Your reasons matter: The Folding Knife, by K.J. Parker

 This morning, we return to K.J. Parker (a pseudonym for Tom Holt), about whose books I have written before.  Parker (Holt) manages wit and insight, if paired disquietingly.  The Folding Knife takes place on an Earth analog, primarily in the Vesani Republic.  The Vesani Republic reads as some mashup of Rome and Venice, and follows the rise and fall of Bassianus Severus-- Basso-- as he goes from the son of the "First Citizen" to First Citizen, himself, to fleeing for his life after flying too close to the "Invincible Sun," which is the deity they worship.  Is Basso a villain?  Not quite.  In many ways, despite having been published in 2010, he was what Donald Trump pretended to be, and desperately wished to be, with a few differences.  He was, however, a testament to the folly of even that false dream.

Basso was born to wealth, yet he was far more intelligent than his instinctive and reckless father.  At a young age, he was apprenticed to Antigonus, the eunuch who oversaw the family's banking interests, but surprisingly, Basso demonstrated true aptitude and eventually took over the bank, and brought the family more money than it ever had before.  When he caught his wife and his sister's husband together, and killed them, his position in Vesani society was such that even his known guilt did not stop him from being elected First Citizen.  If this sounds like a remarkably cursory description of Basso's rise, the narrative goes from vignette to vignette in which Parker casually breezes through minor plot after minor plot, the ingenuity of each putting most authors to shame, and at the core of each vignette is Basso's philosophy of greed.  Basso explains that leader after leader throughout that world's history has gone wrong by trying to set everything right.  Basso, on the other hand, works for himself, but he does so in a way that will have the side benefit of helping the Vesani Republic.  Think about Trump campaigning on the platform that all of his life, he had been greedy, and then he would be "greedy for you."

Strangely, it worked.  Mostly.

As Basso navigated sequential crises, he also mentored his nephew, Bassano.  Periodically, Bassano would interrogate his uncle about why he did what he did, and Basso was always evasive about reasons.  Reasons, reasons, reasons...  Why was Basso so evasive?  He did have real reasons.  He was motivated by ambition and vanity.  Heavy emphasis on that second motive.  He so desperately wanted to be "Basso The Magnificent," or some such.  One does not admit such things to an admiring nephew, so one is, instead, evasive, and brushes aside even the idea of discussing reasons.  Bah!  Reasons!  Behold, consequentialism as smokescreen.

It works until the wind blows the smoke away to reveal a raging dumpster fire.

There were some idiots in the Vesani Republic, and nobody put any security at their Mint.  It was only a matter of time before someone robbed it.  A group of well-organized thieves from Mavortis showed up and cleaned them out.  Basso's general, Aelius, managed to get back damn-near all the money, but Basso made a critical mistake.  The biggest mistake of his life.  He supported a full-scale invasion of Mavortis, and so begins his downfall.  He wants to build an empire.  That ain't gonna work.  He has another empire to keep at bay, and a traitor in his ranks, and really, it was a group of thieves from a country without a government.  And for that, he responds by invading a country without a government with the intent of colonization?  For the sake of empire?  Bad idea.

This is ambition and vanity.

Could it have benefited the Vesani people?  Sure, but that's not why he did it.  He was trying to build an empire for his own vanity.  His fall was inevitable, and the destruction of the Vesani Republic was the externality in the transaction.

We do not see the failed leaders whom Basso rejects, and to be sure, Basso could have been as magnificent as his aspirational title.  He was both brilliant and lucky, with elements of the narrative addressing both.  He was not cruel, he was not spiteful, he was not vengeful.  He was practical, and indeed, a man of the people.  In contrast with some tempting comparisons, he welcomed immigrants, enfranchised them, he was something of an abolitionist.  Were his reasons ever pure?

What did I tell you about Basso?

Yet he did what he did, and from a consequentialist perspective, he made the Vesani Republic great again.  Sorrynotsorry.  Except, he really did.  Through a combination of corrupt self-interest which happened to align with the interests of the Vesani, and understanding of that mutuality, an understanding of finance, and a healthy dose of luck, Basso brought the Vesani Republic to a leading center of finance and trade, with a shipyard--which he owned, of course-- cranking out enough ships to make the Republic a military power with which to be reckoned.

Just don't fuck it up, Basso.

But he did.  And as you read, you see the error.  And you watch it play out.  You watch his luck run out, you watch Aelius's military genius finally fail to be enough, all of which comes to ruin when Basso has a traitor in his midst and a war on another front.  For this, he was not prepared.  Yet he didn't need to be.  Except that he started that damned war in Mavortis.  And he didn't need to.  He did it for vanity.

This was pure vanity.  Basso tries to convince everyone, including himself, that if he can just get some mines up and running in Mavortis, the war will pay for itself after a year or so.  Remember his philosophy.  I win, you benefit.  It's all about the positive externalities of self-interested, corrupt leadership.  It's all about the calculation.  But it wasn't.  It was about the vanity.  It was about building a Vesani empire, and getting a moniker.  That's different.

Somehow, that's different.

I keep writing about externalities.  Remember what an externality is.  In a simple economic transaction, I buy a thing-- say, an ergonomic keyboard-- and I get the keyboard, the store gets the money.  I'm happier with the keyboard than with the money, the store is happier with the money than with the keyboard, and we are both happier, so yay us.  Adam Smith for the win.  Is anyone else affected by the transaction?  I can trace out the supply chain effects, but that's not what I mean.  I mean, does the transaction affect anyone not involved in the purchase?  No.

On the other hand, my lawn guy is doing Fridays this season.  I pay him to cut my lawn.  He is happier with the money, and I am happier with a lawn that I don't have to cut myself.  I get a cut lawn, he gets the money, and chalk up another win for Adam Smith.  Is anyone else affected?  Yes.  My neighbors.  The fact that my lawn stays nice affects their property values.  Don't believe me?  Find a neighborhood in which some asshole doesn't maintain his lawn.  Or a bunch of people don't.

Yes, my neighbors benefited from that transaction.

So, can I make them chip in?  No more than they can make me chip in for their lawns, but I live in a city that requires everyone to maintain their lawns, for that very reason.  Externalities.

There are two kinds of externalities:  positive externalities, and negative externalities.  When there is a positive externality, someone not involved in a transaction benefits from the transaction (like people paying for lawn care).  When there is a negative externality, someone not involved in a transaction pays a cost for the transaction having occurred (like when you pump a bunch of pollutants into the environment).  Externalities create market failures, and invite some form of regulation in some circumstances, depending.

Basso's political philosophy was the exploitation of positive externalities.  Work for his own benefit, but in ways that leveraged positive externalities.  Where did he go wrong?  He shifted from his own monetary gain to vanity.

It's an interesting idea.  The history of corrupt "populists," like Huey Long, is an interesting one, and Basso raised the idea to high art.

Is vanity so different?  Yes, it probably is.  There is no invisible hand at work in the quest for self-aggrandizement.  No check.  No currency conversion formula, and the quest to be seen as higher, better is necessarily relative anyway, moving the process away from the mutual gain that makes voluntary economic transactions so mathematically glorious anyway.  Vanity really is different, and it is for vanity that Basso loses everything.  Not merely the end of his luck, but playing it against his vanity.

William Lee Ellis, "How The Mighty Have Fallen," from Conqueroo.


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