Confederation of Corrupt DictatorsBoard

To remedy the symptoms of a presentation of illness, it is imperative that the actual disease must be accurately diagnosed and treated. As the fundamental basis of medical practice, we can all accept this axiomatically as reasonable and logical. It is simply the most sensible course of action from the perspective of utilitarian resource distribution, in the interests of cutting down on waste and targeting desired results with the least amount of resource consumption that is necessary. Furthermore, medicine also increasingly emphasizes preventive services over the curative aspects which are more prevalent in the average person's unconscious assumptions of a physician's responsibilities. If the disorder can be prevented from emerging in the first place, then resources do not have to be expended to counteract its ruinous development. As it is for the human or any other living organism, so it must also be with the state, which is in so many ways an extension of the human personality across the void of infinity. The civil war was merely a symptom of an underlying disease, and we may consider it requisite to preventing another, more catastrophic outbreak that this disease is routed as quickly and aggressively as it is within the capabilities of our superiors to manage. My diagnosis for the disease was already laid out months ago, when I warned of the sinister creep of liberalism into the institutions and the milieu of Confederation culture, yet my predictions were cast aside as the excessively grandiloquent pronouncements of a self-indulgently verbose windbag. Now that history has vindicated me, whatever one may say of my manner of personal conveyance, I feel confident in saying that the government-yet-to-come should consider the reification of the Confederation's common cultural foundations a chief priority. The Imperial Senate was fraught with petty grievances and individualistic fractioning of parties. Its unspoken creed was exactly that of all parliamentarism, which is irresponsibility of assemblies, lack of discipline, and frictions between private cliques. Each party represented a clique, and some parties contained more than one. For instance, the old NAP contained the clique of Hazelwood and the clique of Whittfield, and the friction which inevitably arose tore the NAP asunder and made the elementary policymaking process more convoluted and difficult. Insofar as partisanship may be permitted to continue, frictions such as this will only increase, leading to compromise, deadlock, and unsatisfactory half-measures. Only the ISV and Whittfield's NUF, out of all the parties, have had any notion of recognizing, encompassing, and surpassing the moment of difference between the interest groups of the people, thus absorbing and synthesizing them into the total unit of what Zendirism describes as the New State. The establishment of a Despotate to exercise the concentrated powers of the entire Imperial Senate may have been decided under a state of advanced exasperation by the Imperial Council, but it is a supremely laudable move which can only bode well for the tides of progress. For now, I invest full faith in the Council's appointee that they may guide the lower tier of government with decisiveness, equity, and mental lucidity. Some recommendations that I may have for encouraging the consolidation of the Confederation would be to declare the Confederation as a pan-national entity unto itself, possessing and exercising the collective right of popular sovereignty against the preposterous "Liberation" resolution of the World Assembly Security Council, but more importantly, possessing and exercising those rights exclusively. There are too many Confederation member states who see the Confederation as a provider of benefits to which they are principally entitled before owing any responsibilities in turn. These states want to insist upon their individual right as nation-states against the overarching cultural unity which is apparent in the Confederation at large, and they maintain a selfish attitude of prioritizing their own protection from the malignance of outside forces over the higher duty to serve the Confederation above themselves. Yet the proper understanding if the Confederation is to endure ought to be the other way around: The sovereignty of the Confederation should take precedence over the "sovereignty" of the member states; no sacrifice should be too great and no obligation too burdensome. The democratic nonsense of the Senate only gave these selfish impulses unrestricted expression, and if the submission of the Senate to the Despot is to accomplish only one thing from my position, it ought to be the resolution of this particular point in favor of the Confederation's pan-national supremacy over "individualism of the peoples."

Infrastructure

Another great project which may be undertaken to more perfectly unify the Confederation as an indivisible, self-contained, total quantity concerns the construction of proper infrastructure to unite the member states of the Confederation and facilitate the flourishing of interstate commerce. Industries are the life-sustaining organs of the state, responsible for producing goods and services that uphold the entirely of national life, yet it is also undeniable that it is government infrastructure which ultimately upholds the entirety of industry. The judicious involvement of the state in the construction of public transportation networks such as municipal roads, freeways, tunnels, bridges, railways, subways, etc. underpins the profitability of business enterprises by enabling greater ease of resource allocation which in turn serves the logistical needs of industrial production and commodity distribution. Here, the eminent reality can be observed that the presumed justice of autonomy in the "private sphere" is at its foundations a colossal jest which no serious-minded person ought to speak of. Private industry can only succeed with the support of government; rather than affirming the rights of private industry to be "free" from government intervention, it follows that government should enforce its rights to its proper share of the profits which are netted by private businesses. A stringent system of taxation which enforces the state's rights to its proper, substantial share of every private fortune and company profit margin would suffice to finance massive public works projects further interconnecting the industries of the Confederation. This will further aid in efficient distribution of materials down supply chains and boost productivity and profitability, in addition to sustaining a large workforce which will consequently reduce unemployment and promote our own people's elevation out of the poverty which a prolonged internal conflict so often brings. The increased productivity of businesses will correspond with an increase in consumption, and the resultant increases in profitability can be subjected to a progressive system of taxation in order to finance further public works in addition to other state-subsidized projects which promote the people's welfare. It should not be understated that these public works programs dovetail perfectly with any pan-national initiative, as an interconnected commercial infrastructure invariably permits interconnection of social structures. This should aid in breaking down the barriers of obdurate provincialism and bring to light the natural organic unity of the Confederation in its entirely over any particular sub-national loyalty.

Finance

Before the civil conflict over Vocryae, there was serious debate over the methodology which ought to be applied in the creation of a financial system for the Confederation, with some favoring a national bank to exercise monetary policy, others favoring a wholly nationalized banking system, and still more arguing that no central banking authority should exist at all. The devastation of civil conflict has doubtlessly resulted in immense loss of life and destruction of property. If reconstruction is to be coordinated expeditiously in adherence to a rational program, it will necessarily require a system of finance, as loans will have to be taken out by both government and the private sector to rebuild public and private infrastructure, restore stability to civilian life in housing and employment situations, and achieve rapid reindustrialization. All these objectives must be pursued promptly lest the dual millstones of crime and poverty crush the people of Jocospor and other Confederation member states into a miserable and perpetual state of discontent, which can only drive them into the arms of communist agitators who will use subtle rhetorical tricks and outright deception to transfer the blame from the so-called "Traditionalist" faction to the Loyalists who ultimately prevailed. The solution which seems to be prescribed by the situation is the provision of low-interest loans to households, businesses, and governments of Loyalist member states to finance their own various reconstruction efforts. The means by which this solution may be accomplished should be the compulsory cartelization of all financial institutions into a state-controlled syndicate, with the aim of circumventing competition, depressing interest rates, encouraging inflationary monetary policy and conversely combatting unemployment, and financing the reclamation and renovation of damaged property. Valuable assets from Traditionalist member states may also be seized and liquidated by the Confederation government for the purpose of allocating funds to direction of reconstruction efforts in Loyalist member states.

Labor

The primary selling point of communist ideology is the Marxist theory of historical materialism. As everyone knows, this theory claims that the socioeconomic history of humanity occurs by dialectical synthesis of classes into new systems of property organization, among which capitalism (defined according to Marxism by antithetical opposition of classes of proletariat and bourgeoisie) is considered to be the precursor to proletarian socialism. Without debating the application of the Hegelian dialectic here to this end, it should come as no surprise that class-conflict ideology is especially attractive to lower socioeconomic strata in nations where immense inequalities in wealth exist, due to resentment by these strata of insufficient wages for the execution of their productive functions. The proposal of a system which will consolidate labor and capital interests into occupational syndicates will sidestep the threat of future communist revolution by eradicating the causes from which class-struggle ideology finds its greatest strength, as the unmitigated greed of competitive market mechanisms and the utter impotence of labor interests under the indifferent auspices of neoliberalism are replaced by fair, collaborative arbitration through the medium of the state apparatus. This possibility should not be inauspicious to the interests of capital either; on the contrary, support extended to these syndicates through institutional mechanisms of the state will reward capital just the same as labor, which is to say to the degree requisite to its contributions to the functioning of the economy and the maintenance of the state. Only disloyal capital and labor interests have any reason to oppose the establishment of such a system, which is naturally to say the plutocrats and communists both manifest their true nature as opposite sides of the same coin, defined by the same placement of particular interest, whether individual interest or class interest, over national interest and state interest. Ultimately, both act to the detriment of the state and bring doom down upon not only themselves, but also true nationalistic elements as well.

Industry

The development of a sprawling commercial infrastructure through subsidy by the Confederation government will serve to increase efficiency of resource distribution, boost production, and unify social, cultural, and economic relations among member states to achieve a more total unity, but it is equally important to the coordination of the entire pan-national union that industries spanning across the various member states are not merely permitted to function in total autonomy from one another. Autonomous, unsupervised management of the industrial base follows a laissez-faire mentality about the fluctuation of markets that inevitably results in the emergence of frictions which frustrate the maximum potential output of the factors of production. Rather, it is vital that the entire Confederation economy is integrated into a singular, central framework, in order so that targeted policies of intervention can be consolidated into a unified program for action. Ad hoc interventions staged on a disorganic basis are simply insufficient to engineering preconditions of industrial harmony and justice. The health of the state requires a lucid conception of material objectives, a delineation of the proper sphere of activity in which an industrial enterprise is considered to pursue socially productive ends, and a will to counteract the fluctuation of any variable in the systems of production that begins to exceed this sphere of activity. In other words, the state must be vitally active to orient industry towards serving the pan-national entity, which requires a large degree of macroeconomic planning and even microeconomic planning. However, this system must not be permitted to achieve socialistic objectives of obliterating the technical standards of the market economy. Indeed, this program may only be effective insofar as the structure of the market economy is preserved. Let us not forget that it was the Bolshevik scum who began the Vocryae incident and threw the Confederation into disarray. Let no one doubt that their end goal, the abolition of private property, would necessarily result in the extinction of the human personality itself, as the entrepreneurial drive which is necessary for the efficient organization of the systems of production would be extinguished with it. The socialist planned economy is a monstrous failure; bureaucratic planners who endeavor to micromanage the logistical aspects of resource distribution routinely underestimate the living requirements of consumers and miscalculate the movements of inputs down supply chains. Thus, famine, poverty, and desolation are the perennial consequence of communist attempts at staging a revolution. Indeed, I would even recommend that to the extent possible socialist member states ought to be compelled to begin large-scale privatization by the Confederation government, to generate more taxable revenue for reconstruction. The model which the Confederation government ought to pursue with the awesome power concentrated in its apparatus is a system that will subjugate private industries to the state, in order so that the state may utilize private industry as a controlled instrument for promoting material recovery of the Confederation's war-ravaged people.

Abolition of Unearned Income

Just as my support for the responsibility demonstrated by industrialists when endowed with a private stake in the ownership of industry should not be misconstrued as a liberalistic support for the automatic fluctuations of unregulated markets, so it should also not be interpreted as a show of support for the beneficence of private enterprise in every field. Rejecting the labor theory of value, Zendirism applauds the class of entrepreneurs when subjected to the stable discipline of careful state supervision, but an entrepreneur's naturalistically molded social function involves the application of a superior rationale as regards the organization of the factors of production to achieve the most utilitarian use of all available resources, guided by the profit motive. An entrepreneur is not the same as a landlord, a rent-seeker, a speculator, or a lender, all of which are manifestations of financial parasitism which represent exploitation of the people through debt creation, gambling on the fluctuation of market values of commodities, and unproductive manipulation of the natural inequalities in distributions of land resources. As such, it is entirely responsible for the state to usurp major functions of the economy directly, in order to liberate the public from enslavement to these widespread yet fraudulent practices. Likewise, the incomes of private economic actors which accrue capital through "enterprises" classified as financially parasitic ought to be seized to fill the state's coffers.

Health and Safety

The state has a primary responsibility to ruthlessly defend the common weal, even and especially when the material requirements for achieving the common weal contradict the requirements for securing the welfare of a foreign people. The civil conflict which has wreaked such havoc upon the Confederation has brought many of our own people to an abject state of misery and despair. Just as I previously recommended that the Confederation government must take extraordinary, thrusting action to protect the livelihoods of the people from further degradation, I now advise that the state must develop a centralized public healthcare system that will guarantee the well-being of every Confederation subject. The method which I would prescribe is a single-payer system funded out of the coffers of the Treasury, extended throughout every Confederation member state, to insure a certain amount of coverage of medical costs no matter the particularity of local circumstance. In addition, as hygiene concerns not only medicine but also working conditions, a list of official guidelines ought to be implemented governing TLVs (transient limit values) and BEIs (biological exposure indices), in order to protect workers against hazardous levels of exposure to potentially toxic substances in industrial plants. Some consideration should also be given to more generous guarantees of work week regulation and unemployment insurance.

Utilities

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu infamously impressed that it is always preferable if the master strategist can compel his adversary's surrender without even waging the battle at all. Following this advice, it seems obvious that a simple way of crushing a rebellion before it has even begun is to starve the essential living requirements of the rebellious provinces, such as heating and air conditioning, telephone and cable services, use of all electrical appliances, and access to petrol reserves, among others. As the standards of all modern industrial economies, whether capitalist or socialist, require services for the provision of energy and water, it therefore makes sense that the Confederation government should nationalize utilities throughout the region under a state-owned conglomerate. Without either of these things, a statelet with designs of a revolt would have no hope to resist the merciless strike of the Confederation Defense Force (CDF). On the contrary, being met with the threat of such overwhelming force and reduced to miserable living standards, the rebels would have no option but to surrender, and the people who might have supported them would despise them for bringing the wrath of Vocryae upon their heads for their middling goals. At another level, the nationalization of major utilities is desirable from the perspective that such utilities represent mere manipulation of the resources of the natural world, with no personal creative involvement required to enhance the commodity form of the product beyond that which is necessary to sustain the civilized living standards of a polity. Whereas in the instances of electric power and oil refineries, ingenuity is required to increase the level of efficiency with which the service may be provided using the available resources, this is the professional activity of engineers, scientists, and technicians, not businessmen. Beyond even this consideration, it is common for privately owned utilities to spin off aspects of their infrastructure for tax deductions, consequently bringing into existence a condominium of parasitical rent-seekers who can only ramp up costs on the utilities providers themselves, finally impacting the consumer. From both the perspective of consolidating control over the member states and the perspective of curtailing unproductive activities in the private sector, the nationalization of the commanding heights makes a fair deal of sense.

National Service

The revolt of the Traditionalists, in spite of their chosen name, is precisely because the Confederation has not enough in the form of rigid tradition to order the submission of the masses before the collective ethos. Perhaps part of the problem is that too much of the emphasis in the Imperial Senate vis-a-vis the operational parameters of the CDF focuses on misguided humanitarian efforts to curtail WMD deployment, and not enough on reconceiving the purpose of the CDF as an instrument whereby all the peoples of the Confederation member states can be instilled with an iron-clad military discipline to fortify the sense of greater Confederal camaraderie. I propose that a national service requirement should be implemented, such that all male citizens of every Confederation member state must spend a minimum of 10 years of continuous service in the CDF, from ages 15 to 25, during which time scientific, technical, and history education shall be provided for such purposes as would enhance simultaneously the martial and intellectual capabilities of each of our countrymen. Individuals with medical history which would complicate front-lines participation will be trained to their fullest capacity in another area of functional expertise, where their talents can be put to best use. This will help ascertain fidelity of all states within the Confederation to the unifying ideal of the ties which bind, and instill a reciprocal disdain for the enemies of the Confederation which ceaselessly plot against it from the feeders and the hall of the World Assembly. One myth shall enshrine the destiny of the entire Confederation and carry it into the future under a common faith: the triumph of the Confederation over the WA Elite and the triumph of nationalism and etatism over liberalism and egalitarianism.

Land Reform

Many of the member states of the Confederation possess arable lands where agriculture is practiced, whether on a for-profit or collectivized basis per the prevailing economic system of the state in question. It goes without saying that the Vocryae incident has laid many of these lands to waste, if not solely in the process of fighting then also in the extraction of manpower to wage the war against the Traditionalist faction, which means lower productivity and inferior crop yields, at least in those states with lesser numbers of workers in the agricultural sector or those with an inferior degree of advancement in the technical standards of modern industrialized farming. This neglect or desolation typically results in declining property values and favors the concentration of arable lands in the hands of the wealthy, and the termination of warfare often means the dissolution of the standing army and the return of able-bodied men to lands which are no longer theirs to reap the profits from. Instead, the farmer class is converted into tenants and sharecroppers, and land-owning oligarchs benefit. This issue is a recurring problem throughout history. Gaius Marius and Tiberius Gracchus struggled with it in the days of the Roman Republic, and so did Wang Anshi during the Song dynasty of Imperial China. My solution is two-fold. Firstly, the Confederation government should offer tax incentives to member states to contract land clearance companies to reclaim swamplands and marshlands within their boundaries and open these lands up to homesteading by small and medium-sized farming enterprises, with the land being held under a provisional non-for-profit condominium by contract with the member states until such time as the land can be parceled out. Secondly, a law ought to be executed empowering member states to seize 3/4 of unused (and therefore unproductive) arable lands within large agricultural estates, with nominal reimbursement of the owners, and transfer of these lands to the non-for-profit condominium for provisional management during the transition to homesteading. These policies should encourage the formation of a new and independent class of farmers, which should be recognized under a unitary trade corporation by the state to accomplish collective bargaining and professional interests' representation.

Punitive Measures

The Traditionalist states, due to being the aggressors in the Vocryae incident, and revolting against the supreme order formed by the Shadow Cult, must be subject to a separate arrangement from the beneficent reconstruction of the Loyalist states. I disagree vehemently with the policy of clemency and reconciliation which the Office of the Despot can elected to extend towards the Traditionalists, for as much as I respect Her Majesty the Despot's personage and position on the matter, which lean closer to the venerable imperial strategies of Cyrus the Great, Zendirist methods are more closely aligned with the logic of the Athenian lawmaker Draco in drafting effective means of deterrence and social engineering. In addition, there is the matter of costs which programs for dynamic state intervention invariably incur, and while I reject the advocates of austerity as absurd peddlers of fiscal-conservative mediocrity, an account of revenues and costs must always be taken, lest the Confederation fall beyond the event horizon of unrestrained deficit spending. The easiest and most readily rationalized source of revenues for Vocryae's coffers is to exploit the historical participants in the Traditionalist uprising and coerce them to pay financial reparations for their accursed crimes. Even better than this unimaginative measure might be to use the Traditionalist states as an experimental testing grounds for a radical new idea of military-agricultural organization. It would do for a certain acreage of suitable arable lands in the Traditionalist states to fall under the jurisdiction of CDF outposts, from where the CDF can be deployed at a moment's notice to exert presence and maintain order in major centers of these polities, while being in close immediate proximity to the source of their supply chains. This would assist the process of bringing the rebel states back under the heel of the central government, where they belong, while simultaneously sidestepping the possibility of supply bottleneck being caused by distant deployment from military bases in closer proximity to Jocospor. Even better, the resources and economies of the Traditionalist states will be exacted in order to supply the CDF to crush any subsequent rebellions by their own governments or peoples. These lands would not be entirely worked by the soldiers of the CDF themselves, but rather through compulsion of a certain percentage of the able-bodied population of the defeated Traditionalist member states to toil on these lands for nothing in return except for the guarantee of food, clothing, and shelter. It may also be advisable for a legal distinction to be imposed for the families of those who supported the Traditionalist faction, barring them from obtaining certain types of political office, employment, residency, property ownership, or military service. If this method is successful, it can be decided at a later date whether to be extended indefinitely, terminated in the interests of healing internal divisions, or some combination of the two influenced by disparate post-war trends of civil disobedience.