Living Under Ice

Living Under Ice 8

No one could say that their life was boring anymore. There was too much to do. The adults had responsibilities that depended on their capabilities. The cook had started up a restaurant which freed time up for the others to concentrate on their own jobs.

All of the children had school to do. That had stopped during the power outage, but had started up after that. Each one had a virtual teacher who adapted to their own learning style. Talon had found out a long time ago that his teacher was capable of tattling. Sometimes they had to do group activities and when the teachers decided to do this, they brought them together with avatars in a virtual classroom where they could fully interact. Even when they were traveling on the ship, their education had continued. There was too much to learn to leave it to chance. Everyone got to learn at their own pace, but that didn't mean anyone could get away with being lazy. There were built-in algorithms to detect laziness and they were quite effective. Among the children there were urban legends of students who managed to fool the algorithms, but no one actually knew anyone who really got away with doing it.

The new micro-colony had to be organized in some way. Since it was so small, this was done by holding meetings of everyone who was interested. There was no need for traditional politics. Direct democracy seemed to work best for them. One meeting addressed setting up an economic system. It was decided to award points for work done based on the complexity of the work and overall value. These units would be used as money. Items that were individually owned could be traded directly or sold for points. A community bank was set up. The bank held real items such as food produced and so forth. This bank was like a store in some ways. One of the colonist families agreed to do the work of running it. Whenever something was produced for individual use, but not for the individual producing it, it would be placed in the store. Anyone who wanted it could come and withdraw it in exchange for points that they had earned. Some things were for public use and therefore never went into the bank. An example was the completed central fountain which earned Tablitha and her mother quite a number of points. Naturally, Samurai would keep up with the accounting.

The reason for the system was to make sure everything was fair. Many things were made by machine and if the machines did not require human input, what they produced could be considered free in many cases. These things were considered to be utilities and utilities were free. But work deserved reward and laziness did not. The system kept some people from just taking advantage of others. Without it there would always be a danger of free-loaders. Under the current system a free loader could still survive, but they couldn't thrive. Countless wars over economic systems had been in the past. People kept making the same mistakes over and over again. Finally the majority was convinced that in order to produce, a society also had to reward. Pretending there was no such thing as human greed was not facing reality and it always ended in failure. Greed is closely related to and on a continuum with the survival instinct. Not everyone was greedy, but everyone did need a certain level of basic things to survive. The current system took the survival instinct into account and even took greed into account. No one could take unless they also gave. Highly motivated individuals were rewarded rather than chastised as long as their motivation lead them to produce goods and or services that were of real value to others.

There were no taxes under the colony's economic plan. None were needed. All work that earned points was work that benefited society as a whole. That work was considered the tax. Machines took care of the extra things that needed to be done and most of these were owned by the community as a whole with the exception of things like household robots, the Medical A.I., etc.

Samurai, as the community A.I. was considered to be the greatest asset of all for the entire colony. He had transferred a copy of himself directly down to the colony once enough hardware was placed to make it possible. This copy would be considered his twin. It would have different experiences than the ship A.I. so they would diverge over time. For that reason he was given a new name. The name was considered important enough to be a topic at one of the community meetings. Over time, with the expected fall of technology, he could be looked at more and more like a deity and everyone wanted to avoid any names which would encourage that. His primary function was not to lead, but to serve and help the humans. His name needed to reflect this. Finally, he was given the name of Timothy after the Timothy in the Bible who was such a help to the Apostle Paul.