Making a Fascist, But Inefficient Interstellar Government

Hallo! So over in the Random Worldbuilding Questions thread, I've been asking a lot of questions relating to the setting of a sci-fi action-comedy webcomic I one day hope to create. I was just explaining how, in this setting, the major interstellar government nuked the Earth because of a bureaucratic oversight that got way out of hand. I had been meaning to ask some more questions on other ways to show this government's shortcomings, but I figured that was a sufficiently broad enough question to warrant its own thread, so here it is. :V

Some background: the interstellar government in question is the Federation of Organized Systems, or the F.O.S. This setting takes place in an alternate timeline in which the Soviet Union never collapsed, survived into the 21st Century and became the most powerful state on Earth after the United States and Canada collapsed in the aftermath of the North American Civil War and the melting of the ice caps (which flooded most of the Eastern Seaboard). However, the USSR could only survive by instituting capitalistic reforms, similar to what the PRC did in real life. The specifics aren't important, as the story itself takes place in the 25th Century so all the ATL stuff is long in the past.

The F.O.S. was formed in the late 22nd Century as a means of putting an end to the international squabbling over colonization claims in the solar system (which from this point on will be referred to as Sol). The F.O.S. was first conceived as a joint effort between the four major world powers - the Soviet Union, China, the European Union, and Westam (the de facto successor state to the USA, with its capital in Sacramento, CA). With such unanimous support, it wasn't long before every nation-state on Earth signed up to the Federation, with the sole exception of the Washingtonian Empire. However, the USSR was the most dominant member of the alliance and so the F.O.S. was mostly modeled after them (as an aside, I first conceived of this idea because I was tired of the United Space of America trope and I wanted to make a space society based off their old ideological rivals instead :V).

In the setting's present day, what with all the Earth-based nation-states having ceased to exist following the aforementioned incident with the nuke, the F.O.S. has mutated into an authoritarian federation-in-name-only, and while it retains a Soviet-style aesthetic (though it's much more diverse than the old USSR - the current premier is Scottish) and inherits much of the old communist rhetoric, it's all a facade. In practice, it's effectively a state-managed capitalist plutocracy, with business dominated by SolKom, a vast MegaCorp that's directly controlled by the F.O.S. (so instead of the corporations controlling the government, the government controls the corporations, but the effect is much the same).

In the story itself, one of the two main protagonists works for the BSB, the FOS' internal security agency that takes its cues from the old KGB. Shortly after the story starts, she gets Reassigned to Antarctica - more specifically, one of the Outer Systems, recently-colonized star systems where direct government oversight is much more lacking, as the FOS simply doesn't have the manpower to closely police all eight systems under its control; plus, communicating among official channels is hard enough when done within one system thanks to a Vast Bureaucracy, let alone between two different systems. Out here, the FOS is only nominally in charge - the local colonies just set up their own governments with their own laws, and while this is technically illegal, they did it anyway because they (correctly) figured the FOS can't arrest all of them.

Some other miscellaneous details about the society in deep-FOS space (Sol and the Inner Systems) as contrasted against the Outer Systems:

• SolKom loves subscriptions. Pretty much everything is attached to your level of subscription. The Vast Bureaucracy can be circumvented if you pay enough Roubles every month, as part of a 'cross-promotion' effort between SolKom and the FOS - even though it's common knowledge that they're the same organization.
• The FOS also likes holding 'civic competitions', for example the 'district litter challenge'. The citizen in the district that disposes of the most litter in a year receives a 50% tax break and a one-year gold SolKom subscription! The bottom 20% have all utilities cut off until the next contest begins. Typically, the point of these competitions is to artificially inflate demand for otherwise-useless SolKom products.

Ultimately, what I'm trying to work out here is what would be the best ways to show the drawbacks of this kind of system, and how would I best contrast it against the Outer Systems so as to both create the Fish out of Water scenario the aforementioned protagonist finds herself in, and explain the animosity that many Outer System residents have towards the FOS.

Edited by PresidentStalkeyes on May 18th 2019 at 5:34:01 PM

Off the grid colonies. People who just disappear into the wilderness of outer colonies and de facto form their own nations, towns and settlements. Entire regions could develop with limited if any contact beyond maybe subtle technology transfers.

Within the FOS, there is one right way to do anything (which is to say, one approved way). It may be that very few people actually know what that one way is, it may be that only one person knows, or that no one knows, but that one right way to do it exists, or so everyone assumes. One's career success consists almost entirely on how well one convinces the powers that be that you have done your job the one right way. Your protagonists is fairly successful at that.

Then she travels to the outer systems, where the most common response to her way of doing things is "What right way?" The comedic potential here is obvious.

Edited by DeMarquis on May 18th 2019 at 10:46:32 AM

There actually was one of those on one planet, though it was created largely by accident, since it was formed out of the remains of a wrecked colony ship that arrived about a hundred years before the rest of the system was settled. It's on the official record now but ended its isolationist stance mostly out of sheer loneliness. :V

Hmm, I like this idea. Sounds suitably flexible for the majority of the population who hasn't read... THE REGULATIONS.

Some expansion on the last post: to elaborate a bit more on the 'subscriptions' and 'civil contests' thing, Oblasts (regions defined by planet) in deep-FOS space run what is essentially a Social Credit system - albeit a very gamified one. You can pay for a number of different subscription options for different benefits - for example, access to certain media, a personal internet connection, high-speed transit, and so on. If you're too poor to afford any of that, you can instead earn points by competing in the Civil Contests - which are held pretty much all the time - and cashing these points in for subscriptions. Those without subscriptions of any kind are known as Unsubs, and have to contend with boring educational programming, incredibly slow trains, and even slower queues to get on the slow trains.

Only problem is, this whole system is run by rather haphazardly-put-together A.I. - the engineers that maintain the A.I. are discouraged from actually learning how it works to assuage concerns that they might rig the system in their favour. This means the AIs have a nasty habit of crashing, effectively shutting down entire Oblasts until they finish hard-rebooting, and after they've rebooted, a good chunk of subscription plans are completely erased, forcing people to re-purchase them. This has a nasty impact on the composition of the government - the past three Premiers wound up getting ousted because they had all their subscriptions erased and they couldn't get to important meetings on time.

The BSB agent suffers this fate at the beginning of the story, forcing her to travel to work in a crappy, incredibly slow 'Unsub train', complete with a PA system that insults everyone on board and passengers assuming that she's some kind of 'performer' because a real BSB agent would never be there - which leads to an extended misunderstanding which results in her winding up in the news because she got arrested for 'impersonating a BSB officer'. It's these events that cause her eventual reassignment - getting sent to the Outer Systems is deemed the worst punishment for a 'not exactly a crime but maybe a crime if we stretch our definition of the term'.

And of course there are people completely outside the system who seem to be able to get any service they really want, without appearing to exit in any records. Since the AI's cant see them, they can never be reported.

Hmm, that also sounds pretty logical. So if any folks lose their place on the records - or never had a place to begin with - they can just bluff their way past the AI and if an actual human asks any questions, just pretend to be someone important and threaten to report them for wasting their time. Though our protagonist wouldn't think to do that because she's too honest. :V

...After writing that up, as someone who works in retail I now heavily relate to this hapless minor functionary. :V

I was thinking more in terms of a rogueish conspiracy, but thats good too.

Why do I now get the feeling this is turning into some darkly humorous Spiritual Successor to Paranoia?

Because of how totalitarian governments come down on dissidents and suspected dissidents, life in a fascist state inevitably becomes a game of paranoia where everybody hates the government but also will betray one another to the government at the drop of a hat.

And, unless there are more efficient rival states out there, engendering competition, there is very little incentive for anyone to worry if all this butt-covering is harming productivity. People will invest almost all their time and energy into promoting their self-interest while pretending to be dutiful patriotic citizens, and that's basically the setting of Paranoia.