Harmony and Detente

"Welcome, students, to today's lecture on one of the most fascinating and complex systems of governance in human history: Harmony and Detente. As we explore the intricacies of this philosophy, which has maintained relative peace and stability across the vast expanse of the Pan-Solar-Consortium, I want to pose a question to you: Can a society truly be considered harmonious when it not only tolerates but actively manages conflict? Is it possible to balance the innate human drives of competition and cooperation in a way that promotes the greater good? Today, we'll delve into the history, mechanisms, and implications of Harmony and Detente, and examine how this unique approach has shaped the lives of quadrillions of individuals across the Solar and Centauri systems. Let us begin our journey into the heart of this intriguing system, and explore the ways in which Harmony and Detente challenges our assumptions about power, order, and human nature itself."
~Professor Mwabudike Jordan, Harmony and Detente, the Pax Solaris

Harmony and Detente: A Philosophy of Managed Conflict

In the Pan-Solar-Consortium, we recognize that human nature is inherently complex and multifaceted. While cooperation and mutual benefit are essential to our collective prosperity, we also acknowledge that competition, ambition, and conflict are inevitable aspects of human society. Harmony and Detente is a philosophy that seeks to balance these competing forces by containing violent conflict within manageable spheres, preventing dominant winners, and protecting civilians from the consequences of unchecked ambition.

Core Principles

Managed Conflict: We accept that conflict is a natural part of human society and seek to manage it in a way that minimizes harm to civilians and the broader social fabric.
Containment: We contain conflict within designated spheres, allowing corporations, gangs, and other entities to engage in competition and violence without causing collateral damage to innocent parties.
No Dominant Winners: We prevent any single entity from achieving dominance, ensuring that no one corporation, gang, or interest group can threaten the stability of the entire system.
Protection of Civilians: We prioritize the safety and security of civilians, protecting them from the consequences of conflict and ensuring that they are not caught in the crossfire.
Economic and Social Controls: We use financial and social controls to maintain order, rather than relying solely on force or coercion.

Implementation

The Pan-Solar-Consortium government and planetary technocrats implement Harmony and Detente through:
Regulated Conflict Zones: Designated areas where those within a sphere can engage in conflict without fear of intervention.
Intervention: Strategic intervention to prevent dominant winners and protect civilians.
Economic Incentives: Financial rewards and penalties to encourage cooperation and discourage destructive behavior.
Social Norms: Promotion of social norms that value cooperation, mutual benefit, and responsible conflict resolution.

Benefits:

Harmony and Detente offers several benefits to the people of the Pan-Solar-Consortium, including:
Increased Safety: Civilians are protected from the consequences of unchecked conflict.
Economic Stability: The managed conflict approach reduces disruptions to trade and commerce.
Innovation: Competition and conflict drive innovation, as entities seek to gain an advantage within the managed conflict framework.
By embracing Harmony and Detente, the Pan-Solar-Consortium creates a society that balances human nature's competitive and cooperative aspects, ensuring a more stable, prosperous, and peaceful future for all its citizens.

Spheres

There are currently eleven recognized spheres, within which conflicts are allowed without outside intervention. New spheres come and go, though some are so basic that they've lasted since the beginning of the philosophy. The Harmony and Detente philosophy needs to adapt to accommodate these changes and ensure that conflicts within each sphere are managed in a way that maintains overall stability and prosperity, and to prevent them from srpeading into or harming other spheres.
Religion: Conflict between religions, both between the Four Movements and in sects within them.
Corporate: Conflicts between Corporations. Aside from the Legal, this is the most vicious and violent. Unlike the Legal, combatants in this sphere have the resources to do true collateral damage, so this sphere is just as closely watched.
Legal: Conflicts between criminal gangs, citizen militias, vigilantes, and police forces. Much to the consternation of small-settlement sheriffs, bailiffs, and commissioners, so long as the criminals ONLY harm police, the PSC will not intervene.
Intraplanetary: Planetary conflicts between factions on the planet, such as the various wars between the clans of Mars or the Venusians fighting against the Waxies. These perhaps look the most like 'wars' as one might imagine them from just that word out of context.
Interplanetary: Planetary conflicts between worlds. These are almost all settled either without violence or through Antibattles. 
Academic: Conflicts between the twelve universities. Often settled with Corsico.
Artistic: Conflicts and competitions within the art world, such as rivalries between artists, critics, or styles. This tends to be nonviolent at scale, but raids and property damage are not unheard of, particularly between the movements.
Cultural: Disputes and debates within and between different cultural groups, such as ethnic, national, or social identity groups. This tends to be delicate, and the line between when this harms civilians tends to be blurry, and the PSC has been accused of playing favorites quite often.
Labor: Conflicts over resource management, conservation, extraction and sustainability, including disputes between employers, employees, and activist groups. A corporation that can't bust its own strike is often left to die, and strikers that don't hire protection rarely live long.
Media: Rivalries and competitions between news outlets, social media platforms, and other forms of mass communication.  These disputes at scale devolve more into slander campaigns than violence, although individual journalists have been known to poison each other or plant IEDs in each other's cars in order to get a leg up on a scoop.
Scientific: Debates and rivalries within the scientific community, including disagreements over research priorities, methodologies, and findings. These disputes rarely devolve into violence, and more often take the form of debates and slander.