Politics

Environmental,
medical, technological and economic tumults of the 21st Century
profoundly changed how politics works on the planet Earth.

Not all
countries were equally affected. Those countries that were already richer, or
that were able to isolate themselves from refugee influxes, or that were less
affected by climate change, found their systems more able to cope –
particularly as these often became safe havens for corporate investment and
activity. Such countries, which still have vibrant economies and civilian
populations, are said to be in the Green Zone. Broadly, this includes North
America, Northern Europe and Australasia, along with Israel, Japan, South
Korea, Singapore, Brazil, Chile and Argentina. Generally, they are illiberal
corpocracies, masquerading as democracies and account for 20% of the global
population of 6.5 billion.

In most
cases, these countries are protected by a buffer of Yellow Zone countries. In
these states, there is still centralized control of territories, but there is
limited economic activity and virtually no civilian participation in industry.
Such states are propped up by corporate and Green Zone foreign aid for the sole
purpose of putting a barrier between the Green Zone and the climate refugees
who have not yet given up their dreams of a less horrific existence. Generally,
they are military dictatorships and account for 30% of the global population.

The countries
against which they are a buffer are in what is called the Red Zone. Here, all
state control has collapsed. There is no economic activity beyond localized
barter and subsistence survival, which is increasingly difficult in a poisoned
world with a dying biosphere. There is no protection against the extremes of
climate change. The only authority that exists takes the form of local warlords
controlling small and constantly feuding territories. Despite this parlous
state, the Red Zone accounts for fully 50% of the global population; however,
this is a fall from 65% in 2050, since which time 3.4 billion people in the Red
Zone have died or fled. This represents 50% of the 2050 population. Current
projections are that the Red Zone will be virtually uninhabited by the mid-22nd
Century. This is generally greeted with relief in the Green Zone countries, as
it will mean they can roll back their funding of the Yellow Zone buffers.

In the Green Zone, Nation States have
had their day and exist as a shadow of their former selves – a convenient
organisational unit only to the extent that they represent a useful collective
meme. State tax revenues are negligible, due to the fact that multinationals
offshore all of their profits to Virtual Havens within Arcadia, the limitless
virtual world that forms a bright counterpart to the physical one. While in
London, England is still ruled by elected officials in the Houses of
Parliament, no politician has dared oppose corporate rule for decades. Most of
the debate about left or right now comes down to which minimally funded social
programs the corporations will tolerate existing at a given point in time.
Temporary concessions, soon rescinded, are portrayed in the
corporate-controlled media as great advances in popular rights. Westminster
itself sits within a reinforced bubble, an airlock protecting it from the toxic
smog beyond and intensely protected by legions of drone soldiers.

In England, the civil service barely
has any functions left. It still runs the Ministry of Justice, with a
theoretically but not actually independent judiciary, the primary function of
which is to fill the jails with inmates to reduce the street population. The
Police, large portions of which are privatised, are almost entirely automated.
The Ministry of Peace runs the Armed Services – England’s Navy, Army and Air
Force – all of which are permanently deployed to protect the coast and urban
borders. The Treasury tracks and dispenses public expenditure, but is primarily
an arm of corporate welfare offices for Universal Basic Income, and a
regulatory organ for the now-privatised Bank of England. Lastly, the Ministry
of Knowledge, incorporating secret intelligence services, monitors educational
curricula and edits the information available on the internet and via Arcadia
to ensure its consistency with corporate preferences.

Only adults of both sexes among the
Captains of Industry, Employed and Dependents have the right to vote;
Ineligibles and Inmates do not have voting rights, nor anyone living outside
one of England’s conurbations – its eight urban areas that hold 95% of the
country’s population. Conversely, corporations – always legally considered
people in some legal senses – have been given voting rights weighted according
to their contribution to GDP. There are no longer county
or town councils, these remaining vestigial barriers to central corporate
oligarchy long having vanished.

There is no longer military conflict
among Green Zone states, the economies of which are so interconnected and the
rich of which so internationally mobile, that it would no longer serve any
purpose. The only goal of the military is to keep the masses of foreign
refugees from each country’s shores. For those rich enough to afford the visas,
free travel is entirely possible among the countries of the Green Zone; for
others, corporate sponsorship, though rare, is available to allow individuals
to work in different countries.