected a real revolution in many ways. She had set up programmes to advance her gender in all spheres of life, intruding on previously sacred cows. She had passed rules stating that every business had to hire representative, demographically defined members of the penetratee gender, irrespective of merit (although presumably the most meretricious of the applicants for the gender niche being filled).

 
Nonetheless years after her accession and notwithstanding the inroads resulting from the anti-rape arrests and the fact that the convicted rapists (and sometimes those only accused) vanished into a vast Virtuality game indefinitely, and notwithstanding all the other advances accompanying the transition, transformation eluded the State.
 
There were daily complaints about the ongoing dominance of the Penetrator gender in positions of authority and the daily tabloids [as small scale widely dispersed newssheets were called, pre- obsolescence: K ref: – Koz P41.] still produced a mind numbing daily litany of death by murder, mayhem, accident and machete wielding hackage, before the era of personalised newscasts made that receipt optional.
 
The critics held that too much of this still represented inter-gender violence notwithstanding that the penalties for violence against penetratees had become more and more onerous. However thanks to the effects of the life activators, compounded with the shift made in the burden of proof, in rape accusations, this daily litany was slowly moving into slower motion, so while still unacceptable, the levels of anti-penetratee violence were, by the time of the disaster, down to about twenty percent of its pre-Starr condition.
 
[According to the Enumerator the notes that follow here, represent some of the key arguments prepared by Starr for her parliamentary presentation justifying her decision to abolish a huge battery of choking legislation; and to change the mode of collecting the revenues required by the State to run the affairs of State to the ‘sjambok’, TEAL system.
 
These notes have no linkages and so we do not know whether they formed part of the debate, which apparently raged for some weeks, or whether they represent her own line of presentation, or perhaps, were no more than jottings from her notebook.
 
It is possible that part of the collection represent random presentations by opposition speakers as well. We simply have no record of who said what, or even who the various quoted Peepil were.
The enumerator has simply presented a batch of some twenty or more thoughts or possibly even, quotations relevant to the decision to alter the fundamental precepts underpinning the society of the day. According to our analysis of the evidence presented in the later testimonies, which take, place variously, a century or so apart: earlier and later. In these, the place called, Zone One, is revealed as a relatively prosperous region in a generally dysfunctional world.
 
This relatively dysfunctional world is however underpinned by a mindset that does seem to reflect the ongoing existence of Starr’s reforms. K.]

 
Vague thoughts of Nozik, and others, in a reconvened House.
“There is no central distribution, no
person or group entitled to
control all the resources, jointly deciding how
they are to be doled out.”
 
Is an injustice, done to someone who’s holding was itself, based upon an unrectified injustice, just?
How far back must one go in wiping clean the historical slate of injustice?”
 
What is what we want? This idealised
process
against which we measure the anticipated changes in our day to day,
day
or is it simpler to seek retribution.
 
There were no rules that said you could not
Redesign the tax system so that the money you needed came from elsewhere? Or were there? It was after all the citizen’s money and the system within which the money flowed was
also the property of independent citizens or as citizens operating as Korporatised Kolektives…
 

Take their money instead, as a fee
payable to the State for a random set of benefits,
some of which are usable at different times, by different citizens, for different reasons.
 

Deal with Ownership:
and the tax in its present form is theft by stealth, often.
And the benefits were progressively
disproportionate to the losses.…
 

Reprogramme the society so that the citizens right to a direct say in the process is affirmed…. and balanced.
 
A voter direct system adds to the traditional representative who evaluates and is technically the party person.
And then the issue then: as now
Does the party who’s members are not elected, but rather appointed: and are yet apparently independent notwithstanding, benefit from a direct vote?
 

Consider this thought she said. The principle of fairness (Herbert Hall restated by John Rawls)
 
“When a number of persons engage in a just, mutually advantageous cooperative venture according to rules, and thus restrain their liberty in ways necessary to yield advantages for all; those who have submitted to those restrictions have a right to similar acquiescence on the part of those who have benefited from their submission.”
 

Liberate the citizen from the oppressive rules that bind their energy.
 

The de facto monopoly of affirmed citizens occurs by an ‘invisible hand’ process.
To each according to how much s/he (sic) benefits others, who have the resources for benefiting those who benefit them…In a free society there will be distribution in accordance with value rather than moral merit: i.e. in accordance with the perceived benefits given to others…To each according to how much they benefit others who have the resources for benefiting those who benefit them:” Restating Hayek. F. She concluded.
 

This (says Nozik) will seem arbitrary unless some initial set of holdings is specified, or unless it is held that the operation of the system over time washes out any significant effects from the initial set of holdings.
 

Nozik Slogan: “ From each as they choose to each as they are chosen.”
 

“No end-state principle or distributional patterned principle of justice can be continuously realised without continuous interference in people’s lives.”
 

The meta- reason of reasons for our addiction to non- performance

 

Our addiction to going round in circles when a straight line is obvious presupposes that we can see ourselves as others do and we cant…. and in our rage we return again to what fires us.
 
“The individual cannot fraudulently keep what is its own property to start with.”
“The income tax cannot work without the violation of elementary civil rights. If that is so: then it is further proof of why the income tax must be abolished” George Reisman
 
Deficits, it should be recalled deprive the economic system of the benefit of that portion of the supply of savings that must be used to finance the deficit.” Reisman
 
The idea of dealing with “limitless liquidity preference” to rationalise the theft of a citizen’s wealth in the form of progressive taxation is undoubtedly erroneous, and has never been subjected to empirical testing: It has been a ‘given’ accompanying the control of the State by the tyranny of the allegedly democratic majority. If only because all governments practice it.”
 

It is however notable that those countries where the ultimately embourgoising of the significant majority has forced tax reduction from outright to partial theft have been the places where economic performance outstripped the high tax regime economies.
 

“The rate of interest is NOT the Price of money and cannot be permanently reduced let alone eliminated.”
 

If it is NOT the price of money then what is it?
 
Is it the ratio defining the relationship between the demand for and the supply of money?
 
Is it an artificial arbiter defining the desired level of economic activity?
 
It measures three things: time preference, money flow, and risk. It is subject to arbitrary adjustment when the key element of interest rates, The Premium for risk is fixable: and not responsive to the market.
 

A true flat tax rate would be honest, and because it would be honest then it would not act to corrupt the society at its core.
 

What are ‘good tax’ criteria: “low administration costs, economic effects, fairness or equity”. Dwight Lee
 

“It is more important what government does and how it does it than the percentage of GDP it taxes and spends.” F Hayek.
 
A man (sic) has a right to freedom of contract….
 
So does a man (sic) acquire a right to income that he has himself created? …NO. He acquires a right not to the “Income” but to the property that he (sic) creates, with that income. The simpler a truth the better.” Murray Rothbard.
 

“ Distribution is just if it arises from another just distribution by legitimate means.”
“Rights based or derived from unjust distribution in the past cannot be made right by decree unless everyone disadvantaged by the past injustice agrees to forego their entitlement to redistributive justice.”
 
Since this is unlikely to occur then it must be concluded that some entitlement process must be initiated to rectify the imbalances of the past.
 

However what happens if the patterning of past injustices follows some ‘natural’ laws that permit [due to the mechanism of a free market] the likely probability that the bulk of resources will once again come to be held by the few to the disadvantage of the many…Does one have to continuously interfere in the workings of society to rectify this …and the answer was the Progressive tax system: whereby those prone to earn more money due to superior skills, connections or levels of cunning, greed or generally acquisitive nastiness, shall pay a proportionately higher rate of tax than their less-advantaged peers.
 

What then happens is that this same progressive system of taxing, forces citizens who are financially disadvantaged albeit technically skilled to use borrowed capital. This must be done in order to overcome the disadvantages inherent in having that part of their disposable income, which could have been saved as their own capital (or used for their own advancement), confiscated by the State in the form of [so-called] Progressive [?] tax. The unintended effect of progressive tax is to prevent upward mobility.
 
Can it still be unintended after a century of empirical evidence?
 
There are two disadvantages to progressive tax: the opportunity cost of dissaving to the individual that must lose its savings to tax, and the volatile cost of borrowing that places the security of the individual at risk when the perceived cost of money changes constantly and unexpectedly in the wake of changes in the economic environment, often thus rendering the taxpayer most liable at the most vulnerable moment.
 
The idea of rights presupposes some things, which needs to be questioned anew.
 
First, is the premise that redistribution of earnings is the only way to solve the problem of inequality of opportunity.
 
This idea has been attempted for a century and ended in disaster; as the redistributionist philosophy took all the useful energy in the form of citizen’s initiative, and redistributed it inadequately and subject to malign leakage, and was ultimately punished as the Systems that took less, incrementally advanced at a superior rate, with the effect that they out competed the less efficient Systems.
 

This did not of course mean that the inherent idea of fairness embodied by the redistributionist strategy was an error: simply that the means to redistribute were inadequately evaluated or were perhaps the only ones obviously available.
 
What about the moral rights that we have created? …The right to some form of redistributive justice…to rectify the wrongs of the past. That which was built on wrongfulness cannot be recompensed, it must be gutted…this is the Shylock dilemma…How do I take my pound of flesh without dropping any blood…. Yes entitlement without death to the giver…can it bring life to the recipient…there are no skills to be transferred.
 

Can I take the contents of my head and shift that knowledge into yours? No the skill is grafted to experience and desire and incentive.
 

Put ten people in the same room each: has its own predetermined ceiling, the nature of which is not apparent to most of the ten. Assume one at each end; one repressed beyond belief, the other irrepressible.
 

Between these are confused people with their own ceilings…
Mix into this, poor incentives and there will as a result be almost no takers…
Don’t forget risk aversion…
 
Why take the risk of being in business when the advantages of not being in business are so apparent.
What are the alternatives to being in business…
Being self- employed or not employed or employed badly or well?
Isn’t that all the same thing?
Self-employed by this definition means scratching at the surface movement of the economy…
Scraping off enough action to cover desired life expenses and perhaps create a surplus…
And do it long enough to sustain the next round of descendents.
 

And so the debate raged on.
 
Starr summarised. It [the debate] was nonetheless overlaid by a reality that the State needed to maintain an income stream, and while we nominally accept that the monetary system is technically the property of the private sector and the reserve bank, and that it is therefore “… not available for looting.” as an outraged governor had once shrieked in a moment of apoplexy; it [the income stream] nonetheless exists because the State that supports it exists, and it is therefore dependent on the continued existence of the effective State, in order that it be nourished…Nonetheless the point is taken and remedies need to be established.
 

In part this was an action dictated by necessity. The loss of life and resources resulting from the disaster [of 10/1] nearly bankrupted the country and the wider planet. Coming five years after, and on top of, the earlier disaster of 23/12, it proved a stunning blow for the planet’s Peepil and vast numbers simply succumbed to waves of violence and social disintegration. [It has not been noted before that the disaster of 10/1 affected the entire planet in one or other way, for notwithstanding that its effects were largely limited to the Southern Hemisphere (as this particular hemisphere of the planet was known) it compounded with the damage to the North caused by 23/12 much of which was struggling with reconstruction. Ed. Ref:- Koz P2-9] Virulent versions of the Plagues swept around the planet fuelled by massive daily movement of Peepil all over the world* (*as the planet was also called in pre- multiverse thought mode). The various regions of the world retreated behind their “firewalls” and communication between the regions was via electronic interface
 
One non-electronic outcome was a series of migratory invasions known as the “New Krusades”, whereby armies of zealots met in a fiery confrontation in a series of violent exchanges referred to as the Apocalypse.
 
[Kontributor: Little is known of these movements or of what happened to the destination of most of the movements. As we understand it, and as we have mentioned before, this alleged Apocalypse was apparently prompted by defence of some region of the world regarded as having a particular referential: historical or metaphysical, significance. For reasons that are unclear a series of massive explosions appear to have largely reduced large parts of the planetary region to an uninhabitable place. What survivors there were have left few records.]
 
The State all but collapses under the trauma of a disaster such as no living being had ever experienced or conceived of.
 

Miraculously, the entire inland infrastructure remained intact notwithstanding the loss of port facilities on the Southeastern coastline. Starr has to go back to basics, she makes a decision that she could never have made had she consulted with anyone other than already mentioned range of philosophers. She did what she thought right and she acted unilaterally…
 

Afterwards there were recriminations; afterwards there were also negotiations. She had done something that had been denied previously.
 
We spend our whole time locked up in our heads, no wonder we’re all crazy
Then we attempt, pathetically, to communicate with other people who are locked inside their own gaol and are amazed when we find out how indescribably complex we all really are.
 
We discover that we are not a pleasant species, cannot afford to be really, we need to be nasty to survive: dealing always with the voice inside us.
 
So once Starr had renegotiated the tax flow and liberated the citizen to spend their entire earnings less expenses on whims of their own choosing, the citizens of Mzanzi entered the era of direct democracy in much the same way as prompted the workings of the popular Reality TV shows that dominated daytime viewing in much of the advanced world….
 
To be continued