Travels of the Myopic Juice Hunter (Chapt 7)

" E a c h
m e m b e r
special
-izes
in
one area of expertise, becoming brighter and better in that one endeavor while growing ignorant about everything else," crows the teacher in delight.

Hero has a hard time understanding the "sound logic".

He dares not ask a question though. His beady bird eyes focus on the wide open spaces around each "peak of excellence".

"It is unimportant," the instructor inserts, "that each member is dumb in almost everything else because collectively our society is brilliant. Just add up all the bell curves."

Learning economics is going to be hard hard work for Hero. He still does not get the concept: Wealth from Tunnel Visions? Maybe it works for lemmings. How can it work for a c o mplex society that plans to soar to new heights? Won't certain worrisome things slip between the cracks?

Travels of the Myopic Juice Hunter (Chapt 6)

In a blink
of a
bird's
eye,
Hero finds himself caged

in a Thought
Correct- ional
Facility.

"You have free will," booms a voice from the front. "Ours is a free market where all can compete fairly and freely in pursuit of their life, liberty and happiness."

"But before you are loosed on society, we must make sure you understand the rules. Our only text is 'Wealth of Tunnel Visions' by Adam Smith. It will be your Bible. We do not mix religion with state affairs. However, by the time we are done with you, you will believe unquestionably in an 'Invisible Hand'. The Hand knows all and does good for all who worship it."

"Let us begin. Open your book to Chapter 1, Supply and Demand in an ideal marketplace ..."

Travels of the Myopic Juice Hunter (Chapt 5)

With
Corny
Porcu
-popia
reading
materials in hand, Hero continues deeper into the territory of Fog Land.

Without warning, a member of the Right-Stuff Thought Tanking Brigade emerges from the fog and stops Hero right in his tracks.

"Our mission is to correctionalize the thinking of all in Fog Land so that they all think the Right way," proclaims the headhardenned driver of the machine.

"We will test your thinking to make sure you have proper econo-minded thoughts framed in your head before we let you "pass", graduate, and move on with your journey," continues the controller of the Thought Tanking apparatus. "It's called an Edge-you-K-shun."

Travels of the Myopic Juice Hunter (Chapt 4)

As he
reaches
the edge
of Fog Land,
our Myopic Hero
finally starts to under
-stand
why they
call it
Fog Land.
It is shrouded
in a low lying fog.
Here, everyone has a vision problem. They cannot see far up along the road ahead. They cannot see the extent of the precious Tree of the Life Juice. It's just guess work.

"You must be a new guest worker," opines a suspicous looking and yet smile happy stranger.
"How rude of me. Sorry. Welcome. My name is Corny Porcupian. Welcome to my home country. Welcome to Fog Land. Here everything is bea-u-tiful. No? The Tree she is bea-u-tiful. Our future, it is bea-u-tiful. We have always had acces to The Prize, to our precious Juice of Life, and it will go on for ... well, basically forever. Think of it as a Bottomless Well."

Hero is stunned.
As far out as his myopic powers let him see, a sea of ladders stretch across the visible ground, each rigged to go high up into the dense fog, to access another part of the unseen tree.

Everything he had imagined was wrong. The natives had not surveyed the full scope of the juice-giving tree in detail. Instead they climbed up their rigs wherever they could, and if lucky, they brought down all they could grab from a low-lying branch.

"What happens when the low lying branches start to run down?" Hero asks.

"Oh that will never happen," quips Corny Porcupian. "Gloomers and doomers have been predicting that we will run out of Juice for hundreds of years. They have been wrong every time and they will continue to be wrong. Malthus was wrong. The famines never came because technology saved the day. Hubbert (a Juice oriented gloomer) will also be wrong. Technology will come through as it always does and help us to extract ever greater amounts of Juice from the Tree practically forever.

Hero says nothing. He thinks to himself, "Why is this cornucopian grinning fool all so eager to meet me at the frontier edge of Fog Land and bend me towards the cheerful view of life? Every bird brain knows that no tree climbs to the sky and beyond. Why is Corny Porcupian so yearning to give me the false impression that the Tree is without limit and that the juice will flow forever? Who pays him to do this? What is their goal?"

Travels of the Myopic Juice Hunter (Chapt 3)

No doubt,

it must be

like this,

He imagined.

With only this one Tree of the Life Juice available, the folk who have dominion over the tree must have taken extreme measures of care and planning.

They must have scoped out the full limits of the tree. There would be only so many branches and only so much removable fruit on each branch.

They would take carefully from the tree only after having fully justified the depletion of this wonderous resource. Surely they would not be like drunken madmen and grab heedlessly everything they could get their hands on without nary a care for what happens when it is all gone.