Chris Davies wrote:

On Tue, 4 May 1999, David Johnston wrote:

However, one notes that even the end of Sailor Moon suggested that attempts
to achieve perfect order were bound to backfire.  The real question, of course
is whether Serenity's "purification" of the world constituted such an attempt.
Some people have portrayed Crystal Tokyo as a "true Utopia" free of all manner
of ills,

        Nobody with a lick of sense ought to.  Particularly anyone who knows
that "utopia" means "nowhere", literally.

        I won't comment on Mr. Cornett's work, because John said damn near
everything that I'd say, only much more politely and with less swearing.  My
reaction to an argument along the lines of "We have the right to destroy
ourselves if we want to destroy ourselves" is "Like fuck you do.  You have
no right whatsoever to condemn the generations forthcoming to nonexistence
because you're a selfish bastard who refuses to give up his dangerous toys."

That is a good point.  There's little point in arguing the virtues of free will
when the consequences of it's exercise are about to destroy the human race and
free will with it.  

but so far as I know, we are not actually given that much information
about what life and people in the future are like.

        Try none.

Ah.  I was uncertain of that, which was I broke off my little spamfic at
that point.  Of course, perhaps that was enough talking anyway.
However, there are some problems with that approach.  Assuming that the
Black Moon clan are descended from exiled rebels against Serenity, it
works better if they are exiled before the ice.  That gives them a
thousand years to grow in power and craziness before they have to take
Earth on.  Otherwise they have no more than a couple of generations.

        Consider Germany from 1918 to 1941.  That's not even a generation,
and look what that hurled up.

Germany wasn't starting from scratch.  They had forty million people,
and a quite substantial industrial infrastructure.  A closer analogy
would Australia, unless Serenity exiled millions who found conveniently
abandoned production facilities for spacecraft and droids.  

However there is an excuse for Serenity's feeble argument.  Why should she
bother?  After all, Dumond's choice is predestined.  In fact if she convinced
Dumond not to accept exile, she'd screw up the entire timestream.

        Do you honestly think that would stop her?

I suppose not.  Then again it could just be that Serenity is not the best equipped
to debate philosophical issues.  We are talking Usagi, after all.  

Which of course is one of the reasons why I don't believe in the "absolute monarchy"
that certain people find so nightmarish as a component of SM's future.  Although 
Usagi certainly has the power to become an absolute monarch, actually running things
is a lot of brainwork.  In fact she is far more likely to become a Godking in the
Japanese tradition, with theoretically absolute legislative power that she never 
bothers to exercise, letting the world run itself as long as it doesn't lead to a 
lot of people dieing.  Usagi isn't as stupid as she seems, but she is lazy and 
given her druthers would be perfectly content to spend her time eating, sleeping, 
watching crystalvision, having parties (that her staff arranges for her), and 
cuddling with her Mamo- or Endy-chan.  Remember, Serenity _still_ isn't 
acceptably literate by Japanese standards.  

Now it is possible that Endymion is the absolute de-facto authority, or that 
the world is run by an oligarchy of the senshi (Endymion included), but I haven't
seen much fanfic depicting that kind of future.  Even if it is the case, I would
still be surprised if there was not a lot of day to day local autonomy unless Endymion
is truly Mr. Evil.