I started writing the Pauper when I was reading Machiavelli’s “The Prince.” As I was reading it, I said to myself: ‘Machiavelli wrote for rulers; wouldn’t it be nice if someone wrote a version of the Prince for the huddled masses?’   The Pauper is for those people who live under power, not the ones who wield it. The mice scurrying under the dinosaur’s feet. Soon the title took on a life of its own, for poverty is the lot of much of humanity, and that class is only going to increase if today’s system continues to be tomorrow’s. 

Poverty is bad, but it is better than catastrophe. As scholars such as Peter Turchin have argued, immiseration precedes the End Times, but collapse isn’t inevitable. Times of hope are behind us and catastrophe awaits in the darkness but we aren’t there yet. 

We are in the interregnum between the past and the future.

Thinking so, the Pauper traveled from Machiavelli to Marx, and from Marx to Gandhi, finally coming to rest on the Planet. I was recounting my journey to the Little Prince and he scolded me for writing like an adult, when we deserve to see the Planet like a child. 

I can’t write that simply yet, but I am trying.