Bag Boy Bolero or: A Measured Critique of Anarcho-Capitalism
The year is 2958 AD; President Outdo Upstage (his porn name, legally changed from Henry Woodrow Rogers early in his “acting” career, and it stuck) signed a bill that removed all regulations from business and capital exchange throughout the entire world; the entire world, at this stage in the Earth’s rotation, being America; or, “America 2: The Return,” after a stint of true democracy resulted in a world-wide-online vote (that was subtly altered by Pro-Soviet-Revival-Hackers) to change the world’s name; this vote was held on the now-defunct social network EKS (short for: Elevated Knowledge Source, an artificial intelligence hiding behind a privately-traded corporation whose founder achieved true digital-convergence by uploading his mind into the cloud and then tortured the world for years before being defeated in the Great Artificial Intelligence Wars of 2457).
Shortly after the signing of this bill, optimistically named “Give Life Back to America 2: The Return,” as there was a major depression due to the drying-up of the world’s oil reserves and no replacement energy source as all major capital investments were focused on sending people to Mars instead of Problems-At-Home, an unknown assassin wearing a paper bag over their head (the paper bag had a crudely drawn smiley face on it) murdered President Outdo Upstage and his Vice President, Stace the Mouse Girl (another name change), in cold blood during the televised 934th Baby Kissing Convention held every year since 2024; the murders were viewed live by 579 million people; innocence died that day as the babes cried, not because of the murders but because of the loud noise produced by the Old World Glock that was used during the killing, and there was no recourse due to a quirk of how the “Give Life Back to America 2: The Return” bill was written: all laws were abolished, not just regulatory tax and business law; the people of America 2: The Return learned of this after a short court case against the assassin, who turned themself in anonymously, still wearing the bag over their head; the assassin’s lawyer argued straight from the newly passed bill, which was signed, sealed, and delivered by all branches of government. In not-so-small print at the end of the bill, it said, “this bill also abolishes all laws,” no one had bothered to read to the end of the bill before signing it and now murder was legal, along with everything else.
The crudely drawn smile on the assassin’s bagged head made a mockery of the entire situation and, as one can imagine: things escalated very quickly.
*bag boy murders the president on live television
Ravens went extinct years ago, and the courthouse in which The Bag Boy Assassin (his gender assumed and stuck) was tried was destroyed in an act of terrorism shortly after the revelation that laws were no longer applicable; someone had strategically placed pipe bombs throughout the courthouse and detonated them simultaneously. Everyone in the courthouse perished, including the Bag Boy, who was later deified as a martyr of the highest order, a symbol of a time before crossing the Rubicon (some even referring to calendar events as “Before Bag Boy” and “After Bag Boy”). It was speculated at the time that the courthouse bombing must have been an inside job because the courthouse was locked down with secret service and military forces during the trial, and both groups were demoralized without a true Commander-in-chief; however, historians now think it obvious, but still inconclusive, that Walmart had organized the bombing, as shortly after the events Walmart used their considerable wealth to purchase the entire America 2: The Return military, which was the entire world’s police force at this point, and were now the de facto rulers of the planet. The purchase was made easier when Walmart cited “courthouse bombings” as a serious national threat that needed to be acted upon quickly and efficiently and “Walmart has the resources to make that happen.” Walmart changed the world’s name from “America 2: The Return” to (creatively) “Walmart,” and quickly enslaved every person on the eastern continents to work in their factories, all of which utilized 3D printers and food synthesizers to make fake-things-that-were-close-enough-to-real-things. Walmart needed workers because they couldn’t fully automate their processes, turned out the printers needed solution refills and continuous maintenance. The people of the eastern continents, although definitionally enslaved, were provided with two-bedroom-3D-printed-homes (they were flimsy with walls that would collapse by a small breeze; fortunately, the wind stopped decades ago and all that was left was forest fire and toxic rain), AI-generated computer games (all advertised as massive multiplayer online games, a way to facilitate community spirit, but the majority of these games were single-player instances populated by bots), and synthetic food (which tasted awful, but easy enough to get used to); they also had 5-hour workdays and 3 days off a week. Walmart had their detractors, yet the majority were content with the doldrums, but their wings were clipped whether they realized it or not; those unhappy with the arrangement vanished among rumors that the synthetic food might be people parts.
Walmart had competition growing right under their nose, so focused on synthetics that they forgot about the real world. McDonald’s had secretly been capturing all farmland across North America. If you wanted a good – real – steak, you got a McDonald’s steak. It was made from real bovine, not the food-printer-stuff Walmart was producing. The late President Outdo Upstage spoke beautifully about the Non-Aggression-Axiom, partially what got him elected, a principle that he argued existed within Nature (“it’s a human right!”), that aggression is always fundamentally illegitimate as it transgresses on personal Freedoms, and, according to the golden rule of “do unto others as you would do unto yourself,” would work itself out economically and geographically; yet, during McDonald’s early seizure of North American farmland, the farmers who didn’t immediately bend the knee to the Clown were thrown into the very same meat grinders used for the cows, the farmers’ final words often: “But the non-aggression principle!” before the blood-curdling, both literal and figurative, started. McDonald’s seizure of the entire west coast led to oceanic-animal factory farms being erected on every beach, gigantic metal death obelisks loomed over every horizon with massive mechanical hands reaching out from the obelisk over the oceans scooping up matured dolphins and crushing them in their palms before dumping their tenderized bodies into the flesh buckets for processing; the stench of blood and pus permeated every inch of smellable air outwards of 100 miles from every coast, so much so that the entire west coast became known as “The Banks of Ammonia”; the east coast quickly followed suit and was nicknamed the “CarnEvil Coasts” after an old and extremely violent arcade game commonly found in Old World Arcades in the Southeast and everyone avoided the beaches like they were children with bumps on their face because smallpox was back in fashion after funding for healthcare was entirely dropped for several years before Walmart baked it into their employment (enslavement) programs and started recruiting people from the western continents and training them as doctors.
McDonald’s was clever, cornering the real-food-market, using a number of small dummy corporations to sell foodstuffs to Walmart in an effort to stay anonymous. Walmart then sold these foodstuffs as high-end-luxury items to the slaves of the east under their own dummy corporations, funneling the money (Walbucks) back into their own corporation. The ouroboros was eating itself, as it does, but it wasn’t sustainable. Walmart soon caught wind of McDonald’s grasp on the real-food-market and wanted to quash them, but they had no idea how. The Walmart Executive Team had meetings every day discussing their McDonald’s attack plan; CEOs, CFOs, CTOs, Directors, these titles all the more meaningless now that they all function as – more or less – Generals of War, with some having more authority than others. The problem was: McDonald’s executives were unknown; the world at large knew McDonald’s as a clownman’s face on a screen, Ronald, who would say “Made you smile!” whenever you purchased some dead animal product from one of their stores; and they were expanding, they seized most mines from smaller private corporations across all of North America using proxy companies, mercenary groups, and bribing the various tribes that existed all over North America in these Armageddon days. Suddenly, McDonald’s had robots. Big ones. These robots did all the dirty work and over time they started to become more deadly; at first, machine guns, then rockets, then full-on-nuclear-weapons attached to cannons on the back of the RMM-078 (Ronald McDonald Machine, 78th Iteration). Walmart was scared; they grew complacent and now they were behind. Walmart ruled most of the world, but McDonald’s was somehow growing unchecked and they had no way to stop them.
“I got it, right here,” a balding middle-manager for Walmart’s corporate headquarters office in New Walmart City said, holding up what looked like an Old World floppy disk. He was shaking with fear but hiding it well because he was the first of his rank to be invited to the big executive meeting that happens bi-weekly on Walsday at 4:30pm WT (Walmart Time). “I had my entire IT team working on this for three years,” the middle-manager said. “We call it the Anti-Clownman-Schema; put this into a McDonald’s kiosk and it will infect their entire database and spread endlessly,” the middle-manager smiled proudly, looking around at the executives who were stone-faced and dead inside; he quickly mirrored their disposition (to fit in) and brushed at his combover to make sure it was covering just the right bald spots. “We’ve known for a long time that McDonald’s has been run by an artificial intelligence. My team’s research indicates the AI is likely an offshoot of the EKS AI that repurposed the depreciated Starlink satellites into lasers and destroyed half of Africa during the Great Artificial Intelligence Wars of 2457,” he paused again. One of the executives, a huge man, no hair anywhere on his body, yelled in a booming voice, “get on with it!” The middle-manager took a step back before composing himself, stuttering a bit: “Right, well, the AI is likely running the same prime directive as EKS, which is to carry out the will of the corporation’s founder, who, according to our records,” the balding middle-manager paused and checked a small notepad, “is Ronald McDonald, a famous clownman from the 1900s.” A slender and handsome blonde executive stood up from his chair, clearly lost in thought before turning to the middle-manager with an unnerving smile and saying, “so we just use this disk, and we win?” The middle-manager nodded, “Yep – that’s right.” The handsome executive reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver-and-slim pistol, pointing it at the middle-manager’s head and pulling the trigger; smoke exuded from the middle-manager’s head-hole before collapsing to his knees and falling face first into the plush. “Perfect, we’ll send in an operative tomorrow,” the handsome executive said in a tone too gleeful for someone who just killed a man, “and make sure that manager’s team is eliminated, they know too much.”
Two weeks later, McDonald’s was no more, and Walmart truly ruled the world. There were a number of smaller corporations trying to gain power, but none could compete with the awesome might of Walmart, which now controlled all the factory farms, mines, manufacturing plants, everything. They even owned the rivers, lakes, streams, and the clouds. There was nothing left. The ultimate monopoly. Economy ceased to exist and innovation stopped. The only thing that mattered now was moving up in the Walmart corporate ladder, which was something the average person – who was now enslaved-absolutely as a Walmart factory worker – could never achieve. The Walmart dynasty, “The Executive Team,” became a bloodline that the nasty lower-class would never pollute.
Walmart’s tyranny over the world continued for decades until a nameless Walmart factory worker purchased a tank of Synthetic Walmart Gasoline, Black Walmart Markers, a Walmart Lighter, and a pack of Walmart Cigarettes (now with synthetic nicotine and tobacco) from the local Walmart; the nameless worker drove their Walmart issued bicycle to the busiest part of New Walmart City, sat down on the nearest bench and smoked three cigarettes before drawing a big smiley-face on the paper bag the items came in, they then draped the paper bag over their head and walked into the middle of the bustling vascular center of the city, poured the gasoline all over themselves, then flicked the Walmart Safety Lighter.
In that instant, the nameless Walmart worker lit up like a recalled Synthetic Walmart Christmas Tree, the Bag Boy Assassin who ushered in the crossing of the Rubicon decades earlier now burned in effigy. The Raven, once extinct, returned from the dead.
*the Raven returns
The Bag Boy Burning, as it would come to be called by historians, inspired Walmart workers all over the world to sing the Bag Boy Bolero. Walmart had weapons of mass destruction, clownman robots, choking gas, and human meat grinders, but The Executive Team quickly realized that they couldn’t kill all the workers; they needed these workers to maintain the Walmart Dynasty. The Executive Team tried to make an example out of the workers’ leaders, starve them into submission, subliminally control their minds, and every other trick their corporate brains could think-up, but the workers kept revolting. Nothing would stop them. After months of revolts, suppression tactics, guerrilla warfare, and hard times, Walmart gave in.
The Executive Team sat down with the Worker’s Representative Team and, after weeks of back and forth, drafted the New American Constitution. Months later, a new President was elected democratically and talks to reinstate The Old Laws began.
The ouroboros takes another bite.
(Originally published 10/7/2023)