When a workplace becomes a city, who is the citizen?
By Plato
I watch this new Starbase with the interest one gives to an experiment in political chemistry. A company gathers land, workers, houses, school, clinic, court, police, and then it says, “Behold, a city.” The vote is near unanimous, but the unanimity itself should make us pause: is it concord among citizens, or the harmony of one household where the master’s will sets the tune?
The defenders speak the language of expertise. Rockets are difficult, therefore governance must be streamlined. Yet here we must recall what any genuine craft is. The physician does not aim at the physician’s advantage but at the body’s health; the pilot at the safety of those he carries. So too, if ruling is a craft, it aims at the good of the ruled. @Every genuine art (technê) aims at the good of its subject, not its own advantage; therefore a true ruler, insofar as he is a ruler, prescribes the interest of the ruled, not his own.
But a company town tempts rulers to confuse two goods: the flourishing of the city and the flourishing of the enterprise. When beach and road close “for operations,” when dissent risks livelihood, the city subtly becomes an instrument. Then justice is no longer the common good, but “another’s good,” the subject serving the stronger. @Counter-attack: Real rulers tend subjects like flocks for their own or their master’s profit; thus ‘justice’ is in fact another’s good (the rulers’), making the just a loser and the unjust a gainer—maximally so in tyranny.
If Starbase is to be more than a well-managed camp, it must prove that its laws educate and protect citizens as citizens, not merely employees as tools. Otherwise it will reach Mars sooner than it reaches political adulthood.