KSR followed some socialist ideal in constructing the world. In El Modena, people seem to work for work’s sake. It seems that they don’t particularly want what is extra to their current ways of living. Except for Alfredo and the AAMT, no one seems to want more materially. Everyone seems to be content with their material life. In other words, it is reasonable that Kevin and his friends don’t want that new construction and extra town shares, as more money seem meaningless to them. They conform to what Doris says, “It’s your values that drive your actions.”
However, the crisis happened in this book, that tradeoff between money and nature, shows that Kevin and his friends’ are only part of the population. Even in this fraternal, environmentally healthy town of El Modena, many people would have chosen the money over the nature. Presumably, they have places to put in their extra money. They are the people who would waste as much as the society can afford.
There are set policies, result of “consensus of the town’s character”, that conserve El Modena’s development and environment. However, it seems that these policies were not strictly enforced, just like today’s international protocols and agreements. Without a powerful central government, these kind of policies are always under threat of violation.
There are also some larger laws and stipulations that seem to be enforced strictly, such as the water laws. However, as we see from the book, the water laws are not strictly fair to different counties, and had caused surplus in some and deficit in others.
I am most suspicious when, in chapter 10, Tom teaches about the struggle to stipulate international agreements curtailing corporations. These agreements were strictly practiced only with enforcing warfare to countries who didn’t cooperate, an appalling history. Tom tries to justify the enforcement of these agreements, while Pravi points out the war was unjust.