My pre-weekend instructions were that it was my responsibility to make sure I did not lose one person in my society through the whole 4 day weekend. The class teachers would send in adversity like a workers strike or a tornado. I was to maneuver the group through the difficulties while making sure the society produced enough credit points to feed and clothe and house everyone in the society. At the end of each cycle I was expected to have enough points built up in storage for each citizen to have two points to cover them in order for them to proceed to the next pay cycle. If that is not enough to think about, we were supposed to advance society to higher and higher levels of civilization. We were to increase productivity, promote general well being, educate the young, increase levels of health and keep crime down. Ok. I figured I could do that. It sounded easy.
The first couple of hours were easy. Participants in the mock society settled into their various positions and things were running smoothly society was advancing. Over the course of the weekend we had a plague, a workers strike, a major fire, an earth quake and a tidal wave hit my little society. I do not have to tell you I was a very busy person. But, I was proud of the j o b I was doing.
At the end of pay cycle after pay cycle I was able to pull together enough credit points so that I did not lose one person under my watch care in the mock society all 4 days of the weekend. I expected the class teachers to be shouting accolades at my great abilities as a leader.
No. It was exactly the opposite.
The lab instructors did not tell us that the real goal of the exercise was to watch and observe as “elected officials” in the mock society coped with catastrophe. They wanted me to realize certain parts of any population are expendable. They wanted to watch me as I explained to the masses caught in the various disasters that the water was contaminated and they would die of dehydration. They wanted me to stand by and watch as people died so I could use those resources to advance the society.
The instructors were very disappointed I spent sooooo much personal energy and society resources saving the expendable dregs of humanity when I should have been shielding and making provision for the producers who were busy building the society, advancing society to a higher form of civilization. I needed to pay more attention to steel production and the new road construction. My triumph turned out to be a huge failure.
These very studies and others like them with the resulting data they compiled from them are the background foundation for the rules governing the U.S and to lesser degrees abroad in the world today.
The stockpile of information is the justification for the layering of health care services and goods and housing and food. Some people count. Some people do not. Money will be the deciding factor whether you count or not. How big is your bank account? What is your address? One is the best more recent examples of how this works is the aftermath of hurricane Katrina and the way it was handled by FEMA. Studies like these guided our rules and set parameters as they decided who to save and who was expendable. The governors learned just how to minimize the suffering of the expendable ones while shielding the valued members of society from knowing the fate of the lower classes.
The category 5 hurricane force winds that made landfall in Katrina drove 20 foot wall of water into New Orleans. The older levies broke. The landfall came at high tide so the ocean surges with high tide caused further flooding and devastation. The electrical lines went down. The water pumping stations lost electricity exacerbating the flood conditions. Just naming a few things that contributed to the misery there.
Many people died. Many people were stuck in filth and squalor as the flood waters receded and the mosquitoes came and the rat infestations grew and the stench from the molds and bacterial infestations filled the air. The U.S. government told the ones stuck there they had to stay. It was feared those people escaping would spread disease to the whole country and perhaps kick off a pandemic. The residents stuck in place were written off as expendable.
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