‘If there is one.’
‘So you’re comparing chalk and cheese just to get one. It was completely different with the banks. Banks are the very essence of the system called capitalism, they hold it up. Do you really believe that back then it was just about individual financial institutions, or about nasty managers and speculators paying themselves performance-related bonuses for no performance at all? It was about keeping the system going that even makes politics possible, it was about the temple of capitalism not crashing down, in the final analysis it was about governments’ influence on capital which had been lost over time. Let’s not kid ourselves, Loreena, the oil companies never played anything like that kind of a role. Our industry was only ever a symptom of the system, it was never part of its structure. You can do without us very well. Those of us who didn’t manage to leap aboard the alternative energies bandwagon in time are in our death throes. Why should the State save us? We’ve nothing to offer it. Back in the day we paid the politicos, which was a comfortable way for them to live, but now you expect them to prop us up? Nobody’s interested in that! The State is digging up the helium-3 because it sees the chance to become an investor in its own right again. America now has the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to secure its energy supply under State control, and this time it won’t let the kingmakers appear in the first place.’
‘That really sounds like a lot of eyewash,’ said Keowa dismissively. ‘You name me one capitalist system where capital and private enterprise aren’t the real powerbrokers. The USA is switching from EMCO to Orley Enterprises, that’s all. Orley will bring Washington to the Moon, build the reactors so that when the stuff gets down to the Earth it does what it has to. The whole project would never have got this far without private sector support. And the new kingmaker is sitting on his patents and laying down the law for his partners. Without him, they’d not be able to build any more elevators, any reactors—’
‘Julian Orley isn’t a kingmaker in the classic sense. He’s an alien, if you like. An out-of-worlder. ExxonMobil, later EMCO, they were Americans, they influenced elections in America and stoked foreign insurrections with their money or by running guns. Orley’s not like that, he acts like a state himself, he sees himself as a world power in his own right. That’s something that the multinationals always flirted with the idea of doing. Answerable to nobody but himself. Julian Orley would never try to topple an American president he didn’t like, he’d even have moral scruples against it. He’d simply break off diplomatic relations with Washington and recall his ambassador.’
‘He really thinks that he’s a – state?’
‘Are you surprised? Julian’s rise to power was all plotted out while governments were still rubbing their eyes and demanding a greater say in how the banks were run. It was their own idea to privatise everything they could lay their hands on, and now they saw the welfare state slipping between their fingers. So all of a sudden they wanted more State power, but were forced to concede that if you take capital into State ownership, you rob it of the very strengths that make it grow, and they went back to business as usual. People contented themselves with the idea that the depression of 2008 to 2012 was just a system overheating, that there was nothing wrong with the system itself. They squandered the chance to reinvent capitalism, and with it the chance to strengthen State power in the long term.’
Palstein was gazing off into the distance. He spoke as though giving a lecture, his voice analytical but without empathy.
‘That was the moment when private capital took the sceptre from government hands once and for all. Human beings became human resources. The parties in the democratic countries were too busy treading on one another’s toes, and the totalitarian powers were wheeling and dealing on their own behalf as always, and meanwhile the big companies forced their way into every aspect of social life and set up shop for modern society. They took over the water supply, medicine, the food chain, they privatised education, built their own universities, hospitals, old folks’ homes, graveyards, and it was all bigger, better and more beautiful than what the State had to offer. They formed an anti-war movement, they started aid programmes for the underprivileged, they took up arms against hunger and thirst and torture, against global warming, overfishing and resource depletion, against social division, the gap between the rich and the poor. And as they did so, they were reinforcing divisions by deciding who had access and who didn’t. They set up generous research budgets, and made the research serve their goals. Planet Earth had been the heritage of all humanity, but now it became an economic asset. They opened up every corner of the planet, every resource. At the same time they put a price on everything, from sources of fresh water all the way to the human genome, they took the world which had been common to all and they drew up a catalogue listing what belonged to which owner, they imposed usage fees, access protocols; if you’ll let me coin a rather loaded phrase, they put a turnstile on all Creation. Even free education and drinking water tie people into the commercial ideology once they accept the offer, it’s the vision of a brand name.’
‘Wasn’t it always like that?’ said Keowa. ‘That the many are rewarded for following the vision of the few, and if they don’t, they can expect to be cast out and punished?’
‘You’re talking about dictators and all their pomp and show. Tutankhamun, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler, Saddam Hussein.’
‘There are other forms of dictatorship, gentler ones.’
‘Ancient Rome was a gentle dictatorship.’ Palstein smiled. ‘The Romans reckoned that they were the freest people on earth. That was something quite different, Loreena, I’m talking about rulers seizing power who don’t even have a country, their states aren’t shown on the map. The fact that the oil companies look like losing this battle doesn’t mean that industry’s grip on politics is loosening, quite the opposite. It just shows that influence has shifted. Here on Earth, Incorporated, other departments have become more influential, and to that extent, you’re absolutely right: Orley takes EMCO’s place. It’s just that EMCO acted in America’s interests, because our people were in government, but Orley doesn’t even want to govern. That’s what makes him so unpredictable. That’s what the governments are afraid of. And now, please consider the whole long history of state failure, and just ask yourself whether this kind of power transfer is really such a bad thing.’
‘Excuse me?’ Keowa cocked her head. ‘You can’t be serious?’
‘I’m not trying to sell you anything. I just want you to look at the situation as though it were an equation, look at all the variables, without fear or favour. Can you do that?’
Keowa considered this. Palstein had drawn her into a strange kind of conversation here. She had set out to interview him, and analyse him, and now the tables were turned.
‘I believe so,’ she said.
‘And?’
‘There is no ideal state of things. But there are approximations. Some of them have been hard-won. When we abolished slavery, the idea of the free citizen won out, at all levels of society. The citizen of a democratic state is bound by the laws but fundamentally free, isn’t that right?’
‘D’accord.’
‘But if you’re a member of a company, you’re property. That’s the change that’s happening all over.’
‘Also right.’
‘It seems to me about as difficult to break out of this pattern as it would be to suspend the laws of nature. The freedom of the individual is nothing but an idea by now. We live on a globe, and globes are closed systems, they offer no chance of escape and the globe is all divided up. At this very moment, while we sit here on this beautiful lake talking the whole thing through, the Moon in its orbit is being divided up, way over our heads, that’s the next globe. There’s no such thing as uncommercialised space any more.’