The Year 3000 | ✔️

Chapter 5

Trip to the Government Palace. - Forms of government and political organization of the world in the year 3000. - The four sections of the Palace. - The earth. - Health. - The school. - Industry and commerce. - The finance office.

Paolo and Maria, after seeing the dynamic workshop and the market, went to visit the Government Palace, located right in the center of Andropoli.

Maria wanted to spare that trip and always differed it from one day to the next, telling her companion that she understood nothing about politics, and that the thought that governed the world from a single palace made her dizzy.

- Dear Paolo, I am an ignorant girl, who finds it very difficult to govern a house and who loses the idea that few men can govern the whole world from the Government Palace of Andropoli.

Paolo smiled, giving her a loving face.

- No, you are not an ignorant feminine and the central government of Andropoli is not a cabal, nor a mechanism so intricate and so obscure, that you cannot understand it and admire it. Once upon a time the art of governing seemed to be concentrated in the complication of administrative and political orders and new and new wheels and wheels were always being created, which seemed to be a game of acrobatics and balance. And with each new use, with each new transmission mechanism, with registries, with protocols, with every new administrative department that met, the business movement was getting complicated; so the breakdowns of the machines were almost every day and the immense forces used to set them in motion were almost all worn down in friction.

Imagine that in the nineteenth century, when civilization had already made giant strides, when the French revolution had proclaimed human rights from above; when already almost all of Europe was governed in republics or parliamentary states, an Italian minister was able to discover that a lira paid by a tax payer in Sicily or Sardinia, arrived in Rome, had become a penny. The other 19 money was lost on the way, to pay the employees, to move and anoint the wheels of the intricate financial mechanism. And this didn't just happen for taxes, but for everything else: for justice, as for education; for the war as for all the systems of public life.

The power was distributed among hundreds and thousands of people, who handled a part of it, and the conflict of the different and cozzier authorities was so absurd, so complicated, to create obstacles, contradictions at every step.

Minus the king, all those who exercised any authority, were sons of free election, but the responsibility was so divided into impalpable molecules, that when one wanted to grasp it, it escaped from your hand, like one who wanted to take the fog.

The mayors represented the municipal councilors and these in turn represented the administrative voters; but the municipal councils were controlled by the provincial councils, which headed the prefects, appointed by the central government.

And there were two Chambers, which contradicted each other and one could not decide anything without the consent of the other; and above the Chambers and the Senate there was the King, who could dissolve the Chambers and veto the laws voted by the Chamber and the Senate. The ministers represented, it is true, the majority of the deputies; but in their turn, they could not govern without appeasing the vanities or greed of the deputies, without coming to terms with the parties, of which there were three, four and even eight in a single Chamber.

And the ministers, who would have needed to study the dicastery that had been entrusted to them for months and months, were overwhelmed by the capricious or interested votes of the Chamber;and the laws followed the laws, with a whirling alternative, removing all stability from the social order and all authority from the laws.