benn@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Thomas Cox) (01/14/86)
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A Fable.
Once upon a time, there was a network of message carriers that operated
among many different small kingdoms. Each kingdom had its local messenger
guild. The Guild Council never dictated to the local guilds because these
guilds earned their own money and licensed their own messengers. But if most
of the guilds agreed upon a thing, the others, having to exchange messages
daily with their fellows, usually went along, lest the entire structure cease
to function.
One strange day, the kingdoms all experienced Socialist Revolutions and the
guilds were Nationalized. This meant that the Government would give money to
the guild, and the guild would carry messages for whoever asked, without
taking
money from that person. Within a week, the system was overburdened with a
strange and horrible new phenomenon. People would address their messages to
"everyone," and the Socialist Governments required the guilds to make copies
of
such messages and, in fact, distribute them to every town and hamlet, even
the
smallest, where they were posted publicly.
This practice caught on quickly. Debates sprang up between widely separated
people on widely separated topics. The heads of the local guilds, along with
many and diverse Authorities, felt that this new thing was a Good Thing, and
held the seeds of Enlightened Anarchy. The cultural exchange was astounding.
Even people on far continents were brought into the discussions. The entire
setup became a Structure with a life of its own.
The Socialist Governments, seeing the brilliance of the guild masters,
granted them some autonomy in matters of spending. And as the cost of the
Structure grew, the guild masters lied to those Governments, saying that the
cost of Government communication was high, when in fact it was the messages
being sent to "everyone" that cost so much. They hid the costs, for they now
feared that the Governments would forbid the sending of messages to
"everyone"
if they learned of the costs, and the guild masters were strangely attached
to
their new Structure.
Eventually some of the guild masters observed that the messages they were
sending to "everyone" were becoming of a poorer quality all the time their
volume was increasing. (One scribe, named Rosenberg the Rich, wrote so
copiously that he kept an entire town's messengers busy, although it was
widely
acknowledged that no one read the scribe's long messages to "everyone".)
Finally, one of the more powerful guild masters, Henry Utzoo, had enough and
cut down the number of messages he would forward. Many discussions halted
because their debaters no longer could reach each other. Other writers
decried
this, in long, turgid, and expensive letters to "everyone," saying that it
was
the Right and Privelege of the writers to have their messages, however empty
and banal, transmitted to the far corners of the world at no expense to
themselves.
Henry said, "pthpthpthpth."
The volume of messages dropped.
Unfortunately, the other guild masters learned nothing from this. Most
looked to the drop in volume as a sign that the Structure could continue as
it
was. Others, who no longer saw their loyalties with their towns or even with
their guilds, for they did nothing but work on ways to improve the Structure,
saw the volume and expense problems as things to solve with a more efficient
Structure, forgetting that it was the pay of the messengers that cost the
most.
At last, one day, the Structure collapsed when the Chair of the Guild
Council, Ihnp IV, dissolved the Council and refused to forward messages
through
his city, which was the Capital of the largest Kingdom. All of the writers
went back to more profitable tasks and lived happily ever after (except for
Rosenberg the Rich, who was heartbroken, and began to write to his hamsters,
who chewed up his letters). The guild masters were upset at having nothing
else to do, but soon saw how much money they saved, and were comforted.
But across all the kingdoms, many felt the void in their lives, for they
were no longer as closely in touch with their fellow humans as they once had
been.
The end.
--
Thomas Cox ...ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!benn
Live long,
avoid intentionalist terminology,
and prosper.