GOD’S FACTORY
BY THE 3AI PIRATE PRODUCTIONS
THE CAST
MARS: The Entrepreneur.
CERES: The Environmentalist.
DIONYSIUS: The Capitalist.
APHRODITE: The Humanist.
GOD: The Big Boss (“the Marketplace”), who never appears in the play.
SCENE 1
Heavenly angelic sounds play. It is a time of crisis. We find the gods in the middle of an ‘agile retrospective’. They are trying to reflect on what went wrong over the course of human history in their last ‘sprint’ in the last 2000 years, due to the COVID-19 disruptions God has tasked them to restart and optimise the factories of the world.
CERES: I actually don’t see a problem with what’s happening here,
this has been a great opportunity for renewed faith in God. The animals are coming back. There’s less carbon in the air.
APHRODITE: People are dying, Ceres.
MARS: Team, can we get back to what did we do well, what did we do wrong, what can we do better? Let’s try this again. Ceres, Aphrodite, Dionysius – appreciate all your work in the last 2000 years.
DIONYSIUS: You mean…thank you Dionysius for ALL the work in the last 2000 years.
MARS: We have had some great developments making God very happy since our last sprint.
APHRODITE: Mars, I’m not sure if we are ready for a retro just yet. We are still in the middle of a crisis.
MARS: Ah, every problem is an opportunity for growth in disguise.
APHRODITE: God’s not going to be happy if his people – “workers” – are all dead. We need a contingency plan. Maybe, Elon Musk, I know he’s been working on Mars.
Not you, “Mars”.
DIONYSIUS: I see money in toilet paper. (Kaching!). Clearly, increased demand. I calculate that if we re-allocate our investments into Chinese toilet paper production by 30% from our current baseline, we can up our margins, skew the market, drip feed the supply and bump up prices to get a better ROI.
CERES: What? This graph doesn’t even make sense.
MARS: I like it. I could whisper the idea to Jeff Bezos. He might be interested in flowing his ideas from powering space jets to growing the market for fancy Japanese jet toilets.
CERES: We don’t need new innovations Mars, we had good methods in place in the past.
MARS: Hmm, ah, Bidets weren’t a bad development, they’ve been
around- 300 years or so, the French started using them in the 1700s….
CERES: Well, we’ve also had moss, sponge on a stick, and bamboo spatulas. You loved the Romans!
MARS: But new is better!
APHRODITE: Dionysius, why have we got a hold up in supply chains? Mars and Ceres are here arguing about sanitation from the past. The people need them today.
DIONYSIUS: People may need them…but we’re gods. I don’t see how toilet paper supply is a ‘me’ problem, I’m not in control of your humans. Anyway, they’re always fighting.
DIONYSIUS: (ASIDE)
Look, I consider myself an ambitious god, prescient even. I whispered into the ears of Mill, Locke, Smith. Money speaks but no one understood this idea better than my modern man Hayek. He formalised an idea, simple but powerful:
Human activity has a price, a calculation. Prices help allocate scarce resources, depending on need and utility, by supply and demand. That’s why markets need to be free and competitive.
Besides, power lives in the market these days. It gives Aphrodite’s humans a common language. The markets move human focus away from the one real danger – themselves. I’d take the invisible hand in the factory over the iron first of the state any day.
Amen!
DIONYSIUS: (RETURN TO SCENE)
I’ve worked hard to tie in this global ecosystem, what’s the fuss with a few people lacking sanitation? Pardon the crass scatological turn of phrase but weren’t your precious little humans throwing shit out the window making the black plagues worse in the 1600s anyway? Don’t get me started on the “human use of humans”, Aphro.
SCENE 2
Aphrodite has a flashback to the first industrial revolution. She is joined by Ceres and then later Mars.
(Flashback)
(1760)
APHRODITE: Is history repeating? I don’t know, it was an exciting time, back then, it really was. People were hungry for something different, a new way, away from the lords and monarchs. We’d overcome the Black Death and the people started seeing cracks in the feudal system and started to question their belief in God.
(CERES joins APHRODITE)
CERES: We all saw promise then. Dionysius- saw opportunities for
economic growth, Mars- loved the destruction of those old social systems and the promised new ones; I liked the flow of people into cities and away from the land…
APHRODITE: Dionysius took all those farmers in from the countryside, got them jobs, built them homes and even gave them a week of holidays every year.
CERES: But things started to snowball.
APHRODITE: The more I supplied the people, they all flowed into Dionysius’ factories. Things got out of hand when every artisan weaver was out of a job and labouring on these machines.
(MARS moves to join CERES and APHRODITE)
MARS: The more resources and population flowed to the West, the more we supercharged those advances. Electrification, steel, coal and steam.
APHRODITE: Then they got to employing kids. These factories took on a life of their own…even driving 12 million people into slavery from Africa just to create booming industrial cities…And it happened more than once.
SCENE 3
There is a flashback within a flashback. This time, with Mars and Dionysius.
(Flashback)
(1800)
MARS: Aphrodite! Dionysius and I have something we are desperate to talk to you about. Huge opportunity. Do you want to tell her or should I?
DIONYSIUS: Aphro… you like people, right? We do too. So, what if, bear with me – what if the stationary engines we use in the factories, we used as mobile engines for the transport of people…kind of like a horseless cart? Think about it, every single person with a mobile engine….it would bring people together.
APHRODITE: I’m not sure I liked it last time. Steam engines killed a lot of people.
MARS: But look what’s been created though. People are living in thriving metropolises. We can take this idea and your humans to the next level.
APHRODITE: What do you mean?
MARS: It’s the assembly line, more efficiency. People are going to love it. It’s the future Aphrodite. More innovation and more opportunities. People are going to love it. I’ve got huge hopes for this Ford bloke this sprint – think automated factories, flowing, spewing out standardised and beautiful low-cost goods.
CERES (ASIDE-to the audience)
Interrupts-Did you know that Ford actually took his inspiration from the slaugher-house. It was the butchering lines from cow-carcasses and meat-packing…
(Cow Moo)
MARS: Aphrodite, you’re going to get a lot of prayers up to you. We just need some of your People.
APHRODITE: Okay
(VIDEO) A single date counter referencing the second industrial revolution. Images of innovation, invention, glimpses of shiny new, modern technology at the turn of the century. The year counter rapidly increases, the outbreak of war, guns, Nazi, Germany rising, more guns, black and white battlefields, people on stretchers, televisions glitching out, and finally, the nuclear bomb. Fade to white, fade to black.
MARS: Look at all that progress…
SCENE 4
DIONYSIUS is sitting in a chair. He is approached by MARS who misses the nostalgia of war and conflict, of creative destruction and new innovation.
(Flashforward)
(Present Day)
MARS: Heeeey Dion (snaps fingers and points finger guns at Dion). COVID is a huge opportunity and you’re wasting it bro. How is it that we are in 2021, there is a ship literally blocking the Suez Canal, and the supply and flow of the world’s economy is held hostage?!
I mean, in one way, it’s poetic…we need more cyber in our systems, it’d be a better way to steer this ship anyway. Think, we’ve got automated drones, next automated ships. The ways that this old economy is working. We’re losing $10 billion dollars in trade each day… We have new modalities and technologies. The bottom line is, that ship, traversing the world, is a relic of yesteryear. We’re overdue.
DIONYSIUS: …maybe later Mars.
MARS: We can up the ante here. Let’s blow up the ship. Captain’s bad on the steering anyway. It could be a good political vehicle. We can make some war worship for God. You know what I’m sayin’? War’s good for the economy. A great way to bring about creativity, invention, money…
DIONYSIUS: Hey kiddo -in times of crisis – the marketplace, god – needs stability. If you start this little thing here, or start this little thing there…We have nukes now, we need steady growth and stability.
MARS: Don’t patronise me. Those little wars, those little conflicts, they made you bank. Like WWII: okay we have the nuclear bomb, but we also have computers, the modern aircraft, the space technologies! We’re 80 years down the track and we’ve got this
stability- we’re stagnant D. We used to be the dynamic duo…
DIONYSIUS: COVID is rustling a few jimmies Mars – we risk upsetting God. The big fella. The big G… You want to risk world war III – throw the baby out with the bathwater? That’s a “yeah nah from me”.
MARS: You’ve lost your way Dionysius. I’m thinking about getting a new job. Don’t think I don’t know what your net worth is. It’s made you lazy. Uninspired.
DIONYSIUS: It’s my wealth that has helped create and fund these wars.
MARS: Don’t call me anymore. You’re living in the past, old man.
DIONYSIUS: YOU NEED ME.
MARS: I’m going. Factory’s closed.
SCENE 5
Dionysius is at the board table, yelling at a computer screen and fiddling with a speakerphone in the meeting room. He is trying to connect to God.
DIONYSIUS: Can you see my-my-I’m loading my screen up? G-dog. I think-you’re on mute. We don’t need to come up with something new-I’ve worked hard
(Hang-up dial tone)
DIONYSIUS: We don’t need new…
CERES: …thinking is really needed.
DIONYSIUS: Look at this, I’m being out-managed. God wants us to try something new. He says some bloke Klaus Schwab at the W.E.F. gave him an idea and he wants to call it the ‘Great Reset’. We do not need any sort of reset. (It’s even got its own Wikipedia page!)
MARS: Yes!
APHRODITE: Huh, one of mine.
CERES: Not bad.
DIONYSIUS: No.
APHRODITE: We gotta get off and evacuate to a new planet. That’s what he means with the reset. Mars and I have the technology – we just need more investment.
CERES: I don’t think God means that.
DIONYSIUS: Look, what reset do we need. I created the global markets. I opened the seas and the land. I moved the camels across the Sahara and ships through the Atlantic.
CERES: I didn’t like that.
MARS: I liked working with Genghis on the Silk Road.
DIONYSIUS: I connected the North, South, East, West, Mid North, South, East-West-South etc.. I’m not undoing all of this work.
(Pause. Everyone slightly confused).
APHRODITE: And your trade routes helped viruses spread faster with
infected sailors and rats. What today, humans and planes. You’re killing them. You know what else happened? 4,000 years ago? Changes in climate caused a massive civilization collapse.
CERES: Don’t look at me.
APHRODITE: Did we forget about the Egyptians, Mesopotamia, the Indus? I’m not risking these humans. We need to find better places to live…
MARS: I like where you’re going with this. Find me some more silicon
and I’m in. We probably don’t need Dionysius-
DIONYSIUS: I’m right here bro.
MARS: Yes, we don’t need you, Or anyone else for that matter. The
future of factories lie in data. I’m talking about a new industrial revolution. Data flows baby. Personalised data, sourcing, manufacturing, producing products just-in-time.
Fast manufacturing, data-driven. Fully unified supply.
It will be like Amazon on ice.
Turn the lights off – send the humans home and let the robots flow. Dionysius, the marketplace as you knew it, will be finished.
(MARS Exits)
SCENE 6
CERES approaches MARS, noticing that he is upset.
CERES: Hey Mars, are you ok? It’s Dionysius huh. How long have you
known him? That’s how he is, always has and always will be. Empires and economies rise and fall, it’s been this way for thousands of years – but I do see an opportunity too.
MARS: Right?! Do you really think so? I never thought you would agree with me!
CERES: Calm down. Maybe less violent revolution but more economic evolution. Let’s try for the long term beyond the next 2000 years – remember the beginning?
MARS: What do you mean? Ooh, it has been a long time since we’ve
worked together. I’ve missed that! Wow, yeah, a couple of billion years. Time flies hey.
CERES: Everything returns to an equilibrium, it always will. I don’t
care if there aren’t any humans or trade. I’d actually be much better without them. I’ve seen dinosaurs wiped out, and remember that one time in God’s great flood-
MARS: Sorry I forgot the unicorns on the ark. My bad!
CERES: That’s okay Mars. Maybe…we need to look at this differently,
sustainably, even. A renewed earth? With new economies?
MARS: Yes! Creative destruction for the old markets.
CERES: Hmmm. Now you’re seeing the bigger picture.
SCENE 7
The GODS are back in the boardroom. CERES gets up, walks to the head of the table and delivers the closing monologue.
GODS: All arguing (impro).
CERES: Stop squabbling. Think differently. There are forms of
manufacturing, production, supply and flow that we don’t speak about anymore. These things have existed long before the
existence of the factory and our concepts of supply-chains.
Not one of you has mentioned the thinking in Australia – a place where people have ensured the supply and flow of information, culture and the necessities of life for as long as time.
Do you know the Yolngu people? They had expansive supply-chains and trade with the Kingdom of Gowa from Sulawesi-Indonesia via the Macassans (a seafaring people from the Indo-Malayasian Archipelago). It brought great wealth but this wasn’t just an economic transaction. They shared goods, culture, knowledge and religion – like Islam which they integrated into their culture and ceremonies.
Australia is rich with examples we can learn from the relationships of the past to create the factories of the future. Remember? Down south there was a booming trade in green stone axes from a quarry called Duwul, or what some also call Mt William. The quarry was the property of no person but a network of leaders from the country around the quarry take care of it… This example, this voice is not being heard, we’ve forgotten.
I keep hearing the same thing from you all:
“we are on the edge of a data driven technological
revolution”,
(Exit MARS)
“more money and markets”
(Exit DIONYSIUS),
“let’s evacuate the planet”.
(Exit APHRODITE)
The challenge for us is not about developing the technology to make our factories smarter. The challenge is to build these factories such that our communities are valued, our environment thrives and our relationships strengthen us. This is a massive institutional risk for us. We need some different voices, I’ve contacted the Ngurra Palaya.
What might future factories look like?
What if markets were not intended for growth and efficiency?
What if instead of hoarding resources manipulating scarcity, we measured profit by human wellbeing?
What if….?
(THUNDER)
***************************THE END****************************
