A stunning counterargument to anybody claiming that there is no real progress in human history.
When Latho was confronted with an excess of money, it proved that embezzlement was still surprisingly effective at dealing with that problem – despite the fact that this method is older than dirt and likely predates the invention of coinage itself by millennia, if you consider the fact that older, more down-to-earth and immediate media of economic exchange already gave rise to corruption. It’s definitely older than history and even protohistory…and it might be older than prehistory, too, since our ancestors might already have practiced forms of corruption before even becoming human in the strict sense, judging by the example of other hierarchical social animals.
Effective at it still is, though, the method has its limits, as evidenced by the amount of digging Latho still had to do in the end. So the massive wave of excess liquidity created by the coin-monster called for a different approach. But Biff war ready to rise to the occasion, or raise his equipment (hardware and software) to the occasion – and here the progress made throughout the centuries is clear to see: humanity’s ability to destroy capital is now practically limitless, thanks to a combination of evolved markets and readily accessible technology. This sort of stuff definitely wasn’t around at the dawn of history…how much it’ll contribute to its era becoming the dusk of humanity is yet an open question, though…
Of course it’s a bit strange that the space-traveling alien from an advanced extraterrestrial society is technologically behind, of all people, Biff Boffenheimer. I’ll blame that on a natural conservative tendency inherent in plush-based lifeforms…
More on Thursday.