No, just a different point of view. We’re talking about motives here, it’s natural to assign the worst possible ones to your opponents.
The Alliance is growing, and always will. Mel has said more than once he prefers the outer planets away from Alliance control because he can breathe free air and do what he pleases. What he pleases is often criminal activity, I have no doubt it’s easier to achieve away from authority. He justifies it as a tough existence and so must do what he must to survive, so it’s noble.
If you dropped in on Montana for a few hours in 1870, how likely is it you’d see overt evidence of this control? Might it not look like the (few) locals were pretty much doing their own thing, by their own codes?
I assume that the economies of the outer worlds are primarily focused on the extraction of resources for use on the industrialized inner worlds, and are dominated by mining/farming/whatever companies controlled by inner-world interests. Said companies don’t have any obligations to the local population other than hiring them as laborers at a subsistence wage.
So the inner worlds are concerned with maintaining the status quo, since they need those resource flows, but aren’t really concerned about improving the standard of living on the outer worlds. The independence movement is mostly concerned with getting a bigger slice of the pie for what they provide to the Alliance.
For example, a successful independence movement would probably nationalize the mud industry on Higgins’ moon, execute Higgins, and parlay the profits from the sale of mud to other worlds into hospitals and schools for the mudders (and probably a substantial swimming pool in the Minister of Mud’s back yard).
Although it is fair to point out that what is seen of the Alliance is essentially from the perspective of its interactions in the outer system, what we do see of the Alliance patrols and outposts is primarily concerned with either resource extraction or interdiction of smuggling. Regardless of the particulars of the executive and legislative constructs of the Alliance, it appears at a working level to be primarily bureaucratic; that is, mostly concerned with following regulations, assuring unimpeded trade and transport for licensed and legal operators, enforcing laws, et cetera, albeit without much concern for the effect on individuals, and especially people outside the Core worlds. In many ways the Alliance seems fairly liberal socially; after all, they allow and license “Companions” to ply their trade with prestige, permit Serenity to land on Ariel despite her questionable provence, et cetera. We actually see little in terms of authoritarianism and only one incidence of corruption (“The Message”) by official Alliance agents and organizations.
On the other hand, we see plenty of corruption, authoritarianism, outright criminal activity, brutality, serfdom, et cetera by independent local authorities and criminal organizations in the outer planets and stations. It is little wonder that they tend to police these worlds and shipping lanes with a firm hand lest the corruption find its way inward. That this enforcement is careless toward the rights of individuals isn’t a sign of dictatorship or corruption but just a blunt and indifferent bureaucracy. And while we only see Mal and company only committing victimless crimes and smuggling innocuous cargo, it is clear that they have to take any job available to keep Serenity in the sky. That they demurred once, in “The Train Job”, after discovering the harm that they were doing by stealing needed pharmaceuticals, which just goes to show how little they think about the consequences of their other jobs.
The one exception was presented in the film Serenity with “The Operative” and the subliminal messages sent in Blue Sun commercials. But this goes to show how covert the entire “Pax” program was; it used agents that were officially deniable and was administratively empowered to kill government officials without so much as a by-your-leave by any executive authority. This could be an authoritarian, Soviet-like government, but frankly it seems too well run for those kind of shenanigans. More likely the program was an unofficial, off-the-books program by some covert agency which had obtained semi-autonomy, and was mostly trying to cover up a massive error in judgement.
While the premise of the show was inspired by Shaara’s The Killer Angels about the Battle of Gettysburg, I wouldn’t take the American Civil War connection (and particularly the slavery angle) too literally. However, it is clear that there are a lot of uncivil people to be found outside the areas of Alliance control (including one of the crew of Serenity who is nothing more than a sociopathic killer who hires to the highest bidder) and that for the most part the Alliance is seeking to maintain peace (if only for the stability of trade and resources) rather than impose the iron hand for the sake of political brutality. In fact, Mal’s complaints are never about the politics of the Alliance, just the bureaucracy and oversight.
The alliance wanted a powerful state that intrudes in peoples lives. They also don’t care about individual freedom, or about the lives of individual citizens, as illustrated by the River storyline. The government is shown to have many of the traits of a police state.
The core planets are not rich because they are alliance, and the fringe planets are not lawless because they are not under alliance control. It is the other way round. The alliance won, and therefore has control over the most prosperous planets, which was the main thing the fight was about. It doesn’t care much about the fringe planets.
Well, that is certainly Mal’s position, but then, he is a rebel and a criminal who appears to enjoy both activities for sake of the excitement it beings to his life. Setting aside the Miranda debacle, the “Hands of Blue”, and “The Operative”, all of which are clearly operating at the behest of some covert organization performing what are at best extralegal orders, the bulk of what we see of The Alliance is fairly benevolent if officious and bureaucratic, and there is certainly avatvistic and criminal behavior that threatens the well-being of Alliance citizens which the government has (reasonably) elected to police and enforce laws to mitigate.
Kinda-Sorta.
The Alliance wanted to have total and utmost control of all high tech and high wealth living on the inner planets. The Brown Coats was a threat to that… and as such they destroyed it utterly.
The Outer Planets are not able to sustain the type of high-tech, high-wealth lifestyle that the inner planets do, so beyond taxes, tariffs, and raw materials cargo… they are of little interest to the Politics-Centric / Power-Centric Alliance.
How much control does [del]Bank Of America[/del] Atlanta and [del]Political Whore Central[/del] DC / MD / Northern VA have over America while destroying all of the infra structure in the North East and bleeding dry any state that agrees with the North East? Is it visible (y’all)…?
Those petty little fiefdoms are the Alliance. When the common people started threatening the idle rich’s ability to play cowboy on their own private planets, those idle rich used whatever means the rich use in the 'Verse to pressure the government to crush them.
Even before the movie, we have plenty of evidence that the Alliance is hopelessly corrupt. Just look at the sorts of cargoes Serenity has carried. Yeah, drugs and military supplies are fairly standard smuggling fare… but toys? Live cattle? If it’s actually profitable to smuggle those, then that’s a sign that there’s something very wrong with your society.
Nor are the activities of the Operatives or the Blue Hands extralegal or hidden within the government. Remember, Book was once a member of something like that, and his ID card is recognized by the officers of a random patrolling warship. Acknowledgement of and deference to those agencies is embedded in the full rank and file of the government.
If we’re still thinking of this as the equivalent of the US in 1870, think Dances with Wolves… if you showed up at Dunbar’s post a couple weeks before he got there, it would have been deserted. How about the closest town? Which do you think it’d look like, the little town near the whorehouse, or San Francisco?
I imagine that the Operatives/Blue Hands are the agents of a KGB/CIA-type organization. They are part of the the government, everyone knows they exist, and their authority trumps that of the captain of a random warship, but a goodly chunk of their activities are secret. The average Alliance citizen would think, “sure they do some shady things, but that’s the cost of society”. Or maybe they’ll spend some time in uni protesting their abuses in the outer worlds, only to lose interest after graduation when they have a job and mortgage to worry about.
Add to this the episode where we saw flashbacks to River and Simon’s family prior to them joining the crew. It’s clear that the family is quite well-off, but watch how their father reacts when Simon is arrested for trying to find out what happened to River. He says just walking through the doors of the police station goes on his “permanent record”, and he warns Simon about “just how far you can fall” if Simon keeps on with his efforts.
It’s clear that, while they are rich, there is still a higher power ruling over them that allows them to have the lifestyle only so long as they toe the line. Step out of line, and you risk losing everything. It’s a pretty common carrot-and-stick type of control.
I think the Alliance was also thinking long term. Sure, there’s not much that’s all that valuable on the Mudder’s planet right now. But give them another five hundred years, and how rich and powerful might that planet be then? And how much harder to conquer? Better to bring them to heel now, when they’re weak (and poor), then try to do it later, when they’re rich (and strong).
Within the context of twelve episodes of TV and one movie, there is no solid answer, and there really doesn’t need to be. What matters is that they did fight, the Alliance won, and the hero of the story was on the losing side. “The Alliance” is simply The Man, and the Independents were the rebels. That is really all one needs to know. The moral position of either side is never reliably explained and doesn’t matter a whole lot.
A history of earth’s colonial eras and empires shows that the imperial powers rarely gave much of a shit about the nations and regions they controlled, but the routes and freight were jealously guarded, as were the spoils. So the Alliance not giving much of a damn about the outer planets as long as they stayed out of their way and didn’t interfere or compete with shipping lanes… that makes sense.
