Similar to the EU, the Federation does not receive much coverage in the series. However, the second season revolves around the liberation of Federation citizens, as well as their union with the United States of Japan to form a much larger union later on (a topic to be presented in a later article).Because of its inclusion of the India Militarized Zone, the Liaodong Militarized Zone, and Mongolia, the Federation in-series should have roughly 2.5 Billion citizens, making it the largest territory-by-population in Code Geass. What we know is that the people of the Federation are in a state of poverty, with anger later placed on the governing body (The High Eunuchs) for hoarding much of the resources. Their execution becomes the catalyst which liberates the Federation.
Synopsis: The Chinese Federation is, in essence, the series equivalent of the Soviet Union, a communist superstate fueled by a corrupt totalitarian regime. That makes it a really good context with which to draw a parallel. But before we go into that, I would to bring to light some supplementary information for what is to be talked about.
1) The Zero-Sum Fallacy of economics asserts that the amount of resources is fixed, therefore one's resource increase is another's decrease. We know this not to be true, as the amount of resources fluctuates with a variety of factors, such as production and discovery.
2) Thomas Malthus's theories on population growth present the notion that the increase in people will always be greater than the increase in food production, but this can be construed to hold for all types of resource, preserving the idea of scarcity in economics.
Both 1 and 2 are contradictory statements, then. If the rate of population growth is always higher than the rate of resource fluctuation, then wealth truly is zero-sum because supply never truly increases. However, if the rate of resource fluctuation is always higher than the rate of population growth, then supply is always increasing and scarcity is no longer a concern.
It is imperative that we establish this contradiction any time communist principles are discussed. Communism can only work if, above all other phenomena, the rate of supply is constantly increasing at a rate faster than the population. This was not true in the Soviet Union; after the 1960s, production began to slow even while the population continued to grow.
We can assume with great accuracy that the same is true of the Chinese Federation in the Code Geass anime. Regardless of actual GDP, we know that Britannia was pushing the Federation in a negative direction from a resource standpoint. Additionally, we can estimate the population at 2.5 Billion and growing. Combined, this points to an economic "pie" where the pieces are not only getting divided further and further, but each individual piece is also shrinking. Had the Federation not been liberated, it would have failed outright anyway.
That is not to say that a functional communist society is impossible; on paper, the ideals are pretty solid. But it will be hundreds, if not thousands of years, before resource accrual succeeds population growth enough to allow such a society to exist.
(Sidenote: In smaller, closed societies, establishing a distribution of wealth not unlike communism is much easier, as the needs of the society are less diverse, limiting the kinds of resources necessary and allowing for a more optimized production model.)
No comments:
Post a Comment