Dawn of the Unthinkable (10 page)

“Hey, shit happens,” Willows answered, as he
dodged a cab.
Every stereotype that was ever put forth about New
York cabbies is false
, he thought.
They are actually much
worse.

“And I bought that other movie company stock
‘cause I liked Bruce Willis as the baby’s voice in that dumb
Travolta film. Then the sequel bombed. Chapter 11. Geez…and there
was the time I got clobbered on options in Texas….” Riven went on,
reciting a familiar litany of failure.

“You had some good picks, too, dude. You
were one of the firsts to buy Compaq. Paid pennies a share. Made
eighty grand,” Willows reminded him, trying to buck him up. Having
a grumpy trading partner made for a long day, and he hated long
days.

“Could have made four hundred grand if I’d
kept it,” Riven moped.

“Don’t be a wimp. What did that Texas broker
tell you? ‘In the market, you’ve got to take your lumps to prove
you’re a man.’”

“I fired him after that,” Riven mused.

“Maybe you should buy Compaq now,” Willows
suggested, stepping in a wad of gum with his expensive Italian
loafer. He shook his head and cursed this part of New York, New
York—funny how Sinatra never sang about how much of a pain it could
be. “It was hammered on Monday,” he said as he tried to scrape the
gooey mess on the curb.

“Too many bad memories,” Riven mourned.

“How about Intel? It’s down. Buy a thousand
shares and make ten percent when the market comes back. Maybe
twenty percent.”

Riven was not convinced. “Maybe the market
won’t come back. I’d be like those chumps who held IBM for all
those years.”

Willows jumped a puddle and dodged a
panhandler. Years playing sandlot football had helped prepare him
to successfully navigate New York’s pedestrian challenges. “Buy a
thousand shares of Intel and a put option to save your principle if
the market drops. Or, you want to make some real money? Try a pure
option play. Puts and calls in Intel. Intel’s gotta make a big
swing one way or the other, right? What’s that called? A straddle?
Quadruple your money!”

Riven was a good balance to Willow’s
exuberance. “Geez, what are you doing to me? Almost everyone loses
on options. And they’re all big guys. I’m little. I could get
squished like a gnat.”

“Come on, champ. You think about this stuff
all the time. You gonna spend the hottest day of the decade on the
side lines? How about index options? Maybe a couple of contracts on
the S&P 500.”

“They cost a fortune. Premiums doubled on
Monday,” Riven informed him.

Willows had to shout to be heard over the
traffic. “What about that index fund you were looking at the other
day, the supercharged one that uses futures contracts? It beats the
S&P by fifty percent.”

Riven did not need to be shouted at early in
the morning. He shouted back, “And it falls fifty percent more,
too.”

Willows almost walked into a telephone pole
checking out some girl’s ass. He really had to watch that; he was
going to walk in front of a bus someday. Up here, the driver would
probably just peel him off and keep on going. “Foreign funds, then.
What about that little fund that buys Hong Kong stocks? It’s been
crucified. Make a killing on the rebound.”

“Sure, what if Hong Kong lets its currency
float? It’ll be like that Japanese fund I bought a few years ago.
Exchange rates murdered me.”

Willows was now walking up Wall Street
toward their office. The sight of the tall canyon of buildings
still thrilled him, which was why he walked while all the other
jaded traders took cabs or subways. The people around him now
looked like himself, all professionals, some talking on phones,
others hurrying to appointments. You could almost smell the money.
He picked up his pace, anxious to get to the day’s action. He
remembered he still had poor Riven on the line. “Stop whining. How
‘bout a small-stock fund? All the other pros are hot on small
stocks.”

“Investors are nervous. They prefer blue
chips when they’re nervous.”

Willows checked out his look in a reflective
window as he waited for a light to change. How you looked mattered
on the Street, as most traders could appraise the value of your
suit to within the closest hundred dollars. He spent more than he
should on his clothes, but he felt it paid off. He wondered briefly
if he was making all the decisions in his life based on their
potential return, and the thought bothered him. But he dismissed it
quickly and turned his mind back to the scrimmage with his
Hobbit-like friend. “Okay, the S&P index fund, then. You’re
always talking about that.”

“Yeah…maybe,” Riven said. “It’s worked
before.”

“It’s thirteen percent below its last high.
Buy some more now and ride it back.”

This was more in Riven’s comfort zone. He
was nowhere near as adventurous as Willows, but he never lost much.
“Well, that doesn’t sound too crazy. Fits the master plan. Sure,
that’s it. I’ll put in an order right now. Those funds buy at the
end of the day. If the market tanks again today, I’ll get a real
bargain!” he said, brightening at the prospect.

“There you go!” Willows responded, glad to
have improved his friend’s mood. “Look, I’ll see you in a minute.
I’m almost there,” he said, flipping the phone shut and heading
towards the elevator in his nice building. He looked forward to
seeing Riven, who, either happy or sad, was usually entertaining.
He was a chunky, usually happy guy, who worried about his friend’s
fast lifestyle.

He walked into his office from the elevator
lobby, greeted a few co-workers, and grabbed his copy of the
Journal
. He came into the office he shared with Riven, and
looked to see the pleased expression he was expecting.

“What?” he asked, as Riven looked like
someone who had had the cream sucked out of his Twinkie.

Riven mourned, “The market’s up 300 already!
I’m cheated out of my bargain!”

Willows tried to control the smile spreading
on his face but could not help it. The news meant that he had
already made a lot of money this day. “Sorry, dude. Guess you
should have been a little more aggressive,” he said, but Riven
already was not listening, trying to find another conservative way
to make big bucks. He did not realize it didn’t work that way.
Willows smiled, and plopped down at his desk, ready to begin.

It was great to be young and in New
York.

Ryan worked on his article in fits and
starts as his schedule permitted. While he wasn’t a real busy guy,
he usually had plenty of home activities to keep him moving. He
almost always held down two jobs during his life, and now with the
valet parking and substitute teaching, he actually had three. In
the earlier part of the year, he had done the census, so at that
time he had worked
four
jobs. He and Kathy talked about it
one night after he got home from parking cars for a valet service
on a hot Saturday night, covered in sweat. Kathy wrinkled her nose,
and said, “Oh, honey, I’m sorry, but you stink. Why don’t you go up
and change and I’ll get you a beer?”

“Yeah, good idea, I guess my deodorant gave
up the fight about an hour ago,” he said, taking a sniff of his
reeking armpit. He longed for the day when he could earn his living
totally on his wits instead of his brawn. He quickly changed out of
the valet uni and came back down to collect his beer and his girls,
who had moved to the front porch to play. Ashley settled into his
lap and sang to her doll, while Kathy had a glass of Chardonnay and
sat on the swing with him. He said, “You know, Kat, working on the
weekend is wearing me down, it seems like all I do is work. But I
can’t see how we can get by without it, I mean, not if we want to
live any kind of decent middle-class life. We have bills to pay and
now three kids to put through college. I probably will never get
promoted at work, so I have to keep working these part-time gigs.
And you have to keep working, too. We’ll never get ahead.” He
sighed and took a long swig of his Miller Lite.

Kathy fiddled with Ashley’s hair,
absentmindedly braiding it. She said, “I know, but isn’t that just
the way things are? Our parents worked crazy long hours too, and at
jobs that were a lot more physically demanding than ours. So even
if it might seem like we’re not making progress, we actually are
living a better life than they did, and our kids will hopefully
live better than us. We don’t need to be rich; we just need to get
by and save enough so that we can retire and live nice. That’s all
I want, anyway. I’m not like you; I don’t feel any need to save the
world.”

That got him stirred up. “Hey, I’m not
trying to save the world, I’m just thinking about how it could be
better. Most middle-classers would be happy with what you said, but
now they can’t even get to retire because they don’t have enough.
They don’t have an insatiable need for more money; most are content
to improve their life incrementally, while trying like crazy to
improve their kids’ lives a lot by providing better education
opportunities, computers, and whatever else it takes. The middle
class makes up the majority of the population in the United States,
so my plan might appeal to them. It calls for marginal increases in
lifestyles based solely on achievement. It would eliminate things
that they didn’t like, such as crime, poverty, and getting ahead by
“knowing someone.” Also, it would bring the upper class down to
their level. They would be suspicious about allowing their level of
living to be determined by starngers, but that would not have a big
effect on them for a while, as the original transition would have
them entering the new society at approximately their current
level.”

Kathy shook her head and said, “Yeah, but
you got to realize what you’re saying would sound crazy to most
people. I don’t know how long money has been around, but I assume
it’s been the way people have been doing things for a lot of years.
For them to just give that up would be unthinkable. You might as
well ask them to saw off a leg, not gonna happen.” She finished
Ashley’s braid, and the girl smiled up at her, and said, “Thanks,
mom, now I’m pretty!” Kathy smiled back and said, “Oh, Honey, you
were already pretty, now you’re prettier.” Ashley slid off her lap
to go play with the boys, who were tossing a football back and
forth. Kathy got up to go into the house, and Ryan followed her
in.

He went to the dining room table where he
had been working on his article. He said, “Kat, come over here, I
want to show you how it would work.” She came over and looked at
the paper he was holding. He said, “There could be income ranges to
determine what class you belonged to, like this:

$0 to $10k - poverty

$10k to $20k - poor

$20k to $30k - lower middle class

$30k to $50k - middle class

$50k to $70k - upper middle class

$70k to $100k - lower upper class

$100k to $150k - middle upper class

$150k to $500k - rich

$500k on up - wealthy

“Using this chart, the middle five
categories could probably stay much as they were when they
converted. The upper two categories would have to divest in order
to bring the lower two into the middle five. When all the
conversions had been completed, the society would have only about
five approximate classes with a person not being able to start out
at top because of his birth but starting at the bottom and having
to achieve his way up the ladder. While it would be true that
families in the middle upper class would still be able to give
their kids more advantages, the kid would still have to start at
the bottom with all other kids, instead of walking into the vice
presidency of Daddy’s business. In this way, no one would get an
unfair advantage by birth or race.”

Kathy looked at the chart, her brow furrowed
in concentration. He saw that she wasn’t getting it, so he hurried
on. “Society could also constantly adjust the standard of living by
trying to improve the lower classes while keeping the upper classes
from getting too luxurious. Current vacation spots that were
exclusive would now be available to all. A family could take a week
or two every year at a non-exclusive spot and be put on the waiting
list for a trip to a nice spot. Their name would be required to
come up for an exclusive spot at least once every five years. As
there were always some vacancies in some spots at all times, this
plan would much better utilize those entertainment assets than they
were currently. It would be interesting to see if there would be
any improvements to people’s state of mind from being able to visit
some of the nicer spots in the world.”

She said, “No, I get it, it sounds kind of
nice, like heaven on earth or something, right? But that’s the
thing; no one wants everyone to get to heaven, just the people that
they approve of. So if your plan calls for the least amount of
sacrifice from anyone, you’re going to get laughed at and thought
naïve. I’m sorry, Hon, you’re a good man and I love you, but you’re
certifiably looney if you’re actually going to show this to
anybody.” She went back outside to keep an eye on the kids.

He watched her go and thought about what she
had said. She was a salt-of-the-earth type that lived in the real
world where money had to be earned, bills paid, and kids raised. He
realized that he sometimes went into a fantasy world where
Star
Trek
was real, governments and people could be changed, and the
whole world would convert to what
you
thought was a good
idea. In order to convince the Kathy’s of the world, the idea had
to be tight, plausible, and doable. He sat down and began to write
again.

He had pretty much finished the “valuation”
section of the article, which read like this:

3. Determination of
Value

One of the most difficult
transitions of this plan will be how a person enters into the new
system. A person’s current position in society will be duplicated
with certain adjustments. People currently at low economic levels
will be given all food, housing, and education that they need in
order to advance in society, so they will have all the tools they
need to improve their lot in life. People whose current economic
status in life is out of proportion with society’s reward system
will have to divest themselves of assets over the course of several
generations of their family. In order to accomplish this, society
must: