Sounds like a property tax imposed on all material property. Does the Freedom approve of that?
You can see it as property tax that is regulated by the V faction in question. Certain cultures may be exempt from that, but those are then considered to be subsidized by that V faction. The Freedom has a lot of these cultures, but the Balance, and the Coherence also have a substantial amount of them.
In those cultures in which people have to pay this property tax, does that tax also include goods such as clothing or implants?
Yes, it does, but those goods are classified as somatic property . The tax for that is automatically deducted from one’s budget. And the budget always it at least as high as is necessary for paying the property tax for all somatic property, as well as the necessary goods and services for sustaining them. That is defined as the existential minimum budget . As an unintended side-effect, this creates an incentive for increasing one’s somatic property, because its sustenance is guaranteed. Some people go on to increase their somatic property by adding more implants, or body parts, or switching to larger bodies. If this behavior reaches abusive levels, those people are called body weight hoarders . They tend to get stuck at the respective existential minimum budget and accumulate a lot of negative reputation for such behavior. They experience poverty and rejection as result of their choices. Most of them eventually think again and accept deals to downsize their bodies in order to escape this particular kind of poverty trap.
Do people have the option to increase their income by work, entrepreneurship, or investments?
The height of your budget already considers most things that can be interpreted as work, entrepreneurship, or investment. Market activity is already factored in when the height of the budgets get computed, so it is expected to pay a substantial role. However, trying to supplement your assigned budget with extreme economic activity exceeding that of the simulations is possible, but bears the risk of endangering one’s budget or reputation, if that additional activity detracts from one’s main task of fulfilling one’s main role within the V faction. And in many cases the main role is “producing culture”. At least the Coherence is mainly a society consisting of what we would call philosophers and artists.
So, are those budgets in general above the poverty level, unless you engage in activities that abuse the system?
Yes, and if you are at least somewhat aligned with the philosophy of your V faction. If you are quite unaligned you will be confronted with an environment that will try to sell you the philosophy of that V faction. You can still decide to stick out like a sore thumb, though, but then most people will think that you are being stupid on purpose. In that situation, you will certainly get the suggestion to switch to a more fitting V faction.
And what if there is no V faction that fits your rather peculiar outlook on the world?
There are a lot of minor V factions. Some of them are rather specialized on collecting those who would be considered as contrarians by the major V factions.
Is it easy to create your own V faction?
No, definitely not. To qualify as V faction that is generally respected as such, you would need to develop a philosophy that is considered to be sufficiently different from that of all other V factions and which is able to withstand the scrutiny of superintelligences. Those requirement are almost impossibly to satisfy for regular people. The only beings having a realistic chance at that task are superintelligences who actually specialize in developing a new V faction.
Let’s get back to the Coherence. How is life in the Coherence actually different from life in the Balance?
With its large amount of sub-factions the Balance can appear to be more like a federation than a coherent V faction. That is decidedly different in the Coherence, which is much more integrated and homogeneous. Not having to deal with sub-faction politics simplifies life for most people. The other important difference is that your reasoning is held to a higher standard. If your reasoning deviates too much from the Universal Value System, you quickly get the suggestion of getting counseling or mentorship from the sophocrats of the Coherence. As always, you are free to reject that, but then you would have to answer the question why you’ve chosen to join the Coherence, rather than the Balance in the first place.
That seems to imply that the Coherence has a higher degree of perfectionism, which reminds me of the Exaltation. Would it be fair to describe the Coherence as a mixture of the Balance and the Exaltation?
That is not a bad first approximation! While Exaltationists strive for excellence on a rather personal level, the Coherence strives for excellence at the level of the V faction. Therefore, the Coherence is much less individualistic than the Exaltation, but it is at least somewhat less collectivist than the Balance, despite its superior internal cohesion. The reason for that is that the Coherence doesn’t adopt the holy mission of the Balance of making the Prestige Accords system work. In fact, the Coherence considers the Prestige Accords as an outdated system that should be overcome. Unsurprisingly, that is exactly what happened after the proof of the UVS theorem.
Has the Coherence actually proposed a new world order consisting of the Coherence assimilating all other V factions?
One V faction assimilating all others was hardly a new idea. The Balance has made such proposals long ago, but they were of course always rejected. For the Coherence the situation looked better, because of its promising philosophical framework. With the Coherence, the other V factions got some serious competition, which they really could not get rid of, since the UVS could not be un-invented. They either hoped that the UVS theorem would never be proven, or that its proof would actually disfavor the current version of the Universal Value System and be more favorable to their own V faction.
Were there a lot of people who were fed up with the Prestige Accords system?
Yes, maintaining the Cosmoshield peacenet was a major burden on the economy, and if it could be replaced with something better, then that alternative would certainly be welcomed. At the same time, it was the Cosmoshield peacenet which guaranteed centuries of peace between the V factions, so it could not be shut down, until there was actually a superior replacement available. The arrival of the Coherence raised the hopes that such an alternative might come soon.