Belt regions

[rancke]

I'm working on the political setup for a system (Shionthy). It's a representative democracy with 70 million people spread out across one belt and 30 gas giant moons (and a couple of trojan planetoid clusters). More than 50% of the population is located in the belt.

What I have so far is that every habitat has an Assembly. The assemblies elect representatives to an intermediate (regional?) assembly, and the intermediate assemblies elect representatives for the Grand Assembly, the system government.

What I can't figure out is how the belt would be divided up into regions. The gas giants and the trojan clusters are easy enough, but the planetoids in the belt moves around over time. So would the regions be astrographical or according to some other scheme? Would the habitats change from one regional assembly to another as they crossed a boundary? That doesn't sound too practical. So what sort of commonality of interests other than positional might cause people to lump different habitats together?

I suppose the easiest solution would be to have the belt assemblies elect representatives directly to the Grand Assembly, but that would be boring.

(Also, it would mean that the smallest habitats would either not get to elect an assemblyman or inflate the size of the Grand Assembly beyond what is practical.)


Hans

 

[far-trader]

Maybe by the type of mining/processing done? A kind of specialization organization:

Carbonaceous

Siliceous

Metallic

(and maybe... )

Anti-Matter (Shionthy's claim to fame right?)

Ice (part of most or all of the above but maybe more concentrated in some for purposes of this organizational idea)

Perhaps even a socially stratified organization (like lower, middle, upper income "classes" ):

Anti-Matter being highest, smallest numbers but most influential, elitists. Upper class. Most difficult to process and requiring the newest and best operated and maintained ships for safety.

Ice being lowest and also small in numbers, with little influence. Lower class. Easy to process, safe even for old and unreliable ships.

The rest being average of course. Middle class.

 

[whartung]

Do the objects in the belt really have that dramatic of a orbital speed difference? Pretty much the definition of being in orbit is the velocity of the object, so things sharing orbits should mostly be pretty stable. If the Habitats are artificial, they can have their orbits stabilized to prevent them from moving relative to themselves.

The problem fundamentally comes down to jurisdiction and enforcement. People can register with a Habitat and become "citizens" of them (for lack of a better word). That pins them to a polity for representation, etc. Their freedom to travel among other Habitats, based on their citizenship, is a completely separate matter.

Now.

Once that is settled, I would give each habitat jurisdiction over enforcement based on some radius around the habitat. When there is overlap, you get "double" enforcement (or at least double patrols), with jurisdiction based on who first arrives.

Ownership of resources can be based on citizenship of the person filing the claim.

Obviously, the more diverse the Habitat laws are, the more complicated things can get. But that's what the federal system is designed to deal with. Depending on the culture, it may well be quite homogenous or the Habitats will be routinely having low scale skirmishes both out in the rocks and in the federal courts fighting over the details.

 

[far-trader]

Do the objects in the belt really have that dramatic of a orbital speed difference?

Well, taking Sol as an example there are asteroids considered Belt objects pretty much from anywhere between the orbit of Mars and Jupiter. Quite a range. Traveller might suppose even closer (to the star) and/or wider belts producing even greater differences.

Might.

It's all pretty much speculative like sci-fi is prone to be. And we are talking an Imperium of millennial age with institutions persisting. So even slow orbital changes could well add up and be factored. The Imperium is unlikely to ever have a Y2K type of crisis. They plan very very long term. In my opinion anyway.

Of course for anyone's game a different tack might feel "righter" and more power to them Your stabilized (and artificially maintained even) groupings idea is good one.

For example, before thinking about the above idea I briefly thought of suggesting an organization based on general orbital periods. As in Inner Belt, Middle Belt, and Outer Belt. Or as in Sol's example there are some groupings of clumps sharing orbital periods and areas that might work as well. There's lots of ways to work it out

 

[rancke]

Do the objects in the belt really have that dramatic of a orbital speed difference? Pretty much the definition of being in orbit is the velocity of the object, so things sharing orbits should mostly be pretty stable. If the Habitats are artificial, they can have their orbits stabilized to prevent them from moving relative to themselves.

Different orbital distances means different orbital velocities, and they're not proportional to the orbital circumference, so over time planetoids will drift from one region (quadrant, hexant, octant (?)) to another (I'm assuming the regions rotate too). Changing orbits require installing engines, which costs money.

The problem fundamentally comes down to jurisdiction and enforcement. People can register with a Habitat and become "citizens" of them (for lack of a better word). That pins them to a polity for representation, etc. Their freedom to travel among other Habitats, based on their citizenship, is a completely separate matter.

There's one systemwide police and defense organization (the Search and Rescue Patrol) and individual police forces for individual habitats. I don't envisage regional police forces.

Having consulted the dictionary, I'm waffling between 'inhabitant', 'habitant', and 'denizen' as the local word for citizen.

The problem is that I want a Grand Assembly of several hundred members, no more. Say somewhere around 350. That means one member for every 200,000 people. The belt has three habitats with populations above one million (1.1, 1.3, and 1.6 million), 83 with populations in the hundreds of thousands, 307 with populations in the tens of thousands, and an unspecified number of smaller habitats, but let's guesstimate the number to be around 1200. Obviously you either have to disenfranchise the smaller habitats or provide some way for them to combine for representation.


Hans

 

[rancke]

It's all pretty much speculative like sci-fi is prone to be. And we are talking an Imperium of millennial age with institutions persisting. So even slow orbital changes could well add up and be factored. The Imperium is unlikely to ever have a Y2K type of crisis. They plan very very long term. In my opinion anyway.

At the moment I'm imagining that the traditions have grown from the early days where each habitat was independent and governed by a demos of all its adult inhabitants (functioning somewhat like an Old Nordic Ting).

I haven't decided on how that evolved into a united system-wide state. However, since I have system defenses run by an emergency rescue patrol that presumably took over that function by default, I think that it must have been mostly peaceful negotiations with a minimum of local military forces.


Hans

 

[BytePro]

It sounds like, other than the ~1200 smaller habitats you are in your ballpark of 350 (well, 3+83+307=393 larger belt habitats plus ~32 moons/planetoid clusters) 'representation by habitat democracy'.

Sounds like the system is based on 'common interest' - i.e. habitat. The smaller habitats have that in common. In the U.S. this is not unlike the Senate, where every state has one Senator, regardless of size/population... Hawaii could be considered akin to the 'smaller habitats' (bunch of islands).

 

[BlackBat242]

Maybe by the type of mining/processing done? A kind of specialization organization:

Carbonaceous

Siliceous

Metallic

(and maybe... )

Anti-Matter (Shionthy's claim to fame right?)

Ice (part of most or all of the above but maybe more concentrated in some for purposes of this organizational idea)

Perhaps even a socially stratified organization (like lower, middle, upper income "classes" ):

Pretty much what I was thinking... perhaps this could actually be partitioned by professional associations and/or unions?

That would provide constituencies without regard to where you were in the belt.

 

[ThunderChilde]

The generally loose and flexible bylaws of a Thing would be a useful model. All Thing, a gathering of representatives of the scattered Things in a convocation was held generally on a yearly basis. I was fortunate enough to sit on a Thing once.

 

[Icosahedron]

The Assemblies will probably be based on common interests rather than location.

Maybe certain habitats were owned by different corporations originally, and alliances or buyouts gradually enlarged the ownership and then the system became democratic instead of corporate, but the old corporate divisions were carried over?

 

[rancke]

The Assemblies will probably be based on common interests rather than location.

The intermediate assemblies, you mean? Because the basic unit is the habitat assembly. So any commonality of interest would have to be between entire habitats.

Maybe certain habitats were owned by different corporations originally, and alliances or buyouts gradually enlarged the ownership and then the system became democratic instead of corporate, but the old corporate divisions were carried over?

That's something to think about.


Hans

 

[Icosahedron]

I'm thinking about how Antarctica might develop into a democratic entity following the creation of a world government...

 

[FreeTrav]

Two senators, not just one. And then there's a House of Representatives, which IS based on population.

 

[BytePro]

Two senators, not just one. And then there's a House of Representatives, which IS based on population.

o: Oops... I posted one, didn't I

Point being, the Senate gives different states 'equal' voting power regardless of size and population (in the Senate, of course).

Equivalent to the OP's habitat scenario.

Defining habitat to include lumping common belt installations with similar populations would support the number of 'representatives' he desires in his one 'habitat', one vote system.