Prisoners of Technocracy (Robots in Your Future Book 1) by David Poland

Author:David Poland [Poland, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Published: 2017-02-21T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Five

The population of the city had been declining in exactly the way that the demographic rule had predicted. The rule said, that as a nation’s wealth increased, family sizes would decrease. The diminishing population seemed to be proving that the rule was inescapable. In the last half of the twentieth century, there had been very real decreases of the populations in both Scandinavia and Japan, and many other affluent areas.

There were no poor neighborhoods in Tommy’s city. It was big enough to be interesting, and small enough to be comfortable. Homeland Care hid the rate that the indigenous population was decreasing by steadily importing citizens from less utopian areas. One of the demographics that HC never disclosed was that in some areas, no one was left. It was also generally not known that at any given time two or three small empty towns were being dismantled and the land given back to the wilderness.

While Homeland Care had been chartered to support domestic tranquility and promote the general welfare, it had been forced into a new task. The urban architects and computers at HC were now struggling to find ways to stimulate young adults to create families. They thought that if at least part of the nineteenth century could be recreated, perhaps families would start growing again like they did back in the old days.

HC had determined that the easiest part of the nineteenth century to re-create was the open-air market. Within the city, five ideal locations had been reconstructed into such markets and were opened only on weekends. Robotic muscle had eliminated the scarcity of human needs, but the open-air markets gave the humans a way to get out of their virtual realities and do something tangible. HC also mandated, that the markets could only be open on the weekends. This forced the humans to schedule their time and it created a wonderful sense of urgency as the weekends approached.

To supply the open-air markets, small acre farms had been located around the parameter of the city, and given to families with at least two children. Each of the little farms had a large house that could easily accommodate a large family. HC had carefully priced the output of the large government farms to be just a bit higher than the prices that would give the family farms a very good profit. There were real incentives for these families to compete with each other and raise the best produce possible. They could beat the government prices and still make very good money.

HC had learned through experience, that to keep humans healthy, they needed to have meaningful problems to worry about and solve. HC saw to it that unfit families were removed from the small farms and relocated to more appropriate places in the city. The robots were programed to never point out how unnecessary the small farms were. They understood this was an important human experience and did their best to let their humans experience it to the fullest. The

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