If science fiction has taught me anything it's that sometime in the future a battle will be fought over who's going to run this here planet. No, I'm not talking about assaults from alien life forms, extra-dimensional overlords or sparkly vampires. I'm talking about humanity seeing who's is going to be in charge around here. See, in every sci-fi story I've ever been exposed to in any medium it's always one of two groups running the show: the government or the corporations.
So on one hand you have the business minded, profit driven groups in control of everything, or it's the a government that taken control of nearly every aspect of the population's lives. It's pretty much conservatism versus liberalism. Do the free markets when out with the winners of the game being whoever has the better product and therefore garners the loyalty of the masses, or is it the government whom we elect because we put them there to serve out best interests? What's really nifty is that the authors of the works no matter which side they come down on in this debate always write about the other side winning. It's always that little undertone of "you see! This is what'll happen if we let them win!"
Will we all work for the faceless corporation heads, whom invariable be hiding some secret that could bring the corporation to ruin?
Will we all be government drones in a totalitarian regime where a small but plucky cabal of freedom fighters will uncover the underhanded methods at which the masses were fooled into bringing them to power?
Is this starting to sound like a cable news network and not science fiction?
And the conservatives are thinking right now, "yeah it sounds like those left wing pussies at CNN!" while the liberals are thinking "hey that sounds like those right wing fascist nuts at Fox News."
And then there's the people rolling their eyes and laughing at both sides.
It filters down to even the most innocent science fiction. Look at poor George Jetson. Toiling away pushing buttons for ol' man Spacely just so he could sell his precious Sprockets. The mortal terror George felt regularly at the thought of his corporate master catching him taking a breath to relax from the frantic button pushing and firing him. How would he be able to confront Jane, Judy and Elroy once deemed inferior and useless by the the Kaisers of the Free Market. Would he be forever ruined and forced to sell Rosey the Robot for scrap parts? Would Cosmo Cogs perhaps look past his years of loyalty to Spacely and hire him?
Then we go over to the more bitter sides of science fiction like the movie Equilibrium in which we see a government run society that's gone so far as to outlaw emotions. They determined that human emotion was the cause of crime, violence and wars so they got rid of such untidy things like art, literature and anything pretty. They also doped the population so they would feel anything.
On paper, Communism works. It should, Marx had enough time to work the bugs out of his manifesto as he was crashing with his friends and being a lazy do-nothing. Hell, this clown was so lazy he didn't even finish writing his manifesto. Here we had a guy who just wanted the government to take care of him. He'd be on welfare today and probably quite content. He probably didn't bank on politicians being... well... politicians.
On paper, Capitalism works. You work hard and earn your living. If you have a trade, a craft or even just a really good idea that is valuable you are rewarded monetarily for it and can sustain yourself. But then greed comes into play, and people start getting the urge to break the rules to get ahead.
So, when will this future battle come to head? Well, it's been said that Democracies come to an end when the population figures out that they can vote for free stuff. I think of the idiot in Florida gushing over the President and asking him what he's going to do about getting him better benefits at McDonalds. I think of London and the fools in streets who lack the ability and knowledge to make a lasting and beneficial change in their own lives and throw tantrums making fools of themselves and doing nothing to help their cause. I think of an acquaintance of main debating the merits of Socialist healthcare and when I pointed out that the government does have healthcare plans for those who need it. She informed me they don't work. The government run healthcare plans don't work, so the solution is the turn the whole system over to the same government. I think I know who is winning.
The battle will not be decided by a giant catastrophic event. It will be determined by the laziness and lack of education of the masses. They don't show that in the sci-fi stories. It's not interesting.
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