The products that people in the Western world buy are, surprisingly enough, made in Western countries by Western workers. Twenty years ago, the first Chinese workers arrived in England on tourist visas. We say simply England, but they also arrived in Spain, Germany, and America. In every country that used to be considered rich. They went to run-down areas. They went as cheap laborers. Slept on the floors of warehouses, worked twenty hours a day, didn’t bother anyone. The next step was for them to open their own companies. Where they worked twenty-two hours a day. The companies grew, brought recovery to regions long since thought dead. A mafia developed, a Chinese middle and upper class developed in Europe. The Chinese take care of the fixed assets, distribution, expansion, structure. The Europeans work. That’s how it goes.

THE COURIER

Was a courier for ten years. Had been. He’d started during his university days (literature and education—WTF?). “I like to be around people,” the courier said. “I get to exercise my legs and be out in the fresh air.” He said, unprompted. To other couriers. Because soon he broke off his studies because in order to afford his studies he had to ride his bike so much that he had no time left to study. Yes, well. There were no jobs for literature graduates anyway. Nobody read anymore, either. “I’d love to read a book,” people said, unprompted and a little sheepishly, “but—time.” Of course, time was spread thin. There were online chats to be had and houses in Costa Rica to look at, hate comments beneath articles nobody read, and after that TV series, TV series. Series that prepared people for actual conditions. Everyone remembered—like the cherry blossoms in grandpa’s garden, which they never had, that is, no garden and no grandpa—the wonderful effect of a good book.

In the meantime the courier was over forty and in excellent physical condition, as long as you look past the bronchial infections he contracted during the era when the cityscape was still dominated by combustion engines. And if you ignore his HIV. Which had been totally ignorable. The medicine is infernal stuff, but

Then the health system was revolutionized.

Something that

THOME’S FATHER

Emphasizes in one of his talks in the House of Lords: “Too much inequity marked our previous health system. The costs to treat the so-called uncooperative members of society, who wantonly endanger their own health, fell on the shoulders of the common man. The system is deeply unfair. With the new system, each person pays what they should. You’re hardworking, keep yourself in good shape, don’t take drugs, don’t drink? Then you are like ninety percent of the population, who up to now had to pay for the ten percent of spongers. For people who engaged in overly prodigious sexual activities, who put parties and drugs above the willpower it takes to lead a healthy, responsible life. Now that the free primary health care has been eliminated as a result of abuse by parasitic foreigners, the fair system of health insurance…”