The Third Way

*"The freedom of the New World is the hope of the Universe.."*

-  Simon Bolivar
Latin America finds itself in an awkward geopolitical situation. Close enough to the western world to not be considered completly exotic yet far enough to not be considered one of the power players in the political scene, since its conquest by the Iberian Crowns it has always been on the periphery of the world, for the most part left to develop on it's own, with little intervention on the part of the other, greater players in the world scene. This unique situation has made of Latin America a rich territory for political experimentation and, in a world where two political ideologies clash endlessly to impose their way over the other Latin America has, once again, chosen to stay away from such dichotomy, seeking instead to opt for a third choice, seeking the almost mythical **"Third Way"**.

## Il Futuro è Adesso

*"You know who's going to inherit the Earth? Arms and drug dealers. Because everyone else is too busy killing each other."*

-  Pablo Escobar
For some countries, the answer to the world’s dilemmas was to simply give in to the policy of open markets and the complete freedom of man, the thought that the state should not and won’t intervene in the matters of the market and that it should eventually regulate itself, maybe everyone by themselves is the true way of the future.

Despite the catastrophic humanitarian crisis triggered by “La Violencia” it wouldn’t be crazy to say there were some benefits to come out of the events that happened thereafter. While the country was drowned in a complete state of chaos, some people managed to fill in the vacuum left by the political messup and bring the country to some sort of stability once again. One by one the Bandolero groups finally gave up and surrendered or were captured by the reorganized military and while the control of some outlying provinces was just completely lost, at least the administrative center of the country was back in order and what’s more, the dawn of the druglord era was just about to begin. In the latter half of the decade of the sixties, immensely rich people started to appear on the Colombian political and social scene, claiming to have the solution to all of Colombia’s problems and that maybe the people should embrace this new era in Colombian history, one which was started by the most gruesome of tests.

It’s this way that many of these bandolero groups got governmental pardons in exchange of giving up their fights, most of the leftist groups in the country were coincidentally eradicated from the face of the land, the MIR being the only group of importance still having a degree of importance in the most outlying provinces of the territory. High corporate managers got in alliances and offered to pay off the external debt of the country in exchange of some “favours” and overnight the situation of Colombia just seemed to have gotten better. One of the few countries in the face of the Earth that can claim to have no external debt and possessor of one of the most vibrant economies in the continent, even in the face of the missionary entrepreneurship of the United Technate or the brilliantly administrated Cybernetic Federation, the problem of auto-defenses and violent groups still exist on their farther reaches, but in spite of all of this, the future holds great things for Colombia.

It’s truly a testament to the power of the way of the future that even the powerful Inca Kola, the criollo soft drink that couldn’t be taken down by the international giants that were Coca-Cola nor PepsiCo was simply no match to the power that is Ambrosia Cola (now with more Coca!), the Camino del Inca now possessor of Escalators for the ease of access and the installation of elevators leading directly into Macchu Picchu means that the annual count of visitors to the ancient citadel now numbers in the millions every year, which means nothing but benefits to the countless tour guides, souvenir sellers or just llama traffickers that now permeate the zone. The economic prosperity Peru is seeing right now is completely unprecedented yet, as with every radical change in the face of an otherwise conservative society, it’s not without its many detractors.

People clamoring against the violent defacing of ancestral monuments and the loss of an invaluable ancestral heritage, archaeological treasures just lost forever in the face of rampant capitalism with no care of what’s in the way of your carefully laid route. There’s also other groups, those who have taken a more militant stance and a staunch attitude against the actions of these new corporate managers who have suddenly taken control of the political scene of the country, people who, against all odds, still hold much sway in the media of the country, not due to good publicity or the economic power to buy a space in television, but out of sheer charisma, people who have no fear in decrying the defacing of the Pachamama that these new Conquistadors have laid upon their lands, actions that they won’t condone and will do everything in their power to stop, people calling the people to fight for their true brethren before it’s too late, people crying to the sky that the day of reckoning is about to come and that this disgrace in the face of the motherland simply shall not be tolerated and shall be destroyed by immeasurable force before late.

## El Futuro es Brillante/O Futuro é Brilhante

*"All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal."*

-  John Steinbeck, member of the Columbia Future Society, Literature Committee
## El Futuro está al Alcance

*"History is ours and it's made by the people."*

-  Salvador Allende, during his reinauguration speech.
While the Combine has opted to descentralize its government and the Syndicate has chosen to have as little involvement of the government in economy as possible, the Federation on the other hand has taken a different path. Centralize its economy, to degrees seldom seen anywhere else or before, to be under the control of the government. In the middle way between Western Capitalist economy and the Communism of the Second World, the Cybernetic Government has found a place mired with oxymorons, contradictions and things that aren't as they seem at first sight.

Cyberbolivarianism is an ideology born out of concessions, a path tho socialism that wouldn't be as violent as the soviet method of 5 year plans plagued with famines and mass cullings of population, but neither wanted to take the slow, painful and controlling path that the Allies have taken to a Welfare State built upon the notions of whatever economists may say is the best, no, Cyberbolivarianism is meant to hear directly what the people need and act upon it, in real time and with a robust economy that can supply those needs, with no need to go through unnecessary bloodshed and where the people could voice their opinion right there, right now, as long as Cybersyn provides.

The result of this experiment is an economic model that's perfectly impossible to predict, a state where economic growth is almost non-existant, and actually appears as to actually be shrinking in purchasing power, yet, it's not in a crisis. An uncanny prediction model that can avoid, time and time again, shortages, scarcity and the pitfalls brought by such an abrupt change in the way society and the economy works, with an economic focused on providing domestic products to the population at large even at the cost of sacrificing heavy industrial output, to avoid the problems that brought the early years of the Soviet Union, the Federation has somehow managed to keep the population at large content and employed, the incredibly extensive and pervasive presence of the Cybersyn system meaning the employment of millions in government positions, be them building the infrastructure, installing the machinery or keeping the computers functional. That's without mentioning the thousands of people who have suddendly been incorporated into the government system as innovative systems have meant that even the humble street vendor can now operate from their very own T-Syns where an innovative system not too dissimilar to parking meters keep their terminals both functional through the daily contributions of coins for the powering of the machines as well as their bussiness legal through the impromptu system of tax collecting.

Even this doesn't account however for the thousands newly employed in the government sector for various functionary roles within the Cybersyn system, what do these roles entail and why such a sheer number of employees are needed for a system that's supposed to be run by machines is unknown, yet the government has reassured that this is a system meant to cater to the worker and not the other way around, and while this explanation has raised more questions that it has answered, it seems to have contented the people in the national front enough as to not be too questioned.

This so called cybernetic miracle has been heralded as the true coming of the third way, the real, peaceful way to socialism not through violent change, but through the use of intelligent management, cybersocialism as it has been christened. While native economists claim that this is mere proof that the Vuscovic plan indeed does work and Cyberbolivarianism is a succesful, peaceful model ready to be replicated wherever there may be interested parties.

As with any new economic model however, there are those who cast the shadow of doubt over the claims of success, pointing out that most of the *"miracle"* can be attributed to the fact that the country is undergoing reconstruction after a war that was devastating to the infrastructure, and due to much of the foreign debt of the new nation-state has been deemed "odious debt" due to it being incurred through a military dictatorship, making the lack of foreign debt a dubious claim, if anything. Once most of the reparations has been done, the country will start escalating into unemployment, inflation and finally debt at an uncontrollable rate according to various international investment firms, claims that for the moment have stopped most syndicate investors to risk bussiness in the territory for sheer fear of losses in such an unstable economy, the local government has reassured the population at large that there's already plans projected so that, once the reconstruction efforth is done, an economic crisis will be the last of the population's worries.

These claims have done nothing but lead to further speculation, conspiracy busters who've gone further beyond in the search of answers, claiming that even with the reconstruction process undergoing there's simply no explanation to the prosperity that the Cybernetic Federation is enjoying. Even compared to similar models like the Empire of the Rising Sun's, where most of the age of employability people were recruited onto the military while Zaibatzu and Artificial Intelligence alike make sure the country's bussiness are running smoothly, or the Mediterranean model, where the poor people are just left to fall beneath the cracks while the rich enjoy the fruits of cheap, derregulated hand labor, it somehow seems that the Federation has had the capacity to provide for employment and a decent standard of living for the totality of their population, all while having a robust, dynamic, if modest, economy, no one being left behind. This is claimed to be simply impossible, the Cybernetic System simply can't be this perfect, there's no way it can have had such an impact on a society so quickly and effectively, without negative repercussions, either they are muddling the data, or there's a distinctly large amount of the population whose jobs have not been undisclosed or, worse yet, have simply not been accounted for...