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	Re: Poll: Future of Earth
	Posted By: Yossarian	Date: 7/29/02 8:02 p.m.
	In Response To: Re: Poll: Future of Earth (Dan Aris) I like the Rubicon model in which massive government works with massive business (big business and big government had long since became extinct) to control a massive human populace. Power and authority as we know it will no longer come from the governments of individual nations, in fact it will come from entities that can cross borders and command more loyalty from, i.e. corporations and or religious/spiritual movements etc. In order to maintain a balance and provide some form of protection for all humans (nothing a company or religious movement can or will necessarily provide), the national governments will homogenize (new world order) to balance and check those entities that execute power in a non-governmental fashion. In such a system all entities involved would become reliant on eachother for stability. The UESC could not maintain its infrastructure without corporate business and the Corporations would not have easy access to markets without the security and gurantee of a safe consumeristic society without the UESC. The government would maintain, through regulation, a market system in which competition would continue to progress science and technology (even though said competition would be between only a handful of very large corporations). Small business would still exist on a lemonade stand to planet-wide size companies, but the big players would most probably dominate the interstellar channels, while planetary law would keep the major corporation from forcing the local guys out of business; thus keeping the small fish small and the big fish out of the little pools. What we're left with is an economic model based on a federalist system. And the outcome? Everybody has a share. Of course, the paperwork and government regulation required to keep all of this in check would make the Federal Government of the United States look like a scribble on a napkin. Obviously, the bureaucracy involved would be impossible for us 21st centurions to comprehend. However, this wouldn't be all bad since a government so large would collapse under its own weight if it were to be a Unitarian system. Again, federalism would come in to play as local systems, provinces, cities, etc would have their own set of affairs to deal with. Organized religion would be forced to concede doctrine until it is recognized as merely symbolic and overshadowed by the individuals' search for a far more personal, spiritual solution to philosophical questions (no doubt because of the environment made by the governmental/corporate bureacracy that would be unescapable). Of course, no new religion or spiritual movement that refuses science and scientific thought will be taken seriosly as thse things would be equally unavoidable. Of course, there will always be nihilists. On Earth, humans will take for granted that their air was cleaned and ozone patched centuries ago by rusty hulks of machines that lay dormant in silent monument to the years that saw the reversal of the planet's self-destruction. Children will be given a basic education and then taught towards what would be the most personally fullfilling and beneficial to civilization. These same children will know a world where you can truly be whatever you want, and they'll run and play over the graves of soldiers from a thousand battles dead thousands of years, now forgotten several meters beneath bedrock. In museums our progeny (of now a single blended skin tone) will sit and wonder life was like a thousand years ago and feel shame and admiration for what and who they see. Meanwhile the government and military will still have in secret plans, prototypes, models and facilities erected from just-in-case scenarios, the justification for the existence and funding of such things. You see, if humans have ever learned anything since crashing rocks on eachothers heads on the plains of Africa and Asia, it is never forget to fight. And forget they would not, as fleets and armies of scales unimaginable would be erected and directed to dsipatch new threats. They would be glorious, always victorious as dreaded species and rebels and pirates lay smouldering beneath them as they breathe the alien air on an alien planet, enjoying the feeling of being an instrument of nature, of being human. Exactly what the hell am I talking about? I honestly don't know. But what I DO know is that when the tide comes in, WAY IN, I'll be up home in the mountains where the fish are mercury free and it still snows in the winter (for now). Yossarian

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Replies:

	Poll: Future of Earth	Anthony Surace	7/29/02 12:27 a.m.
	Re: Poll: Future of Earth	Scifiteki	7/29/02 1:16 a.m.
	Re: Poll: Future of Earth	Dan Aris	7/29/02 9:14 a.m.
	Re: Poll: Future of Earth	:: Beer Can ::	7/29/02 10:56 a.m.
	Re: Poll: Future of Earth	Anthony Surace	7/29/02 12:01 p.m.
	Re: Poll: Future of Earth	Steve Levinson	7/29/02 12:06 p.m.
	Re: Poll: Future of Earth	Dan Aris	7/29/02 2:23 p.m.
	Re: Poll: Future of Earth	Yossarian	7/29/02 7:21 p.m.
	Definitely *NOT* the same book! *NM*	Steve Levinson	7/30/02 7:39 a.m.
	Re: Poll: Future of Earth	Yossarian	7/29/02 8:02 p.m.
	Re: Poll: Future of Earth	Todd	7/30/02 1:07 a.m.
	Re: Poll: Future of Earth	Dan Aris	7/30/02 8:52 a.m.

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