Dragon Anatomy

I've used the word "dragon" in a few of these letters, and I wanted to clear up what I mean by that.


In a nutshell, the mythology of medieval dragons was tied to anti-monarchy satire. Lots of people didn't like kings, but you didn't want to say that straight to them!


Kings were the dragons of the medieval world, and stories of dragons stealing young women, killing the virtuous men, and laying waste to the countryside - these were critiques of the failings or vices of kings.


At the time, people argued that monarchy was the natural order of things, rather than a system that people had made up that had pros and cons. An example - Milton's "Paradise Lost" was a way for him to use the metaphor of God (similar to a powerful dragon) as satire against the monarchy.


When I say "dragon" in politics, I do not mean an "evil" person or conspiracy, rather I mean

  1. the system that rewards behavior that harms people, or

  2. the actual people who are filling that role -

Not because they are monsters (though they may also be), but because the system demands the role be filled. The show must go on!


Does this mean that someone chose for the people to suffer? Usually not explicitly, rather they chose to increase profits. When they lay exclusive claim to natural resources (for example this water is mine, not yours) they chose prosperity for themselves but suffering for others. They chose private property above human community. And that decision used to be necessary, because for thousands of years, people kept running out of food from time to time.


But we don't have resource shortages anymore, thanks to technology. Instead we have artificial scarcity in order to maximize profits


What does that mean?


Think about this - walking down the street you see a man begging for food. You have a small bag of apples for yourself and your family. Maybe you can spare a little for this beggar, but if you turn the corner and meet another one, and another one, you would soon reach the point where handing out more apples is going to put you at risk of becoming a beggar yourself.


That's a scarce resource for you, and ultimately you have to choose your own well-being over that of the beggar's.


Artificial scarcity would look like this - you have hundreds and hundreds of apples, but you can make more money if you only sell half of them, and let the rest rot. You would never give even one away for "free" because that would reduce the value of the apples you are *selling*. You made apples rare, and those who can pay for them consider them more valuable and exclusive because of their rarity. And also some people starve to death - just a side effect!


Maybe that seems unrealistic, but it's sadly VERY realistic and it is what our system does all day every day. But you're told that the Irish potato famine was caused by a potato disease not by the need for profits, right? Nope. Instead, *profit disease* killed 1.5 million Irish (1 in 5).


local relief committees were forbidden to sell or distribute food at less than prevailing prices -- which were inflated because of scarcity and speculation


Why would anyone do that when people are going hungry? Well, if those people were your friends and family, you probably wouldn't, but you may find you have to if we just add a simple rule. If you don't make enough from selling apples, the system is going to throw *you* out in the cold, whether it be for taxes, rent, medical, or other expenses that you must pay to others scrabbling just as hard as you.


How much is enough? There's no way to know for sure, so you better get as much as you can.

And that's why 821 million people do not have enough food to live a healthy life, and 9 million people die every year from hunger. Not because they don't live in countries that grow enough food, but because that food is not available to them, or frequently because super-wealthy countries start wars-for-profit on their land.


But if you work super hard, you can become rich! Some thought should reveal that those who do amass fortunes, can ONLY do so by increasing the poverty of the poor.


It is not until the exploitation by the rich ceases that the desperation of the poor will be healed. And this is not a matter of shaming the conscience of the wealthy, but a matter of choosing a different system, just like we chose to end monarchy and all its associated dragons.


That is the dragon-system that eats men, women, and children every day. That is what produces dragon-people that make these decisions every day, putting fear and greed over their humanity - causing the whole world to focus in on how best they can get ahead and secure themselves over others, rather than how the abundance of automation has already surpassed the needs of humanity. As Chaplin said in 1940, the "machinery that gives abundance has left us in want" -


But it was never the machine (Industrial Revolution, in this case) that was faulty. It's not a lack of "HARD WORK" but rather an outdated system that now holds us back, just like we faced with Monarchy hundreds of years ago.