The dismantling of the vast and wholly parasitic armaments industry had given an unprecedented – sometimes, indeed, unhealthy – boost to the world economy. No longer were vital raw materials and brilliant engineering talents swallowed up in a virtual black hole – or, even worse, turned to destruction. Instead, they could be used to repair the ravages and neglect of centuries, by rebuilding the world.
And building new ones. Now indeed mankind had found the 'moral equivalent of war', and a challenge that could absorb the surplus energies of the race – for as many millennia ahead as anyone dared to dream.
4 – Tycoon
When he was born, William Tsung had been called 'the most expensive baby in the world'; he held the title for only two years before it was claimed by his sister. She still held it, and now that the Family Laws had been repealed, it would never be challenged.
Their father, the legendary Sir Lawrence, had been born when China had re-instituted the stringent 'One Child, One Family' rule; his generation had provided psychologists and social scientists with material for endless studies. Having no brothers or sisters – and in many cases, no uncles or aunts – it was unique in human history. Whether credit was due to the resilience of the species or the merit of the Chinese 'extended family' system would probably never be settled. The fact remained that the children of that strange time were remarkably free from scars; but they were certainly not unaffected, and Sir Lawrence had done his somewhat spectacular best to make up for the isolation of his infancy.
When his second child was born in '22, the licensing system had become law. You could have as many children as you wished, provided only that you paid the appropriate fee. (The surviving old guard communists were not the only ones who thought the whole scheme perfectly appalling, but they were outvoted by their pragmatic colleagues in the fledgling congress of the People's Democratic Republic.)