Murderbot Q6. Libertarianism

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The world of Murderbot is a libertarian one, with corporations controlling things and no governments that we can see. Justice is seemingly served purely by civil lawsuits, with no criminal offences. The punishment for killing everyone in the DeltFall trip seems to be a fine, albeit a very large one.

Is this setting meant to be a utopia, a dystopia, or just an interesting alternative way of organising people?

Comments

  • 1

    Looks like now to me.

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    Pretty sure it’s not meant to be a utopia… maybe not a dystopia either, but that depends on your definition. If you think as I do that a dystopia is a setting that to some characters is a utopia, but to the reader is the opposite, then I don’t think it qualifies because we never get the utopia angle.

    So I guess I’d rather just call it a cold corporate setting. It’s well-trod ground in SF. There’s even an award for depicting Libertarian worlds - the Prometheus award - for which The Murderbot Diaries was a finalist in 2019, but didn’t win.
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    As @Apocryphal said somewhere, the world building makes it hard to understand what the world is, other than a cipher for events to occur in. Is this because it is about an autonomous and intrinsic individual, for whom the world and the people in it are simply grist for its main character energy?

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    Yes, it's an odd one, no real sense of justice other than endless legal cases (and one has to wonder, to what body of laws are they appealing and what court has jurisdiction?). If each station/base/planet/asteroid has its own laws, how can a legal profession exist which purports to straddle all of them?

    I think this was another facet of the world which was intended to be sketchy and incomprehensible to the main character - if you take the line that the series is about neurodivergence, and how some people can only adapt to social norms around them by observing and trying to imitate, then of course lots of things won't make sense and just have to be taken at face value. Especially if the baseline for reality that the person is using is a streamed trashy soap opera that everyone (including the character) knows is wildly unrealistic!

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    I am so clueless. I didn't pick up on the libertarian angle at all. Oops.

    I find it weird that it would win an award from a Libertarian organization as it wouldn't strike me as a positive view of libertarianism. But what do I know!?

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    You should look and see which books have won’t the awards - it’s not what you might think. Winners include LeGuin, Tolkien, and many more. Look at the legacy awards as well. The books don’t necessarily promote libertarianism - they just depict it, or some aspect of it.
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    Yeah, that's what I found odd about it.

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    I've had people call Far from the Spaceports libertarian, which kind of took me aback when I came across the comment. I guess it's not a word I use or think of using this side of The Pond.

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