How did Earth find itself in a squalor?

cthia wrote:

Duckk wrote:http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Harrington/233/1

Thanks for the dump, yet as in all of the others I've consumed it doesn't serve the meat and potatoes. It simply touches on Earth's peripheral problems and the same age old dilemma of the economic gap between classes. And the citizens' jadedness err ignorance. How do the people of Earth allow the government to find itself here?

Aside:

Klaus Hauptman wouldn't even make it onto the Solarian League's Fortune 500???

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:Thanks for the dump, yet as in all of the others I've consumed it doesn't serve the meat and potatoes. It simply touches on Earth's peripheral problems and the same age old dilemma of the economic gap between classes. And the citizens' jadedness err ignorance. How do the people of Earth allow the government to find itself here?

Aside:

Klaus Hauptman wouldn't even make it onto the Solarian League's Fortune 500???

Probably because the League government has about as much impact on the average citizen of Earth as the UN does on the average citizen of the US.

The local system governments are almost completely automatous from the League government in all internal dealings. And even intra-league dealings each system's veto ability keeps the rules and regulations very non-controversial and center of the road.

You might bitch about them being corrupt, or ineffective. Or read the occasional article about how even the best efforts of their Office of Frontier Security couldn't quell all the violence in some war torn system out the back of beyond. But until about 1 year ago nobody thought that the League could screw up in such a way to negatively impact most full citizens.


Basically it doesn't affect them, it's exploitative forces and effects are out of sight out of mind. So why exactly should they have been incited to the kind of overwhelming groundswell necessary to change how the enormous monstrosity has grown to work?

Theemile wrote:It's actually mentioned that on most planets that the SL government is considered a joke- so much so that powerful families see League posts (elected and other wise) as a place to park the family idiots so they can't break anything important.

The president of the SL was mentioned to be one of these people, placed to make sure the government is steering the way the important family wants; having him there gives the family a little prestige over it's peers (like a yahting trophy would), while placing the individual in a place where any misstep didn't matter.

saber964 wrote:RFC is probably modeling Old Chicago somewhat after RW Washington D.C.. The Mandarins and the rest of the government probably don't actually live in Old Chicago, they probably live in really really nice enclaves or towers. Look D.C. inside the beltway it's mostly slums except near government buildings and rich enclaves like Georgetown and outside the beltway four of the richest counties in the U.S..

PeterZ wrote:The method is simple, Cthia. After the Final War "SOMETHING MUST BE DONE!"
People created the Solarian League assuming that the central government would remain small because, since every system could produce everything it needed locally, taxes based on free trade would ever be minute. That was true. Trade was a small potion of each nation's GSP.

What those creators forgot was all the forces surrounding bureaucratic inertia. OFS began by shepherding nations on the perimeter of the League into the more advanced levels of the Core League. By and large they were successful and taxed the developing world for their services. These worlds eventually joined the League. I believe the Shell was integrated into the League in this way.

Then as is the case in all things, OFS began accepting some graft. At first I am sure it made sense for an appendage of the underfunded government agency to look for corporate donations for them to continue their good work. For those donations, corporations received a quid pro quo. Pretty soon the agency was working for the "donations". Soon after that corporations began ....abusing their privileges over the protectorate states. Newly elevated systems began spending longer and longer time in Protectorate status. Eventually, every Tom, Dick and Harry Solarian were told that these people...neo-barbs, couldn't manage their lives without OFS to keep them out of barbarism.

As OFS transformed from an agency that elevated newly discovered systems into a giant vampire squid creating a financing mechanism to support itself and the rest of the federal government, the rest of the government developed appendages to enable OFS to complete its transformation. As those appendages got bigger, it allowed OFS to expand the scale and scope of its activities. That meant more money was being generated, which allowed the federal government to co-opt more and more of the League into supporting its activities.

The citizenry lost their say over the federal government when they declined to accept the burden of paying for their federal government. By transferring the tax burden to foreign entities that had no say in the functioning of the Solarian League federal government, the Solarian Citizen created the conditions for the federal government to ignore the League citizenry. The federal government paid little attention to the citizens because the citizens couldn't unfund their activities. The Citizens didn't spend a lot of time thinking about the federal government because the activities of the federal government didn't directly impact the League citizens one bit. So long as the messaging was controlled, the League citizens never grew aware of possible alarming activities. Add to that ANY League nation could veto any legislation and no elected body of the League did anything. EVERYTHING was done through agency level regulation and/or traditions.

That's why David put the League capitol in Old Chicago, that epitome of American government corruption. The League functions just as Chicago did in it's heyday.

Btw, I will bet dollars to donuts that Earth's local/national government is not so corrupt. The same is very likely true for almost all national governments in the Solarian League.

Marty wrote:I think all the ambitious and idealistic people left the Earth for the "opportunities" out there in the cosmos, leaving only the lazy people behind, hence the home world ended up having nothing but the dregs.