"How much do you really know of our history?" the Investigator demanded. "How much do you know, for instance, about the tax debt and how it all began?"
"Not very much," Hendley admitted. "The general facts—"
"But you must go beyond the general facts, TRH-247!" the Investigator declaimed. "Consider the brilliance of that single concept—the very foundation of the Organization as we know it today!"
With animation the gray-haired man launched into a discourse on the stroke of genius which had launched man on his upward journey toward Freeman status. Once, it was true, there had been a time when men worked for themselves, were conscious of their individuality, and were paid in some form of money according to their capacity to earn. That money was used by all men to buy the services and necessities of life now provided entirely by the Organization—and to pay for recreation and leisure, the twin aspects of freedom. But few could afford more than a limited glimpse of these pleasures. Many never achieved them at all. Men fought one another for them, and the weak were crushed by the strong.
Somewhere along the line a point was reached when the money received for work was not enough to pay taxes to the government, which was the clumsy, early form of the Organization, and still buy the necessities of food, clothing, and lodging, to say nothing of leisure and recreation. The limited inhabitable land was one problem. Exploding population and ever-increasing automation complicated the situation. At that time an anonymous government worker originated the revolutionary concept of the tax debt. Every worker was allowed to carry over part of his taxes as a debt to the government, thus keeping more spendable money for himself and his needs. This preliminary measure proved inadequate. There were too many workers, labor was inefficiently used, and the spiraling cost of even that early form of Organization could not be held down. A point of balance was passed. It became impossible for the tax debt to be paid in the old way. It was only natural that in the end the worker should be employed directly by the Organization—that he should finally work not for money, but for credit against his debt.
The Corporate Tax Debt followed closely upon the origin of the personal debt—with the same result. Within the span of a few generations the Western Organization arrived at the crude, rough form of an economic and social structure already realized in the East. The Organization owned, controlled, supplied, managed everything. Concurrently with that first century of the Organization's growth to maturity—and in large part because of its development—automated efficiency came into its own. Computers came more and more to dominate life. Under their guidance, wasteful and unrewarding ventures were gradually eliminated from man's work and his dreams—like the costly and unsuccessful attempts to invade outer space. Man's world narrowed—but man flourished.
Then came the war—a residue, the Investigator asserted, from the hostilities of the pre-Organization world. Only the wisdom of the computers enabled civilization to survive, for, a score of years before the first bomb fell, the computers on the Peace Planning Boards of both East and West had directed the movement of the cities underground.
The second century was one of recovery from the war, of continuing progress toward a more streamlined, automated and efficient society, and of the slow but steady return toward the surface of the earth. But if those years presented unusual obstacles—new ways of producing foods had constantly to be found, new methods of decontaminating air and water, new systems of construction and transport, new ways to accommodate a population which entered another phase of explosion in spite of the limitations of underground life—if there were difficulties, there were also advantages.
"At last the opportunities were present," the Investigator cried with unflagging vigor, "for a truly controlled progress. Even the strictures of space underground became an aid rather than a deterrent. Controls were easier to put into effect, easier to enforce. And we had the tools, TRH-247—the computers to guide our way. No longer were we stumbling blindly, planned progress was possible!"
"But is it progress?" Hendley interjected defensively, for the first time breaking into the Investigator's narrative. "Haven't we lost a lot of things? That's what I feel. It seems to me those early societies had something we don't have. They were always moving outward, discovering new horizons, exploring—even if they blundered, they tried. We're not trying. Our world isn't expanding, it's shrinking. It has less—less meaning."