"...the major source of threat and conflict is securocratic, stemming from social unrest and crime linked to poverty, and the operations of major crime organizations, drug cartels in particular."
-Jeff Halper, War Against The People (New York, 2015), p. 220.
In the Solar Union, there is no poverty. Instead, there is a comfortable life for all. Further, it is difficult to see how there could be organized crime in that society. In any case, it is not mentioned. There is social unrest because the majority who had been accustomed to working for their livings can no longer do so. But they no longer need to do so. Many would regard this as a release. And the next generation would not grow up with any expectation that they should work for their living. Instead, they could be offered cultural activities to address every taste: every kind of sport and art; travel; study etc.
Those who remained dissatisfied would hardly constitute a force capable of waging global war as described in "Cold Victory." Thus, I find the historical transition from "Quixote and the Windmill" to "Cold Victory" implausible. If the psychotechnicians could allow, or even inadvertently cause, that to happen, then their science did indeed count for nothing. I think that there is another timeline in which the Humanists were an ineffectual sect while the utopian economy went from strength to strength.
