Chapter 15 · Earth in 2497
Economy: markets on top, essentials underneath
The Settlement's economy is capitalism with a floor: health, food, education and housing are free and state-run, and above that floor people trade, build and get rich. Threshold Democracy rests on this. Its defenders hold that an exam for the vote is only fair if education and a minimum of essentials reach everyone equally — so the floor is written into the constitution, where no vote can lower it, and guarding it is the Chamber's first duty. The Mandate guarantees much the same essentials as policy rather than right; the Parishad guarantees free, equal health care to the age of 100 (see The Parishad); the Open Cities guarantee nothing.
The floor
- Free essentials. Health (including body renewal and an equal ration of brain renewal), food, education up to and beyond the Threshold, and housing are provided by the state as of right. Its ancestors are the Nordic welfare states and the universal-basic-services movements of the twenty-first century. On Proxima the floor cannot include brain renewal, which is out of reach there (see Ageing slowed, not ended).
- Raised care. Essential provision includes core maintenance, necessary repairs, power and a serviceable body. Luxury appearance, specialised equipment and elective changes may cost extra (see Care and bodies, in One mind, one form).
- Little poverty, mostly illness. In the best-run Threshold polities almost nobody is poor, and those who are usually have a severe mental illness. When found, they can be effectively treated. Finland's Housing First policy — housing first, treatment second — which has cut long-term homelessness sharply, is the acknowledged ancestor.
- What counts as illness in 2497. Not only classic conditions, but Hollowing-era drift, the first memory saturation in the oldest renewed, and Raised-specific disorders such as early swamping.
Work and responsibility
Robots perform most routine physical labour, while licensed tools handle much routine administration and analysis. Human and Raised professionals judge results, sign off work and take responsibility for what they approve. Residents can qualify through apprenticeship and practical skill or build businesses, although university routes remain closed until they pass the Threshold. Ordinary professional approval is distinct from a Slow Lane signing office, which remains citizen-only (see Work and trades).
Network access
The Settlement, the Parishad and the Belt Republic provide free Level 1 protected access to basic communication, essential services and purchases, education and a public reference library. Public terminals and loan interfaces make it usable without owned equipment. Level 1 also covers civic information and discussion, petitions, consultations and voting where eligible. Level 2 adds wider public forums, hosted entertainment and wider commerce for a fee. Personal sharing, small groups, downloaded books and local games do not require Level 2. Local rules define essential purchases, consider disability and occupational needs, and allow appeals. Access does not make goods free.
In the Open Cities, both levels are paid; the only generally available free network access is to the Wild. Voting remains available through civic terminals and polling places without a subscription. The Mandate officially permits only Level 1, including approved entertainment, though wealth and influence can secure Level 2 access. These differences shape who can take part in cultural and social life (see Two levels of access, in Everyday technology).
Where the wealth is
When machines make almost everything and essentials are free, wealth gathers in what cannot be automated or multiplied. Mirror power is making energy cheaper, but it has not ended scarcity; it has added new scarce things of its own. The rich of 2497 are rich in scarce things.
| Scarce good | Why it is scarce | Who holds it |
|---|---|---|
| Licensed bulk compute | Capped by law since the Partition and by treaty between the blocs; also the bottleneck of brain renewal, so in the Open Cities and the Parishad it is literally years of life | Firms, research houses, Lines, and anyone buying a longer life |
| mirror array output | A bloc's mirror array, all its seeds together, doubles only every 8–11 years, under its existing production and maintenance constraints, including licensed industrial-controller deliveries (and, in the Settlement, human signatures): about 45–60 TW for the Mandate in 2497, 11–21 TW for the Open Cities, 5–10 TW for the Parishad, 4–5 TW for the Settlement. Little of its power passes between blocs, except as Freehold's pay for its crews | The blocs; the Settlement's array is state-owned |
| Emitters | Delivering a beam takes emitters, which need far more chips than collectors; every large one is registered, and its shutdown key is split with the Concord Accord | The blocs, and the worlds and firms that buy their beams |
| Mercury | The system's furnace: energy-hungry industry moves there and ships its products out, carrying energy in goods rather than beams | Split between the blocs, each working its own seeds and factories |
| Earth land | Earth is capped near eight billion; the northern refuge latitudes are the best land left | Old families, Lines, the longest-lived |
| Earth's heat budget | Waste heat caps how much energy Earth can use: about 2,000 TW warms it roughly as much as doubling CO₂, so energy-hungry industry is pushed off Earth | The polities that ration it, and the firms licensed to use it |
| Handmade work | Provenance culture prizes unassisted craft; it cannot be mass-produced | Guilds, master makers, collectors |
| Climber slots | A few elevator cables carry nearly all traffic from Earth's surface to orbit | The blocs, by treaty share on the Elevator, and the Settlement and the Mandate each on its own new elevator; Lines and firms that lease them |
| Sea lanes and chokepoints | Trade between the blocs passes the Bosphorus, Suez, Hormuz, the Cape, Malacca or Lombok | The blocs that hold them |
| Birth licences | In most Settlement polities on Earth, tradeable quotas per person per century, within the polity; in the Parishad, about two per couple, sold only by those made infertile; the Open Cities set none, and off Earth most caps have gone | Sold by the childless, bought by the prolific |
| Fame and reputation | Provenance makes it fragile (see Culture) | Performers, makers, witnesses |
Tradeable birth licences are the system's hidden inequality: in an economy of free essentials, the rich can buy the right to have more children on Earth. In the Parishad, where sellers must be made infertile, the poor sell their fertility itself. Raised parents may also buy unused birth rights and permanently surrender them to remain beyond 150, a legal but disapproved practice (see Parenthood in the Parishad).
The Open Cities set no birth caps. For 150 years the Settlement and the Mandate tolerated it, because the Open Cities hold the Elevator's platform; with the Mandate's elevator open in 2488 and the Settlement's under way, and Open City numbers estimated past their treaty share for the first time, both began in the 2490s to sanction them, with trade rules, asset seizures and licence bans, to make them keep their share of the treaty that holds Earth near eight billion (see Sanctions on the Open Cities, in The long middle). Their population is estimated rather than counted, from orbit, from their own voter rolls and from trade, and the Open Cities dispute every figure.
The Band: keeping wealth within a range
Settlement polities hold wealth inequality within a range written into the constitution and measured as the ratio of the richest households' wealth to the median — called the Band. No vote can widen it.
- How it is enforced. Wealth and land taxes; time limits on inherited property (the Rotation Laws); public charges on resources and licensed bulk compute; sales of power from the state-owned array; and a Vault dividend: royalties and licence fees on the designs of the Settlement's four publicly owned Vaults, which largely pay for the floor. Mirror designs are never published, so they earn none of it. Because the floor is entrenched, so is the dividend: no Chamber can divert it. Who sets the Vaults' questions, and so which designs earn it, is settled by a majority of the Settlement's Chambers, and the Mirror Race has made that queue a weapon (see The Mirror Race).
- Capital flight. Hold the Band tight and wealth leaves for the Open Cities, the Parishad, the Belt or charter worlds — along with people seeking longer lives. The Ore Secession of 2441–2449 was, at heart, a tax revolt by the rich frontier, sharpened by fear that mirror power would soon undercut the Belt's fuel monopoly. Rules on moving assets between the blocs and the Belt Republic are a running quarrel, fought out in the Anchorage, the council where all six members sit, though the Accord gives it no power over money. The Band itself cannot move, so when wealth starts to flee, the Vaults propose laws to stop it. Laws that simply restrict how much citizens may accumulate rarely win a vote; the ones that pass usually push the cost outward — trade rules, asset seizures and licence bans that bleed the Open Cities. The equality test in Vault screening applies only inside the Settlement.
- Gulf money. When oil lost its value and the Gulf emptied, its sovereign wealth emigrated rather than vanished. Much of it now owns property in the Open Cities and the Belt: the Gulf states' lands joined the Parishad, but their fortunes survived as portfolios.
Policy: the Vaults propose, people choose
Superintelligence rarely produces one right answer, because every policy trades off growth, equality, freedom and risk. Asked how to keep the Band, a Vault returns several workable designs, each with different winners and losers. Choosing between them is a question of values — and that is where human politics lives. In the Mandate, officials make the same choice without asking anyone.
- Framing is power. Whoever writes the question shapes the options, which is why the fight over who sets Vault questions matters so much.
- Unvaulted candidates. Occasionally a politician runs on ideas that did not come from any Vault. They are popular with Hearthers and the Hand culture, and mocked by technocrats. Their ideas can win elections, but like any bill they must clear Vault screening (see Politics).
The shadow of the safety net
- The poor as patients. If a system assumes anyone poor must be ill, refusal, dissent and eccentricity can be labelled and treated. Settlement law makes treatment voluntary except where life is at risk, and the line between care and control is fought over constantly. In the Mandate, where the Vaults forecast unrest, the same line is drawn by officials.
- Who does the finding. Outreach depends on witness networks and household records, which can slide into surveillance.
Outside the Settlement
Not everywhere has a floor. Beyond the Settlement's reach (see Other political orders, in Politics) there are also darker places: warlord zones in the buffer and in some of the emptied lands the blocs claim but do not police unless population begins rising there, and outer-Belt habitats run as dictatorships, though officially within the Belt Republic or a bloc. Their existence is a standing argument for the Settlement — and an escape route from it.