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Anonymous
The Slacker Crackdown 2016-09-06 23:59:03 Post No. 49211725
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The Slacker Crackdown 2016-09-06 23:59:03 Post No. 49211725
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"Somewhere in the suburbs there is an unemployed 23-year-old who is plotting a cultural insurrection, one that will resonate with existing demographic, cultural and economic trends so powerfully that it will knock American society off its axis."
"The cultural battle lines of our time, with red America pitted against blue, will be scrambled as Buddhist vegan militia members and evangelical anarchist squatters trade tips on how to build self-sufficient vertical farms from scrap-heap materials."
- excerpt from "The Dropout Economy", by Reihan Salam, March 2010
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Access to land, water, internet, transportation, medical treatment, and security services are free and unregistered transactions at the point of use. These resources (industries is so out of date and inaccurate) are managed by for-profit public-private hybrid organizations, referred to in the vernacular as The Trusts. The Trusts frack all the oil, choose which drugs are provided, choose which dwellings are safe and unsafe (and what land is fit and unfit for human habitation), and choose when and where the trains will run and which laws will be enforced. In exchange you get to ride the trains for free, walk up to any empty lot and build your filthy lean-to, and enjoy North America's bountiful waterways and grazing land.
As System D, the gray market, took over 2/3rds of the world's workforce, the global market knew better than to try to keep taxing and registering and regulating these people. Proper real businesses where the minority of human beings on Earth have real jobs were either classified as small businesses and relieved of tax and regulatory burdens in order to put themselves on even footing with the bazaars and underground dealers, or were deemed so large as to be too big to fail and formed ultimately into The Trusts.
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This was just as well, as in the ongoing economic climate it was impossible for brick and mortar stores such as Walmart to remain in operation as taxed businesses and not either free for all bazaars or public utilities. People will steal anything in front of them, and the costs of policing stores for all of the fights and incidental crimes that just happen to occur in them was just getting too much. These days if you don't want to make a deal with a street vendor you just order something online and get it shipped to you. Amazon is a Trust now and there is no limit of cheap labor willing to be subcontracted by them (or anyone else, such as private sellers on Etsy and so forth) to hand deliver your item to you.
Along with brick and mortar and the highway system, another thing that is no more is air travel as we knew it. With fuel scarcity and the hydrogen revolution, the FAA just can't regulate all of these airships and drones, so the big sky has been turned into a Trust. You can go up any time you want without registering with anyone, but if the people in charge see you doing something they don't like, you'll get a security drone on your tail.
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As a consequence of the food shortages of the early 21st century, which were indirectly responsible for revolutions like the Arab Spring, agricultural policy became the number one concern in North America. The first purpose of the Trusts was to relocate (they can't make you stay there, they can just make it free to go there and then not provide you a way to get out) out of work young people into rural areas and encourage them to concentrate into new agricultural communities. Encouragement of smallholder agriculture turned Vietnam into a net food exporter and was great for the economy, so why couldn't it work here? While the resulting kibbutzes are still around, it was mostly a failure in the food production department (but did help start a plan to disperse the population more thinly across the continent). The real food revolution has been in urban agriculture as a consequence of the previously mentioned changes in the global economic system.
One World: The new economic and political system of the "free world"/"law-abiding international community". The soft authoritarianism of massive social engineering by for-profit, unelected organizations which use less direct force than either previous megacorporations or federal agencies. The reformed globalist system, incorporating the "legitimate grievances" of populist and nationalist movements by simply accepting the global cyber-favela future and rolling with it, so that the politicians and executives in the ruling elite would remain on top and not be overthrown.
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If everything is free, how is anything for profit?
What ensures that say, the internet trust will actually provide internet coverage and not just slack off and let their equipment go old and outdated?
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>>49211794
>The reformed globalist system, incorporating the "legitimate grievances" of populist and nationalist movements by simply accepting the global cyber-favela future and rolling with it,
This doesn't make any sense. This is the opposite of nationalist or populist
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Your character's Assets have Material, Social, and Intellectual dimensions; because in the mid to late 21st century you don't own an AK-47 without learning how to repair it and belonging to a militia or online community of fellow gunowners. Assets are the means of production in a world where the old economy no longer exists.
the Follower is either the personal servant of a Patron, one of those who maintained their wealth outside of Trusts through family inheritance of valuable property, or a fanatical devotee of an NGO - with most organizations not dissolved into System D gray market status or formed up into a giant Trust having avoided those fates by becoming legally classified as a church. While they may see themselves as an artist or a warrior, the real commodity they provide their Patron is the loyalty necessary to do what drones cannot and Turks cannot be trusted to do without oversight. Their primary Assets are tools granted to them by their Patron.
the Mad Doctor survived the Zimbabweification of North America by squatting in the university or research facility at which they had been a student or faculty member when they all began shutting down. By the time the Dubaification was in full swing, these societies had become runaway colonies of weird science and untamed experimentation. Their primary Assets are the inventions they create.
the Turk works for others doing what drones can't. One day they are riding along an automated shipping airship because as a coolie they weigh less than a sufficient mechanical lifting rig attached to the vessel would. The other day they're hired security, beating up other desperate freelancers like themselves. Such is life in the gig economy. Their primary Assets are their body, their training, and the wearables that let them get the most out of their efforts. They are the proletariat of the post-industrial age.
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>>49211954
The Trusts were the consequence of returning to a system of open range and free grazing. After the civil war/unrest this allowed those who refused to work in the gig economy or as personal servants to more easily live out their lives in their communities, be they isolationists or separatists or what have you. North America as a natural resource was "de-marketized" and returned to the Public Trusts, in the trust of The Trusts. Nestle sold water, the water Trust just polices it to stop abuse (and of course this lack of impartial written law/rule of law has been a step back according to some old fashiond types, but the old way was killing everyone so lets see whether there is another revolution in fifty years).
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>>49212170
the Debrouillard is the petite bourgeoisie of System D, the one who buys (or more often begs, borrows, steals, or recycles) things and then sells them, who makes deals and facilitates transactions and generally acts as a middleman. They are the future of today's fruit vendor in the public market and the seller of bootleg DVD's of unreleased films. Their primary Assets are in constant flux as they juggle an everchanging set of goods and favors they trade in a neverending gift-exchanging video-game style fetch-quest.
the Kibbutzer is part of a community that was either relocated into agricultural service as part of the government initiative to prevent famine from the new Dust Bowl or who banded together to pool resources and buy/claim land in these days after the end of accessible credit. Their primary Assets are their stake in the community and the tools they use to work and defend the land they all share together.
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>>49211925
The Trusts are part of the government. They make sure all the untraceable, un-keep-trackable people of North America play nice when using the land and the water and the air and in exchange they are in charge of fracking the gas, extracting the coal, collecting the solar energy, and generally using the best, choices bits to generate wealth for the establishment - where private and public are interchangeably intertwined.
They make sure Turks like you aren't setting up fracking operations or smelting iron, because the government needs those resources (and carbon credits), and in exchange they serve as (mostly) benevolent police/oversight of your activities as you enjoy the vast natural wealth (just not the best bits) of North America. So you get to live off of the land and harvest the machine part carrion of the industrial age (and trade without taxes or licenses) while what old style industry remains, mostly automated resource gathering, is done by the Trusts.
They can be trusted to keep controlling, because control is both their job and their reward. The open-ended contract to be the civil authority creates its own opportunities for fun and profit.
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This is what retarded millennial masturbation looks like.
Pure mental garbage with no knowledge, reason or even internal consistency.
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>>49212627
Millennial? I think this transcends classification. This is insanity pure and simple.
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I was initially considering Apocalypse World for this resurrection of the old Slacker Crackdown from /tg/'s salad days, but now I'm thinking I'll need to homebrew a system based around Assets.
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>>49211725
>Amazon becomes a public utility
Who produces the goods that you can buy?
Who prints the money you buy it with?
>people favor street bazaars over centralized retail
Why? How is that more efficient or useful than a supermarket?
Is US military hegemony somehow maintained? If not, who sweeps in to fill the power vacuum (and eventually start pushing around the people of North America with gunboat diplomacy)?
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