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Designing Society for Posterity
Charlie Stross |
How do you design a society for the really long term? There are a couple of levels to consider: notably, decision-making and economics. And it doesn’t look as if we’ve got any good solutions to either.
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Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 11/12 at 01:59 PM
Well, people already ignore / neglect their partners, family & friends for the wonders of Everquest or Warcraft. So, if you assume an improved virtual playground on the starship, I doubt if the people would much care how the ship is managed. So long as they are fed and watered, most of the human status seeking could be moved to virtual reality. The ship management would be done by computer anyway. Improved robotics might even make the humans unnecessary for tightening loose screws and swapping out failed components.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 11/12 at 02:22 PM
The fact that you are not able to envision a libertarian society inside a hollowed-out asteroid don't matter. I think it is possible if the "ship" is designed correctly.
1) 250.000 people need a fairly complex economic structure that need a free market. If they are able to communicate with the home planet to implement innovations, they really need it, as the market is adaptive.
2) It is a given that the ship will need many redundant services to recycle stuff, produce energy, etc. They can easily be run in a free market, so the people running it can no have a monopoly over a single service or product.
3) The best way to produce (2) is to have a generational fleet where single ships exchange services and goods. A ship would be someway independent from the others, but it would have a strong incentive to have peaceful relations with other ships in the fleet because specialization would let them to enjoy greater productivity and less work.
The biggest problem is population control and selection.
If the urge to procreate is not controlled there is no way out of famine and war. So it must be expected that procreation must have a large cost (but not large enough to prevent women from having children).
Multiple ships work better to force the cost of procreating on the procreators and unwanted people would be forced to stay on their home ship and would be prevented from going to other ships.
Another advantage is that a group trying to take over all the fleet would have an hard time to take and keep control, where would be much more easier on a single big ship.
Posted by James Sargeant on 11/13 at 05:15 AM
It certainly seems doubtful, given past precedent, that any sample of the human race would be able to sustain itself for such lengths of time without splitting in to factions and fighting for the right to govern.
But if all humans could be held in stasis for the duration of the journey, then maybe the passing of time and issues around surrounding generational development become irrelevant. Your awareness of time would end as you go under and only re-emerge as you wake up. There could be a thousand years in between... assuming the ship will be able to maintain itself (and the sleeping crew) then there's no problem.
The whole idea of physically boarding a vessel is starting to look a little archaic though... what if we were able to 'vibrate' at any given point in the universe without the need to actually travel?
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 11/13 at 08:00 AM
"The Catholic Church, the Japanese monarchy, and a few other institutions have lasted more than a millennium, but they’re all almost unrecognizably different."
Well, there is /one/ religious group that has lasted around three millenia, and you would most likely consider them recognizably similar to the way it looked then. And they've even managed to maintain most of the ideals despite the fact that they've been scattered throughout the world.
Oh, but they're religious, so scratch that idea.
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