There are plenty of examples from across alternate worlds of authoritarian regimes ruling over
an embittered population with an iron fist.
Yet despite their frequent and ostentatious displays of power and wealth, many of these
governments seem completely incapable of surviving a rebellion once it occurs.
What’s rare however is to come across a dystopian nation so incompetent, that it seems
to have been built solely for the purpose of encouraging a mass revolt and then collapsing
almost immediately.
A state designed to fail, culturally, ideologically and economically.
There is no better example of this than the Nation of Panem.
Founded in the ruins of a post-apocalyptic North America, Panem is comprised of 12 districts
each specializing in a specific industry.
These districts are bound to the Capitol; Panem’s largest city and home to the nation’s
central seat of government.
After a previous rebellion against the Capital failed, every year, each district offers one
boy and one girl to serve as tributes in a gladiatorial contest, serving as a reminder
that the Districts exist at the Capitol’s mercy.
Can you see the problems here already?
Let’s break it down.
I think the biggest weakness Panem suffers from is its fantastically inefficient District system.
There’s a few different sources on where these Districts are located in North America,
but they all portray them as sizeable regions, rivalling or surpassing the largest modern
US states.
The problem here is that each District is based around a single industry.
District 7 makes lumber, District 11 is in charge of agriculture, you get the idea.
While this level of specialization can work in smaller instances, there are after all, mining
towns, college towns and others, to administer a large section of a continent along these
lines is unrealistic and ignores the natural distribution of resources in favor
of artificially imposed boundaries.
Just as an example, let’s look at California.
In our world it’s one of the most economically powerful regions on Earth with a GDP greater
than all but three other countries.
Its major industries include finance, real estate, professional business services, energy,
manufacturing, information and technology, educational services and healthcare, retail
trade, arts & entertainment, construction, agriculture, forestry, utilities, mining,
transportation and so many others.
So, what does District 4, Panem’s version of California produce?
Fish.
Now, you can argue that not all of California’s industries could re-emerge following whatever
events led to the foundation of Panem, but the region would still be home to an abundance
of natural resources and to ignore all of them in favor of just one is willfully senseless.
One of the main advantages of decentralizing any industry is to prevent unfavorable circumstances
from affecting your entire economy.
If inclement weather affects citrus production in California, you have backups in Florida,
and because the entire industry of California isn’t based around fruit, its effects on
the national economy are minor.
Contrast that with District 4, one bad fish harvest and the entire country faces starvation.
With every district supplying a critical resource and no other district allowed to produce the
same thing, if even one suffers some sort of issue, the entire country collapses.
To make matters worse, it also means that every resource has unnecessarily long travel times,
rather than growing your own corn, if you live in the wrong district, you gotta wait for it to be shipped to you from across
the country.
I can’t imagine any rationale for running a technologically sophisticated economy like this.
I have to imagine there’s been at least one phone call where some guy has messaged
the Capitol with news like “Hey, this is Roy from District 10, we just uncovered a bunch of rare-earth elements,
valued at well over 1 trillion dollars. What do we do?"
and the response being “Sorry pal, you live
in the livestock District.
Unless what you found goes well on a burger, I don’t wanna hear about it”.
This leads us to the Capitol itself whose major export is a feeling of smug superiority.
The Capitol seemingly exists only to antagonize the rest of the districts with endless displays
of colorful extravagance in contrast to the grim poverty that grips the rest of the country.
The Capitol’s hostile relationship to the rest of Panem is epitomized in the Hunger Games.
In this competition, a boy and girl from each district are forced to fight one another in
a battle to the death.
This serves as a form of entertainment for the Capitol and a reminder to the remainder of the Districts
never to rebel again.
Although exactly how it serves as a reminder of the Capitol’s superiority is beyond me,
because if anything it just seems to be daring the rest of the Districts to rebel again.
Something like this might be effective at unifying a nation if each District had some
sort of professional Hunger Games Team and there was an even playing field, but in Panem,
only some Districts seem to do this.
Where exactly is the sport in watching some guy who’s been training for this all his
life kill some poor soul selected by lottery?
Who is watching the Hunger Games and saying to themselves “Well, I really hate the Captiol,
but I gotta hand it to them, they did a really excellent job of murdering that 12-year-old”.
A competition like this only fosters hatred and resentment instead of unity and patriotism.
Naturally when the second rebellion finally arrives the Capitol is completely helpless to stop it.
They destroy District 12 in retaliation, crippling their own energy supply in the process by the way,
and then place most of their military forces in an underground fortress.
This fortress seems to have been cunningly designed to be unable to withstand a siege
however and as soon as the rebels collapse the entryways it immediately runs out of food
and supplies.
When the Capitol itself is invaded, the defenders rely on a bunch of weird, indiscriminate traps
and genetically modified creatures that just seem to love running into bullets.
Just use guns and tanks and artillery!
Why is everyone trying to reinvent the wheel here?
I could go on about just how incompetent Panem is, but what really gets me is how its
President is always so complacent and confident about his wildly terrible plans.
Everything he attempts ends in complete failure, but he is too busy making toasts with his
cadre of upper-class idiots to even notice.
He remains completely oblivious to his own failures and acts like everything is proceeding
entirely to some brilliant strategy known only to him.
Panem’s inevitable swift defeat isn’t the result of maintaining the worst economic system ever
designed and ignoring the realities of a civil war, but rather due to the clever manipulations
of a master strategist whose brilliance was just too much for even his tremendous intellect to overcome.
I’m sorry sir, but you’re just an idiot.
Of course, all of that is just my opinion and even though my arguments are infallible
I’d like to hear your thoughts!
Was Panem an example of administrative genius?
Is turning California into a giant fish farm a great idea?
What’s the point of using a bow and arrow in a modern war?
Let me know in the comments, and until next time, thanks for watching.
The Templin Institute investigates alternate worlds and realities.
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