Long turned toward me with a supercilious look that put me in the same category as assistants who had the temerity to question the boss. Then in an instant the mask returned and he was just as polite and smooth as ever—but I'd seen the crack in the slickness before he changed. It really got me where I live. That's one thing I can't stand—an assault on the ego by a slick bum like that, who thinks he's so good.
"Oh, I don't see how it can be that small a point," I said. "Especially if you thought of it." I said the last part as insultingly as I knew how, and I saw the color rise in his face.
"Yes, speak up," said Blik, siding with me. "He's got a right to know."
"All right," said Long with some asperity that even the professional mask couldn't hide, "but I warn you that it's strictly a minor point."
"So it's a minor," said Blik. "Tell us."
"The point is," said Long, after a short pause to collect his thoughts, "that EL fills a need for some people. You see, with the big upsurge in automation years ago, it got harder and harder for a production-oriented economy to survive. Jobs got fewer and easier. People were thrown out of work. During the early years of automation, there was a lot of population displacement because of a lack of jobs, and this made for a lot of economic juggling which really didn't help matters.
"It wasn't until some ten years ago that people finally came to the conclusion that production was outstripping the need for labor and that, in fact, production was beginning to become a burden on the economy. And so they turned things around a bit. Instead of giving rewards and subsidies to the production end of the economy, they began giving it to the consuming end. That was really the only way out of the hole.
"But it was soon found that people are not merely organisms geared to consume. At first it was grand and glorious, but after a bit the urge to create, to work, to think began to assert itself strongly, and that's where EL came along. EL was developed to give unsatisfied people satisfactions that they couldn't get anywhere else. They couldn't be allowed to produce because that was what was wrecking things. So they had to be provided with a synthetic 'production-fulfillment.'
"Today these producer-minded people can get any sort of satisfaction they need from EL, and it keeps them from wandering around trying to produce something that would just be a hindrance. After all, what we need is consumership, not production.
"But that's a relatively minor point, as I said earlier," Long concluded looking at me with a superior air. "It's such a minor point, it won't even bear discussion."