Possible Futures

What you are about to read is an excerpt from a work of fiction written by David Weber. The reason I've chosen to write it here is because I can see some eerily similar trends within our own nation. As such, I thought I might present it as one of many possible futures for this nation, couched in terms of a futuristic, space faring society. In it, he describes the progress of a major Star Nation which progresses from a  Constitutional Republic, to what was essentially an expansionist dictatorship. All credit for what follows belongs to David Weber.

"The People's Republic of Haven

Although the Haven System lies 667 light-years from old Earth, 155 light-years further distant than Manticore, the first shuttle landed on its habitable planet (also called Haven) on 1309 pd (post-diaspora), over a century before Manticore was settled. This was possible because of the fashion in which the introduction of the Warshawski Sail had revolutionized the logistics of colonization. Haven's day is 24.56 standard hours in length, divided into 13 months: 9 of 32 days each and 4 of 31 days each. The short months are the 3rd, 5th, 10th, and 12th. Every 4 years, the 3rd month s 32 days long.

Haven lay in a particularly attractive region, with an unusually high proportion of F, G, and K class stars, and the original expedition was estremely well financed as a joint venture by no fewer than eleven corporations based on member planets of the Solarian League.Moreover, the planet of Haven proved well named, for terrestrial life forms adapted to its envrionment with a minimum of difficulty and its climate was very nearly idyllic. With a powerful PR organization to tout its attractiveness, it exercised a magnetic effect on would-be colonists of the League and, with the availability of the new hypership technology grew at incredible speed. By 1430 pd, the Republic of Haven already boasted a planetary population of almosta billion and was beginning to mount colony expeditions of its own in what became known (despite the fact that six other systems in the region had been colonized before or almost simultaneously with Haven) as the Haven Quadrant.

By 1475, the Haven economy and government had proven themselves extremely efficient and effective. Politically, Haven was a representative democracy with a strong and politically active middle class, and its economic policy enshrined the principles of liberal capitalism with minimal government interference. Couple with the "jump start" provided by the colony's highly favorable initial circumstances, the combination of market efficiency and flexible government created a planetary standard of living at least as high as that of most Solarian League member worlds, and it became the envy and the pattern for every other world in the quadrant.

For the next two centuries, Haven continued to fulfill its promise, rising to a system population of almost seven billion and becoming a sort of interstellar Athens. The Haven Quadrant, although composed of independant worlds and star systems, rivaled the Solarian League for economic power, and it remained a vibrant and expansive entity, unlike the essentially satisfied and content League. Although the quadrant contained no wormhole junctions, it had access to the Manticore Junction (and, later, to the Erewhon Junction) and thence to the League, and there was every reason to believe that its expansion and prosperity would continue.

It did not. Precise identification of a specific event which caused the change within the quadrant is impossible, but in general terms it might be called over-achievemnet. The quadrant-and, in particular, Haven-had done too well. Its wealth was incalculable, and it began to seem unfair that that wealth was not more evenly distributed. In particular, capitalism, as always, had produced stratified classes, ranging from the extremely wealthy to the marginal and even sub-marginal, and if the members of Haven's "sub-marginal" class were immeasurably better off than, say the pre-Anderman citizens of New Berlin, they were not well off compared to their own affluent fellow citizens.

The Republic thus began to experiment , cautiously at first, with assistance and welfare programs to increase the opportunities of its less advantaged citizens. Unfortunately, what began as an experiment gradually became something else. Transfer payments became increasingly importantfor the maintenance of the industrial poor, requiring greater levies on the productive elements of society. Marginal industrial operations were shored up by protective tariffs, government loans, and outright grants to encourage full employment, which both undercut the overall efficiency  and productivity of the industrial base, and encouraged inflation. Inflation further worsened the condition of the poor, requiring still higher transfer payments-payments which were soon adjusted for inflation on a mandated basis-and, as the network of assistance proliferated, it came to be seen as a fundamental "right" of those receiving the aid. By 1860 pd, Haven had issued its famous "Economic Bill of Rights", declaring that all of its citizens had an "unalienable right" to a relative standard of living to be defined (and adjusted as inflation required) by statute by the legislature.

In the process, the government had initiated an unending spiral of inflation, higher transfer payments, and increasing deficit spending. Moreover, it had (quite unintentionally, at least at first) undermined the fundamental strength of its own democracy. The middle class, the traditional backbone of the Republic, was under increasing pressure both from above and below, caught in the squeeze between an increasingly less productive economy and ever larger levies against its earnings to support the welfare system. Whereas the middle class had once seen the upper class as (at worst) essentially friendly rivals or (at best) allies in their joint prosperity, they came to see the wealthy, like the poor, as enemies, fighting over a dwindling prosperity. Worse, the middle class's traditional aspiration to upward mobility had become an increasingly remote dream, and it was much eaier to focus resentment on those who had more than the middle class than on those who had less-a tendancy which became ever more pronounced as "enlightened" commentators and academics secured dominant positions in the media and educational system.

Perhaps worst of all, was the emergence of the "Dolist" blocs. The Dolists (so called because they were "on the dole," receiving government assistance in greater or lesser degree) were still franchised voters and, quite logically, supported the candidates who offered them the most. It was a case of self-interest, and the Dolists' self-interest interlocked with that of increasingly careerist politicians. A new class of machine politicians. the "Dolist Managers" emerged, playing the role of king-makers by delivering huge blocks of votes to chosen candidates. Incumbent politicians soon realized that their continued incumbency was virtually assured with the managers' backing-and that the converse was also true. A politician targeted by the People's Quorum" (the official term for the alliance of Dolist managers) was doomed, and as the leaders of the Quorum became aware of their power, they selected specific politicians to punish as an example to all politicos of the power the Qwuorum represented.

Finally, as if to complete the system-wide outbreak of mass insanity, most of those who recognized that something was wrong embraced a "conspiracy theory" which assumed that their problems must result from someone's hostile machinations-probably those of the domestic "monied classes" or foreign industries who "dumped" their cheap, shoddy products on the Haven economy. Almost worse, there was an entrenched element of "this wouldn't be happening to us if we weren't somehow at fault" in the vast majority of mid 18th cnetury Havenite political and societal analysis and rhetoric, and this masochistic tendency only became more pronounced as the century wound to a close.

By 1750 pd, the Republic-no longer "The Republic of Haven," but now "The People's Republic of Haven"-had become the captive of a coalition of professional politicians (indeed, politicians who had never had and were not qualified for any other career) and the Quorum, aided and abetted by a morally and intellectually bankrupt academic community and a mass media philosophically at home with the Quorum's objectives and cowed (where necessary) by threats of blacklisting. The the Quorum could succeed in blacklisting journalists had been demonstrated in 1746 pd, in the case of Adele Wasserman, one of the last moderate journalists. Her moderation, which was actually a bit left of center by mid 17th century standards, was labeled "conservative" or, more frequently, "reactionary" by her 18th century contemporaries. She herselfwas called "an enemy of the common man," "a slave of the monied powers," and (most cutting slur then available on Haven) "a fiscal elitist," and her employer, one of the last independant news services, was pressured into terminating her contract (for "socially insensitive and inappropriate demagoguery") by means of an economic boycott, strikes, and governmental pressure. Her firing, followed by her subsequent relocation to the Kingdom of Manticore and a succesful career as a leading theorist of the Centrist Party, was the writing on the wall for any who had eyes. Unless something quite extraordinary intervened, the current Havenit system was doomed.

The problem was one which had arisen as long ago as Old Earth's Roman Empire: when power depends on "bread and circuses," those in power are compelled to provide ever greater largess if they wish to remain in power.In effect, the politicos required a bottomless and ever-filled public trough to pay off the Dolists and provide the graft and corruption to support the lives to which they themselves had become accustomed, and after almost two centuries of increasingly serious self-inflicted wounds, not even the once-robust Havenite economy could support the burden.It became apparent to the political managers that the entire edifice was in trouble: tax revenues had not matced expenditures in over 143 T-years; R&D was faltering as an increasingly politicized (and hence ineffectual) educational system purveyed the pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo of collectivist economic theory rather than sound scientific training; and the decreasing numbers of truly capable industrial and technical managers produced by the system were incrfeasingly lured to other star systems whose economies allowed them to use their talents and enjoy the benefits thereof. The "Technical Conservation Act" of 1778, which revoked emigration visas for all research and production engineers by nationalizing their expertise "as a resource of the Republic," was intended to put a stop to that, but it could not reverse the fatal trends.

Real economic growth had stopped-indeed, the economy was contracting-but ever higher Basic Living Stipend payments were politically inescapable, and the stagflation which had resulted was becoming a self-sustaining reaction. In 1771pd, a highly classified economic report to the House of Legislatorspredicted that by the year 1870 the entire economy wouldcollapse in a disaster which would make Old Earth's Great Depression and the Economic Winter of 252 pd look like mild recessions. The Chiefs of Staff, apprised of the degree of collapse to be anticipated, warned that it would precipitate pitched warfare in the streetsas Haven's citizens fought for food for their families, for Haven had long since attained a population which could not feed itself without imports, and imports could not be paid for with a negative balance of trade."


The excerpt you have just read comes from a collection of stories entitled More than Honor. The story itself is called The Univers of Honor Harrington, and was written by David Weber as a work of science fiction.

For those of you who managed to read the entirety of the post, I hope you were able to see why I chose to write all this. The similarities between the path the Republic of Haven followed to its downfall, and the one our politicians are now sending us on are eerily similar. I can only hope that it's not too late to turn ourselves around, lest we become known as "The People's Republic of America".