January 4331Image: Promotional material for the project, featuring the
"Benevolent Eye of Ataraxia".
The Ataraxian Confederation has announced the
Ataraxian Benevolence Project as a way of mending relations with other parties and Hutori as a whole. Following their attempts to abolish the national security apparatus, including the military and reform it into highly autonomous units during 4330, the party received strong backlash from the other parties. At the time the Ataraxians gained a majority in parliament and sought to use it increase local autonomy. As the other parties refused to participate in a cabinet with them, the Ataraxians decided to take on all cabinet positions, effectively putting them in charge of the government as a whole. This resulted in the Ataraxians eventually exhausting their human resources, which led them to agree to early elections and concede that they are unfit for national governance. The elections of July 4330 resulted in their majority being lost.
Former Chancellor Lyn Kopp, present Ambassador of the Ataraxian Confederation wrote:Us trying to govern both Hutori and ourselves was a big mistake. Our society is made up of small autonomous communes. We can handle ourselves very well, but when it comes to handling tens of millions of people, our resources are exhausted very quickly. We regret that we didn't recognize this before attempting to make our reforms, but now we know better. The important thing is that we recognized our limits and didn't proceed forward in futile denial when it was clear we weren't going to handle it.
There is another problem with our actions. We stand firmly in our belief of non-interventionism. While true we were elected into power and we are Hutorian citizens with the same rights to participate in elections as anyone else, we shouldn't have tried to meddle too much into Hutorian affairs. We have autonomy you see. We are by and large left alone by the Hutorian authorities. It didn't make sense for us to try and change the entirety of Hutori when our real focus should have been ourselves.
For now on we're going to keep Hutorian politics at a distance. Like we mentioned before, we're still going to vote on bills in parliament, but our proposals will be restricted to projects concerning us directly. Frankly, we don't want to rule Hutori, we want only to rule ourselves, which for the most part we are and have been able to do. We only hope that the others are willing to move on from this and continue to accept our autonomy, which has benefited us and them for a very long time.
As part of the Ataraxian Benevolence Project, the Ataraxians hope to accelerate their funding efforts to install fibre to the premises (FTTP) infrastructure throughout Adelia.
Marvyn Warrick, Conciliator of the Commune of Ataraxia wrote:We want to show everybody that we are no threat to their way of life and we aim to demonstrate this further by contributing to mutual projects of science and technology. Our goals have been slightly refined. Instead of trying to reform Hutori into a confederation, we will focus solely on our own internal affairs and initiating mutual projects with the rest of Hutori. We know we angered a lot of people and we regret that.
The Ataraxians have represented a unique cultural icon for Adelia, with their communes occasionally attracting tourism interest, albeit the communes themselves consider too many visitors to be a security risk. While Ataraxians are very transparent to the outside world, to a point where every council meeting is broadcast publicly, physical access to the communes is heavily restricted for outsiders. Most of their visitors involve potential initiates who are seeing what life is like inside before joining. The Hutorian authorities also have access to ensure the Ataraxians are following by their autonomy agreements. Many are attracted to the unique technophile culture of the Ataraxians, who focus primarily on developing and embracing emerging technologies.
Over the years, the Ataraxian population has gradually become more composed of scientists, engineers and others in the STEM fields. Their idiosyncratic ideology and internal laws make immigration highly selective. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of people are awaiting available openings in the communes. Sometimes this number has swelled to over a million. Due to their policy of sterilization, Ataraxians do not have children and are completely reliant on immigration to maintain their population, which rests at 52,200 residents.
All 65 Ataraxian communes pay an 8% tax on all their income, including donations. Individual Ataraxians have their bank accounts frozen to avoid any accumulation of wealth. Residents inside the communes live a comfortable life in exchange for work. The Ataraxian economy has maintained a high standard of living, although it often requires steep capital costs to expand and sees very little growth. Economic observers describe the Ataraxian economy as an example of a steady-state economy. Communes produce most of their own resources (including energy production, which they sell supplementary power back into local power grids), sell surplus goods and services, and import products they can't make themselves or just not enough of it. Sometimes Ataraxians will rely on outside education and or surgery, although this has gradually decreased over time. Money is not traded internally, but is instead used for external transactions. Ataraxians have been known to invest in gold reserves. The GDP per capita is around $86,934 HLR, although economists have noted that since the residents themselves do not get paid monetarily, this number more represents the living standards than individual wealth. This number is expected to grow in the future when older communes upgrade themselves to using more efficient means of production. After upgrades the GDP will likely return to stagnation.
Life in the Ataraxian Confederation has been described as utopian, although because of its highly idiosyncratic internal laws, Ataraxian life is only applicable to a small proportion of the Hutorian population. Pervasive public surveillance, strict population control measures and other policies that most on the outside would find bordering totalitarian are normal to Ataraxians. One of the most notable policies in Ataraxian communes is universal access to euthanasia and bans on sexual intercourse, including romantic relationships, which are deemed morally impure and a threat to their ideas of comradeship. The Ataraxian political system is controlled by increasingly technocratic workers' councils and governed through a process of consensus decision-making, where unanimity is required for changes to occur to the status-quo.