Walter Mosley (7 page)

Having the knowledge of what things cost provides almost absolute power in the modern world. If you know what something costs then you have at least the potential to control that thing. There are people in Washington and on Wall Street who can tell you how much it will cost to make a young woman a doctor or to maintain a young man's lifelong journey through the prison system once he has slipped (or has been pushed) into the gangs.

This might be the most important and complex step in the recovery program of the Oppressed Denizen of the modern world—this because Cost is an intricate process that appears to be simple. It (Cost) started out purely and innocently as a human bartering system but through the centuries it has been taken over by the virtual system of the Great Shadow Joe. Capitalism (GS Joe's other name) has altered Cost and value to fit its needs and predilections.

There was a time that an old woman sitting in front of her semi-rural home in Oregon could tell you what an apple in her barrel cost. No more. Now Best-Fruits-Imaginable, an agribusiness cartel officed in Cincinnati but incorporated in São Paulo, Brazil, can undersell that grandmother and tell her, by the greatest of all communicators (The Market), what the true and transitory
worth of the product of her family's age-old orchard actually is.

“But, Miss Rogers,” the potential buyer says, “I can buy a whole bag of apples like these at the supermarket for the price you're charging for one.”

Cost.

As everyday citizens in the world who know our alphabet and our numbers, we believe that we understand Cost. The price tag says
apples $3.25 a bag
. I can read. I can comparison-shop in the newspapers. I can call Betty and ask her how much she's paying across town. I don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

Au contraire.

The price tag has nothing to do with Cost. The price tag is what you pay—right now. But every dollar you spend is only a down-payment on a bill that will follow you for the rest of your life. Once Best-Fruits-Imaginable buys 87.09 percent of the mom and pop orchards in the Northwest, apples might well become a rarity and their Cost will reflect their availability. The apples you bought five years ago at a discount will now eat into your paycheck as you bite into them. These are the wages of Cost.

And it goes further than that. What does a highfat, fast-food, antibiotic-treated, whole herd of cattle
in a single burger cost? It's probably cheaper than you can make at home; but what about the addictions that you and your children develop to fast foods? What about the clogged veins, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, colon problems, and a host of other maladies? What do they cost?

What does vengeance cost? The starving children in Afghanistan and the shell-shocked citizens of Iraq may not be on the radar of most Americans, but what about our own disabled and traumatized soldiers who went to War because they couldn't afford the Cost of living as young working-class citizens of this country. Who pays? Who profits? Who makes the decision, and who is told what they will pay regardless of what they want, what they earn, and what they're worth?

Using War as an example of Cost we can begin to see the crystal-like complexities of Cost connected to any action we take or exchange we make in the Modern World.

Almost every action we take has an effect that we did not intend, an effect that Costs us more than it provides for our comfort and ease, health and well-being.

Whatever something Costs in the Great Shadow Joe's domain—it is worth less. This is the rub. This is the instant when we give up our value to the greater system. And this gift is not to an entity that cares about us or our well-being. Above our heads, in the ether of capitalism, there is a continual war being waged between virtual corporate gods—Best-Fruits-Imaginable versus Mantan Applesauce, Tolmec Investments versus Less Bank, General Hospital versus If You're Lucky Health Insurance. These warrior gods are animated and empowered by our labor, our dollars. As their battles intensify we are drained of more and more of our resources. As we get weaker they get stronger. Costs rise at the supermarket and in the taxes and even in our veins. We pay out of our pockets, we pay in secret charges, we pay in outrageous interest rates, and we pay just by working and being undervalued by the servants of the virtual war being fought in the heavens of our own imaginations.

Okay. That's the uppermost surface of the problem. We work and then receive less than the value of our labor; we pay more than what we buy is worth. The systems that these exchanges are based on are decided by virtual entities (i.e., corporations) that are alien to our biologies and therefore have no ability to identify or empathize with our problems. It
seems
as if human beings govern these interchanges but, in truth, this is not so. Individuals can prosper from the systems of Cost only as long as they go along with the rules. No one who breaks the rules may stay in control.

How do we, Everyday Denizens, counteract this tautological economic trap?

To begin with, we have to come to some kind of understanding of worth versus Cost. What am I worth? What am I paid? What is the worth of the things I buy versus the price I buy them for? Once we begin to have a notion of the answers to these questions we can begin to organize ourselves against the Great Shadow Joe and his invisible machinations.

 

I am about to embark on some very murky waters here because I am not an economist and so don't have the training to present arguments in those terms. But I do have some common sense and an appreciation
for what is necessary to enter a conflict between any two entities.

In order for someone to challenge me, my Opponent, if he has any hope of winning, must bring at least equal strength into the conflict. This strength may be defined in different ways: It might be skill versus brute power, reach versus close-to-the-ground weight, determination versus self-confidence, or just the power of one opponent to
psyche-out
the other. These rivals will be more or less evenly matched (because the fight is the thing: the debacle that is our
open
market).

Our Opponents, the Joes, have an in with the promoter (the Great Shadow Joe) and have gone to great lengths to fix the fight in their favor. They have defined everything from the size of the ring, to the referee, to the judges. They own the experts who have written how we (the consumers) are the underdog. They have even created advertisements that show every blow we have ever received while, alternately, showing every punch that our Opponents have delivered. They have filled the auditorium with their supporters gratis while charging our followers a thousand dollars a seat.

Conversely, they have hinted, here and there, that their favorite might have an injury, that the underdog
has a slugger's chance, that this is a fair fight and anyone can win.

We are dreading defeat but given hope at the same time. In this way we keep on fighting but without much heart.

 

The boxing metaphor, I believe, works. It leaves us with the suspicion that there might be other ways to win this fight—a fight whose very nature is the state of our economy. There are two major ways that we can begin to plan for victory: by realizing (1) that the Joe in the other corner is our equal and (2) that we don't have to fight the way he expects.

To speak to the first part of the
plan for victory
I believe that we should use a rule of thumb to gauge what is happening to us in the so-called open market: That is, for every dollar we make, the Joes take a dollar for themselves (maybe a few mils more) and for every dollar we spend we get fifty cents or a little less in value. And, even though these two claims have to be true in order for the Joes to challenge us, the wealth is all created by us. The wealth is ours and we have to begin taking it back. We have to begin to make a ceiling for profit on necessities just like there is a floor for wages. Food, for instance, should not exceed a 10 percent
profit margin; neither should primary-home real estate. Economic corruption by elected officials has to come with heavy penalties, and citizen review boards need to be set up to oversee the uses and abuses of our various branches of government and bureaucracy. All primary service providers (banks, hospitals, insurance companies, supermarkets, and natural-resource providers) must be held to this standard. You can profit, but only by a strictly maintained margin. I don't care about bling. If a jewelry store wants to charge $100,000 for a silver hoop—that's fine with me. But apples and pears, work shoes, and a one-bedroom apartment cannot be overpriced because of the demands of the market. If it costs $1.00 to bring a pear to market then you can charge me $1.10.

The second part of the plan is mixing up our approach to the fight. This is to organize against Shadow Joe with our own virtual entities like guilds, unions, brother- and sisterhoods, special-interest organizations, and watch-groups. We can organize just as well as they can. We can come together and consolidate our wealth. You don't like unions? Okay. Join a special-interest group that fights for your cause. You like to meet our opponent head to head? Create or join a third party that the sold-out politicians
have
to recognize.

If you want to fight the champions of Cost you have to go to the gym to get in shape, you need trainers and other fighters in your corner, you need to organize and to demand a fair shake in the open market. You need room to breathe, time to consider, and a sympathetic and understanding version of your story on the front page of the newspaper.

T
his step develops from the section on Cost. Worth comes in two forms for the worker and Denizen-wanting-to-be-Citizen. The first of these forms relates to labor and the open market. We work and create products and then buy those products to live and prosper. As I have said above, there need to be certain controls over the Costs of those products which are essential for our survival and well-being.

But this is only the beginning.

We are all potential citizens of the United States of America. We are descended from many generations of workers who built this nation, its cities, corporations,
great works, and art. The ground beneath our feet and the sky above our heads belong to us. As far as we can see in any direction this is our country, our nation.

New citizens inherit this property by making their oath and changing their allegiance. We are all equal in this great nation and it, equally, belongs to all of us.

I'm not talking about private property here. Your home is your own. Ford Motors owns their property. This is not a class revolution but merely the recognition of the worth of a nation and its individual members, owners.

 

Not long ago there was a lot of talk about America's trillions-of-dollars debt to China. News reports and op-ed heads were intimating that, in some way, China owned America. This seemed odd to me. I began to wonder what the full value of our nation was if a foreign country could buy us. Was eight trillion dollars enough?

From there I opened my mind to the vastness that is the United States: the natural resources such as gold, copper, marble, uranium, zinc, precious and semi-precious stones, granite, coal, oil, and natural gas to name just a few; then there's the flora and fauna that fill our wild and tamed areas—deer and steers, coyotes and redwoods, pines, poplars, maples, and arable farmlands,
bees and hummingbirds, homing pigeons, and all the fish in our seas, rivers, and lakes; there are the flowing rivers themselves, the electric power that sits dormant in most of them, and the wind and the solar power of the daylight on our brows; there's the labor in our muscles and the content of our minds, libraries, museums, opera houses, and even jails; there are dams and roads and airfields and quays; there are thousands of government and military installations and parks so vast that it takes a day to traverse them; there are the colleges and universities, trade and grade schools; there's water itself and the power of our minds to harness the atom.

Just how much is America worth? And how much of that almost incalculable value belongs to me—Denizen #344,562,891?

How much am I worth? If my government can barter with my inheritance, why can't I? If the complete value of America is 4,127 quadrillion dollars, then why can't I barter with my little portion of that?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that we should sell our country but I am saying that certain questions necessarily arise when we begin to talk about our value, our worth.

For instance: If I, Denizen #344,562,891, am worth 1.9 million dollars, and each member of my family is
worth the same, then why can't I send my kids to college, pay my mortgage, afford health insurance, retire when I reach the age of sixty-five (or thirty-two), or just buy a decent rib-eye steak now and again?

This is a valid question. The Congress can make deals with the value of our nation. Big corporations get special rates on mineral rights. China owns a large chunk of our debt. Why can't I afford basic needs if I'm so rich? Why can't we nationalize something like coal or natural gas? Maybe if I felt that the wealth of the oceans was shared a little with me I'd be more likely to worry about its ecological welfare. Why am I kept away from my heritage and my wealth?

 

This step in personal recovery is more an action of the mind than a direct political economic move. I mean, certainly, there are ways to garner our wealth but first we must imagine our vast value and push aside the notion that this land belongs to someone else. This land is my land, this land is your land ... that's a fact. Once you accept this reality you will find that you are better able to argue for yourself and your family and friends.