“Philosopher’s Stone”

I just read the short story “Philosopher’s Stone” by Christopher Anvil, in the January, 1963, issue of Analog science fiction magazine. In it is described an interesting idea on how to spur technological progress and expand economies.

The story, in short: the main character is an interstellar data courier. While faster than light travel is in use, there is still a whole lot of relativistic time dilation, the result being that a few week ship travel time equates to a year or three back on Earth. So as the courier goes about his career, he sees technological progress and cultural changes occurring very rapidly. He is an American, but eventually bumps into one of his Soviet counterparts (remember, published in ’63), and they compare notes.

When they started out, they (or more strictly, their employers) tended to book tavel on American or Soviet star liners… but now they are being booked on British Imperial star liners. And the culture onboard the ships is very, very old-school British, with “nobility” walking around with swagger sticks that denote their “station,” and people bowing and scraping accordingly. The American and the Soviet are confused by this, so they do the obvious thing… get themselves a boxload of booze, get ‘faced, and check the onboard computer library to find out what the hell is going on. And what’s going on is that the British Empire, once a tiny little speck, economically, is now the dominant power on Earth and growing exponentially.

The question is, “how in the hell did *this* happen?”

Being science fiction, the usual answer would likely be that the Brits made first contact with aliens or some such. Instead, what Anvil came up with is perhaps an ingenious solution, and purely sociological.

1) Nobility and social rank are pushed as worthy of attainment.

2) Rank in nobility is not passed on directly to the male heir, but is instead dropped two ranks. “The son of a duke becomes an earl.”

3) And the way to bump your rank *up* is to “bring a useful invention to prominence.” This is not to say to *invent* something… but to be the guy who brought Invention X to the world stage and made it go. Think: “Baron Billy Mays here for Oxy Clean!”

This system means that social climbing is done by advancing the state of the art. Families that don’t do well at that fall out of the nobility; families that do well at that keep their station, or advance upwards. But one need not be an inventor… only  have the wisdom to see the value in an invention, and have the wherewithal to bring the technology not only to market, but to make it a world-beater.

In the story, the start of Britain’s rise to dominance came with the invention of “ocean mining” (which is not described, other than to point out that Britain can now effectively mine 70% of the Earth that the other nations can’t). With “nobles” crawling all over each other to find The Next Big Thing in order to climb up the aristocratic totem pole, Britain is now far and away the world leader in innovation. The story ends with the American and the Soviet discussing how to incorporate the same basic idea into their own home societies. The Soviet’s idea is that each Party member must sponsor one good innovation every five years, or get booted from the Party; the American’s idea is to have “teams” like major league baseball teams, with the team members made up of innovation-sponsors, with pennants and awards and such awarded based on “points,” which themselves are based on numbers of useful innovations sponsored by the team members.

Personally, I can see the British solution, as presented, proving to be very effective and the Soviet version fairly effective, but I’m kinda “meh” about the American idea. While my personal view of “nobles” is that their best social purpose is that of “gunnery target” and “guillotine fodder,” I can see how a society that takes some of the sleazier motives of humanity (social climbing) and marries that to true social progress (technological advancement) could quickly rise technologically, economically and politically.

In the US today, our current best approximation of this is the profit motive. And while the profit motive is certainly an effective one, we also have a truckload of anti-motives, such as “progressive” taxation, massive bureaucracies, regulations out the ying-yang… and cultural indifference to innovators. If we adopted something somewhat akin to the system proposed in “Philosopher’s Stone,”  I could see the US clawing its way out of the recession ina  heartbeat. Here are a few ideas… certainly some suck, but I’d be interested in others.

1) Once a year, a hundred (or whatever number) innovations are selected. Those who sponsored those innovations (and the sponsor could of course be the actual inventor) are granted five years free from *all* taxation.

2) Sponsors are given land grants… say, hundreds or thousands of acres of choice property that the sponsor chooses (if the land is currently privately owned, the government can buy that land… but none of that eminant domain bullcrap). Free from property taxes or any other obligation for the rest of the sponsor’s life. The land can be sold or willed to inheiritors, but the property taxes and such kick back in after the sponsor kicks off.

3) Sponsors get ten votes in federal elections. Vote ten times for one guy; vote for ten guys. Whatever.

4) Sponsors get a five-year supply of all the bodyguards, doctors, lawyers and world travel they can stomach.

5) The selected sponsors are given the sort of fame and media adoration that is currently reserved for such as the Kardashians, the Jersey Shore mutants, Paris Hilton, movie stars, rock stars, etc. Sponsors can of course opt out… but the desire for fame is a common one, and could easily be one hell of a motivator.

My idea is to make the five years (and that time period is up for debate) following the sponsor’s selection by the Awards comittee into one long party… if the sponsor so chooses to do it that way. If the sponsor is smart, he will instead be making plans for his *next* great innovation, to keep the party going and the tax collector at bay, and to build up his land. If the party-period ends and the sponsor doesn’t have something else lined up… well, he will be inspired to get back on the job. But even if not… the prospect of making a bucket of money from a popular invention, along with scoring a primo bit of real estate and a couple of really entertaining years would be incentive enough for a whole lot of people.