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This is my first substantive post here; hopefully I haven't broken any subtle points of etiquette! (Or nonsubtle, in which case my deepest apologies.)
Since we're moving to a hybrid model, I'd like to suggest that we move to the 5x5 (or even a 5x6) civics model of C4. This is orthogonal to the question of whether to have SE modifiers or idiosyncratic modifiers for each SE option - I'd prefer the latter, but I seem to be in the minority. I'll only argue that if we do adopt a greater number of SE choices having more specific and less abstract effects would enable them to differ more meaningfully.
To steal most directly from C4, the five categories could be Government, Economics, Labor, Legal System, and Values; "Future Society"-type options could be built in as later-tier options to all of these categories. I've no doubt somebody can come up with superior alternatives to these categories, but they seem to be pretty solid for now.
I have a rough outline of what all the social models could be; this is necessarily incomplete and improvable. My goal here is conceptual rather than the exact benefits each might provide (though I imagine the goal would be to make the earlier options balanced with the later options even in the late game.) Rather, I'm hoping to preserve the Alpha Centauri feel by keeping with the themes of utopianism, dystopia, and transhumanism.
Government
After Planetfall, a Frontier government takes control merely because no one else will. Decisions are made by ad hoc committees, the decision-makers rule without clear authority but seek to establish consensus, and governmental infrastructure is yet unformed. It will cede power to marching masses, ambitious elites, or armed ideologues.
Once a general sense of peoplehood and voting technology and infrastructure is set in place, Democracy becomes a workable possibility again. At the earliest stages of information technology development, democratic populations vote for leaders who promise to legislate in their interests; later, access to information and logistical ease enable most issues to be voted on directly. Though a political elite of the smartest, most ambitious, and luckiest necessarily exists, it cannot enact its agenda without broad consensus.
Hitler had radio, a depression-starved people and Carl Schmitt; you have the hologram, a Planet-hardened people and loyal officer corps. Charismatic Dictatorship enables the unary executive with unlimited power to pass all laws and direct all actions of the government. Sometimes the dictator is an immortal, technology-enabled god; sometimes she is merely a front for more mysterious interests or even a complete fabrication. Holographic technology and dynamic coding enable the leader to talk personally with each citizen in his own home; the same technology that allows political campaigns to win in free factions sculpts for her a psychological profile calibrated exactly to her populace's needs.
Bribery is a part of every government. Until the institution of Federal Anarchism, it has been an unwanted one. Advances in game theory allow the construction of an arbitration system based entirely on bidding. Bypassing the dictat of appointed experts and disinterested parties with no understanding of the issue, the bidding system allows stakeholders - or shareholders - to settle issues amongst themselves directly. Dreams of a stateless capitalism become feasible, and with Cooperative labor, syndicalism as well.
With the rise of genetic engineering and Planet-resonant psychic abilities, organized psions may push for rule by an Empathic Consciousness. While in any society where they exist and are tolerated, psi-active individuals will come to compose the elite - as the rich gengineer their children and "natural" psions rise to the promise of their abilities - in this social model they pool into and rule through a collective mind. The Consciouness tends to present itself as Planetmind, or God, or simply the unconscious will of the whole people. Societies ruled by such minds tend to have a closer relationship with Planet than otherwise, and those citizens that participate in it have their abilities nurtured to the fullest, but people of talent are pushed away from other pursuits, and the ungifted "pets" of the psions find their individuality and creativity sapped.
The alternative deity of a technological civilization is the computer. Cybernetic societies turn themselves over to the care of selfless expert systems infinitely smarter and less prejudiced than any human. The decisions of the computer are wise, from a technocratic point of view, and relative to the society that wrote their metaprogramming scripts, but ultimately can't garner the people's emotional investment in the way that human governments, however brutal, can.
Economics
Before industrial infrastructure is built, a central bank is instituted, or laws enacted to enable risky or large-scale investments, Simple economics are the only kind possible. Trade proceeds by barter, extraction by gathering, and production by jury-rigged Unity machinery.
With the financial institutions, transportation infrastructure, and legal codes in place to support it, a Free Market economy is possible. Beyond providing this base, the government takes little or no initiative in directing the economy, either to direct production or to distribute goods and services. Corporations or cooperatives can start up and operate free from red tape and burdensome taxation, and entrepreneurs spot opportunities planners never would, but bivalent boom-depression cycles and negative externalities on health and environment run just as freely.
A Mixed economy builds on the same infrastructure and general model necessary for a Free Market economy, but enables the government to regulate business practices and distribute goods and services, whether to counteract market failure or provide for those whom the market will not. A generally practical rather than ideologically-based model, the ability to implement a Mixed economy depends not on any high-minded theorizing but a rigorous empirical examination of economic life on Planet. (Governments which tried to reform their Free Market systems prior to such examinations inevitably failed, finding their central bank and labor market models particular to developed 21st century Earth economies.) Avoiding the excesses of Free Markets, Mixed economics curbs its benefits with red tape as well.
On Planet, Planned economics are made once again viable and even intellectually respectable by the advent of advanced computing technologies. Amounts of data that couldn't possibly be computed by human planners is rendered effable by machines. Under comparatively low-tech planning, humans enlist computer aid in crunching information and automatic citation of arbitrage possibilities, and demand curves are constructed from consumer surveys and automated analyses of revealed preferences. Under higher-tech planning, computers construct plans from human assignments of input-output production techniques and derive demand curves from mass psychographic profiles, all dynamically adjusted to new production techniques and consumer preferences as they are revealed. Its feats are impressive, but at all stages the drain on society's computing and logistical resources are heavy.
Green economics are... actually, I have no idea how to conceptualize this, other than as a version of any of the others, but with the environment treated as as much a goal as this generation of humans' happiness. Maybe this is an argument for another category; I dunno.
There should be at least one "future society"/transhumanist economics option, but I can't conceive one at the moment that isn't better subsumed into something else. This is somewhat embarrassing because I'm an economics major interested in comparative and alternative stuff, but I'm sure smart people can come up with something.
Labor
The earliest colonists must make do with Subsistence labor; neither incentive nor coercion is necessary to inspire a hard work ethic, because everyone must work merely to produce her means of survival. More advanced economies that fall back to this labor model aren't necessarily on the brink of starvation; their notions of what is necessary for "survival" just happen to be a bit more lofty.
Roughly contemporaneous with the feasibility of market economics, due to similar infrastructure requirements, Wage labor marks a return to the system most familiar to the masses of Earth's last two centuries. Under a wage labor system, citizens sell their time to society's major economic units and are recompensated according to its value as a factor of production. A managerial class directs the work of the other wage laborers, and there are frequently iterative hierarchies of such that coordinate work for the labor-buyers. Wage laborers have enough choices and independence to not make the system functionally one of Slavery; but neither are their unions, if allowed, strong enough to make the system functionally one of Cooperatives.
In the past, the brutest of coercion was generally only capable of inspiring the brutest of physical work; beyond a few well-fed house slaves slavery was generally only useful for mining, construction, and farming. With the advent of nerve stapling, neurochemically-based torture techniques, and invasive procedures, a society's elite may force the masses into Slave labor in even the most sophisticated professions. Rather than selling their labor to or owning their economic units, slaves are the property of them. Economists in this system, at least the free or pampered ones, point out the simplicity and common sense of listing "worker," rather than "labor," as a basic factor of production alongside machinery and land - after all, "labor" is a flow variable, unlike all the others, which are static variables. Slaves, whether fungus-pickers or programmers, may be worked to death with abandon, but seem to be curiously ungrateful for their masters' loving care.
Shortly after industrialization, workers' movements attempt to move their societies to a model of Cooperative labor based on worker ownership of firms. The role filled by management in wage economies and enforcement in slave one is replaced by a comparatively minor group of foremen (or, if one cynical about it, distributed amongst an endless variety of councils and meetings.) Increased stakeholding and a sense of empowerment drives the common worker to new heights of industry, a broad-based prosperity ensues, and elites find it more difficult to direct the proles to their whims.
With mass genetic modification to the human chromosome, Biospecialization looks like an attractive prospect to some. Under this system, offshoots of humanity would be custom-designed for various tasks, equipped with both the aptitude and desire - both genetically encoded and socially supported - to fulfill their lot in life. From Chairman Yang's prototypical "gene-jacks" to later iterations - skyscraper-hanging man-spiders with the instinctive desire to clean windows with their antibiotic spit, unquestioning soldiers with group psionic links and regenerating limbs - these workers are good at what they do, but the economy of a population composed of them becomes grossly inflexible, retraining is not exactly an easy prospect.
Among societies with truly advanced automation, work may become as much an artefact as petroleum or theism. This does not, of course, displace the need to feel useful. While the first generation to abandon work finds itself plagued by narcissism and excess, their children adopt the philosophy of Eudaimonia. According to Eudaimonia, the end of "work" as it was heretofore constituted does not condemn people to uselessness, but opens up the door to pursue greater achievements still. Freed from any boring labor and given all the educational resources their information-enabled society has to offer, every individual is freed to pursue her own idea of the fascinating, the excellent, and the good. Arts, culture, and science flourish, but if these lotus-eaters find themselves in a situation in real need of discipline and asceticism, they will be in for a rude awakening.
Legal Systems
Factions on Planet begin operating under Colonial law, the legal norms specified in the original Unity charter. A product of the U.N., Colonial law is designed to preserve as many liberal rights as possible in a situation with little resources for jurisprudence or legal infrastructure. State abuse of citizens is proscribed, but the system of torts needed to enforce it does not fully exist; the right to a trial exists for felonies but to a jury trial only in the most controversial of circumstances, and appeal is difficult to achieve. Arbitration in sticky situations invokes a multinational tradition of common law uniquely unsuited to life on Planet, when not decided by force of personality.
When a more sophisticated court system may be put in place, a more salient collection of case law enables the formation of a new, Planet-based Liberal tradition. The integrity of the individual against the state is affirmed in questions of freedom of speech, of movement, and of privacy; and advantage is accorded to the defense at every level of criminal proceedings. Expression and privacy issues raised by new technologies are incorporated into the legal literature; the pro forma legal equality of all adult humans is affirmed. No price in paperwork and procedure is considered too great to ensure the rule of law, and the petty criminal freeloads off measures designed to protect the dissident.
Advances in network, database, and recording technologies tempt the elites - or security-fearing masses - to follow an alternative approach to privacy: Total Surveillance. Every action, identifying fact, and innocuous statement is recorded and archived; the public square and hab complex hovels are subjected to full video, audio, and chemical analysis. Scanners linked to databases of citizen facial structure make periodic ID checks useful only for employment's or nostalgia's sake. Statistical analysis hums forever in the background, finding the relationship between purchases of bars of soap, subversive codewords, and jaywalking. When a Total Surveillance society is able to employ psions working in concert with advanced stat-crunching AI, crimes are typically prevented before they occur.
I'm sure there are other futuristic (or non-futuristic) models that smart people can describe, probably dealing with superhuman intelligences and such.
Values
Survival is the primary value of the first generation of colonists to live on Chiron. Not the loftiest of goals, but it'd be yours, too.
Traditional values mark a return, incomprehensible to the scientist-composed first generation of colonists, to premodern mindset. The ancient ways of humankind are affirmed even off of their homeworld: loyalty to kin against loyalty to state, ritual against reason, the beauty of mystery against investigation. Earth-style gender roles reassert themselves, pushing population growth up while denying society the talents of female scientists and engineers. The dignity of rural life and small, tight-knit communities is upheld against large cities, despite the inefficiencies and ecological impact. Religion in its pre-Enlightenment form finds devotion in the populace, robbing them of curiosity but not creativity. People have less need to ask incessant questions of their leaders, finding meaning and expression instead in ritual.
You already know what Knowledge, Power, and Wealth are. The only change (if it's really a change) I'd make is to conceptualize Knowledge to be about all intellectual pursuits rather than strictly technology, and have Traditional and Knowledge, despite being opposites in all other ways, be the "culture bomb" values. So the Roman Rite and Threepenny Opera compete with each other while stomping all over firepower displays and MTV reality shows. (Since this is somewhat unrealistic, we can make the assumption that people of the future have better aesthetics, possibly thanks to genetic engineering.)
Unlike the other categories, pretty much all of these come early in the game; there's room for a far-future cultural politics, but I can't think of anything more inspired than Psi/Planetmind idolization - which tromps on the much cooler territory of Empathic Consciousness and/or Green economics - or "how much of a superbeing can you be."
General stuff: are we too far invested in the current SE model to consider this? If not, is this capable of being better?
Specific stuff: Better organization of categories? Suggestions for SE choices? Suggestions for mechanical effects and balancing of various choices? Critiques of specific SE choices given?
Since we're moving to a hybrid model, I'd like to suggest that we move to the 5x5 (or even a 5x6) civics model of C4. This is orthogonal to the question of whether to have SE modifiers or idiosyncratic modifiers for each SE option - I'd prefer the latter, but I seem to be in the minority. I'll only argue that if we do adopt a greater number of SE choices having more specific and less abstract effects would enable them to differ more meaningfully.
To steal most directly from C4, the five categories could be Government, Economics, Labor, Legal System, and Values; "Future Society"-type options could be built in as later-tier options to all of these categories. I've no doubt somebody can come up with superior alternatives to these categories, but they seem to be pretty solid for now.
I have a rough outline of what all the social models could be; this is necessarily incomplete and improvable. My goal here is conceptual rather than the exact benefits each might provide (though I imagine the goal would be to make the earlier options balanced with the later options even in the late game.) Rather, I'm hoping to preserve the Alpha Centauri feel by keeping with the themes of utopianism, dystopia, and transhumanism.
Government
After Planetfall, a Frontier government takes control merely because no one else will. Decisions are made by ad hoc committees, the decision-makers rule without clear authority but seek to establish consensus, and governmental infrastructure is yet unformed. It will cede power to marching masses, ambitious elites, or armed ideologues.
Once a general sense of peoplehood and voting technology and infrastructure is set in place, Democracy becomes a workable possibility again. At the earliest stages of information technology development, democratic populations vote for leaders who promise to legislate in their interests; later, access to information and logistical ease enable most issues to be voted on directly. Though a political elite of the smartest, most ambitious, and luckiest necessarily exists, it cannot enact its agenda without broad consensus.
Hitler had radio, a depression-starved people and Carl Schmitt; you have the hologram, a Planet-hardened people and loyal officer corps. Charismatic Dictatorship enables the unary executive with unlimited power to pass all laws and direct all actions of the government. Sometimes the dictator is an immortal, technology-enabled god; sometimes she is merely a front for more mysterious interests or even a complete fabrication. Holographic technology and dynamic coding enable the leader to talk personally with each citizen in his own home; the same technology that allows political campaigns to win in free factions sculpts for her a psychological profile calibrated exactly to her populace's needs.
Bribery is a part of every government. Until the institution of Federal Anarchism, it has been an unwanted one. Advances in game theory allow the construction of an arbitration system based entirely on bidding. Bypassing the dictat of appointed experts and disinterested parties with no understanding of the issue, the bidding system allows stakeholders - or shareholders - to settle issues amongst themselves directly. Dreams of a stateless capitalism become feasible, and with Cooperative labor, syndicalism as well.
With the rise of genetic engineering and Planet-resonant psychic abilities, organized psions may push for rule by an Empathic Consciousness. While in any society where they exist and are tolerated, psi-active individuals will come to compose the elite - as the rich gengineer their children and "natural" psions rise to the promise of their abilities - in this social model they pool into and rule through a collective mind. The Consciouness tends to present itself as Planetmind, or God, or simply the unconscious will of the whole people. Societies ruled by such minds tend to have a closer relationship with Planet than otherwise, and those citizens that participate in it have their abilities nurtured to the fullest, but people of talent are pushed away from other pursuits, and the ungifted "pets" of the psions find their individuality and creativity sapped.
The alternative deity of a technological civilization is the computer. Cybernetic societies turn themselves over to the care of selfless expert systems infinitely smarter and less prejudiced than any human. The decisions of the computer are wise, from a technocratic point of view, and relative to the society that wrote their metaprogramming scripts, but ultimately can't garner the people's emotional investment in the way that human governments, however brutal, can.
Economics
Before industrial infrastructure is built, a central bank is instituted, or laws enacted to enable risky or large-scale investments, Simple economics are the only kind possible. Trade proceeds by barter, extraction by gathering, and production by jury-rigged Unity machinery.
With the financial institutions, transportation infrastructure, and legal codes in place to support it, a Free Market economy is possible. Beyond providing this base, the government takes little or no initiative in directing the economy, either to direct production or to distribute goods and services. Corporations or cooperatives can start up and operate free from red tape and burdensome taxation, and entrepreneurs spot opportunities planners never would, but bivalent boom-depression cycles and negative externalities on health and environment run just as freely.
A Mixed economy builds on the same infrastructure and general model necessary for a Free Market economy, but enables the government to regulate business practices and distribute goods and services, whether to counteract market failure or provide for those whom the market will not. A generally practical rather than ideologically-based model, the ability to implement a Mixed economy depends not on any high-minded theorizing but a rigorous empirical examination of economic life on Planet. (Governments which tried to reform their Free Market systems prior to such examinations inevitably failed, finding their central bank and labor market models particular to developed 21st century Earth economies.) Avoiding the excesses of Free Markets, Mixed economics curbs its benefits with red tape as well.
On Planet, Planned economics are made once again viable and even intellectually respectable by the advent of advanced computing technologies. Amounts of data that couldn't possibly be computed by human planners is rendered effable by machines. Under comparatively low-tech planning, humans enlist computer aid in crunching information and automatic citation of arbitrage possibilities, and demand curves are constructed from consumer surveys and automated analyses of revealed preferences. Under higher-tech planning, computers construct plans from human assignments of input-output production techniques and derive demand curves from mass psychographic profiles, all dynamically adjusted to new production techniques and consumer preferences as they are revealed. Its feats are impressive, but at all stages the drain on society's computing and logistical resources are heavy.
Green economics are... actually, I have no idea how to conceptualize this, other than as a version of any of the others, but with the environment treated as as much a goal as this generation of humans' happiness. Maybe this is an argument for another category; I dunno.
There should be at least one "future society"/transhumanist economics option, but I can't conceive one at the moment that isn't better subsumed into something else. This is somewhat embarrassing because I'm an economics major interested in comparative and alternative stuff, but I'm sure smart people can come up with something.
Labor
The earliest colonists must make do with Subsistence labor; neither incentive nor coercion is necessary to inspire a hard work ethic, because everyone must work merely to produce her means of survival. More advanced economies that fall back to this labor model aren't necessarily on the brink of starvation; their notions of what is necessary for "survival" just happen to be a bit more lofty.
Roughly contemporaneous with the feasibility of market economics, due to similar infrastructure requirements, Wage labor marks a return to the system most familiar to the masses of Earth's last two centuries. Under a wage labor system, citizens sell their time to society's major economic units and are recompensated according to its value as a factor of production. A managerial class directs the work of the other wage laborers, and there are frequently iterative hierarchies of such that coordinate work for the labor-buyers. Wage laborers have enough choices and independence to not make the system functionally one of Slavery; but neither are their unions, if allowed, strong enough to make the system functionally one of Cooperatives.
In the past, the brutest of coercion was generally only capable of inspiring the brutest of physical work; beyond a few well-fed house slaves slavery was generally only useful for mining, construction, and farming. With the advent of nerve stapling, neurochemically-based torture techniques, and invasive procedures, a society's elite may force the masses into Slave labor in even the most sophisticated professions. Rather than selling their labor to or owning their economic units, slaves are the property of them. Economists in this system, at least the free or pampered ones, point out the simplicity and common sense of listing "worker," rather than "labor," as a basic factor of production alongside machinery and land - after all, "labor" is a flow variable, unlike all the others, which are static variables. Slaves, whether fungus-pickers or programmers, may be worked to death with abandon, but seem to be curiously ungrateful for their masters' loving care.
Shortly after industrialization, workers' movements attempt to move their societies to a model of Cooperative labor based on worker ownership of firms. The role filled by management in wage economies and enforcement in slave one is replaced by a comparatively minor group of foremen (or, if one cynical about it, distributed amongst an endless variety of councils and meetings.) Increased stakeholding and a sense of empowerment drives the common worker to new heights of industry, a broad-based prosperity ensues, and elites find it more difficult to direct the proles to their whims.
With mass genetic modification to the human chromosome, Biospecialization looks like an attractive prospect to some. Under this system, offshoots of humanity would be custom-designed for various tasks, equipped with both the aptitude and desire - both genetically encoded and socially supported - to fulfill their lot in life. From Chairman Yang's prototypical "gene-jacks" to later iterations - skyscraper-hanging man-spiders with the instinctive desire to clean windows with their antibiotic spit, unquestioning soldiers with group psionic links and regenerating limbs - these workers are good at what they do, but the economy of a population composed of them becomes grossly inflexible, retraining is not exactly an easy prospect.
Among societies with truly advanced automation, work may become as much an artefact as petroleum or theism. This does not, of course, displace the need to feel useful. While the first generation to abandon work finds itself plagued by narcissism and excess, their children adopt the philosophy of Eudaimonia. According to Eudaimonia, the end of "work" as it was heretofore constituted does not condemn people to uselessness, but opens up the door to pursue greater achievements still. Freed from any boring labor and given all the educational resources their information-enabled society has to offer, every individual is freed to pursue her own idea of the fascinating, the excellent, and the good. Arts, culture, and science flourish, but if these lotus-eaters find themselves in a situation in real need of discipline and asceticism, they will be in for a rude awakening.
Legal Systems
Factions on Planet begin operating under Colonial law, the legal norms specified in the original Unity charter. A product of the U.N., Colonial law is designed to preserve as many liberal rights as possible in a situation with little resources for jurisprudence or legal infrastructure. State abuse of citizens is proscribed, but the system of torts needed to enforce it does not fully exist; the right to a trial exists for felonies but to a jury trial only in the most controversial of circumstances, and appeal is difficult to achieve. Arbitration in sticky situations invokes a multinational tradition of common law uniquely unsuited to life on Planet, when not decided by force of personality.
When a more sophisticated court system may be put in place, a more salient collection of case law enables the formation of a new, Planet-based Liberal tradition. The integrity of the individual against the state is affirmed in questions of freedom of speech, of movement, and of privacy; and advantage is accorded to the defense at every level of criminal proceedings. Expression and privacy issues raised by new technologies are incorporated into the legal literature; the pro forma legal equality of all adult humans is affirmed. No price in paperwork and procedure is considered too great to ensure the rule of law, and the petty criminal freeloads off measures designed to protect the dissident.
Advances in network, database, and recording technologies tempt the elites - or security-fearing masses - to follow an alternative approach to privacy: Total Surveillance. Every action, identifying fact, and innocuous statement is recorded and archived; the public square and hab complex hovels are subjected to full video, audio, and chemical analysis. Scanners linked to databases of citizen facial structure make periodic ID checks useful only for employment's or nostalgia's sake. Statistical analysis hums forever in the background, finding the relationship between purchases of bars of soap, subversive codewords, and jaywalking. When a Total Surveillance society is able to employ psions working in concert with advanced stat-crunching AI, crimes are typically prevented before they occur.
I'm sure there are other futuristic (or non-futuristic) models that smart people can describe, probably dealing with superhuman intelligences and such.
Values
Survival is the primary value of the first generation of colonists to live on Chiron. Not the loftiest of goals, but it'd be yours, too.
Traditional values mark a return, incomprehensible to the scientist-composed first generation of colonists, to premodern mindset. The ancient ways of humankind are affirmed even off of their homeworld: loyalty to kin against loyalty to state, ritual against reason, the beauty of mystery against investigation. Earth-style gender roles reassert themselves, pushing population growth up while denying society the talents of female scientists and engineers. The dignity of rural life and small, tight-knit communities is upheld against large cities, despite the inefficiencies and ecological impact. Religion in its pre-Enlightenment form finds devotion in the populace, robbing them of curiosity but not creativity. People have less need to ask incessant questions of their leaders, finding meaning and expression instead in ritual.
You already know what Knowledge, Power, and Wealth are. The only change (if it's really a change) I'd make is to conceptualize Knowledge to be about all intellectual pursuits rather than strictly technology, and have Traditional and Knowledge, despite being opposites in all other ways, be the "culture bomb" values. So the Roman Rite and Threepenny Opera compete with each other while stomping all over firepower displays and MTV reality shows. (Since this is somewhat unrealistic, we can make the assumption that people of the future have better aesthetics, possibly thanks to genetic engineering.)
Unlike the other categories, pretty much all of these come early in the game; there's room for a far-future cultural politics, but I can't think of anything more inspired than Psi/Planetmind idolization - which tromps on the much cooler territory of Empathic Consciousness and/or Green economics - or "how much of a superbeing can you be."
General stuff: are we too far invested in the current SE model to consider this? If not, is this capable of being better?
Specific stuff: Better organization of categories? Suggestions for SE choices? Suggestions for mechanical effects and balancing of various choices? Critiques of specific SE choices given?
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