Greed, page 17
‘Who on earth wants steel girders made by computer programmers?’ muttered Kim’s grandmother.
Nida refused to be put off. ‘As a result the United States churn out more software, and the twelve freed-up—’
‘Unemployed …’
‘—steelworkers can write one hundred and twenty programs.’
‘Steelworkers writing software?’ chirped the old lady. ‘It just gets better and better!’
Don’t laugh, Jan!
‘This is a simplified model to illustrate the principle,’ Nida said patiently. ‘No one is claiming that steelworkers have to become software programmers overnight in the real world. In a modern economy offering a wide variety of professions, the steelworker could train to do a different job.’
‘When’s he supposed to do that, after a forty-hour grind at the foundry, bringing up his children, looking after his parents and doing the shopping?’ countered Gran.
‘You’re right, of course. Such changes take time, which is why the economist Karl Polanyi suggested slowing down the pace of processes of undirected change.’
‘Clearly no one was listening,’ hissed Gran.
‘That still doesn’t affect the basic advantages of comparative advantage,’ Nida said with a sigh. ‘Like I said, I’ve simplified things to make it easier to understand. The United States no longer produce one hundred programs and one hundred girders, but two hundred and twenty programs. Which is also more than the USA and China put together originally. Again, part of this is now exported to China.’
‘If the Chinese haven’t copied the programs already …’ Jan interjected.
Nida ignored him. ‘Together the US and China have increased their production by twenty programs and twelve and a half girders, resulting in greater overall prosperity.
‘Ruin this effect, for example by engaging in a trade war, and you reduce the standard of living on both sides.’
‘Now all you have to do is find more customers for so many computer programs and steel girders,’ Gran said scathingly. ‘Personally, I can do without either.’
Jan had already noticed that Kim’s eyes glinted when she got angry. How old was she? She was a student, so she might be his age or in her mid-twenties or anywhere in between. Was she as engaged and intense in everything she did as she was with the squat and in her fascination with this stupid farm story? Why was she listening so attentively, when he was really the one who needed to pay attention? His gaze shifted to Nida whose every word Kim was drinking in.
‘As usual, it’s far more complicated in practice,’ Nida said. ‘Already in the thirties and forties, economists like Ohlin, Stolper and Samuelson were highlighting the fact that globalization tended to make rich people in rich countries richer and poor people poorer. We’ve known that for decades! Incidentally, it can also have the opposite effect – make poor people in poor countries richer, as has been observed in countries like India and China in recent times. You can’t blame comparative advantage if states don’t distribute their increased wealth fairly.’
‘My dad worked in the car industry,’ Kim said. ‘His job wasn’t taken by Chinese workers; he was replaced by robots in Germany.’ Taking Nida’s pencil, she drew lines through the workers in both countries and added a robot arm instead.
‘That’s an important point,’ Nida agreed. ‘Nowadays even some of the programmers are starting to be replaced.’ She took back the pencil and crossed out the programmers. ‘Doctors and other highly qualified professionals too. Not by programmers or doctors in other countries, though – by artificial intelligence.’ She drew a robot head next to the scratched-out programmers. ‘Robots replace the workers, and now artificial intelligence’s going to do the same in the academic world.’
40
El would have loved to crush the door handle in his fist. Instead he’d merely nodded understandingly and obediently to the police officers and thanked them politely when they returned Jack’s registration documents and driving licence. And handed him a ticket.
The documents were no problem: they were perfect forgeries.
Had the taxi driver deliberately led them past the lurking police car? Probably. They had his registration number, but the gambler and the Samaritan weren’t so stupid – they’d have got out somewhere and hailed another taxi to their final destination. If they had one.
El and his men had been driving aimlessly around the city for the past hour. As if their client possessed a sixth sense, he rang just as El was preparing to call him.
‘Has the small matter been taken care of?’ he asked without any introduction.
‘There was a witness to the target’s little accident,’ El said. ‘He managed to escape and then contacted a second person. We were able to follow the two of them to a squat, but we lost them shortly afterwards.’
There was a brief silence on the other end of the line.
‘You messed up,’ the client said. ‘What do they know?’
‘That it wasn’t an accident. Later on they got into Will Cantor’s hotel room.’
‘What were they doing there?’
‘We don’t know.’
‘Professionals?’
‘No.’
‘Just like you then … Do you know their identities?’
El controlled himself and reeled off the details.
‘Finish the job,’ said the client, ‘or else you can forget the second payment. I’ll be hearing from you.’
El ground his teeth. How was he to find two people in a city of three and a half million?
‘I’m such an idiot!’ spluttered Fitz.
Nida and Jan were startled. Fitz rummaged in his jacket pockets and held up the piece of paper triumphantly to Jan. ‘Jeanne Dalli’s numbers! I completely forgot in all the excitement.’
He took out his burner.
‘It’s the middle of the night,’ Jan reminded him.
‘She’ll be organizing something or writing a report or a presentation. Or partying. Work hard, party hard – I know her kind, trust me. I used to be the same.’
Ringtone. If Jeanne Dalli was awake, she would see a withheld number. In the middle of the night. Fitzroy wouldn’t have taken the call, and nor did Jeanne Dalli.
Please leave a message.
He didn’t. Thanks to the computer whizzkids in the squat he still had two other numbers to try.
Fitzroy had worked with people like Jeanne Dalli – young, brilliantly educated go-getters in the finance industry. He knew how they arranged their lives; he knew how their minds worked. If a withheld number appeared on his second mobile so soon after someone had tried to reach him on his first, it would set him thinking. He would have given both numbers to very few people.
Please leave a message.
If Fitzroy had two work mobiles and one private number and someone tried to get hold of him successively on all three phones in the middle of the night Berlin time, late afternoon/early evening in the States, then there were very few possibilities indeed. Either one of a small handful of people he’d given all three numbers to was trying to reach him or – but Dalli was pretty unlikely to think of this possibility – her firm had a security problem.
Jeanne Dalli didn’t seem to entertain either of these thoughts, or else she hadn’t heard any of her three phones. There were very few possible explanations for that.
41
Jeanne sat up in shock. It was almost totally dark and, still half asleep, it only gradually dawned on her where she was. Beside her Ted’s breathing was calm and regular. She was wearing one of his shirts as a nightdress. It had worked its way up her thighs as she slept. Her evening dress lay somewhere in the living room, as did her scattered underwear. They hadn’t made it to the bedroom. Not the first time. The noise of the city seemed extremely remote as it filtered through the well-insulated windows. Jeanne could hear nothing in the dark room apart from Ted’s breathing and the quiet beating of her own heart. The rumpled shirt rubbed against her back. She pulled it down and closed her eyes again, listening out one last time into the darkness and within her body. She drifted off to sleep again with a smile on her face.
42
‘We’re at a dead end.’ Jan yawned and took another sip of rum.
Kim had fetched the bottle, and Fitz had laid a hundred-euro note on Gran’s coffee table. ‘Buy yourself another one with this.’
‘Are you trying to turn me into an alcoholic?’ Kim’s grandmother had exclaimed. ‘I can get ten for that!’
Jan’s thoughts were elsewhere now. ‘Was that true, what you said about the wealth distribution during the coin-toss game?’ he asked Fitz.
‘It’s known as Pareto distribution after an Italian economist who lived from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century. Most people have barely enough to live on, while the lucky few own virtually everything. It was true of most societies at that time and it’s still true today.’
‘We were tossing coins. The distribution during the game was random.’
‘That’s right.’
‘But in real life a person’s wealth doesn’t depend on luck but on hard work, effort, skill and knowledge.’
‘Oh, don’t talk claptrap!’ cried Gran. ‘In real life, it all comes down to who your parents were and who you know.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Kim asked.
Fitz dug out a coin and gave a short summary of the game.
Kim took the coin from Fitz’s fingers and flipped it absentmindedly. ‘That old chestnut,’ she finally commented. ‘The favourite myth peddled by our so-called “meritocracy” is that you’re guaranteed success so long as you put in enough hard work and effort, pass all your exams and develop your skill set. Think about it though. Hard work, skill, effort and whatever qualifications you managed to achieve are themselves largely a matter of chance. We know that fifty per cent or more of a person’s intelligence is genetically determined, and it’s the same for so many other capabilities.’ She flicked the coin and caught it again. ‘It all comes down to luck. Then again, having the world’s highest IQ won’t get you very far if you’re born as the child of subsistence farmers in today’s South Sudan.’
‘Or have a drunkard for a father who can neither read nor write,’ muttered Gran.
Another flip of the coin.
‘That’s right. Your chances of surviving your first few years of life are slim enough, so your success also depends on what kind of family you were born into.’ The metal disc spun through the air again and landed back on her hand. ‘Unless your parents prize learning or higher education, you’ll more than likely end up as a low-skilled, low-paid worker.’
‘You can say that again,’ Gran said quietly.
Another coin toss.
‘Genes, family, social background, place and time – all random.’ She caught the coin and slapped it on her wrist. Tails. ‘Some people have lost before they’re even born.’
Gran smiled bitterly to herself.
‘You mean to say that success in life is a matter of pure chance?’ asked Jan.
‘Chance is at any rate a more important factor than we tend to assume and many successful people care to admit. So important, in fact, that one of the leading philosophers of our time, John Rawls, based his theory of justice on it. How would we shape society if we knew nothing about the position that the accident of birth would assign us within the social order?’
‘And what conclusions did he come to?’ asked Fitz before taking another swig of rum.
‘He wrote an entire book about it called, obviously, A Theory of Justice. He and Bill Clinton often dined together.’
‘Didn’t help much, though, did it?’ said Gran. She hauled herself up from the sofa and hobbled over to the cabinet, returning with one of the board games. Monopoly.
‘Please, Gran, not now!’ Kim objected.
‘What you’re describing is like Monopoly,’ Gran said as she opened the box and set up the game. ‘One player always cleans up in the end. It’s the same distribution of wealth. If halfway intelligent people play on a regular basis, a different person generally wins each time.’ She threw the dice, which skittered across the board. ‘The important thing is that your roll of the dice gets you to one of the good properties fast. It’s all about luck and chance.’
‘Gran has a point,’ Kim said, her eyes roaming around the tiny living room. ‘In real life some people don’t even have to buy up land and build houses because they already own the whole damn city.’
‘They inherit a huge fortune, you mean,’ said Nida.
‘Without ever lifting a finger, while barely anyone else has a chance.’
‘The cumulative effect of chance!’ said Nida. ‘Marx called it “accumulation” and blamed capitalism, but the phenomenon is far older than capitalism – it’s been around for thousands of years. With it, wealth just keeps on growing.’ She picked up one of the dice and rolled it over to Fitz.
‘That’s true,’ Fitz said. ‘The most recent examples are digital juggernauts like Amazon, Facebook, Google and co. They control the oil fields of our age – our data. They’ve amassed vast wealth at an even faster rate than the robber barons of nineteenth-century America.’ Fitz spun the die in his fingers.
‘That’s why the Torah and the Bible prescribed a jubilee year long before modern capitalism existed,’ Nida said. ‘That’s the root of our word “jubilee”. Every forty-nine or fifty years, people were supposed to waive others’ debts and free any slaves they owned.’
‘The ancient Babylonians had a similar concept even earlier,’ Fitz added. ‘It was intended to restore a sense of balance to society.’
‘But no one knows whether jubilees were actually implemented,’ Nida said. ‘Still, it was the first suggestion of how to control the accumulation dynamic.’
‘“To those who have, more will be given”,’ said Gran. ‘Jesus knew the score.’
‘The Matthew effect,’ Nida confirmed.
The die skidded from one side of the board to the other as the conversation skipped from subject to subject. Jan took his go.
‘Money breeds money,’ he said.
‘Yep, the principle’s reflected in lots of common sayings,’ Nida said with a laugh.
Fitz blew on the die before rolling it. ‘Even one of the great advocates of free markets, the economist Friedrich von Hayek, admitted that the workings of the market weren’t fair.’ He had rolled a two.
‘You’re a genius, Anya!’ Nida said. ‘Did you know that Monopoly was originally invented for this precise reason?’
‘So you’re fond of a little flutter too, are you?’ Fitz asked with a grin.
‘Only with play money,’ Nida said, returning his smile. ‘At the start of the twentieth century, the American shorthand typist Elizabeth Magie invented “The Landlord’s Game”. She believed in the ideas of a contemporary social reformer called Henry George, and wanted to show how unearned income from property ownership led to unequal wealth distribution.’
‘Well, that would make for a very different game,’ said Gran.
‘Anyway, what’s largely been forgotten is that Elizabeth Magie devised an additional dimension to the game – a form of the “Single Tax” on property Henry George had proposed. It completely changes the course of the game! Instead of one person winning, most players grow richer.’
Fitz was slumped on the sofa, but at this he sat up. ‘What did you say?’
‘It sounds a bit like what’s going on with our farmers,’ said Jan.
‘I need to take a closer look at this,’ Fitz muttered.
‘But no one plays the alternative version now?’ asked Jan.
‘Nope,’ said Nida. ‘We only play the one dominated by luck, not reason.’
Kim threw the die and remarked pensively, ‘A game with multiple winners isn’t in tune with the zeitgeist.’
Why has the old lady stopped talking?
Gran’s head had pitched forward on to her chest. Her wrinkly hands rested on the dressing gown under which the outline of her skinny thighs was visible.
‘Gran? Gran?’
She woke up abruptly and gazed around in surprise. ‘Who … what …?’ She pulled herself together.
‘Go back to bed, Gran,’ Kim said, reaching out a hand to her grandmother and helping her to her feet.
Fitz yawned and stretched. ‘I think it’s time for all of us to get some rest now.’
The others agreed.
‘I’ll just tuck her in,’ said Kim, ‘and then I’ll show you all where you can sleep.’
Gran wished them all a good night.
‘Good night.’
They go so well together, Jan thought, watching them head for the door, the elderly lady shuffling along, Kim kind and supportive.
Back at the hotel Maya was trying her luck with headquarters one last time.
No, she couldn’t have any reinforcements. Oskar, Jörn’s partner, was also back on duty now.
No news yet from technical support or forensics, nor any information regarding the identity of the victims in the burnt-out car. No reports from the Golden Bar. No further sightings of Wutte or Peel.
Maya decided to walk for a bit and then hail the nearest cab.
The streets were quieter now. The cooler air announced the approach of autumn.
Her mobile buzzed. An email with the subject line ‘Video’. Maya recognized the sender’s name as that of one of the two eyewitnesses she’d talked to on the roof terrace.
Blurred, shaky footage. Loud music and people shouting. On the other side of a crowd of people two figures were running across the roof of the next building. Tall, dark shadows, too powerfully built to be Wutte and Peel – they must be the other guys – and then they were gone. Maya played the clip for a second time. The cameraman was too far away, the film too out of focus, too short. Not much to identify, but that might be due to her eyesight. It was two o’clock in the morning by now. She’d been on duty for eighteen hours straight after three hours’ sleep. She’d had a few cocktails … and then a few more.
