Affe #235

About Affe mit Waffe Deprecated

It was as simple as it could be: Take in more than you spend, and you will never be short of bananas. Jean Colobert's problem was how to make that understandable to a horde of prodigal monkeys who were dopamine junkies and believed strongly in the short-term reward system. And should the primates be persuaded not to spend their last banana coin directly on the current trend of fur jewelry, fruit carrier bags or the latest Bananamobile, it would be almost impossible to convince them that they should work instead. The principle that a reward only came after a successful deed was more than alien to most of the residents of the Monkeyverse, it was downright contradictory. Life was short, so why waste your time working? However, the question that followed was: What to do when the banana coins melted away faster than coconut ice cream in the midday heat? The usual primate responded with a familiar pattern of behavior known to him from an early age as an apeling – attempting to snatch the coveted object from his siblings. The result was usually a bloody nose, pulled out fur, and bite wounds and, in Jean's experience, injured monkeys were even less willing to work. Labor couldn't just pay off in banana coins.

Ultimately, Jean's idea was a "favorable balance of trade" in which goods were produced and sold for banana coins, as opposed to an "unfavorable balance of trade" in which banana coins would flow out of the monkey society. Currently, work was not attractive because a monkey had to laboriously sell its own products, pay fees for rent or stand space, and then pay taxes to the monkey society management. And as if that wasn't bad enough, primates had a great dislike for all the numbers and calculations involved in the buying and selling process. No monkey liked to calculate the set percentage – a task considered even worse than the tax levy itself. Jean even knew of instances where the apes preferred to simply eat the entire harvest, as it was deemed easier to estimate a percentage from a sum of "zero". However, binge-eating monkeys made no economic sense and only put a strain on the healthcare system.

So, Jean introduced a new tax law – every primate in the Monkeyverse had to pay taxes, and to even out inequalities it was based on the monkey's body weight. This had two advantages: First, it was clear that larger apes could do more physical work. It was not fair that, for example, a marmoset should bear the same tax burden as a large gorilla. On the other hand, this made the monkeys watch their weight and live healthier lives. And even if they didn't actively try, this arrangement meant that the heavier they got, the more banana coins they had to pay, which in turn resulted in a diet at the end of the month.

Solving the second problem, concerning the monkey's aversion to mathematics, was far more difficult. Even after careful consideration, Jean could only come up with one sensible solution: The sellers brought their goods to newly established official trading posts and left them there to an intermediary monkey. To give the primates more incentive, an amount was paid directly in banana provisions for the way home. A better price was paid for quality goods. This direct payment allowed the apes to compare their results directly with each other, since they could see how many bananas each went home with. In retrospect, another advantage turned out in the end. Working at the trading posts was not physically demanding, so it was very popular with smaller primate breeds learning to do arithmetic and use an abacus. And since, over time, almost every family of little monkeys had a member working at a trading post, it was no longer wise to bully the smaller primates just because their size would allow it.

These achievements earned Jean the nickname "Le Grand Colobert", but all he said himself was: "The art of taxation consists in so plucking the monkey as to obtain the largest number of bananas with the least possible amount of screeching."

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