An introduction to Surplus Statism

Surplus Statism is an ideology that is very syncretic in nature and uses arms-length bodies and a transparent surveillance state to eliminate corruption arising from conflicts of interests. While the Surplus State is operated by a single party, this party is divided into two separate groups: the Inner Party and the Outer Party. While the Inner Party manages the state apparatus, decides which industries to reinvest profits in, and sets economic and social objectives for the nation, the Outer Party consists of everyday citizens with satisfactory social credit and an active membership in one of the national volunteer armed forces. In terms of social policies, the Surplus State operates along a Reviewist model, where behaviors proven to be damaging or obstructing to the collective’s wellbeing by scientific studies are modified or banned. Reviewism mandates these scientific studies are continuously reconducted over set intervals, in order to align social policy with the current social conditions of the citizenry, and jurisdictions within the Surplus State have varying laws in order to accommodate differences in social values across geography, cultures, and demographics. Economically, the Surplus State operates in a socialist market economy, comprising a variety of QUANGOs, industrial co-ops, industrial banks, and state-owned enterprises.

== Political Makeup ==

The Surplus State consists of both an Inner Party and an Outer Party, with membership being exclusive to those who qualify. Political membership in the Inner Party is awarded based on intellectual merit, industry experience, and loyalty to the Surplus Statism ideology, with ranks within the Inner Party being earned based on Confucian testing scores meant to certify that individuals fully understand the field they are put in governing roles of. Political membership in the Outer Party is earned through active participation in one of the national militias, a sufficient social credit score, and loyalty to the Surplus Statism ideology. Both Inner Party and Outer Party applicants undergo extensive political education, being taught about both material and historical dialectics, as well as cybernetic theory, to better understand the world around them before they are inducted into their respective parties as full-fledged members. Members of the Inner Party can be demoted to the Outer Party in order to retain skillsets without putting potential subversives in sensitive positions.

The Inner Party’s power is constrained by a union of national militias, which are run by the Outer Party, as well as by a system of courts, staffed by judges that are appointed by the Outer Party. The Outer Party, having a sizable paramilitary presence and ruling on what’s ethical in regards to policy from a proletarian point of view, keeps the proletarians involved in decision-making. The Outer Party appoints inner party members to the judicial system, who rule on the legality of legislation proposed by the Inner Party. This process allows for the Outer Party’s members to voice their concerns, through representation afforded by Inner Party representatives who have to cater to them in order to further their own careers. Appointed Officials in this system, should their approval rating drop below 66.66%, are removed from power in order to guarantee that at least 2/3rds of the population is always satisfactorily represented. Legislation, similarly, must be agreed upon by 66.66% of the legislators. This system of national militias also allows for the good citizens of the Surplus State to take part in the political process, restricting the Inner Party from acting in its own interests against the collective interests of the citizens of the Surplus State.

This concept of proposing, rejecting, and approving policies, known as Threeism, is done to ensure that all decisions reached are approved by the large majority of people and forces compromise, seeing every side of an issue to usually contain valid points and arguments. Legislation, drafted by the Inner Party, is put forward in Industrial Congresses, where the elected representatives of unions bicker and barter with the party’s representatives on the implementation of policy. The industries can go on strike, refusing to implement policies, but the Inner Party can retaliate by withholding reinvestment funds that would otherwise be doled out through industrial banks into those unions’ respective QUANGOs. Each industrial congress is composed of three unions per industry, representing the employees, the managers, and the consumers respectively. These three unions are presented with the proposed legislation by the Inner Party’s representatives to that industry, and then discuss amongst themselves what changes need to be made before it’s considered acceptable. This system that encourages debate and deliberation between planners, managers, workers, and consumers enables a far broader number of views to be brought to the table, from all of the major but different interest groups. This process of shaping, reshaping, and implementing policy allows for legislation to push forward both national and local agendas after debate and deliberation between the two parties, the state’s controllers and the QUANGOs’ representatives, has been allowed for.

The authoritarian aspects of this ideology manifest in the fact that non-Surplus Statist ideologies are banned, being seen as too one-dimensional, dangerous, and inflexible in adapting to the material and social realities of society. Surplus Statism operates along the notion that the simpler an ideology is, the more infectious it is due to the easier way in which it can spread its values (with the idea that simplicity makes things more easily transferred). These one-sided, overly simplistic ideologies are called “Unidim” (uni-dim being “one-dimensional”). People gripped by these poorly developed ideologies would wind up in labor camps and reeducation camps, before being gradually reintroduced to society once they’ve been deprogrammed and sufficiently remoralized.

=== Role of Property ===

Private Property, while illegal in the Surplus State, is replaced by a concept known as Property Privileges, where an economic entity and individual’s right to use of property is determined based on their social credit, as well as the amount of taxes they choose to pay on the property. Property can, should the individual or economic entity cause enough social disruption, be seized and put back on the tax auctioning market. Property taxes in the Surplus State are entirely voluntary, and act in a fashion similar to bidding, where the highest bidder on a property buys the rights to use it from the state. These taxation bidding wars can be averted on a property, should the owner choose to write-off the estimated market value of the taxes through development costs taken on in reinvesting into the property. This incentivizes leasers of business properties especially to continually reinvest in their properties, accumulating more value and capability for the economy overall, in order to avoid disrupting their business models by being forced to relocate and relinquish their assets to competitors. While all property is inherently owned by the state, the state leases the property to the entity most capable of developing it or obtaining enough value from it to be willing to pay the highest taxes of any bidders on it. In the Surplus State, there is no speculation issues for this reason, as the concept of holding property is replaced by a fluid market mechanic that forces leasers to use it or lose it. It is believed that under such a system, an organic form of economic accelerationism can take place in which firms endlessly increase their industrial capacities in order to retain their properties, and thus, keep up with their competition in expanding their market shares. 

Employees in QUANGOs own voting shares, held in security by holding companies which reinvest the dividends from these shares into various ventures, before diverting the returns to employee pension accounts. These employees can lose their pensions, their QUANGO-sector careers, and voting shares, should they engage in criminal activities, with these perks being seen as privileges for those who display a history of non-criminal, socially harmonious behavior. Employees are forced upon retirement to relinquish their voting shares, being given the pension accounts that have accumulated through the returns on their invested dividends, and these voting shares are redistributed across the company to current employees. While workers see their pay based on lockstep, ratcheting steps, management sees their pay based on the dividends they’re able to generate through the company’s economic progress, and naturally, these two divergent class interests collide in the Industrial Congresses, where the Consumer Union of the respective industry steps in to serve as a tie-breaker.

While Personal Property, such as clothing and personal belongings are allowed, the underlying ownership of all larger-scale property inside the Surplus State is always reserved for the state, with individuals and economic actors serving as tenants. While one can live very nicely in the Surplus State, this is only earned through the productivity an individual generates for the firm he or she works for, guaranteeing that wealth is derived from work, rather than from ownership. 

=== Currency ===

The Surplus State has two currencies, that consist of the Divi-Dollar and the Thermodollar. The Divi-Dollar is based upon the average dividends in an industry, and thus the value of the currency actually varies by the category of products that a person wishes to buy. Should an industry see record profits, and thus very high dividends, the Divi-Dollar’s value in relation to that industry’s products rises in tandem to compensate for the momentary inflation, and companies in these industries subsequently form pricing cartels, in order to find the optimal balance between profits and deflation. Consumer Unions can alter the value of the divi-dollars in their respective industries, in order to reward some companies for compliance, in order to allow manufacturers to obtain and thus reinvest more profits into R&D, and so on. 

The Thermodollar, on the other hand, is based off the technocratic principle that items should cost simply the total energy and labor put into creating, transporting, and storing them. Thermodollars are created by the Surplus State, and are awarded to each citizen based on their social credit score. In thoery, Thermodollars are equally divided amongst every citizen, but this is basically impossible to accomplish, as that would require every citizen to be perfect. Every citizen of the Surplus State is awarded a fraction of their share of Thermodollars, based on their social credit, to incentivize good behavior in citizens. While Thermodollars don’t work in procuring properties, they are allowed to be exchanged for products from QUANGOs at the rate estimated in producing the products on average, and these QUANGOs can use these Thermodollars to requisition labor and resources from the state. Thermodollars left over from the dividing up between citizens are used by the state for the purposes of reinvestment, either in its own facilities or within the QUANGOs through the use of the Inner Party’s Industrial Banks.

===  Taxation ===

The Surplus State only uses property taxes and these are, as mentioned above, purely voluntary payments to ensure that property is retained. In addition to this, organizations that seek to obtain tax revenue must compete with one another to get it, as taxpayers have the ultimate say over where these taxes go. The Surplus State itself runs off the labor of the Outer Party and Inner Party, paid for by part of the surplus extracted from the portion of the population in labor camps, as well as through the leasing of natural resources and automation monopoly. The State in the Surplus State, for this reason, is self-sufficient and generates an economic surplus, hence the term “Surplus Statism.”

=== Economy  ===

The Economy of Surplus Statism operates along the dualistic systems of a syndicalist quangocracy and a form of barracks communism. The model relies on the Inner Party extracting enough wealth from prison laborers, automatons, and natural resources to generate net surpluses, which are then doled out to the QUANGOs in reinvestment schemes, meant to stimulate industrial growth and forge a very large and comfortable middle class population of technicians and scientists. Industrial Banks, captained by the Inner Party and serving as emergent entities out of keiretsu relationships, are used to incentivize QUANGOs to act in ways more in line with party policies. In addition to this, QUANGOs are attached to these Industrial Banks due to their status as Keiretsu members, where each market actor in an industry owns parts of each other, with the Industrial Bank being sustained by these interactions through the charging of rates for processing, lending, and regulating the industry each one respectively governs. Industrial Banks work in tandem with Consumer Unions to dilute the markets they govern with economic actors or combine the actors, in order to lessen or increase the competition in favor of the industry’s overall health and for the consumer’s ultimate benefit.

Consumer Unions, through their surcharges on the products of the industries they regulated, could push forward advertising campaigns, industry-wide research efforts, and provide seed money to upstart QUANGOs in their respective industries. Smaller-scale QUANGOs, in industries that did not benefit from economy of scale operations as much, would be members of industrial co-ops, that acted as pricing cartels and standardizing agents for their constituents, to ensure that the quality of products in less centralized industries remained steady and that the market actors within them remained capable of sustaining business operations. Consumer Unions, staffed by Inner Party Members, are incentivized in pay by consumer report scores, which assess the consumer-friendliness of the respective industry they govern. Inner Party Members, in these Consumer Unions, are paid based on the fractional equivalent of their consumer report scores according to their base pay grade, with higher scores yielding far higher incomes and lower scores leaving them with little. The Outer Party’s various observer boards conduct these consumer polls, in order to prevent the Inner Party from manipulating the feedback. With the consumer in mind, the Consumer Unions act as tie-breakers in collective bargaining situations between Managerial Unions and Worker Unions, always pushing priority of the end product to the forefront of the conversation. 

Jobs are guaranteed in the Surplus State, with QUANGOs in certain industries serving as job banks to both sharpen skills, train, and educate workers. The Surplus State also serves as a job bank, with some Outer Party Members working under Inner Party members to carry out the functioning of the state’s apparatus in non-sensitive positions. Every individual is part of both a trade union, as well as an industrial union in the Surplus State, with membership in them being determined by the profession the individual works within, as well by the QUANGO that the individual works for. Inner Party Members and Outer Party Members, who work full-time for the state, are not part of unions so as to prevent unfair situations from arising where the government engages in coercive forms of collective bargaining with the taxpayers. Pay for Inner Party members that manage the state apparatus is based upon the median performance scores across their entire departments, collected by the Outer Party from the users of these services, in order to incentivize them to continually stay sharp and on top of their game. Pay for Inner Party members that work within the industrial banks is based upon the percentage of economic growth within their industry, as well as the averaging of performance scores, as rated by both Inner Party legislators who’ve tried to implement legislation through them as representatives and as rated by employees of the industries they govern. Pay for other Inner Party members, who serve in advisory and legislative roles, is based on lockstep pay rates that are earned through the filling of positions, which is done through the passing of Confucian civil service exams, and subsequently through the appointment to positions by hiring boards staffed by other members of the Inner Party. Outer Party members’ pay is based on lockstep pay rates they earn as members of the national militias and in addition to their full-time jobs, but unlike the Inner Party, the Outer Party is intentionally composed of mainly reservists, who work within the Quangocracy full-time, in order to ensure that the working-class have a strong role in government. Proletarians, not affiliated with neither the Outer Party nor the Inner Party, have their pay based upon their salaries, bonuses, and subpay. All of this pay, across the entirety of the Surplus State, is doled out in weekly paychecks based upon hours worked, with salaries being seen as a bourgeois concept meant to separate pay from work, thereby inflating the former. 

Pay throughout the Surplus State, both within the QUANGOs and within the state apparatus, is completely transparent across the board, as are bank accounts. This is done to ensure that despite the variance in pay, all citizens of the Surplus State must live honest lives without indulging in graft or greed. Violators of this aim at establishing a corruption-free nation, who try to skirt the system or who are observed engaging in these activities, are charged with treason and interred in labor camps for the rest of their lives or publicly tortured and executed depending upon the severity of the infraction, with their close families and others suspected of complicity and abetment having their social credit scores severely downgraded as well. The Surplus State, in observing all financial activities, managing all bank accounts, operating on solely digital currencies, and capping bank accounts at the income of its citizens, aims to eliminate all aspects of corruption, as it sees the presence of corruption as an existential threat to Surplus Statism. In addition to this, debt is banned in the Surplus State, forcing the various banks to take on cautious attitudes towards lending in order to ensure economic stability and reduce risks to the economy. This also reduces the possibility that anyone might feel financially squeezed and pressured into committing violations.

The Surplus State, operating as a totalist entity, provides material rights to its satisfactory citizens. Education, jobs, healthcare, and more are all provided by the Surplus State, through both the state apparatus and its accompanying QUANGOs. Education is dominated by work colleges, with everyone entitled to a free education through performing volunteer work for their respective work colleges, while more traditional models of schooling are reserved for the brightest of the Surplus State’s citizens in order to devote more resources to research and political education for the Inner Party’s members. Healthcare is managed through a system of non-profit insurance QUANGOs, that deduct premiums from paychecks, invest the money into a variety of projects, and divert the returns to health savings accounts for individuals. These health savings accounts can be inherited and passed down, which when the accumulated interest is considered, allows for the average person to have a great deal of savings in case of an emergency. State institutions serve as healthcare providers, alongside QUANGO healthcare providers, with state institutions geared towards providing long-term care guarantees to all citizens, as well as apprenticeship and residency programs for medical workers. QUANGO healthcare providers are charged with performing more elective procedures and surgeries, using more experienced medical staff in these functions and being paid through individuals’ medical savings accounts.

All citizens are guaranteed housing as well, and citizens have the right to choose between scholastic housing, work housing, colony housing. In addition to this, citizens can choose to live in traditional housing, and upgraded versions of other kinds of housing, where they pay taxes in order to retain their property privileges on the house. Scholastic housing is based upon providing students housing with other people in their field of study, while work housing is based upon providing established adults with housing in company communities composed of other people working in both their field and for their respective QUANGO. This is done in order to better establish a sense of community, and this housing is free, provided volunteer work is performed in order to ensure that the community remains operational and thriving. Intangibly productive economic actors, such as artists, are allowed to live in self-sufficient communes within the Surplus State, vying for tax revenues to fund their projects from both the Inner Party and the taxpayers, while also being able to offer their services on the open-market. Traditional and Upgraded Housing can be secured on the open-market, through the use of bidding on properties via tax auctions. Nutrition is also guaranteed by the Surplus State, with both housing communities and employers operating factory kitchens. These factory kitchens, through the use of polling, can adjust their menus to cater to their consumers’ needs on a weekly basis, and within housing communities, these factory kitchens operate on the basis of volunteer labor, while the factory kitchens found in work zones are professionally-staffed, and depending on the benefits the QUANGO offers, provide the food free of charge to employees or charge just a subsistence fee, covering the costs involved producing the food. 

=== International Statism ===

Surplus Statist borders are determined by economic and cultural similarities and differences. Surplus Statism sees large territories possessed by singular states to be problematic, as it doesn’t allow enough representation for the individual populations that live within these territories. Surplus States on the international scale are united under one of three commodity exchanges, with the Surplus State being assigned to their respective exchange based on their economic development and chief economic sectors. The commodity exchanges issue their own international trading currency with a value based on the economic setup of their constituents, to best grow the wealth of their member states in a way that avoids nations engaging in currency wars with one another. This currency can be used to procure developmental goods, key to developing the native industries of the Surplus States that require them, as Surplus Statism believes industrial localism to both respect the rights of its workers and ensure a higher employment rate. The idea here would be for countries to organize by economic standing and material incentives, rather than by cultures, and would allow for weaker countries to come together to demand more of the surplus their resource commodities produce. Additionally, the Developed World wouldn’t be beholden to hand-holding nations on their way to prosperity either, with every relationship within this international community being one based on trade, mutual benefit, and solidarity. 

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