term, the old time way, is strictly Telly
talk, Max. We don't do things _the old time way_. No nation in history
ever has--with the possible exception of Egypt. Socio-economics are in a
continual flux and here in this country we no more do things in the way
they did fifty years ago, than fifty years ago they did them the way the
American Revolutionists outlined back in the Eighteenth Century."

Max was staring at him. "I don't get that, sir."

Joe said impatiently, "Max, the politico-economic system we have today
is an outgrowth of what went earlier. The welfare state, the freezing of
the status quo, the Frigid Fracas between the West-world and the
Sov-world, industrial automation until useful employment is all but
needless--all these things were to be found in embryo more than fifty
years ago."

"Well, maybe the captain's right, but you gotta admit, sir, that mostly
we do things the old way. We still got the Constitution and the
two-party system and--"

Joe was wearying of the conversation now. You seldom ran into anyone,
even in Middle caste, the traditionally professional class, interested
enough in such subjects to be worth arguing with. He said, "The
Constitution, Max, has got to the point of the Bible. Interpret it the
way you wish, and you can find anything. If not, you can always make a
new amendment. So far as the two-party system is concerned, what effect
does it have when there are no differences between the two parties? That
phase of pseudo-democracy was beginning as far back as the 1930s when
they began passing State laws hindering the emerging of new political
parties. By the time they were insured against a third party working its
way through the maze of election laws, the two parties had become so
similar that elections became almost as big a farce as over in the
Sov-world."

"A farce?" Max ejaculated indignantly, forgetting his servant status.
"That means not so good, doesn't it? Far as I'm concerned, election day
is tops. The one day a Lower is just as good as an Upper. The one day
how many shares you got makes no difference. Everybody has everything."

"Sure, sure, sure," Joe sighed. "The modern equivalent of the Roman
Bacchanalia. Election day in the West-world when no one, for just that
one day, is freer than anyone else."

"Well, what's wrong with that?" The other was all but belligerent.
"That's the trouble with you Middles and Uppers, you don't know how it
is to be a Lower and--"

Joe s