Between the years 2146 and 2148, a particularly powerful US president, Mr. Clyde Davis, with popular support, pushed hard to redefine the US government model. Both his significant power and influence and his success in redefining government can largely be attributed to the influence of the non-corporate directors upon the board. What emerged, in December 2148 was a major amendment to the US constitution that redefined the US. No longer a federation of states, the new constitution described the US as a post-national Federation defined by unifying common protocols to administer the
clades.
The clades were the evolution of the corporate interests reigning the US in the last century, but where also much more. Clades were groups of people distinguished by a shared loyalty, either to a corporate organization, or more often corporate culture, to shared values, similar ethnic heritage, a common religion, or other, self-described identifier.
Each clade is responsible for the subnational organization of its members. Elected presidents, corporate executives, church leaders, or any other government structure its membership might adheres to govern the individual clades. Membership in a clade must be voluntary for both the organization and the individual with many clades, especially corporate ones, having very strict membership limits.
Each clade provides one or two members to the federal council and receives votes based a system of ‘value leadership model’ which represents both total population and economic and military development. In practice this means that the most potent corporate clades continue to have a disproportionate influence upon the common government.
Society, and territory, is divided amongst the clades, with many of the most influential and powerful controlling huge swathes of territory and innumerable smaller segregated (often gated) enclaves throughout the major metropolises and territories of their allies and trading partners.
Infrastructure, law, punishment, and governance of the clades is left to each to determine with the ‘federal’ law, called the ‘Common Protocol’ coming into effect when the clades cannot adjudicate differences between themselves effectively.
The Common Protocol (CP) are intended to provide for the coexistence of, and peaceful economic activity between clades with potentially very different values, culture, and structure. It is concerned primarily with the rights to personal property, being very harsh in its treatment of those harming the economic capacity of another person or group (weighing damage to a person in terms of their ability to contribute economically to themselves and their clade and to the commons). Each clade, by the CP, is ultimately responsible for its member’s behavior and actions. Considering that the vast majority of crimes policed by the CP result in a hefty fine to one clade or another, the clades themselves are highly motivated to ensure their populations are well policed, with exile serving as a final detriment
The Common Council serves as the federal government and elects the president (almost always a council-member him or herself). The federal government is itself a specialized clade, though under direction of the council and with a very strictly delineated, primarily support, role for the federation. Their territory is called ‘the commons’, though access thereto is also tightly regulated. The federal government directs common economic policy (especially transport infrastructure), foreign diplomacy, and the military. It also sets a limit to the clades’ private security (ie military) forces to help prevent intra-clade violence. To support the council’s role, the clades each provide a federal tax relative to their ‘value measurement’ (and thus representation in the federation).
Not all clades are equivalent. The richer clades (Koch, Schlumberger-Halliburtin, some other corporate clades) provide a very high quality of life to their citizenry, including education, healthcare, telecommunications and transport infrastructure, and excellent food and housing security. Access to their territories and enclaves is securely guarded and membership is highly sought after. Others, especially the smaller ones arisen to represent the interests of populations with no corporate interests, lie at the opposite end of the spectrum, with the majority of their population living in abject poverty with no access to education, healthcare, and with minimal food or housing security.
“Non Sovereign Citizens” (NSCs), people with US citizenship but not having clade citizenship, commonly called vagabonds, hobos, tramps, or thetes, exist. These NSCs are often highly socially disadvantaged and economically poor, necessarily without land, and are very much second class citizens in the CP. While originally a relatively small percentage of the population, by the year 2160, they have grown in number significantly and often serve as paid unskilled laborers for clade citizens.
The years between 2148 and 2160 see an initial huge increase in the number of clades on the common council but these soon find that administering and caring for the population and infrastructure can prove very expensive and that unsatisfied citizens can easily vote with their feet. The 2150s see a rapid contraction in the number of clades with only those with the best ability to administer and care for their populations thriving. Ultimately this leads to much greater efficiency as infrastructure and administrative control is centralized in a more limited number of highly effective centers.