The Poker Tournament

Day one hundred and twenty-six, Georgia. The Machakhela National Park is a long way from what we call civilisation, and from out here civilisation looks like the aftermath of something: survivors of a catastrophe nobody remembers, working very hard.

People believe they are free. I don't see how that holds when the arrangements they live inside are built to make them otherwise.

Money works like a poker tournament. Every round the blinds go up, so nobody can sit still. You have to keep betting or you are out. At the end a few are ahead, and the last man standing has most of it.

Compound interest does something similar, only politely.

How deep are the states in debt? How many companies have anything put by? All those new cars on the roads — how many of them were bought with money that exists?

Apart from a few, we are all pedalling hard for the daily bread.

The system strikes me as unnatural. It doesn't fit what we are, which — and I am aware how this sounds from a man sitting in a national park — is peaceful, affectionate and rather beautiful when nobody is raising the blinds.