Heretic's Post-by-Post Collab worldbuilding

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Heretic
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Heretic's Post-by-Post Collab worldbuilding

Post by Heretic »

Dem rules are pretty common everywhere: Don't contradict each other unless you want to discuss adjusting something, you don't have to discuss one whole subject, etc.

But you can double post if you want to, though they must be two separate things. And you can insert characters and ideas from other universes you have.

What I'm planning is trying to write Libertarian Sci-Fi (as there is a market out there for such things :P), but the stuff I try to read is full of boring speeches and self-important characters I can't seem relate to. There are a few good ones from both sides of the isle (I need to look into more Ursula Le Guin), but most are just meh.

I want to write a setting that is funny and campy, but not too satirical and demeaning to the ideology. These are going to be the protagonists (mostly). You can add anything you want, as with all other Post by post worldbuilding, and if you want to write in socialist/tyrannical/federalist/moderate polities and/or individuals who aren't bloodsucking bad guys, go ahead; it adds flavor and more dimension. And when I say libertarianism, I don't just mean Ayn Rand and Hayek. If you want to add left-libertarianism (which I am to suspect most of you are more comfortable with), go ahead.

Oh, the feel of the setting will be Space Opera/Soft Science Fiction. Last thing I need you guys to do is crush me in the Name of Science! I want to write about the people and situations, not blow my head in formulas (Shit, I got that math final...)



The Temurav Empire
Law
Order
Security
Trust

The biggest thing since The Neo-Hooligans 2nd Galactic Band Tour in '35, the Temurav Empire is not evil per se, but liberty is stifled in the name of Law, Order, Security, and Trust.

Created by a bunch of retired policemen and insurance agents in 2455, the Temurav Empire is the place for absolute safety and assurance. Everything and everyone is monitored and recorded. Lose your doggy? No problem, The National Monitoring System can find the pulse of the dog, and Extract Teams can retrieve the dog. Hooligans attacking your house? The local 485 (part of the law guaranteeing protection to each community) unit will neutralize the threat, allowing you to continue your gardening with the legal and safe equipment.

The sworn enemy of The Liberty Entrepreneurs, a confederation of businessmen and merchants banding together to keep the Temurav Empire's hands out of their pockets. The war between the two polities started when the Temurav Empire wanted to levy a new tax for the R&D of a vaccine to cure a cancer prominent in children, and a group of businessmen refused to pay; they stated that private institutions do better than the Temurav Department of Health. After a few scuffles, a mass exodus of businessmen and free entrepreneurs occurred, moving to the material-rich Mercury System. The Temurav Empire let them go at first, but later on started attacking the Liberty Entrepreneurs when it became clear that the black markets that started popping up in the Empire were led by the LE. At the moment, it is a stalemate between The Temurav Expedition Fleet and the various Private Defense Agencies and militias of the confederation of Liberty Entrepreneurs.

The Temurav Empire is a Federal Police State, commanded by a council of military,legal, and police chiefs. The federal government distributes its power to the systems, who in turn have small security alliances with nearby systems also under the Temurav. The Federal and the local governments work together and share resources in order to bring optimal security, though the Federal sector has the final say. While the citizenry have quite a few social freedoms, these can be changed on the whim of the council or the local province, and draconian economic laws exist in order to protect the consumer from sub par equipment and lethal substances. There is corruption, as with all governments, and the citizenry must rely on the government for everything, and the Standard of Living is stagnated across the cities. The Temurav also has a tendency to go around absorbing planets under their jurisdiction. Invasion, if necessary. The punishments for many offenses are draconian, and Three Months is a common phrase for jaywalking offenders.

But despite the flaws (which I will flesh out later), the Temurav Empire is not pure evil. They want to protect all citizens from the evils of dark space, and be a beacon of light to the rest of the galaxy. The citizen in the Temurav may have no privacy, but that doesn't mean they are going to be hounded over watching porno* (58% of the reasons against monitoring), and whole battleships are sent if a transport of children get kidnapped by space pirates. The Constitution, while shaky, guarantees basic rights mostly stay protected, and with enough money and mountains of paperwork, anyone can set up a food vendor. All they need to do is make sure they follow all protocols and be willing to be in the middle of a firefight between corrupt food inspectors and Section 485 troopers.


*The Monitoring Bill of '58 was the bill that allowed all channels of the private sector to be monitored. Section 5(a) was nicknamed the Porno Clause. It stated that is was aware of the reasons for many arguments against monitoring, and lightened the punishment for underage viewing and bootlegging. It has been said that opposition against the bill virtually disappeared. Underage pornography is still a felony.
Last edited by Heretic on Fri Jun 10, 2011 5:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.
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Re: Heretic's Post-by-Post Collab worldbuilding

Post by speaker-to-trolls »

I don't know exactly what I would have to write for it to be Libertarian sci-fi, is that sci fi that promotes an anarchist ideology? I'm not that good with writing ideologically. Ah, hell, I'll do it anyway, how's this?

Jasmine

Jasmine is one of the most valuable planets in the civilised galaxy, while it is not a politically or militarily powerful planet, nor one loaded with unobtainable mineral wealth or situated near a valuable stellar resource or interstellar trade route, it is nonetheless home to one of the greates commodities around. What is on the planet Jasmine is nothing less than the fountain of youth.

The beautiful, ringed planet, with its soft, purple skies, its ribbons of continents bedecked with blue-green forests, its shallow seas and its spore-choked air, is home to a wondrous and unique ecosystem. Organisms that contain traits of both plants and animals at different times in their lives migrate from the asteroids of the rings to the planet's surface and back again, growing from flimsy, spire-like trees to become long strings of airborne spores, jet propelled by their own supplies of hydrogen gas, which float up into space to complete one stage of their life cycle before dropping down to become trees, or floating seaweed, or drifting, semiconscious airborne vines, or things like vegetable ships, or all manner of other things. There are a hundred complex ecosystems that weave an intricate pattern around the world's land, air, sea and orbit, and which killed the vast majority of settlers who first came to the planet.

Indeed, there were no fewer than four colonisation initiatives on Jasmine which took place, each one dying of various horrible illnesses, before the fifth finally managed to establish a permanent foothold. Many, many of them died, but through time, through hard, manly (and womanly) exertion, from the sweat of their brows and the ulcer-inducing stress of their brains, and the hideous pustules that sprung from their bodies, they were, eventually, able to begin to understand this wondrous world that seemed to hate them so much. The survivors of the fifth colony struggled and learned how to adapt themselves to the conditions of Jasmine, many died young, many lived with horrible debilitations, but slowly, ever so painfully slowly, they learned how they might use one microbe to counter another, how they might hold alien chemicals, viruses, parasites and prions within themselves in some kind of balance. Slowly, agonisingly, they learned how to make Jasmine a part of themselves, and thus to make themselves a part of Jasmine.

But this was only the first step, for after many horrible centuries, perhaps by accident, perhaps by adaptation, perhaps by some design of god, man or something stranger, they learned that they could not only learn to live with the organisms of Jasmine, they could learn to add the planet's strength and health to their own. With precisely the right mixture of different organisms, with the right regimen of behaviour and nutrition, they could control the planet's effects on them, they could make themselves more tolerant of the flesh of native organisms, less susceptible to its diseases, they could make themselves live longer.

And one day, when researching desperately for the sake of her people, one intrepid young scientist was able to unlock the ultimate in that ability, a secret which has secured the place of Jasmine on the star charts of every civilisation in the galaxy. That woman, who now calls herself Persephone, discovered how to use the Jasminean fauna and microbes that infested everyone of her fellows to control their own aging process. She had created, in this monstrous Eden, the very fountain of youth, the tree of life! She has not aged a day since she made that discovery, three hundred years ago.

Other planets have since desperately tried to ring the secret of eternal youth from the planet Jasmine, but all have failed, for the simple fact that Jasmine's ecosystem is so complex, so convoluted and so interconnected, that the conditions which exist for the Jasmineans cannot be replicated anywhere else in the universe. There are no other planets where spores of a thousand different sentient plants fill the western hemisphere every two years, or where a migration of huge, carnivorous, floating vines cuts across the equator, spreading thirteen unique long chain proteins across the oceans when the gravity of three moons causes an unusually low tide in the Bay of Longing. These are but two of the thousands of conditions unique to Jasmine which make its secret so impossible to export.

This has not stopped the people of Jasmine making a pretty penny exporting miracle cures and false hope across the universe.
"Little monuments may be completed by their first architects, but great ones; true ones leave their copestones to posterity. God keep me from completing anything."
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Heretic
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Re: Heretic's Post-by-Post Collab worldbuilding

Post by Heretic »

Love it, Troll. A Dune-esque planet that everyone wants. This is a good plot starter. Sorry I haven't posted too much, my mind has been in a null for a bit over the summer, but I feel the cobwebs leaving with school started.
Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.
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Re: Heretic's Post-by-Post Collab worldbuilding

Post by Heretic »

I wouldn't say anarchist, but more minarchist. But you don't have to support the ideology I'm trying to sell and maybe(!) get a Prometheus award for down the road. I will write the Pro-Libertarian viewpoints and stories, I just need a setting to base this around, which needs places and people who aren't necessarily good or evil (there, I just alienated the Objectivists). Anything goes....

....but no replicators. I don't want a post-scarcity galaxy as that would just lead to instant socialist/Communist Utopia. I want scarcity, problems, resources, trade, Ayn Rand, Freelance Traders, privacy, aliens, etc etc.

Oh my gosh, a Pandora/Dune world. This is perfect for the self interest/altruistic intentions of both sides, and the philosophy of "Ends justify the Means".

NOTE: This was an older post that I didn't submit. Forgot about it and sent the previous message.

Liberty Entrepreneurs

A coalition of anarcho-capitalistic businessmen located around the Mercury System, this conglomerate is in a constant competition. Nothing is public. Everything, from water to healthcare to law, is on the market. Everything is on sale, and the belief that private property and incentive will keep ethics and prices together is the core glue.

Created in 2511 during the Mercury Exodus, in which the Temurav Empire and the Liberty Entrepreneurs fought each other until the LE evacuated into the Mercury System, the Liberty Entrepreneurs have the heaven of Laissez-Faire proponents. Total unregulated economy and vast amounts of property were the treasures for the hard-working individual. The Mercury System has no unified political system; rather, it lets the market and the consumer themselves determine which set of laws would suit them. The Private Defense Agencies that scattered around the system and beyond also competed for the customers who wanted the most security their Platinum Credit could buy. The PDAs serve as a supplement to the militia forces that fend off threats like the Tenurav Empire as well.

There are problems with the anarcho-capitalist mindset of Mercury System,though. Due to the idea of ultimate freedom, no one really knows what their neighbor is doing; alongside the harmless drugs and nuclear weapons, slavery is also in the market. While many places have anti-slavery private laws within their property, there are others who hold slaves within their own property and shun the idea of non-coercive exchange that is the holy law for the ideological Capitalist. A low-tensity civil war between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions is currently occurring, with no side having the upper gain.


Tl;dr Rothbard for President! :P
Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.
-Joseph Campbell
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