Pandora: The Final Solution
I gratefully acknowledge one of the foremost creative geniuses of our times, James Cameron, for conceiving the lush moon Pandora and the "noble savages," the Na'vi, that inhabit it. This story uses the setting he created for his movie, Avatar. I have not received any money for my work based on Avatar. If I could get paid by the hour for these stories, I would retire and spend all my time dancing and writing in comfort.
This story contains all original characters and situations, set on Earth immediately after the end of the movie. It is the obvious approach to dealing with the Pandoran uprising, with less than obvious consequences.
Author's Note: This is a work of fiction. However, I do synthesize current events into a "history" of how RDA came into existence. I have endeavored to be thought provoking and not offensive. I welcome your reviews, but please do not flame me because you disagree with any political view expressed below. Rather, I encourage you to think about these ideas, come to your own conclusions, and then get politically involved in your area. Flaming is much easier than making a difference, but is of little value in itself.
Chapter 2: Historical Interlude
Osama Bin Laden went to his watery grave not knowing how spectacularly successful his attack on America proved to be. Like all historical events, much groundwork was laid by others beforehand to make that one attack so pivotal.
Ronald Reagan, in his zeal to rid the world of the "Evil Empire," took the first step. When he tightened export regulations on high-tech products, some manufacturers immediately opened manufacturing operations overseas beyond the reach of the new laws because the potential export market overwhelmed their existing sales in the USA. With lower labor costs and few environmental regulations, moving overseas to escape export restrictions was a no-brainer. By the end of the century, almost all high-tech products were made in Asia. The export controls effectively exported the technology and eliminated its continued development from America. Like the Roman Empire before it, America went on a long, slow decline, even though there were no Goths on the northern borders waiting to attack.
Bill Clinton also made a significant contribution. Once the USSR imploded, the need for a large military to contain it became politically expendable. His "Peace Dividend" also gutted the American intelligence agencies, so there was no one to "connect the dots" when al-Qaeda infiltrated and trained in plain sight within the borders of the USA. The attack on the World Trade Center was, on one hand, insignificant. Knocking down a few, admittedly huge, buildings in the wealthiest country on Earth should have no appreciable effect. On the other hand, the physical isolation of America has always made its people feel immune from outside attacks. Destroying the World Trade Center and damaging the Pentagon with American passenger jets shattered that immunity, and made the American people go insane. Not only did they give up many of their own hard-won freedoms, they also drove their country into bankruptcy to fight wars on the other side of the world against those who harbored al-Qaeda and other terrorists.
George W. Bush did his part by using this insanity to clean up the historical "loose ends", namely Saddam Hussein and Iraq, left by his father George H. W. Bush after the first Gulf war. Once the blood-lust of America was satisfied, the people found that their government has become a shambles. Again, Reagan showed the way. His administration enabled the savings and loan debacle and the looting of the Housing and Urban Development Administration, with few consequences for the perpetrators. At that time, the rest of the executive branch had the good manners to perform as expected. George W. Bush focused so much on the military and the war on terrorism that the rest of the executive branch quickly degenerated into cronyism. Mine disasters, the Gulf oil spill, Hurricane Katrina and the destruction of New Orleans, the housing bubble, the bank crises caused by lax regulations, hedge fund manipulations, and unimaginably huge Ponzi schemes were caused or made worse by inept government employees in the revolving door with business. Again, very few of the perpetrators were made to pay.
The attack on the World Trade Center was simply knocking out the single card that held the house of cards up, causing the slow-motion collapse of the American empire. The American people tried to keep things as they were by becoming conservative, but all that achieved was gridlock. In other words, the legislative branch could not function, because necessary political compromise was no longer rewarded by the electorate. This opened the door for the monied interests to take over. Corporations found that it was very cost effective to fund sympathetic politicians, high-powered lobbying firms, and slick ad campaigns like "clean coal". As Will Rogers said almost a century earlier, America had the best Congress money could buy. While voters focused their attention on "unsolvable" social issues like abortion, immigration, guns, same-sex marriage, and health care, the corporations made sure that laws were passed for their benefit, mainly eliminating taxes and regulations to increase profits, often shifting costs, such as health care and environmental remediation, to the government for future generations to pay.
Of course, the rest of the world was not immune from upheaval. As the European Union (EU) was formed and later expanded, stringent conditions were negotiated for each member country. While times were good, the conditions were manageable. When the world economy faltered in 2008, a number of European countries teetered on the edge of financial collapse. Only when the more stable EU countries put up guarantees would the multinational financial services corporations help to keep the EU afloat.
In the spring of 2011, the "Arab Spring" led to the overthrow of the tyrants that ruled the countries of Northern Africa, and chaos elsewhere else in the Islamic world. These countries usually had only three organizing elements, excluding religion; the tyrant's government, the military, and the local operations of multinational corporations. By knocking out the tyrant and neutralizing the military in these countries, the door was open for the multinational corporations to exert their influence with money and jobs, and instill a more benevolent hegemony over the people. In most cases, the people welcomed the change and became the consumers that businesses need to survive. Businesses reciprocated by leaning on the politicians to allow more personal freedoms and reigning in the secret police.
In this maelstrom of instability, the huge multinational corporations eventually provided enough influence to get the governments of the world operating again. Once they established a working relationship within a country that allowed the corporations to flourish and the supportive politicians to retain power, they started to look outward. Large scale wars are bad for business, but small scale wars are very profitable, especially for companies that can sell to both sides. So, small conflicts continued to pop up around the world to resolve ancient antagonisms, and fill the coffers of companies that supplied them.
Warfare can be very brutal, and definitely is counterproductive, making it unattractive in some quarters. The control of scarce resources has caused many wars in the past, and overpopulation was making another world war inevitable. So, the multinational corporations banded together and sold a bold solution to the friendly governments of the world. In exchange for immunity from anti-competition laws, a new, quasi-governmental agency could be formed to collect resources from space to ease the resource scarcity issues. Thus was born the Interplanetary Commerce Administration (ICA). As numerous companies had already invested in systems to exploit space resources, they agreed to become wholly-owned subsidiaries of a single holding corporation, the Resources Development Administration (RDA). The shareholders of these small companies received RDA shares in exchange, making the RDA one of the most widely held corporations overnight. RDA was hailed as the "new Microsoft and Intel combined." The individual companies that comprise RDA were too small to obtain contracts from ICA, but together as one became a compelling organization with the muscle and experience to fulfill the mission of ICA. The RDA negotiated with the ICA, and received monopoly rights for all off-world products in perpetuity, in exchange for banning weapons of mass destruction in space and limiting military power in space. Of course, these limitations meant little while exploiting the lifeless planets, moons, comets, and asteroids in Earth's solar system, but proved ICA was looking out for the people of Earth. After the initial agreements, a series of "xenophobic" regulations were imposed on RDA to protect Earth from contamination, assuaging the various groups that thought RDA got the better end of the deal. In little time, RDA became the largest non-governmental organization on and off of Earth. The pressure to reduce costs and increase profits caused the separate subsidiaries to get reorganized out of existence, and RDA morphed from a holding company to a full-service operation controlling almost everything above Earth's atmosphere. RDA negotiated joint ventures with other industries to get access to expertise it did not have: airlines to run passenger and cargo services between the Earth, Moon, and Mars; hotels to run resorts in Earth orbit and on the Moon and Mars; and pharmaceuticals to test and distribute new drugs developed off-planet. In all cases, RDA was very careful to retain as much control as possible, to maximize its profits and minimize its risks and liabilities.
Only when a humanoid species was found on a moon in the Alpha Centauri system did the limits on military power become an issue. As always, RDA was more nimble than ICA, mirroring the fact that corporations can always move faster than representative governments and their attendant bureaucracies. As Earth's dependence on RDA became stronger, and the tensions on Pandora increased, the RDA was quietly allowed to increase its Security Operations forces as it saw fit. The ban on weapons of mass destruction remained, and RDA could not obtain such weapons in any politically acceptable manner. Such weapons were not needed anyway. You cannot bomb a people back to the stone age if they currently live in the stone age.