The Eden Project: When Corporations Are No Longer Motivated By Profit, Run For The Hills | Red Eden Codex
“When corporations are no longer motivated by profit, run for the hills.”
-Ancient Martian proverb.
There was a time when corporations were no longer motivated by profit, a time when the world’s multinational tech conglomerates united under a common cause: to solve the mass unemployment crisis sweeping across the Earth.
The Eden Project was the brainchild of a cabal of the world's largest multinational tech giants. Ostensibly, it was a utopian scheme wherein machines and artificial intelligence would liberate mankind from the chains of so-called wage-slavery, and in doing so abolish the very concept of money.
In the lead up to the founding of the Eden Project, machines began replacing human labour in vast numbers across the globe, leading to an increasingly unstable socio-economic environment. Political polarization eventually led to regular outbreak of flash riots, street brawls between political factions, and terrorist attacks.
The top executives of the Eden Project, collectively referred to as the Eden Directorate, had every incentive to solve this crisis. First, the rapid decline in labour participation meant that the world’s currencies, backed only by the people’s labour, had lost much of their value. Dollars, Yens, Yuans and Pounds had become nothing more than mere tokens distributed by governments to the unemployed masses as part of a universal basic income scheme.
These tokens carried little value for the corporations that received them. True, corporations could use these tokens to purchase goods and services from each other, but why use a token system that would require them to divert huge amounts of resources to a segment of the population that could provide nothing of value in return? Thus the profit motive broke down. The corporations had come to realize that they were playing a rigged game. While the unemployed masses benefited from this game, the ones truly in charge and who had all the power were the central banks that issued these tokens.
The tech corporations faced another problem. While they were the ones who had to provide goods and services to the unemployed masses, the corporations received none of the praise and all of the blame for creating the new socio-economic order. The hostility towards these companies reached a boiling point when the UN held a summit in Beijing during the summer of 2045 to discuss plans for a coordinated global nationalization scheme.
Faced with imminent takeover, the top executives of the world's major tech companies held their own summit at Bermuda to figure out how they would remain in control of their vast network of AI-run machines. They hatched the Eden Project.
The Garden City concept formed the core the Eden Project. Inside these cities, the distribution of goods and services would be completely automated by a host of AI-controlled machines. Those who lived in the city would have all their needs and wants met forever and for free. To prevent overuse of scarce resources, AI would monitor the behaviours of the city's denizens and generate a menu of suggested goods and services catered specifically to each resident. The resident would select their preferred choice from each category, which included but were not limited to clothing, food, electronics etc. Those who wished to obtain goods and/or services beyond that suggested by the AI would have to submit a request for review by the AI which would then either accept or decline the request based on various factors such as resource availability, past usage of resources, contribution to the city's upkeep, and good behaviour.
The Eden Directorate rolled out their Garden City pilot project on Graham Island off the coast British Columbia, Canada, and following its success, they followed suit by transforming the entire island of Iceland into a Garden City. After two years, the pilot projects were deemed a success, and the Eden Directorate was given the green-light by every major nation to roll out the Eden Project in each respective country.
Before long, the Eden Project gained widespread praise from both the people and their governments. However, not all were happy with the new world order. The central banks of the world's most powerful nations had become obsolete as the world's peoples no longer needed nor missed the tokens that the banks issued. The central banks lashed out. After a brief power struggle, the engineers of the new age defeated the old-world bankers, consigning money and its power brokers to the dustbin of history.
One might be forgiven at this point for thinking that the Eden Directorate were the lesser of two evils. In fact, they were the greater. The Eden Project had two purposes. First, it kept the members of the Eden Directorate in charge of their legion of AI-driven machines. The second and more insidious purpose was to reduce the global population to less than five percent of its peak of ten billion.
They planned to achieve this by creating an addictive virtual reality simulation that would substitute real life with virtual life. In this way, people would be too invested in the virtual world to consume excess resources in the real world. Furthermore, the Eden Directorate would foster a culture of hedonism in order to discourage its wards from having children, which would be highly disruptive to hedonistic living. Lastly, if all else failed, the Eden Directorate had plans to develop a virus to sterilize the human population.
Ultimately, the end goal of the Eden Project was to eliminate the excess population that no longer had any use to the members of the Directorate. Thus, they would create a world unburdened by the unwashed masses, a world where only the truly exceptional could live, love, and reproduce.
But the unwashed masses were not as stupid as the project directors believed them to be, and the Eden Directorate, far from being a monolithic entity, suffered from a deadly internal power struggle which would ultimately lead to the Cataclysm. But that is a story all on its own.
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