<aside> 😕 We (Max and Yonotan) have dreamed up this future scenario based on our limited and biased understanding of the present conjecture. It has many flaws and errors, so please forgive us. We offer it in the spirit of "speculative improvisation"! We can, collectively, "edit" this scenario to suit our creative needs!
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You have been elected by your union, organization or affinity group to the World Care Forum (WCF), an amorphous and ambiguous global entity with over 3-billion ardent participants: the largest organization in human history! Except... no one really understands how its organized, how it works or what it stands for. It was created as a kind of global online/off-line, decentralized assembly for platform workers, a grassroots response to the platforming of capitalism since 2010.
But in order to avoid state and corporate repression, surveillance and disruption it organizes in weird, semi-organic, time-limited ways. Its structure is one where affinity groups (some based on workplaces, others on local community, still others on elective online affinities) nominate delegates who are randomly assigned to temporary working groups for a specific period of time, seemingly through sortition (randomized selection).
You have been "elected" by your affinity group to be their representative and the WCF has nominated you and the other participants in this role-play as members of the (De)Central Strategy Commission: a group with profound influence within (not power-over) the WCF to direct its orientation for a period of one year. The (De)Central Strategy Commission is as close to "leadership" as the WCF gets.
The situation is troubling. Six month ago, with huge fanfare, Thiel-AI and BezosBot, two huge corporate artificial-intelligence conglomerates operated largely from huge orbital data-centre satellites, surprised the world by launching, in the same week, two completely uncoordinated but extremely ambitious geoengineering projects aimed at introducing new material into earth's atmosphere to address runaway climate change. While both organizations had allegedly noble if megalomaniacal intentions, they each worked with huge resources in complete secrecy and, as fate would have it, their two "solutions," when combined, created a devastating "perfect storm": the earth's atmosphere is now being quickly drained of oxygen!
In response, both AliBot and BezosDrones, along with many of the other platform corporations that dominate the global economy (and have subordinated smaller governments), are proposing yet more "platform solutions," largely by rolling out new platforms through which people can access commodified breathable air offered through a variety of for-profit platforms. What could go wrong?
The secretive WCF has let its nodes know: ¡No pasarán! The commodification of (c)air is the final moment for humanity to say NO!
And it's your job, as delegates to the WCF (De)Central Strategy Commission to devise a strategy of resistance, refusal and revolt!
Here are your briefing notes about the world in which we find ourselves in 2030.
The United States remains a preeminent global superpower, but is in a low-intensity state of ongoing civil war. Large swaths of the territory are organized by militia warlords, but these areas are typically not economically significant and therefore allowed to exist in semi-autonomy: they're not worth the investment to re-conquer. Meanwhile, many cities have semi-permanently barricaded radical socialist or anarchist communes that are operating relatively autonomously, loosely confederated into a commonwealth, though these communities find it difficult to trade between themselves and are often embattled by increasingly paramilitary police forces. Otherwise, the American government and about 25 for manufacturing, energy, agribusiness, tech and finance conglomerates are increasingly tightly integrated, with "associates" of these firms ("employees" no longer exist any more, just platforms partnered with "associates") gaining their income and means of survival through declaring their contractually-limited loyalty to their preferred corporate entity.
While the EU remains a federation of states dominated by the "The North-West" core. In 2025 a huge mass movement (politically ambivalent, including left and right factions) was successful in winning a universal basic income. But due to political maneuvering it was poorly implemented, only affording coverage to "European citizens" (defined strictly and along predictably racist lines - today, only 66% of residents in Europe have citizenship). While the UBI is indexed to official inflation statistics, these have been distorted due to political interference. The reality is that the UBI cannot cover all the (rising) costs of shelter, food, (c)air, water, schooling, care and other increasingly commodified/platformed services. A "rump" of socialized systems exists for things like healthcare, housing, etc. but it is laughably bad except in specific wealthy enclaves. Increasingly, European citizens (let alone non-citizens living in Europe) rely on platform work of one kind or another to make ends meet, and many governments and organizations have contracted out to platform companies to run schools, hospitals, care facilities and even factories and utilities, even when still publicly funded.
China and India remain emergent superpowers with increasing influence in Asia, Africa and Latin America. They have each, in similar but distinct ways, developed a muscular alliance between state and corporations to harness the power of "platform capitalism." China has a set of proprietary platforms for its citizens and a second tier of platforms it exports to the world, based on their own increasingly influential national crypto-coin, considered to be the world's most stable currency (backed by the Empire's industrial and energy power). Like other superpowers, it also maintains a powerful cyber-military that regularly "disrupts" other nations' platforms in various ways. India is also a platform powerhouse, based on close collaboration between corporations and government.
There are an archipelago of nations that are holdouts against the platform empires organized into a "New Non-Aligned Movement," but they face great adversity, including from their own populations.
A huge frontier of corporate and state cold warfare is orbital space, with many of earth's data centres with their massive AIs located in orbit and with asteroid and lunar mining coming online. Sabotage is rampant.
Life for most people around the world is dominated by navigating multiple platforms for work, access to necessities, relationships and more. Life is a kind of constant arbitrage between multiple different platform markets for (c)air, food, care, transportation, government services and more. New platforms appear and disappear quickly, but the norm is a kind of low-intensity chaos. But it's not uncommon for people to swarm between platforms and trying to coordinate a fluctuating portfolio of platform services to survive, as if everyone lives in an unceasing digital war zone where there is little certainty from day to day.
In light of this, it has been tempting for many people to sign on to "full meal deal" contracts that see them access work and services from a chosen "patriarch": a multi-modal platform that offers a sense of security in terms of work and access to necessities in return for loyalty. Others prefer or are compelled to use multiple fluctuating platforms and cobble together an compounded precarity day to day.