Nemeth Game Theory

XonOIL
1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-1-62095-731-8
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 280 Seiten

The Game theory unfolds as two adventures are revealed simultaneously about an environmentalist and her grandfather, a Washington economist. Together they endure the collapse of society as manmade and natural catastrophes are unleashed. This story evolves as their choices and lives begin influencing events in the future that impact, not only survival but recovery. Less that 100 years after man has walked on the surface of the moon, the planet is now a wasteland of hopelessness where Mary's grandson mostly confined in doors, discovers escape by playing old 21st century video games. Charlie is joined by network of other underground pirate Gamers that hack into the forbidden exclusive security access controlled remnant of the www. In these fantasy worlds he dominates as the top player defeating any game and all challengers. However, once their illegal congregation is discovered, he is forced from his virtual existence, to dealing with reality the only way he knows how. Charlie with his morphed feline features (a souvenir from the corporate vaccinations) ventures out as he begins his challenges to emerge, as the winner in this new Game.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Nemeth, Michael

Leseproben

Chapter 1
TYRANNY OF SMALL DECISIONS
Mary is intently watching her favorite professor as he writes TYRANNY OF SMALL DECISIONS on the large white board. He prints big bold letters and moves with command and style. She is captivated by this confident, magnificently fit, mature, African-American professor watching him rhythmically pace back and forth. The professor gestures as he quotes, “Aristotle, sometime before his death in 322 BC, says, ‘For that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Everyone thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest, and only when he is himself concerned as an individual. For besides other considerations, everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfill.’ ” He continues, “Imagine a railway with daily service to get in and out of a remote location. It provided services regardless of conditions, in fair weather and foul, during peak seasons and off-peak seasons. The local airline and bus company also offered service, but only when conditions were favorable. After several years, the railway service is then withdrawn, because travelers did not provide the railway with the revenue it needed to cover its incremental costs to keep the line operating, resulting in, ‘no service at all’ once the bus and airline stop proving the seasonal option.” He then stops writing and walks away from the board. Mary notices that today the professor is wearing the exact same well tailored clothes as he had on the day before. She wonders if he might have not made it home last night, and fantasizes about what he might have looked like when he was twenty-three, her age. She stares down at her notebook barely hearing him ask: “For those of you that completed last night’s assignment, let’s have some other examples of undesirable economical outcomes due to individual small decisions or choices made initially with a positive intended, however, cumulatively in mass, results in an opposite negative impact to the contingents.” She hides her pretty face behind her hair as she feels his eyes scanning the classroom. She peeks through a small part in her bangs as the professor picks on a young man in the front row. “Yes, John, stop waiving your hands and stand up.” Mary lifts her head slightly watching John stand, knowing he will answer any question just for a chance to hear himself talk. She looks back down to her iPad notebook trying to get the images out of her mind, and to find her place again in the novel she downloaded earlier in the week. She is only half listening as John answers. “Tyranny of small decisions…” John says as if boasting, “a result when consumers don’t consider all the costs and benefits of a choice, and when the same choice is made by many people, the result is irreversibly damaging.” The professor’s face reads disappointment. “Okay, but I was looking for an example, not a definition…” He pauses. Mary tries to finish reading the last couple lines of the chapter, until she notices the silence. She lifts her head and realizes that the whole class is now looking at her. She removes her glasses, pulls her long curly red hair back over her right ear; sits up straight before making eye contact with the professor, just as he says: “Yes, Mary, are you with us today? Let’s hear your example on this topic…” Before Mary can even get a word out, he continues in a patronizing tone, “and try just this one time not to turn it into another environmental issue. I would expect a Galbraith to give a little autonomy for the economy.” The professor claps his hands once shuffling his shoulders. Mary smiles, feeling that familiar chemistry she always has when she locks eyes with her favorite professor. She’s aware of the class and shifts her facial expression as she answers in a serious manner. “Okay…so I won’t go with the example of how small decisions made by farmers and land owners to drain wetlands or small decisions of industrialists to release pollutants into our skies are an example of tyranny. I’ll just use the fact that thousands of educators make small decisions every day to leave out a vital factor, the environment. It’s just like your quote from Aristotle—you’re only thinking of your own interests, and neglect reality, expecting that it will be part of some abstract elective or future program. So, who should we be hearing the truth from regarding our environment? The engineers? The lawyers? The military?” Mary gets up, grabbing her books and starts her trek toward the door while continuing, “The farmers, the fishermen, truck drivers, Wall Street, Washington, United Nations…why can’t it be coming from you, our educators?” “Where are you going, young lady?” the professor challenges her. She stops in the doorway. “Nowhere. That’s the point. We’re not going anywhere that really matters.” “Mary, I want to see you after classes today, or you are going to fail this class and not graduate this term,” the professor calls out as she leaves. Mary spends the rest of the day in the library finishing her book, The Elite Society, before deciding to go back and see the professor. She knocks on the door and walks in. She is agitated when he does not look up as he says: “Mary, I have better things to do with my time than wait around all evening. You are lucky I have papers to mark or I would not have stayed this late.” “Look, you asked me here, remember? So I’m here.” “Is your education not important to you?” He continues before she can answer, “You have a chance to make something of yourself. You are one of the brightest students I have ever taught, and you just don’t get it.” “I don’t get it?” Mary rolls her eyes in disbelief. “Can you not see what is happening all around us?” “Mary, not everything is about the environment. You can graduate with top honors, and then if you decide, take a few years and work with a special interest group, make a difference. Just don’t do it in my class. You influence and distract the other students who are here to learn.” “Learn what?” she huffs. “Your canned lessons on how to apply ourselves so we can propagate the agenda of the almighty economy?” “Mary, no one forced you to study economics.” “No, but it is clear after these last four years that I have entered the Devil’s Lair.” “Mary, do you hear yourself? Honestly, the Devil’s Lair, my classroom?” Mary gestures right and left. “NO…it’s this whole place.” “I’m surprised at you, Mary,” the professor shakes his head. “I never saw you as the religious type,” “It wasn’t meant that way. There is a bigger picture. There are other elements and things more important than learning about the economy.” “Of course there is…” the professor pauses for a moment to reflect. “Okay, humor me, you have my attention. I’ll listen. You educate me on how you see things. Get it out of your system once and for all, and then I don’t want to hear it again. Not in my class.” He turns to a white board on the wall, and with a red marker he writes as he is saying, “Not everything in life is about the ECONOMY VS. NATURE.” Mary picks up a green marker and writes the word MOTHER over the word NATURE. “Mother Nature…” she erases and rewrites NATURE in green, “and don’t be offended, it’s not just your class, but it is the economy against Mother Nature.” “Please, we’re just here to discuss your behavior in my economics class, young lady, and if you plan to have a future…” “Future?” Mary interrupts in a low voice looking straight into his eyes. “That is exactly what I am concerned about. And not just my future, but everyone’s future.” “Look, you’re far too young to start shouldering the weight of all the problems on this planet. So just put Mother Nature on hold while you are in my class and focus on Father Economy,” the professor smiles. “Father Economy?” she snaps back, “You’ve got to be joking? The father hasn’t even started to wave his invisible hand. In case you haven’t noticed, the earth is changing…” Mary writes the words, one under the other, EARTH AIR PLANTS ANIMALS as she says, “The father is on this side!” She points to MOTHER NATURE. “He has not weighed in yet. He has noticed that we’re no longer satisfied with just suckling at her breast. And like a good father, he wants us to have free will. What he can’t see is that we just want her exploitable resources, so we can serve this precious economy…” Mary’s passion is evident as she continues, “and it’s killing her. Like any mother, she has given all she can. But like spoiled children, we just can’t wait to inherit what we believe is ours. You’re teaching us to rip at her very flesh, her every treasured morsel listed on the stock exchange. You can see how she is responding to the pain.” Mary writes the words in blue, CLIMATE and FORCES under MOTHER...