"Kim Stanley Robinson - Forty Signs of Rain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

you give a third of that to the government. Your government uses what it takes to build all the roads and
schools and police and pensions, and your boss takes his share and buys a mansion on an island
somewhere. So naturally you complain about your bloated inefficient Big Brother of a government, and
you always vote for the pro-owner party.тАЭ He grinned at Frank and Anna. тАЬHow stupid is that?тАЭ

Anna shook her head. тАЬPeople donтАЩt see it that way.тАЭ

тАЬBut here are the statistics!тАЭ

тАЬPeople donтАЩt usually put them together like that. Besides, you made half of them up.тАЭ

тАЬTheyтАЩre close enough for people to get the idea! But they are not taught to think! In fact theyтАЩre taught
not to think. And they are stupid to begin with.тАЭ

Even Frank was not willing to go this far. тАЬItтАЩs a matter of what you can see,тАЭ he suggested. тАЬYou see
your boss, you see your paycheck, itтАЩs given to you. You have it. Then youтАЩre forced to give some of it
to the government. You never know about the surplus value youтАЩve created, because it was disappeared
in the first place. Cooked in the books.тАЭ

тАЬBut the rich are all over the news! Everyone can see they have more than they have earned, because no
oneearns that much.тАЭ

тАЬThe only things people understand are sensory,тАЭ Frank insisted. тАЬWeтАЩre hard-wired to understand life
on the savannah. Someone gives you meat, theyтАЩre your friend. Someone takes your meat, theyтАЩre your
enemy. Abstract concepts like surplus value, or statistics on the value of a yearтАЩs work, these just arenтАЩt
as real as what you see and touch. People are only good at what they can think out in terms of their
senses. ThatтАЩs just the way we evolved.тАЭ

тАЬThatтАЩs what IтАЩm saying,тАЭ Edgardo said cheerfully. тАЬWe are stupid!тАЭ

тАЬIтАЩve got to get back to it,тАЭ Anna said, and left. It really wasnтАЩt her kind of conversation.
Frank followed her out, and finally headed home. He drove his little fuel-cell Honda out Old Dominion
Parkway, already jammed; over the Beltway, and then up to a condo complex called SwinkтАЩs New Mill,
where he had rented a condominium for his year at NSF.

He parked in the complexтАЩs cellar garage and took the elevator up to the fourteenth floor. His apartment
looked out toward the PotomacтАФa long view and a nice apartment, rented out for the year by a young
State Department guy who was doing a stint in Brasilia. It was furnished in a stripped-down style that
suggested the man did not live there very often. But a nice kitchen, functional spaces, everything easy,
and most of the time Frank was home he was asleep anyway, so he didnтАЩt care what it was like.

He had picked up one of the free papers back at work, and now as he spooned down some cottage
cheese he looked again at the Personals section, a regrettable habit he had had for years, fascinated as he
was by the glimpse these pages gave of a subworld of radically efflorescing sexual diversityтАФa
subculture that had understood the implications of the removal of biological constraints in the
techno-urban landscape, and were therefore able and willing to create a kind of polymorphous panmixia.
Were these people really out there, or was this merely the collective fantasy life of a bunch of lonely souls
like himself? He had never contacted any of the people putting in the ads to try to find out. He suspected
the worst, and would rather be lonely. Although the sections devoted to people looking for LTRs,
meaning тАЬlong-term relationships,тАЭ went far beyond the sexual fantasies, and sometimes struck him with