Member Fiction: How The World Is Run

George Wright

There was once a leader of a country who wanted to be safe from atomic attack so he asked another friendly country to provide a facility to protect them. Unfortunately the facility could not be constructed in the time-frame anticipated. In fact, the digital research into the latest software needed to drive the advanced equipment had not quite been completed and until this occurred the deterrent could not be provided at the anticipated date. In fact completion got repeatedly deferred.

This delay could be politically accepted for some time, but after some years past the leader was facing domestic criticism and he found an alternative solution through other friendly countries and terminated the original agreement. At a world scale, this was a normal political give-and-take arrangement commonly made in anticipation of technological advances that had not yet been discovered but were accepted as normal scientific breakthrough research behaviour. However, the once-friendly country suddenly showed signs of disquiet. This got so bad that the leader faced the unthinkable. The once friendly country was publicly rude.

Luckily, in the meetings of world-wide leaders there is a game they play called Pass-the-Treaty. This occurs regularly where suggested exchanges of goods and services are issued at a series of meetings that are scheduled to occur over several days in confined location from which the leaders would find it difficult to escape. These meetings occur at increasing frequency so that at the end of the session on the final day the leaders have faced a barrage of offers and counter-offers which will be terminated by the leader of the host country at a predetermined hour. It originated in kinder where we all learnt how to play pass-the-hanky.

Luckily for us all, there is a dedicated team of digital recorders who keep track of things such as agreements or terminated handshakes so that there is a rational context for all the matters resolved at the conclusion of the session. The results are there for all to read. Unfortunately these records often don’t make sense as well as those decisions made leading up to such a meeting whether it be about climate or nuclear stoppers or any other irrelevant thing.

Taken in a wider context, what is agreed at the termination is something that is difficult to specify. Announcements are made such as those that leader had made about protecting his country from atomic attack but all leaders understand that this has been made in the context of artificial timelines and social pressures

In the current case, the leader who terminated the agreement would have had the opportunity to deal with any rudeness that had occurred in the context of a wide range of possibilities of things that could be invented at some future times which has the flexibility to introduce many outcomes that are impossible to pin down with any certainty and the issue can eventually be downgraded in importance by mutual agreement between all negotiating participant leaders.

After all, what technology do you need to drive a facility that has been operating successfully for decades and in the context of a game that has been played for centuries?