International Economic Union (IEU)
Purpose:
The IEU is a complex supranational bureaucracy organized for the purposes of ensuring economic (and thus political) stability and interconnectedness.
Structure:
Central Committee (CC):
The International Economic Union is, at its highest echelons, run by the IEU Central Committee, a council of thirty civilian officials sent by their governments to do the job. Of these thirty officials, twenty are constantly connected to particular nations - economic powerhouses on Earth - and ten are rotating representatives of other countries with effective self-government, rotated out every six months. The Central Committee does not personally draft economic plans and distribution schemes, but they do give overall guidelines to the Economics Corps, which drafts the plans based on previous production levels.
Economics Corps (E Corps):
The Economics Corps is the central bureaucracy of the IEU. It has been a fundamental part of the IEU from its birth to the present, and has a huge effect upon the actions of every other part of the IEU. The E Corps is the mental muscle of the IEU, handling raw data in complex inputs and outputs to put forward plans, describe phenomena, and predict the future. Without it, the information flow on which the IEU is predicated cannot function.
The E Corps supplies the Central Committee with numerous documents, plans, notes, and so forth in an unending torrent of carefully produced information. No intent to deceive is made, and no alteration of facts is allowed, but the information reinforces the status quo and the plans made by the E Corps upper hierarchy have a very high tendency to become the plans approved by the Central Committee. The plans it produces are enacted (normally) with the enthusiastic consent of governments who have received the plans, and grudging admission on occasion. The E Corps focuses on a largely "hands off" policy, producing recommendations which require a minimal amount of changes on the part of the local government and won't significantly alter present economic state.
While many other large-scale organizations of the IEU are intrinsically feudal, separated by hours in communication and weeks or months in terms of physical travel, the E Corps is centralized on Earth. It handles incoming data and produces outgoing orders - it does not directly interact with the rest of the IEU to any significant degree, though E Corps technicians are sometimes sent out on "reconnaissance" missions to various locales. Its purposes are myriad: identify speculation bubbles before they burst, control movement of capital, prevent monopolization, ensure the development of endogenous industries on particularly important planets, and so forth.
Bureaucracy:
From there, the IEU quickly descends from there into a mess of bureaucracy: economists, technicians and all variety of paper-pushers whose sole job is to keep the interstellar economy running smoothly. The distance of interstellar travel mean that significant delegation is necessary. Individual systems have local bureaucratic councils, who make regular reports back to the E Corps and answer immediately to the E Corps itself.
Local bureaucratic councils sometimes obtain a level of corruption qualitatively similar to fiefdoms. These occurances are rare, but spectacularly corrupt bureaucrats do exist, and every few years a new scandal breaks out regarding this or that bureaucrat taking eight or nine digit bribes from this or that corporation. The IEU has a sprawling internal affairs division, but even it can't watch everything, and money laundering has become a well-established talent of these bureaucratic despots.
International Armed Forces (IAF):
The IAF exists largely in parallel to the main bureaucracy, and delegates authority to its Supreme Commander, who in turn ultimately answers to the Central Committee. The Supreme Commander is responsible for large-scale strategic decisions undertaken by the IEU military, such as focuses of development, military theory, and so forth. The Supreme Commander is appointed by the Central Committee, makes monthly reports to it, and they answer directly to it. Other elements of the IAF (especially its intelligence services) also make regular, independent reports to the CC. The nature of the IEU make military affairs somewhat feudal; transmission of information can takes hours either way, so the military is often divorced from orders from above for long periods of time. During important crises (such as the Ozto Conflict), the Supreme Commander tends to remain within the system in question, overseeing information transfers more directly.
The IAF is, in times of peace, used to protect the status quo, prevent the misuse of spacecraft, and similar such things. It controls extremely powerful anti-spacecraft weapons, more than capable of destroying any suicide bomber, and maintains patrol craft in almost every system that is either colonized or part of the "trade lanes." It is not applied to internal affairs of the various nations, though it does remain a silent threat to any country that treads too far from the IEU's economic line.
Colonization and Reclamation Initiative (CRI):
The CRI could be thought of as the bureaucracy of colonization, or as a colonial administration in and of itself. In the modern era, it handles the management of labor outflow, resource inflow, terraforming, and other such concerns. Any early colony is effectively under CRI administration until it is deemed self-sufficient, except in the rare cases of a colony that is simply an extension of an Earth polity (such as Bonaparte). The CRI, like everything else, answers ultimately to the Central Committee, but also to the E Corps to some extent.
Perspectives:
The General Public:
For most people, the IEU is an important international organization, lying somewhere between the UN or EU. Few people particularly like the IEU, but think that without it, everything would be chaos. The boom-bust cycle would reign supreme once more, and monopolization would lead to the rapid formation of a few oligarchic corporations. In a way, the IEU has systematically discredited free market capitalism: it is perceived as inevitably self-destructive by the public. Any school teaching Whig history (the predominant view of history presented to primary and secondary school students) teaches the formation of the IEU as a crucial formation towards the modern world, on par with the first unions, the eight hour work day or the end of the gold standard.
Within:
Working for the IEU, at least in the upper echelons, requires a degree of ideology above and beyond the simple passivity and acceptance of the general public. To its most important employees, the IEU is a precisely tuned machine, existing for the purpose of furthering the interests of all people. Its mission is inherently humanitarian, because a stable economy is necessary to have a bright future. They would point out how IEU economic doctrine has lead to humanitarian ends: the economic catch-up of the (former) third world, the industrialization of Ozto, the provision of aid to colonists seeking a new life, the end of warfare (within its borders), the prevention of space-based terrorism, and so forth. To them, the IEU is inherently beneficial, because economic rationalism is superior to all other systems of economics. Growth is superior to either equality or "fair play," because it benefits everyone.
The IEU is a complex supranational bureaucracy organized for the purposes of ensuring economic (and thus political) stability and interconnectedness.
Structure:
Central Committee (CC):
The International Economic Union is, at its highest echelons, run by the IEU Central Committee, a council of thirty civilian officials sent by their governments to do the job. Of these thirty officials, twenty are constantly connected to particular nations - economic powerhouses on Earth - and ten are rotating representatives of other countries with effective self-government, rotated out every six months. The Central Committee does not personally draft economic plans and distribution schemes, but they do give overall guidelines to the Economics Corps, which drafts the plans based on previous production levels.
Economics Corps (E Corps):
The Economics Corps is the central bureaucracy of the IEU. It has been a fundamental part of the IEU from its birth to the present, and has a huge effect upon the actions of every other part of the IEU. The E Corps is the mental muscle of the IEU, handling raw data in complex inputs and outputs to put forward plans, describe phenomena, and predict the future. Without it, the information flow on which the IEU is predicated cannot function.
The E Corps supplies the Central Committee with numerous documents, plans, notes, and so forth in an unending torrent of carefully produced information. No intent to deceive is made, and no alteration of facts is allowed, but the information reinforces the status quo and the plans made by the E Corps upper hierarchy have a very high tendency to become the plans approved by the Central Committee. The plans it produces are enacted (normally) with the enthusiastic consent of governments who have received the plans, and grudging admission on occasion. The E Corps focuses on a largely "hands off" policy, producing recommendations which require a minimal amount of changes on the part of the local government and won't significantly alter present economic state.
While many other large-scale organizations of the IEU are intrinsically feudal, separated by hours in communication and weeks or months in terms of physical travel, the E Corps is centralized on Earth. It handles incoming data and produces outgoing orders - it does not directly interact with the rest of the IEU to any significant degree, though E Corps technicians are sometimes sent out on "reconnaissance" missions to various locales. Its purposes are myriad: identify speculation bubbles before they burst, control movement of capital, prevent monopolization, ensure the development of endogenous industries on particularly important planets, and so forth.
Bureaucracy:
From there, the IEU quickly descends from there into a mess of bureaucracy: economists, technicians and all variety of paper-pushers whose sole job is to keep the interstellar economy running smoothly. The distance of interstellar travel mean that significant delegation is necessary. Individual systems have local bureaucratic councils, who make regular reports back to the E Corps and answer immediately to the E Corps itself.
Local bureaucratic councils sometimes obtain a level of corruption qualitatively similar to fiefdoms. These occurances are rare, but spectacularly corrupt bureaucrats do exist, and every few years a new scandal breaks out regarding this or that bureaucrat taking eight or nine digit bribes from this or that corporation. The IEU has a sprawling internal affairs division, but even it can't watch everything, and money laundering has become a well-established talent of these bureaucratic despots.
International Armed Forces (IAF):
The IAF exists largely in parallel to the main bureaucracy, and delegates authority to its Supreme Commander, who in turn ultimately answers to the Central Committee. The Supreme Commander is responsible for large-scale strategic decisions undertaken by the IEU military, such as focuses of development, military theory, and so forth. The Supreme Commander is appointed by the Central Committee, makes monthly reports to it, and they answer directly to it. Other elements of the IAF (especially its intelligence services) also make regular, independent reports to the CC. The nature of the IEU make military affairs somewhat feudal; transmission of information can takes hours either way, so the military is often divorced from orders from above for long periods of time. During important crises (such as the Ozto Conflict), the Supreme Commander tends to remain within the system in question, overseeing information transfers more directly.
The IAF is, in times of peace, used to protect the status quo, prevent the misuse of spacecraft, and similar such things. It controls extremely powerful anti-spacecraft weapons, more than capable of destroying any suicide bomber, and maintains patrol craft in almost every system that is either colonized or part of the "trade lanes." It is not applied to internal affairs of the various nations, though it does remain a silent threat to any country that treads too far from the IEU's economic line.
Colonization and Reclamation Initiative (CRI):
The CRI could be thought of as the bureaucracy of colonization, or as a colonial administration in and of itself. In the modern era, it handles the management of labor outflow, resource inflow, terraforming, and other such concerns. Any early colony is effectively under CRI administration until it is deemed self-sufficient, except in the rare cases of a colony that is simply an extension of an Earth polity (such as Bonaparte). The CRI, like everything else, answers ultimately to the Central Committee, but also to the E Corps to some extent.
Perspectives:
The General Public:
For most people, the IEU is an important international organization, lying somewhere between the UN or EU. Few people particularly like the IEU, but think that without it, everything would be chaos. The boom-bust cycle would reign supreme once more, and monopolization would lead to the rapid formation of a few oligarchic corporations. In a way, the IEU has systematically discredited free market capitalism: it is perceived as inevitably self-destructive by the public. Any school teaching Whig history (the predominant view of history presented to primary and secondary school students) teaches the formation of the IEU as a crucial formation towards the modern world, on par with the first unions, the eight hour work day or the end of the gold standard.
Within:
Working for the IEU, at least in the upper echelons, requires a degree of ideology above and beyond the simple passivity and acceptance of the general public. To its most important employees, the IEU is a precisely tuned machine, existing for the purpose of furthering the interests of all people. Its mission is inherently humanitarian, because a stable economy is necessary to have a bright future. They would point out how IEU economic doctrine has lead to humanitarian ends: the economic catch-up of the (former) third world, the industrialization of Ozto, the provision of aid to colonists seeking a new life, the end of warfare (within its borders), the prevention of space-based terrorism, and so forth. To them, the IEU is inherently beneficial, because economic rationalism is superior to all other systems of economics. Growth is superior to either equality or "fair play," because it benefits everyone.