Ecotopia (17 page)

Competitive threats from other enterprises keep such laxity within bounds, but even so some Ecotopian products are utterly noncompetitive with the products of more efficient industries abroad. The prices of clothes and shoes outside the core stores, for example, are sky-high and draconian tariffs are used to keep out the sweat-shop products from Asia—the consequence being that many Ecotopians wear homemade garments, which has by now become considered a virtue.

It is impossible to assess the relative tax burden of Ecotopia, since taxes fall only upon enterprises. However, since the Ecotopian arms establishment is small (about the size of Canada’s) and many functions of government which for us are very costly (such as education) are organized, strangely enough, on free-market principles, it seems certain that the relative total tax burden is much lower than ours. This may of course help to explain why the drop
in Gross National Product after Independence did not agitate the population more.

The tax revenues are used by the community governments to support their recycling services, housing, power, water, telephone, medical services, police, courts, and so on. A pro rata share of tax funds goes to the regional and national governments, to support operation of larger-scale systems such as the trains, defense, telecommunications, and most of the research establishment.

Curiously, despite the importance Ecotopians attach to agriculture and other rural affairs, the Ecotopian constitution is city-based where ours, inherited from an agricultural era, is rural-based. With us, the states have broad powers over cities (including the right to give them legal existence and set their boundaries). The Ecotopian main cities, however, dominate their regions through a strict application of one-person-one-vote principles. Furthermore, the county level of government is omitted entirely.

This curious system evidently leads to continual conflict and jealousy over the disposition of tax revenues. Instead of relying on a powerful central tax-collection agency that can attach incomes directly, the central government must continually placate and cajole the local governments to ensure a continued flow of funds. Thus the Ecotopian federal structure, which superficially resembles the small government bodies found under primitive capitalism, makes most of its outlays on uncontroversial activities that benefit all citizens absolutely equally. There is a surprisingly small national welfare system, considering that Ecotopians enjoy a lifetime “guarantee” of minimal levels of food, housing, and medical care. While some citizens, especially those working on untried developments in the arts, utilize this guarantee to exist without jobs (sometimes for years—the envy of our young artists!) most people either feel the guarantee level is too abject to exist on, or find it’s desirable to work in order to provide themselves with a lively social life. The old and disabled, of course, must survive by taking advantage of the guarantee; and by my observation the living standard involved, while low, is perhaps slightly better than that of our Social Security recipients.

Despite the severe criticisms made of the Ecotopian economic
and tax system by our experts, direct observation can thus only support the claims of Ecotopian spokesmen, however unwelcome these may be: the system is now a proved and integral part of Ecotopian life, and it is not going to go away.

(May 29) Just reread last couple of columns. Realize that my attitudes toward the place have changed a lot in three weeks. (And it doesn’t seem to be just Marissa!) Am I getting soft in my writing? Maybe I didn’t know what were the really penetrating questions to be asked on that economics stuff. Or maybe I’m even getting some kind of over-all snow job. The whole Ecotopian experiment seemed to me at first a silly provincial attempt to construct a decent society when every place else was going down the drain. From what I had seen of the rest of the world, I
knew
it couldn’t work, it must be some kind of fraud! I hadn’t believed the rumors about forced labor and stone-age degeneracy and all that crap, but I guess I really did expect to find there was something terribly wrong with it, some obvious horrible flaw which meant that we didn’t after all really have to pay any serious attention to it; and my reports would end up documenting that, would make it all go away….

But it’s not going away. In fact the more closely I look at the fabric of Ecotopian life, the more I am forced to admit its strength and its beauty. But that just leaves me at a total loss. I don’t seem to have an attitude to write from anymore; all I can do is call the individual separate shots as I see them. Is that losing my objectivity? Will Max start cutting my copy? Maybe I don’t really understand anything anymore, or at least not in the way I used to think I did?

Have come out to visit Marissa at the forest camp. Found her deep in the woods, selecting trees for cutting. She let me come along if I wouldn’t talk. She walks slowly through the trees, looking at them all very carefully. Then she’ll sit or stand for a while, meditatively. In time she will walk to this tree and that, attach to each a red ribbon marking its doom, and murmur a
phrase I couldn’t catch. Her expression at these moments is sorrowful yet determined. Then she relaxes and we walk on to another tract of forest. This is a major part of her work—but it might as well be a ritual of some kind; there is a holiness to it.

Difficulties have at last begun to arise between her and Everett—he still doesn’t seem to feel triumphed over, as I would in his place, but there has been dark talk about one of them having to leave. (I wish he would—I now find myself terribly jealous of her having anything to do with him.) At supper an argument came up over whether it would be a good idea to re-establish relations with Washington. Rather to my surprise, Marissa strongly in favor, with some ingenious arguments. I got many dirty looks, even though I didn’t say much. Everett is, after all, a member of the family, and I am an interloper.

Was invited along on a provision trip to the nearby town. Four of us, bumping along in a little electric truck. Went to one of the core stores. Apparently the goods in them are produced by automated factories to government specifications. Standardized, very plain though often attractive, and incredibly, astoundingly cheap. Thus socks about a quarter of our prices, but only in black or white; standard plain pants, shirts, underwear similarly priced. I happen to need a new T-shirt, and got two, considering the bargain (saffron color!). Food sections of core stores offer a modest coverage of dried, frozen, preserved items. You could, if you wished, subsist on these for a tiny sum—and I have met a few artists and other oddball types who claim they do, being unwilling to spend their time earning the income needed for better fare. Many Ecotopians, however, seem to buy only bread, beans, rice, fruit and similar staples from these stores, relying on small independent shops for meat, produce, etc.—or shipments from fellow communes. (Lumber camp gets its meat, milk and vegetables from a farm commune 15 miles away.)

Standardization is carried amazingly far in the core stores. Preserved foods come in only three sizes of containers (all biodegradable, naturally)—one about the size of a small pickled-herring jar, one like a large jam jar, and one huge, the kind our restaurants get fruits in. These go by metric contents, not our “giant,”
“jumbo,” etc. or our intricate can numbers. The labels, however, very lovely in design. And some of the goods have style, like the shoes.

Had lost my hairbrush somehow, and the core stores carry only natural-bristle types. When I said that I wanted a proper plastic-bristle one, my companions looked at me a bit strangely, took me to an “antiquarium.” Turned out to be a special store where you can buy items no longer available in ordinary stores—including, it turns out, many items we sell in drugstores.

(Ecotopian “pharmacies,” as they are called, are cramped little places that sell almost nothing but prescription drugs. The Ecotopian medical profession went through the pharmacopeia after Independence and ruthlessly eliminated many tranquillizers, energizers, sleep-inducers, and other drugs such as cold remedies. In fact they now license
no
behavior-control drugs at all. Which may have been a contributing factor in reorganizing their schools: unable to make difficult children adapt to the schools, they had to adapt the schools to the children! I asked one doctor what happens with insomnia. “Well, usually this indicates a social problem, not a medical one,” he said. “So we try to help the person change his life rather than his body chemistry, which is probably working fine. Besides, in Ecotopia it can be fun to stay up all night, you know. The 20-hour week has loosened things up a lot.”)

Anyway, the antiquarium was patronized mainly by elderly women and a few rather decadent-looking young people, who laughed a lot and seemed to be looking for campy artifacts. With my plastic brush I got a lecture about it being impossible to recycle because it’s the old type of plastic. “Damn thing will last for hundreds of years,” said the clerk with distaste. Well, I’ll remove it from his precious country when I leave….

Marissa and friends telling me about origins of policy that all buildings must be of renewable and biodegradable materials. There was a time after Independence when only wood structures were permitted—the guiding genius of the period being one Archibald Fir, an architect. He wrote a remarkably influential study of earlier wood building, and helped lay down the specifications that plastics had to meet to be allowable as building materials. I asked
why he took the name Fir, and not perhaps Redwood? Marissa: “Well, he was a modest man really, you see, and a realist.” (He was also, it turns out, author of a magnificently biting attack on megastructures.)

Must go back to the city tonight. Trying to get Marissa to come too. But I am getting to be more part of life at the camp. Today before supper we were all sitting around playing (there’s really no other word for it). “Well, Will,” somebody says, “what can
you
do to entertain us?” I went hopelessly blank. People had been singing; I can’t sing. There had been jokes; I’ve never been able to remember jokes. People had laughed and teased each other, in a kind of vaudeville-routine way; I’ve never been able to do that hostile-friendly act. The fantasy flashed through my mind, “I could tell you the story of my life,” but I realized I couldn’t do that either—it would be too boring, it has no climax. Knowing Marissa was ashamed for me, I blurted out lamely, “Well, I don’t know—I’m afraid I’m just not very entertaining. Nobody ever taught me how to entertain people—we relied on television, I guess.” They absolutely wouldn’t accept this; they thought I wanted to be coaxed. When it got through that I meant it, people were sad and embarrassed for me. “Listen,” said one of the men, “we won’t let you get away with that. You can’t deny you know how to sing ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat,’ okay? All right, start us on a round with that.” So I took a deep breath, happened to come out more or less on key, and after a minute it went marvelously, everybody doing funny harmonies and fooling with the rhythm, and laughing at me. I shall have to extend my repertoire….

RACE IN ECOTOPIA:
APARTHEID OR EQUALITY?

San Francisco, May 29. There are surprisingly few dark-skinned faces on San Francisco streets, and I have now learned why. After Independence, the principle of secession became a lively factor in Ecotopian political life. Thomas Jefferson and other early American patriots were quoted in its defense. The black population, whose economic deprivation under white control had made it increasingly nationalist and separatist even before Independence, apparently joined in the general exultation when the great break with Washington came. But in the months following, black separatist parties grew up to dominate the ghettoes of Oakland and San Francisco—having been strangled by the white suburbs earlier, the black population now wanted to control their own territory. After a long and bitter political struggle, the black areas (and also Chinatown in San Francisco) were officially designated as city-states within Ecotopia. They had their own city governments, levied the usual taxes, had their own police and courts, their own industries, and owned farms in the nearby countryside. In fact they possessed all the attributes of tiny independent countries—even including the issuance of postage stamps and currency—except for the carrying on of foreign relations.

This situation, though it satisfies many blacks, seems to others inherently unstable, and they argue for full independence as the only long-range solution. One scheme, which is currently being debated, would relocate the entire black population in a new territory including Monterey Bay and the Salinas Valley, which would provide abundant agricultural resources and direct access to the Pacific sea lanes. The political and economic problems posed are monstrous, of course, but such things were carried out in Eastern Europe after World War II.

A few black people have preferred to continue living or working outside the black areas (which are often referred to as Soul City). They seem to be fully integrated into white society, with intermarriage frequent. Life within the black territories, judging by my
limited observations, has more hold-overs from pre-Independence days than Ecotopia as a whole. In fact a few private cars are still mysteriously tolerated, and people cling to certain symbols of the old ways: there is a brisk trade in high-quality Scotch whisky and other imported luxury goods which are hard to find in Ecotopia elsewhere. The per capita income is said to be about 10 percent higher than in the white areas, largely because of longer working hours—probably a consequence of the lag in black consumption before Independence. “We’re still making up for lost time,” one stylish black man put it to me.