They were the sons of the owner of a DeRegger system. Their father was the CEO above all other CEO's, and his word, and theirs by extension, were law. However, seeing all the degradation in the worlds their father commanded, they decided to change things. They'd had the best education money could buy, even being allowed to get a higher education in the Alliance worlds, "to know their infidelities, insanity, godlessness, and excess my sons" was their father's reason. However, that education gave them something their father didn't expect. Compassion. -- Lessons
Just as you don't know you're on a Deathworld until you leave it, you also don't know you're on a Deregger colony until you hit Alliance space. So it was for the sons of Nigel Lodalute. He had had enough of the Alliance winning all the time, and demanded that his heirs learn the secrets of the alliance so that the Fiscal Empire of Lodalute Incorporated could prove their true economic strength and get one up on those evil socialist overlords trying to overtake the one true way.
Nigel did what he always accused the Alliance of doing, and sent his young to take advantage of the other education system to learn the secrets and use them back home. He insisted that they return, and had an unbreakable contract to prevent them from defecting. Even the CRC said it was a perfectly amenable agreement.
So they went. Nigel VI and his younger brother Steve III. There was a mandatory period of culture shock where they kept wondering how the system held itself together. Their chief concern was who had to pay for all of it, and how the administration managed to manage everyone's Time. They were encouraged to dig deep, and what they found shocked them.
The CRC worked in concert with planetary, station, and ship's economies. Enforcing standards of living between all. Follow these rules, they insisted, or commerce will be out of your reach. How was it all funded? The people living under the rule contributed their Time in one form or another. Either by using their monetary savings, or actually devoting their hours and skill to the betterment of those who lacked.
Steve III asked an Alliance citizen about it. How could the system enforce such a thing? Where were the loopholes for the lazy freeloaders to exploit? What holes were there in the system?
Dee, the Spacer teen stared at him as if he'd grown a second head and said, "Oh right, you're a Deregger kid. We've seen what happens when there are loopholes, so there's an entire culture around co-operation and doing the work for someone just like you, but a little worse off."
"Why would you do that? Why would you accept that? You're doing fine on your own."
Dee laughed. "But I'm not on my own. I have my parents who devoted their time and effort to raising me, the educators who spent their time on teaching me, the Mediks who spent their time on caring for my health... there's hosts of unseen engineers who spend their time on making sure the environment will sustain my life. If I was truly on my own? I'd have died years ago. So why not spend some of my time on someone who might not have as many people behind them?"
"There's nobody like that," scoffed Steve III.
"Ever thought that our system might be the reason why? And you only think there's nobody like that. There's lots. We have a special term for them."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. We call them Deregger Escapees."
It was a slow process, removing the scales from their eyes. The brothers were well off and could afford all their amenities, but the workforces from the same planetary systems... the 'walking assets' as HR called them... they were a different story.
The CRC had thousands of case files. Personal testimony. Medical evidence. Footage. It wasn't just the scrawny and starving, it was the harems of trophy wives. It was the diseased and desperate, risking their lives just to get away from their Deregger point of origin. It was also the multitude of the mutilated.
Every regulation, every law with safety in mind, was written in blood. It was scribed with cut fingers, delineated with amputated toes. It was sanded with broken bones, and etched into the gravestones of the dead. If a business could plausibly get away with cutting corners in the name of greater profits, it would.
Laws prevented things like bread being made out of milled weevils and rat poop. It prevented lead being used to make drinking water pipes. It stopped the use of arsenic as a colouring agent in children's sweets. It made sure medicines both actually did what they were supposed to do and were accessible by the people who needed it most.
Further, the economy flourished because those who had jobs wanted to work on them. They received a basic standard of accommodations and wage that paid for their wants while they were secure in their needs.
And it was all summed up with, "We don't treat our people like disposable pieces of a bigger pyramid with only the righteous deserving on top. Society is a network, and it's no good if people fall through the holes."
Their father had so much money that he didn't know how to spend it, and yet paying his employees fair money for their time and effort was the one expense that he reviled. Their father insisted on making the 'walking assets' truly earn what they got. Not a single one of them could afford any of the products made by the Lodalute empire. There was a debt management system that kept them all working for minimal returns if anything at all.
Crime was high, back in their home. So was inebriant use. So was violence. Those hardly existed in Alliance space. There was little need for any of them. Why steal when one could find work within one's skill sets and interests that would pay for anything one wanted? Why destroy brain and body with inebriants when there was little need for escape? Who could be angry enough to hurt others when things were this easy?
Nigel VI almost broke his contract, but he discussed it with his brother. They owed it to the people currently under their father's thumb. What if they, too, had been one bad circumstance away from complete ruin?
Admittedly, they did trick their father out of surrendering his control. It was the only way, they wheedled. They had learned every trick and his interference would just ruin everything. It worked, though he complained a lot when the theories became practice. What about the freeloaders? What about the loopholes? What about the freeloaders? What about their lifestyle?
They did turn the Fiscal Empire of Lodalute into something to rival the Alliance, but they did it by becoming like the Alliance to the point that the whole thing was no longer a Deregger empire any more.
It's rare indeed that a Deregger colony wakes up and reforms itself. This one was one of the CRC's success stories.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / Funtap]
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