My Tao - The Pied Piper

Who will pay the piper? This is the question sometimes asked rhetorically when debt piles up with no clear plan to pay it back. It is a reference to the story about the pied piper of Hamelin, where the children end up gone as a consequence of inaction by the people of the town.

The point is that debt cannot simply be ignored. At some point, someone has to pay. That someone is either the creditor or the debtor. The debtor can default, in which case the creditor ends up without the promised return, or the debtor pays as promised. Alternatively, there's a debt negotiation in which the two sides arrive at a compromise. However, it is impermissible to simply ignore the situation. If no action is taken, the piper comes for the children.

If the pied piper was simply an ordinary person, he would have been the looser in the story. He would have had no way to retaliate. However, the piper is not some ordinary person, he's the spirit of debt. As such, he embodies the fact that no debt can be unpaid without consequence. Someone will pay, and that someone is the children if adults refuse to act.

But who are the children, if not the guarantee of a safe and prosperous old age for the adults? Without children, who will take care of them as they grow older? This part was intuitively understood in the past, and therefore not explained in the story. The listeners didn't merely feel sorry for the children, they grasped the full disastrous consequence of their disappearance.

People nowadays do not see this connection quite as clearly. But the problem is no less real. More so than many realize. There's an eerie connection between debt and fertility rates. People have very few children in places like Japan and Italy, where public and private debt are at nosebleed levels. Other place, we see the same pattern. The more a society goes into debt, the fewer children there are.

There's a sense among people in debt burdened nations that they cannot afford to have children, and a promise of guaranteed old age care by politicians makes it tempting to refrain from having children rather than paying down debt. But what is truly unaffordable is not to have children.

If the piper isn't paid, children disappear and there's no future. As we move into the final stage of a global debt orgy, this truth will become increasingly clear. Those who thought they were safe because of shares and obligations held in retirement accounts will be sorely disappointed because none of that has any value without children.

By Artist: Kate Greenaway (1846–1901) Engraver: Edmund Evans  (1826–1905)   Alternative names Edmund William Evans Description English engraver and printer Date of birth/death 23 February 1826 21 August 1905 Location of birth/death London Isle of Wight Work location London Authority control : Q4529602 VIAF: 71519059 ISNI: 0000 0000 8392 8947 ULAN: 500023437 LCCN: n81059993 NLA: 35071074 WorldCat - Browning, Robert (1910) [1888] The Pied Piper of Hamelin, London: Frederick Warne and Company, pp. p. 41 Retrieved on 26 July 2009. (direct link to high resolution image here), Public Domain, Link