Jack of Harts

The key concept of the Socialist Republic of Juneau’s Life Debt system was that the very lives of those who owed a Life Debt belonged to Juneau. Juneau fed and clothed them. Juneau sheltered them. Juneau schooled them. And the schooling process including sorting the children into the jobs they would be most proficient at performing for the good of Juneau. Juneau assigned their service based on the very best algorithms the government-trained bureaucrats could generate, and those services worked off that Life Debt. The other key concept was, of course, that the majority of people could never work off the Life Debt. That would defeat the entire point of a system meant to formalize the public debt of all to the State. There had to be some Zero Balancers, to act as a beacon for all the other workers, of course. But they had to be the right people. Most people could not be trusted to know how to be their best person on their own. Most people needed others to tell them what to do, or they would never succeed. So Juneau took care to pre-sort those who would be allowed to gain Zero Balance status and those who would be kept in Life Debt for the rest of their lives, and then pass their Life Debt on to their children. For the good of the people, of course.

The Socialist Republic of Juneau ran into the same problem that every socialist nation ran into during the centuries before we developed fabricators. There were never enough resources to feed and clothe those who did not wish to work to generate them. They could always expand and acquire other peoples’ resources for a time, but sooner or later, they always ran out of other peoples’ money. Juneau ran into that problem within a decade of the formation of Pacifica, and those who formed their workers’ paradise had to quickly decide how to encourage people to generate more resources Juneau needed to survive. Luckily for those involved, the government employees they used to be were always exceptional at labeling and organizing things. So if resources were becoming increasingly expensive, and if human life was becoming comparatively cheap, the only way to balance the two was by putting an expensive price on human life. The medical costs to keep a person alive. Their food costs for a lifetime. What it would cost to keep them entertained. The average cost a person would impose on Juneau over the period of an average life. The debt every person owed Juneau for giving them life. They called it the Life Debt.