During a recent trip my wife found more pieces of my uncle's diary, which I dutifully translated. This is a continuation of this, this and that.
Deregulation
Capitalist pigs like to talk about market forces and such
nonsense, as if having a plan is not necessary. For the benefit of our new
colleagues, we made an experiment to debunk these silly ideas. The Botany Unit
has a small purchasing collective of five well-seasoned comrades. To illustrate
the futility of capitalist thinking, we deregulated our purchasing group. Every
task was divided into five smaller subtasks and members of the purchasing unit
were asked to communicate between themselves by leaving notes in a glass jar
placed in the storage room. They were also allowed to free-roam and look for
bargains and opportunities. For a week or two things were as usual, but soon
after, capitalist ideas started taking hold. Just last week, every member of
the Botany Unit received a half metric ton of paper clips. They were a bargain,
because 10% of them were guaranteed to be rust-free. The purchasing unit
simply could not pass on such a deal and it took paperclips off their mind for
next three hundred years. Soon afterwards we received many gallons of
green camouflage paint. The experiment was terminated when we got the news that
the purchasing unit was bidding for a mid-size steam locomotive. Other
than being stuck with paperclips and paint, it was a good lesson. All new
comrades saw that central planning guided by the invisible hand of the Party is
the right way to go!
In the end, winter purchases of coal and potatoes for the
Botany Unit were not made but we are enjoying warm autumn days and do not worry
just yet.
Stargazers
Ministry of Everything has a Stargazing Unit which is in
fact closely associated with the Botany Unit. Comerades stargazers are
good companions and we like to work with them. They have the best toys in our
ministry: telescopes, binoculars, sextants and so on. For the long time they
were forging ahead without much supervision. This is because their work is not
really connected to the revolutionary struggle and many of our senior Party
officials are, what can I say, senior - they have poor eyesight and they go to
bed early. Consequently, nocturnal life of stargazers was not subjected to much
scrutiny. Unfortunately, all good things come to an end and lately stargazers
have fallen on bad times. Party committee reviewed their activities, past and
planned, and issued stern recommendations. Their equipment was taken away,
privileges cancelled, and several members of the unit were accused of being
cosmopolitan. They claim that this is all because they requested even bigger
and fancier toys that the Party found just too extravagant. But as always the
truth is more complicated.
One reason for their downfall are their discoveries. Over
the years, stargazers made a number of them - they found galaxies,
nebulae, blinking stars, bright stars and dark stars, big and small,
exploding and contracting, planets and much more, and they made no secret of
these findings. In summary, they have shown that the Universe is a busy place.
Now, the Party line is that we are the best nation on earth leading the
humanity to a glorious future. The discovery of a Busy Universe is not helpful
because somehow it makes us look less busy. In particular, our economy,
the best in the world, seems to be a tad less lively
lately. Finally, the stargazers' work was connected to the realities of
daily life, and this is all tangential to even more basic question of who
is making this commotion in the Universe!
The other problem is even worse. Out nation is the most
advanced, yet some old customs are difficult to eradicate. In particular, astrology has a strong foothold in our
society. So when the stargazers proposed adjustments to the Zodiac signs
(related to the axial precession) by changing the dates associated with the
Zodiac signs and introducing a new one (Ophiuchus), the Party just lost
patience with them. Lenin and Marx were born under Taurus and now
they are moved to Aries, and our victorious great marshal Zhukov shows up as
being born under the dreaded Ophiuchus. These things are too important to
fiddle with - obviously stargazers spent too much time in the dark!
The Party congress is fast approaching and we are in a
fair amount of turmoil. The central committee seems to be considering two
ideas. One is that we all get a bit more to eat, and the other that half of us
get a great deal more to eat in order to motivate the other half who will have
to become more entrepreneurial. Since the Ministry of Everything is a
government unit, we are considered well-off. Consequently, our food rations
were cut by 30% immediately. Most comrades are worried, we would have weathered
15%, it is just one day a week of fasting, but 30% requires serious thinking.
Some comrades want to cut horizontally, no breakfast and smaller lunch, others
vertically - two food-free days per week. Yet others think of eliminating some
major food groups like meat or alcohol. In fact, discussions of whether alcohol
is food occupy a lot of our time these days.
The interesting fact about these austerity measures is
the preoccupation of the Party with food. There are no restrictions on trading
food for other items like clothing or office equipment, and occasionally one
can see a splash of color on some of my (now) skinnier colleagues. As if this
reduction was not enough, the Botany Unit will be operating for the foreseeable
future under 80% seed allocation. Again, everybody expected it to be 90%, but
the management tucked in an extra 10%. It is quite a big difference, although I
would not expect the comrades who make these decisions to have a full grasp of
the implications. Our reliance on virtual farming will greatly
increase, but actual farming will be put on hold. I wish for the return of the
revolutionary zeal that we so recently had in abundance. Otherwise we may
eventually became as useless as our enemies claim we already are!
Fearless leaders
I have to admit that our leaders share the struggle
through this difficult period with us. Leadership is harder to quantify and so
it is difficult to pinpoint what exactly they are doing when we are working. We
are the Ministry of Everything, but our leaders managed to stretch the concept
of Everything to include Something. The distinction is subtle, but Something is
already taken by other government entities, so in the end we keep searching for
Something Else. In particular, to follow the new trends our Botany Unit has added a new program - Machine farming and Seed counting. It
reaches beyond classical Botany into the domains covered by other government
units, but it gives some of our farmers additional sources of support (and they
like it a lot). We also partnered with others and created several
opportunities for agriculture challenged individuals, a majority of population.
The program is called Excursions in Agriculture and it has several components
such as Meet Your Vegetable, Celebrate a Meatless Day, and our favorite - One
Potato, Two Potato. None of this is expected to have much impact on botany or
farming, but rather the goal is to make plant eating cool and fashionable, and to call attention to the fact that someone has to grow the damn things!
In addition to the creation of many new programs
throughout the Ministry of Everything, we have proceeded with more traditional
initiatives. Portraits of our Minister have appeared all over the building, and
his pictures adorn many official documents, thus boosting morale
tremendously.
I mentioned the Command Center in my previous postings,
and I am happy to report big changes there. Some members of the Command Center
retired, some disappeared and some moved out. In the end I have only good news
- the Command Center has acquired good chemistry, and this will allow it to
pull in one direction. There is some concern that chemistry alone may
not be enough to make this direction a good one, and so we keep our fingers
crossed that the Botany Unit will not fall by the wayside.
Continued here.
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