Megelanese model

History

The Megelanese model's roots date back to the end of the Megelanese Civil War, in 1943; even though the Futurist Political Party had been defeated, their defeat came more as a result of the regime's economic woes than because of the regime's military performance: indeed, Futurist military forces were still occupying portions of Megelan on the day of the armistice between them and the anti-Futurist front, and a large swath of Megelanese territory, centered on the Commune of Alba, remained relatively safe from widespread invasion for most of the civil war.

Moreover, the anti-Futurist front was not a unified one; some of its members had turned on one another during the civil war, and there was the very concrete risk of another civil war ensuing between the components of said anti-Futurist front. Hardline elements were disposed of through a variety of lethal and non-lethal means, while moderates from a wide array of movements and parties, from the anarcho-communists to the classical liberals, hammered out a compromise.

On one hand, the re-establishment of several political features and societal institutions of old Megelan, up to and including some that had been long dead even before the rise of the Futurist Political Party, brought the more conservative wing of the anti-Futurist front on board; on the other hand, the fact that said political features and societal institutions were modernized and revamped versions of the ancient ones, rather than carbon copies of the same, garnered the approval of the more progressive wing of the anti-Futurist front.

This impromptu hodgepodge of modernity and tradition, formed in a time of severe economic and socio-political crisis, eventually led Megelanese Common Sphere chairwoman Gina Campanelli to describe the country as either the most conservative revolutionary nation in Tyran, or the most revolutionary conservative nation; the aftermath and defeat of the Neoliberal conspiracy only strengthened this arrangement: because of this, even though the Community is among the most radically democratic countries in Tyran, it is also one governed by a relatively narrow cultural consensus.

Economic system

The Megelanese economic model shares many aspects of the broader Common Sphere economic model; unlike fellow Common Sphere countries such as Akashi and Gylias however, Megelan has an overwhelmingly private sector economy, tempered by large-scale antitrust regulations according to which craft workers, sole proprietors and small farmers are not taxed at all, while taxation on larger businesses grows exponentially in relation to the size of the business.

To avoid being taxed out of existence, businesses that are too large are forced to devolve themselves into multiple smaller businesses; because of this, Megelan's economy is dominated by small-scale cooperatives and family businesses, that cooperate and pool their resources through one of the many trade guilds that operate in the Community, of whom there can be several in any given field, leading to a great variety of approaches to business.

Guilds

Even though they are modeled after the old medieval guilds of Megelan, the modern guilds of the Community are run according to distributist and syndicalist principles: as there can be several guilds in any given field, none of them is able to monopolize the market as the medieval guilds did, to the detriment of the economy.

Just like their ancient predecessors however, they are granted a high degree of autonomy, to such an extent that they take responsibility for the training of their members and the quality and price of their products and services, they are the sole judges of the qualifications of their members, and have the power to set both standards and prices.

Another commonality between the old Megelanese guild system and the new one is the distinction between apprentice, journeyman and master, that was restored in order to make it feasible for workers to build skills by on-the-job training, as well as being able to earn a living while learning new skills.

Apprentices earn their license and status of journeymen through education, supervised experience and examination; to become a master, the journeyman has to submit a piece of work related to their trade to the guild their workplace is affiliated to, their fitness to qualify for said role being judged partly by the quality of the aforementioned piece of work.

Even though they are private associations of private businesses, Megelanese trade guilds can carry out a variety of tasks on behalf of the Community, some of which would normally be monopolized by the government; these privately owned national champions are not, however, appointed by the government, but elected in the same manner according to which the delegates to the Megelanese parliament are elected.

General Confederation of Labour, Technology and the Arts

At the national level, guilds - regardless of their size - are grouped into one of several sectors, according to the industry they are a part of; since there are a hundred such sectors, there are a hundred guilds that cooperate with the government at any given time. Each year, 10% of all the guilds enjoying such a relationship with the government are replaced, to prevent any one of them from asserting a dominant position in the national economy.

As explained above, the process is akin to the one according to which the delegates to the Megelanese parliament are elected, through a procedure of alternated sortition and election between all the guilds in the Community, with their number being halved over and over again until only one of them is left. Some of the guilds chosen in this fashion have been able to obtain global pre-eminence in their sector during their 10-year tenures, with those belonging to the clothing and textiles sector having been especially influential in Gylias in the second half of the 20th century.

Each and every one of these guilds, called paratici in Megelan, is included in the General Confederation of Labour, Technology and the Arts, a confederation of labour unions that replaced the old, pre-Futurist Credenza in this role once the Credenza was revived by the post-Futurist consensus as the upper house of the Community's bicameral legislature, and whose internal workings are essentially identical to those of the Grand and General Council, with individual businesses being the lowest represented level rather than rural villages and urban districts.

On one hand, some of the biggest Megelanese guilds have been likened to federations of worker cooperatives as well as to horizontal and vertical keiretsu, depending on their driving ideology or their guiding principles, and enjoy friendly relationships with foreign capitalist and socialist enterprises alike. On the other hand, some of the guilds of the Community have been accused of acting like cartels, especially before the early 1990s, and of discriminatory or unethical practices, as Megelanese labour law tolerates a great variety of approaches to business.

Megelanese welfare model

Public provision of welfare is less of a factor in Megelan than in the other Common Sphere countries; instead, welfare duties are evenly split between the guilds and the voluntary sector. Guilds are required by law to to devote a certain amount of their resources to free or low-cost services for the impoverished or indigent and, as conscientious objectors and the disabled can earn their right to vote through work in non-governmental, non-profit organizations rather than through service in the military, welfare providers are often well-funded and well-staffed, and cooperate with the private and public sectors on a regular basis.

Moreover, several services - private, public, and voluntary alike - exist to provide training and education to those currently in the welfare system, in order to encourage direct employment to get individuals off the welfare roll and directly into the workforce; that said, several guilds exist for those that are not part of the workforce, as well - job seeking having been recognized as an activity requiring an expenditure of resources on the part of the applicant not unlike that of an actual job.