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Economist and Nobel Prize recipient Joseph Stiglitz recently published a book entitled The Three Trillion Dollar War. He claims that the global cost of the war (not just counting troops wartime bonuses or weapons, but a host of indirect costs) is above three trillion dollars for the US and the same for the rest of the world.

There are roughly 30 million people living in Iraq.

Instead of using the money to destroy a country and make cripples, terrorists, or fundamentalists, maybe it would have been smarter (and just as machiavellian) to share the six trillion dollars among Iraqis and give a million to each family, in exchange of all the oil, a democratic tame government, and exclusive commercial rights for US firms, so that the money finds its way back to where it came from.

Nobody wants to blow themselves up when they get to choose between being a martyr and a millionaire.

By command of Her Royal Highness, I hereby answer a series of personal questions which make the blogging world a futile and friendly place.

Where I was ten years ago.

I think ten years ago was when I got my first doubts about my job. I had been working for two years then, in what is probably the finest job in the world for an engineer who likes hardcore technique: future spacecraft projects with the leading European space systems manufacturer. There’s nothing like achieving a childhood dream too early to kill glamour for good. The job was extremely interesting, but essentially abstract. One of the inventions I made back then did make it into a live spacecraft design, which is due to fly in 2010. That’s a five percent chance of seeing a concrete outcome for my work after twelve years. The job was (and still is) great fun, but essentially aimless. I have lost all illusions about space conquest (and will probably write soon why). There is no democratic debate on how the space subsidies should be spent either. I spend taxpayer’s money for things taxpayers have no clue about. Sometimes I feel like a Monsanto scientist doing fun stuff just because it can be done and it’s fun to do; and that which can be sold makes it to the market.

For the past two or three years I have been wanting to find some other job, one that would be more useful to mankind, but now I have decided to keep my fun (and mildly harmless) job, and save the world on my free time, like most superpeople do.

Five fatty snacks

1. Home-made nutella (which some would call Gianduja; it’s hazelnut butter with sugar and chocolate), by the spoonful
2. Roquefort cheese. My boy’s nanny is raising ewes, whose milk is used to make Roquefort. Each year, she gets discount cheese from the ‘caves’. We have six pounds of the treasure cheese hoarded in our freezer, bought for the price of burger-grade cheddar.
3. Saucisson. You’d probably call it dry sausage.
4. Foie gras. (We do it ourselves with our neighbour’s ducks, but not before November)
5. Tomates confites. Half-tomatoes that are slowly baked in the oven with olive oil, garlic and pesto.

Five other fatty snacks (no dietary duality in my world)

1. Tapenade. A paste made with olives.
2. Caviar d’aubergines. A paste made with eggplant and olive oil.
3. Ail confit. Garlic slowly cooked in duck fat.
4. Fresh cheese with herbs. Chives especially.
5. Onion jam.

Have you noticed? All go with bread. I must be French.

Five things I would do if I was a billionaire

1. Wonder where all that wealth came from
2. Subsidize conversions to organic farming in my region
3. Subsidize research in natural and organic farming all over the world
4. Donate heaps to open-source projects
5. Go back to work

Five jobs I have had

1. Math & physics tutor for rich but mediocre pupils
2. Summer camp leader (volunteer)
3. Metalworking lathe operator in French Guyana (2 month internship)
4. Flight control systems engineer for commercial aircraft future projects
5. Attitude control systems engineer for spacecraft future projects

Three of my habits

1. Going to sleep with the same chapter of the same audiobook on my mp3 player.
2. Commenting blogs in bed instead of reading serious books.
3. Reading blogs at work whenever I need a break. The more pressure there is, the more I read.
4. Driving slower than the elderly.
5. Taking a 30′ nap every other day.

Five places I have lived

1. Paris, France (0->1/2)
2. Trois-Rivières, Québec (1/2->2)
3. Paris, France (2-22)
4. Toulouse, France (22-32)
5. Home, Home (32-Inf)

Remember that I recently recommended reading George Monbiot? Well, he’s just agreed to my translating his recent article Small is Bountiful, in defense of smallholdings, on my garden blog. Not that you need a French translation anyway, but I thought I’d let you know.

Barter vs. gift

We often think that when currency did not exist, most societies relied on barter for economic exchange. This is the main argument in favor of the use of money, which essentially allows to delay both halves of barter by materializing debt. In a barter economy, you can only trade what you have, whereas with currency, you can trade what you will (probably) have later.

When the seller (or the lender) realizes later that you cannot in fact honor the debt, then you get a financial crisis, in which everybody starts to question the value of everybody else’s debt (i.e. money loses its value), therefore nobody wants to sell or lend (i.e. accept someone’s debt as payment), therefore many people stop working (nothing to sell), therefore economy grinds to a halt.

But this is not true. Barter may have been the rule for merchant trade (i.e. rare and foreign stuff like beads, salt, silk, spice, etc.), but for daily economic exchange, barter was the exception and gift was the rule.

Somehow, we have been brainwashed into believing that any exchange should be reciprocal. But we must not look very far to find perfect examples of a gift behaviour which is as old as life itself: one expects no quid pro quo when one raises a child or takes care of a family. Obviously we do not ask a newborn baby to give something or do something special in return for nursing or shelter. We do not ask a newborn baby to sign a debt certificate. It is true that some parents have great expectations (you’ll be a famous lawyer, my son), but most parents only want the best for their kids, regardless of what the kids will do to them in the future.

Savings and credit

Savings (and then credit) is what you have when you have worked more than what it takes to fulfill your short-term needs (or wants). You can either stash this surplus as hard goods, like a squirrel hides nuts, but most people hoard it as money (or investment). Money (or invested capital) is someone else’s debt. When an insane economy forces goods onto impoverished people in exchange for debt, and then realises that the debt cannot be honored, then people’s savings are hit. Your surplus has melted just like hazelnuts can rot. It seems fair enough, but the crisis goes far beyond simply telling the rich that their surplus has vanished (bummer). And the poor are also hit, first when they get squeezed (e.g. evicted) so that creditors can get crumbs back, then when the economy slows down and they lose their jobs.

What if I had just given my surplus away?

Now imagine we have our brains intact and can live in an economy when we never expect anything in return. If I have surplus, I will give it away, for whatever I feel deserves it best. I will probably think twice before giving my surplus to the rich and old, and instead, it will feel natural to give it to the young (and generally poor), especially if someone had done the same for me when I was young and poor myself.

I do not expect anything in return, I do not think of the surplus as mine and to be returned one day; therefore, there cannot be a financial crisis. But society does get the full benefit of this ‘investment’ in any case, and I will get my interest directly through social recognition (there were rich people before money existed), and obviously indirectly via the healthy society I contributed to.

Note that the people who get gifts from me, even repeatedly, should not consider that they owe me anything nor feel uncomfortable in any way as a consequence of my largesse. In today’s world, only children can do that well.

If you think hard enough, there is no more nor less ‘justice’ in this system than the current one. But it is more robust, and certainly more humane. Probably, a gift economy does not work when you do not know the people. Instead of seeing it as an obstacle against my utopia, I see it as a good reason to get to know my neighbours and make tons of friends on the web. Who knows, maybe I will have to give something to you one day.

Epilogue

We have a saying in France, which goes like this: “Les bons comptes font les bons amis”, which means “Good accounts make good friends”. My personal belief is that “Les bons comptes font les bons comptables, c’est tout”: “Good accounts make good accountants, period”.