New sci-fi political / economic system (Patreon)

So going to finish editing homelands 26 tomorrow.  I was reading a thing about how there's so little creativity in political and economic systems in science fiction and fantasy that I decided to take a stab at it.  Let me know what you think.  As always, thank you ever for supporting my writing and brain ramblings.

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"I don't understand," Terra muttered, as if admitting to the Lunarian that she had some dirty sexual fetish.  And, of course, once confessed, she couldn't stop.  "I don't understand any of it!  I've been here for three days and I don't even know how to buy a meal!  And whenever I ask I get these funny looks.  Am I being rude or something?"

Selene smiled, shaking her head.  "You're a refugee till they return you to earth.  It's not surprising you don't know, especially with all the propoganda back on earth.  Let's start with something simple," she opened up screen and set it to holographic display.  "What do you want to have for lunch?  Here are all the places that are currently serving prepaired meals and how far away they are."  She said as she gestured to a scrolling menu.  Some of them had gold stars, others had red.  But Terra pointed at one that was at least familiar.  "There!  A hamburger."

"Excellent.  Tell me how you want it."  She said, and entered in her tastes.  Finally she nodded.  "I have our meal entered in," she said as she rose.  "We can have it delivered if you want, but really it's not far and I'd rather not accrue obligationary credit without good reason."

"Obligatory credit?" Terra asked.  "Is that your money?"

"Not exactly.  It's similar in that it takes an abstract concept and quantifies it into accountable form, but instead of being a materialization of productivity, it's a quantification of consumption."  She sighed.  "Let me simplify.  On earth, you do a thing and are compensated with money.  You spend the money on things you need and want.  Here, we do the reverse.  We need and want things.  As those needs and wants are provided, we generate obligation.  To discharge that obligation, we do work."

"And what if you don't work?" she asked, furrowing her brow.

"Less and less will be provided for you.  But there's a difference in that if you run out of money, what happens to you on earth?" Selene asked.

"You wind up homeless.  You could even starve," she admitted.

"Correct, but here on the moon, the worst that happens to you is your life is unpleasant.  You'll always have the basics of food, shelter, clothing, and air.  Those are involatile.  The encouragement is that if you want better, you have to find a means of discharging that obligation.  But if you don't, or can't, it eventually evaporates on its own.  Likewise, you can work as hard as you like, but there's a limit to how much obligation you can discharge.  Once you get it to zero, any further time you spend is essentially volunteered.

They walked over to kiosk were food was being produced by a placidly smiling Lunarian.  She showed her computer and took the two food trays back to their table.  "So don't have any rich people?"

"Not particularly.  On earth, the wealthy largely get more money through investment.  This in turn draws more future capital to them.  They're not actually working for the money.  The money is being pulled by the system, forcing an economy that is forever growing.  Such a system can be expanded, but collapse is inevitable.

"So how would I start a business on the moon?" Terra asked.  Then she furrowed her brows.  "Wait.  Why would I start a business on the moon if I can't make money off it?"

"I presume because its something you want to do?  We all have so many hours in a life.  We have to be doing something with it.  But lets say you wanted to organize a business to do a thing.  You would submit a proposal to the community block, settlement, or government depending on how big your business is.  Your idea would then need to generate interest.  As you generate interest, an amount of obligation credits are donated to you.  You'll need workers willing to donate time to your idea.  If your business generates value, more credits will be attributed to you as people use your business.  If you don't, eventually your credits will dry up and your business closed and its equipment allocated to other endeavors."

"So you're saying I wouldn't own anything in the business I make?!" Terra asked, aghast.

"Of course not.  Why would you?" Selene asked.  "Do you own the air you inhale or exhale?  The food and water you eat and excrete?"

"Yes, I own my food," Terra said with a huff.

"Here, you don't.  Here, you are hungry, so food is made available.  Selection isn't infinite of course, but then selection is never infinite on earth either.  And if the food you like isn't available, then you can list it as a want.  If enough people want a thing, someone will make it available."

"Wait.  Are you saying your whole economy is... what?  'On demand?'" Terra asked as she finished her burger.  It was probably all vat grown proteins, but it still tasted like cow.

"Of course," she said as she opened a program.  "This is my 'wants/needs' page.  There's a list of literally millions of products that we can produce.  After all, it's all just chemistry.  I can flag any number of them as wants.  That's simply telling the system that there's desire for that product.  When there's enough demand, someone will spend their time filling it, starting a business and such.  When the want is fulfilled, some other want might be addressed."

"But what if there's not enough productivity?" Terra countered.

"Then it becomes a political issue.  'Do we invest in more productivity capability or cut back on other wants?"  She said and then pointed to a little star.  "Now 'needs' are different.  I only get so many needs to flag, so I try to only flag ones that are most important to me.  For example, if I absolutely needed grass fed beef, I could flag that need.  There are people who specialize in filling that need, but I'll be heavily obligated to fill it.  Needs are really big deals, so we don't abuse them."

"It just seems so weird."

"Weird is advertisement and marketing.  You understand that's all waste, right?  Earth squanders time and resources convincing people that you have to spend your money on this good and that good.  We don't do that here.  We supply demand.  We do it as efficiently and effectively as possible.  We don't care what you want.  We care only that you can get it in a timely manner.  And it turns out that when so many of those overheads are removed, goods can be made ridiculously cheap."

"What about innovation and choice?  Why bother coming up with new things?  What prevents stagnation?" Terra asked, exasperated.

"People come up with new things all the time.  We don't patent and market ideas.  Quite honestly, the idea's absurd.  If you can take an existing idea, and make it better, why not do so?"

"Because... people should be able to profit off their ideas!" Terra said, feeling like it should be obvious.

"And they do.  Some people spend all their lives thinking up new technologies.  And when they generate sufficient want, or are more effective at fulfilling need, they are produced.  But we don't bother with lawyers fighting and scrambling over this idea or that idea.  We recognize all ideas as equal, and pursue those that fulfill demand.  But we don't obsess and quibble over their production.  If it is good, it will generate interest.  If it generates interest, it generates demand.  If there is enough demand, it should be pursued.  Isn't that obvious?"

"But... what about trade?  No one will trade with you if you're going to take their intellectual property!"

"All ideas are emancipated upon arriving on the moon.  To be honest, there's very little the Earth produces that we want.  Mostly some more exotic organics we struggle to produce in quantity.  We can mass produce wood, but not actual lumber.  When we do need Earth goods, we essentially barter with the Earth.  You have a market price for gold.  We are largely outside the gravity well of earth.  It is cheaper for us to go and find a gold rich asteroid, powder it, and sell the goal to subsidiaries on earth and in exchange we purchase what we need.  In fact, we have such a large capital surplus that we rarely need to go through the trouble of offering goods in exchange."

"That's parasitical!" Terra countered.

"Your economic system.  Your economic failure," she said with a shrug.  "So long as you prioritize the acquisition of money over the fulfillment of demand, you're always going to be at a disadvantage."  Selene blinked and she opened up a panel.  "Ah... one second.  I need to vote."

"You're having an election today?" Terra asked.

"Every day is an election.  Politics are just another demand.  If a person wants to donate their time to solving political disputes, they can announce their desire to do so just like any other business.  If enough people support them, their ideas can be implemented.  If enough don't, they're abandoned."

"But what about laws?  What's to stop a person from passing a law making themselves king of the moon?"

"Nothing what so ever, but they'd have to work hard to support it."  She opened up a page.  "Here are our political candidates.  You can select if you strongly support them, kinda support them, don't care, kinda don't support them, or oppose them.  So long as they maintain a proper level of support, they're in power and have to work with other people in power.  If we don't like them, we can withdraw our support and remove them from power."

"So you mean direct democracy?  That's too messy to be practical."

Selene smiled.  "Perhaps, but it works for us.  But quite honestly, we don't even view it as democracy.  It's simply aggregate of political will."  Selene said with a shrug.  "People can withdraw their support for a person and remove them from power for a time or perminently at any time.  We don't have to wait for elections or tolerate corruption.  We simply make our will known and only empower people with support."

"But what about manufactured consent?  What's to stop someone from doing propoganda to go to war with the Earth?  Or from people in your government from lying to you?"

"Nothing, but they'll have to win on the merit of their ideas.  As for lying to us, I am the government.  It has no secrets from us."

"Yeah, right," she snorted.

"I can access any internal government document at any time.  Any sent communication.  Any and all.  The only caveat are military communications, and even those are unsealed after a year.  I know everything that a politician says to others.  There is absolute transparency."

"What about privacy?!" Terra gasped.

"If they wished privacy, they should have remained outside government service.  I am the government.  I have every right to every piece of information undertaken on my behalf, and I will not support any politician that attempts to without information from me."

"But there's nothing to stop your enemies from spying on you!" Terra said, shaking her head as if it should be obvious.

"What do you think we want to keep from our enemies?" she asked in turn.  "If an Earth government wants to know what we're doing, we tell them.  We don't have to hide information because we never do anything worth hiding.  We don't make sneaky surprise attacks because we don't want to be sneaky or attack people.  And yes, Earth nation states DO use our information to their advantage.  The best information is the fact that at any time we could utter annihilate any nation on Earth with orbital bombardment if we really, really wanted to.  And because you know this, and we know you know this, we ignore the hyperbole and saber rattling because we know that we will never have a significant armed conflict.  Because if we did, we would obliterate you.  In fact, it would be hard not to obliterate you.  We wouldn't even have to target a specific nation.  A hemisphere would do."

"That's monstrous!"

"Which is why we don't do it.  But go ahead and nuke one of our settlements and see how rapidly we decide we do want to."  Selene almost had a pitying look.  "Do you want to see for yourself?  I assure you, the e-mails of government are extremely, exceptionally, boring."

"I just... it doesn't seem possible for a government to exist without maintaining secrets from its populace."

"Quite honestly, we can't understand how a government is possible while keeping secrets from its people.  The imbalance of power is utter intolerable to us.  It generates paranoia, perpetuates cruelty, but ultimately it's just not necessary.  Most people are apathetic to the day to day exchanges of bureaucrats, but there are always some who follow and watch them closely for signs of corruption."

Terra shook her head.  "I don't buy it.  They have to be hiding it somehow."

"Oh, I assume they could be writing notes on paper, but in addition to being inefficient, the use of paper would definitely stick out, and someone would see something.  It'd be a guarantee to generate opposition, and there's really no reason to BE corrupt.  We don't have money, and you can only counteract so much consumption."

"I just... direct democracy is just rule of the mob!  How do you prevent 51% from abusing 49%?"

"Why would we want to abuse them?" Selene asked in turn.

"Because people are shit?" Terra asked, harsh than she intended.

"I find that statement horribly sad," Selene replied, looking disappointed.  "We have 51% imposing rules over 49% all the time.  It's up to the minority to make a better argument to convince others.  But there's nothing for us to take from the minority, nor is there anything for them to take for us.  Everyone generates the same consumption and demand and we all know fulfilling demand is more important than denying the fulfillment of others due to some arbitrary metric."

"What if they say the 49% can't vote?" Selene countered.

"Ah, that would be very foolish then.  That would be changing the system, not the rules, and we tend to be very skeptical of people who say that we should introduce such political barriers to participation.  The only people who are barred from democratic processes, and the economic system, are children."

"You let criminals vote?" she scoffed.

"No.  We don't have criminals.  We have children."  That is to say, if someone a criminal, they are rendered to to the same status as children in our society.  Limited participation, until they demonstrate maturity.  Only then are they permitted to return to adult society."

"So you limit their participation in society till they say they're ready to be good?  And that works?"

"Well enough.  You underestimate the power of a transparent, informational liberated society.  Crime is an expression of immaturity.  If a person has a need, we try to supply it so they don't have to revert to criminality.  If a person has to break the law to fulfill their needs, its not a crime.  It's a failure of society."

"So what if a person needs something intolerable, like sex with a child?" she asked.

"Why would that be intolerable?  We would have to address that need with extreme care, but a need is a need.  Perhaps they want a sexual encounter with someone of small frame and there's a person willing to supply that fantasy.  We would try to facilitate it in an acceptable way, not arbitrarily deny it."

Terra grinned, wanting a victory, "So what if he wanted to have sex with a ten year old child?"

She shook her head.  "That would be unacceptable, whether it was a ten year old child, a fifteen year old child, or a thirty year old child.  Children have demonstrated that they can not make rational decisions.  Instead, we'd try our best to find them a ten year old adult."

Terra recoiled.  "What are you talking about?"

"Maturity is not a measure of chronology.  When an individual child wants to become an adult, they have to take a series of tests demonstrating that they understand all the responsibilities of being an adult.  If they pass, they can be regarded as an adult and have their demand met.  That includes sexual intercourse if they so desire."

"But what's to stop an adult from exploiting them?!" Terra gasped.

"Everyone else being aware of their relationship.  If someone is being harmed, then one or both are in need of being reverted to childhood status until they can demonstrate maturity.  If harm isn't taking place, then what's the objection?"

"A thirty year old having sex with a ten year old is disgusting!"

"I agree its unusual, which is why I don't do it, but so long as the ten year old understands the mechanism of society, it is their body and their life and their time and their demand.  I think the record is a six year old as the youngest adult."

"But... why?"

"As I recall, they just wanted to be.  They wanted their own demand and their own life.  I can't presume to know their mind.  Some people want to be whatever they are, not told what they can and can't be."

"Would you let someone commit suicide?"

"Yes, after finding out why they wanted to do so.  It is their life to end, and we would do so humanely as possible."

"That's... that's insane.  You're all insane!"

"We are all individuals expressing our individuality in aggregate.  We could impose a restriction on the age of sexual participants, and have in the past.  The problem is that such arbitary barriers were inefficient.  We wasted time and thought on something that was largely not a problem.  So instead of fixating on the ages of the participants, we fixate on the harm, which is where the actual problem is.  We have a far lower rate of suicidality than Earth, but it happens.  We have some members of society attracted to members who are young.  As long as harm is not being committed, we don't intercede."

"So how do you determine harm?"

"The same as we do everything else: by aggregation.  Say you slapped me.  Have I been harmed?  Well, if I say you harmed me, then it needs to go to trial.  But say I don't say you harmed me.  What if everyone else sees it and thinks you did?  Well then it also needs to go to trial.  Not to determine if a crime has been commited, but to determine if harm is being committed or not.  And if no harm is being commited, no crime is being commited."

"So what if everything thinks thirty year olds having sex with ten year olds is harmful?" Terra asked, as if it should be obvious.

"Then the trial would determine which one was the criminal and revert them to childhood, curtail their freedom, and after a year they'd be eligible for adulthood again."

"Which one?!  The thirty year old is obviously the sicko."

"That is one possibility.  The other is the ten year old doesn't know how to conduct themselves sexually.  Or both could be guilty."  Selene gave a shrug.  "Again, the ten year old decided to become an adult and hold themselves to the responsibility for adulthood."  She folded her hands before her.  "Generally, most people become adults between fifteen and twenty years of age.  Childhood restrictions though are generally enough that by twenty most people want that social access."

"So you're all libertines then?  Eat, smoke, and screw whomever you want, just don't harm anyone?" Terra sniffed.

"That's it in a nutshell, but the harm is very important.  If I play loud music and it's keeping you awake, am I harming you, are you harming me, are we harming each other, or is no one being harmed?  In classical libertarianism, harm would be deprivation of property, but we don't have property in the classic sense.  In the former case, you losing sleep harms you.  Me turning down my music doesn't harm me, so I should turn it down.  That doesn't mean I'm banned from playing music!  That would harm me.  So some kind of an arrangement would need to be met."

"What about firearms?" Terra asked sharply.  "Denying me a firearm is harmful."

"If you say so, but why would I deny you a weapon if you want one?  Especially if you need one?  That would be a gross imposition on my part."

Clearly, Terra hadn't expected that.  "Well what stops some people from getting a bunch of guns and just overthrowing the system?" 

"They would be ignored at best.  If they attempted to push through their demands by force, they would tried by the public and reverted to children.  Children may not own weapons.  After a year, they could test to become adults.  They could get their weapons back and live their lives."  Selene narrowed her eyes, her placid smile turning hard.  "If they persisted in their attempt to achieve control through violence, they would likely be determined to be suicidal and would be treated as such.  We would vent their atmosphere, or quarentine them in their habitation.  We don't force people to live in society.  Childhood, thankfully, is preferable to death for most."

"Ah..." Terra pursed her lips together, trying to find some flaw or argument.  "What about housing?  Can you just live anywhere you want?"

"Of course not.  Every adult is provided four hundred square feet of living space.  Couples and groups can combine those spaces, as desired.  Ten percent of habitation space is kept vacant for flexibility, renovations and the like.  All are kept within walking distance of transportation.  Children may live with parents, or have their own habitation.  Naturally, children are more widely monitored and have fewer choices without a parent caring for them."

She shook her head.  "It's a wonder everyone isn't scrambling to live in utopia."

"It's not utopia.  It's simply different.  We're used to being told 'not today, but maybe next week'.  We're used to being told 'That's hurting someone else, please stop.'  We're used to not caring about a person's particularities if they don't hurt someone, but at least want to talk to them if they do something harmful to themselves.  We don't have much privacy at all, and rely on the wisdom of the masses.  We don't have rich people or poor people, just people who do a lot and people who do little.  And we do so as efficiently as possible."

"Well," Terra muttered, "I still think that it's weird."

"Perhaps... but you'll never be homeless or starving on the moon."

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Not sure if this is anarchocommunist or what.  Someone with smarter political / economic labels can tell me.