everyone pays the same exorbitant price for a regular antitoxin pill;
men with large families put their children to work young;
undereducated youths are less able to succeed economically;
the poorest are in debt for life;
policing is slight, incentives to crime many;
a few merchants, manufacturers and landholders rule downtrodden peasants and unruly proletarians;
classes are hereditary because no one is able to advance;
Biocontrol could exercise more control but has no reason to.
12 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I would modify your third comment. I don't think many people at the bottom of society on Unan Besar during the Biocontrol era got any formal education at all.
Sean
One of the perennial errors people make is assuming that the moral character and/or intelligence of powerful people is the most important determinant of how things turn out.
Whereas it's the incentive structures that actually matter.
Biocontrol is a good example of this.
If Flandry hadn't happened on Unan Besar, the ultimate conclusion would be an incompetence-driven accident destroying the vats as the whole system became more and more dysfunctional, since it's protected from Darwinian pressures by its control of the planetary point-failure source and has no reason to be efficient.
Whereupon everyone would die.
Or in a variant on that, some internal squabble doing the same, whereupon everyone would die.
With that setup, Unan Besar can't even collapse to a pretechnological state and then start over -- it's the wet-dream of an ossified "hydraulic despotism" that isn't even vulnerable to barbarian invaders.
Incentive structures are also very tricky and extremely prone to the operation of the Law of Unintended Consequences.
Eg., on the face of it competitive meritocracy seems an unanswerably superior system; it's what we're supposed to have as our selection mechanism in our economic and organizational life.
In point of fact, not only are the incentives to distort the process (for relatives, in patron-client or 'old-boy' networks etc.) very strong...
... but even when it functions perfectly a highly competitive political or economic system has an institutional bias towards promoting sociopathic or psychopathic personalities.
Because they're the most single-minded about competitive success, especially in fields that don't give most people an inherent pleasure to pursue. Lots of people put up with poverty and uncertainty to pursue careers in the arts, but you have to be truly warped and quite possibly evil to go through the slog of political or bureaucratic careerism.
(Business can be the same, but does offer some opportunities for creative work -- an Elon Musk or something of that order.)
The main exceptions to this psychological selection are fanatics, who are also willing to devote their entire life to politics which is not really a great alternative either.
Benoni Strang (Mirkheim) is an example of the latter.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
I like these comments by you and agree with them. Yes, at best, absent the arrival of a disrupting factor like Flandry, Biocontrol would become more and more corrupt, oppressive, and inefficient that SOMETHING, a part or mechanism breaking, or a faction fight within the ruling clique, would cause the vats to fail, and everyone would then die.
And Biocontrol did have fanatics! After Flandry was captured the second time by Nias Warouw, he was shown the plant where the antitoxin was manufactured. The supervisory control had a nuclear bomb wired to it, so if Biocontrol's rule was ever seriously challenged, the director then standing watch would detonate the bomb. And it only needs ONE fanatic, after all.
I also agree with your comments that the political setups in Western countries makes it easy for sociopaths to rise to power. Democracy merely allows them to rise without needing to shoot their way to power. I don't know how to prevent driven, ambitious, power hungry psychopaths from rising
Your comments makes me wonder if some kind of constitutional monarchy might be a partial solution to the problem posed by sociopaths. If the topmost and most august position within a nation is held by a man who became king by hereditary primogeniture, then I think it's reasonable to think not all of these kings will b be psychopaths. Power hungry sociopaths can still seek power via sitting in parliament or becoming PM, but they would be restrained to some extent by having to give some heed and attention to the Sovereign's advice and warnings.
Sean
I favor more democratic control and accountability of elected representatives.
Kaor, Paul!
That has been tried over and over in many of the states of the US, and has not worked. Recall what Stirling said about the "law of unintended consequences." A political system can be as democratic as you like and it still won't stop psychopaths from seeking power.
Sean
Democracy works best as a small-scale, face-to-face mechanism, and as such it has recurred often throughout human history; unfortunately, that's hard in large-scale societies.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
More and more I find it very hard to disagree with that proposition. So, would some kind of limited or constitutional monarchy work better for large states or societies? Such as your own High Kingdom of Montival in the Change books or Poul Anderson's Terran Empire where the member planets of the realm ran most of their own affairs?
As for the US, all I can think of is that it would better to reduce the power of the Federal gov't over the states and have the states again run most matters not having to do with defense and foreign affairs.
Sean
It seems that here in the U.S., a number of people are faced with situations similar to the inhabitants of of U B- having vital medicines prohibitively priced by greedy and unscrupulous (corporate) officials. U B is essentially "Big Pharma's wet dream"....
Sean re: a benign constitutional monarch being able to maintain a reasonably functioning government better than an elected (presidential republic) or appointed (parliamentary republic) ceremonail executive. while Scandinavia and the Netherlands seem to be managing well, I wouldn't say the same is true for Spain, Belgium, or the UK...
-kh
Kaor, Keith!
I will comment at proper length after I wake up. Time I went to bed!
Sean
Kaor, Keith!
First, I don't understand what you meant by "UB," so I can't really comment.
Second, the problem of many medicines having high prices has many factors. One, it costs money (which is shorthand for the time, research, trained personnel, etc.) needed for developing medicines. Including things like PAYING the people I listed above. Such factors will influence prices.
Third, another problem has been how US pharmaceutical companies has been cheated in other countries by foreigners refusing to pay royalties due to them. That too would have to be factored into the cost of medicines.
So, while I sympathize for those who find the prices of many medicines too high, there are not going to be any quick or easy solutions for that.
Sean
Sean,
Unan Besar.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Thanks! That clarifies an otherwise puzzling comment. And one I disagree with, btw.
Sean
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