A Tale of Two Cities - The Great Rebound
As the great city of Excessinon continued to wallow in state of economic stagnation, a new communication tool emerged that allowed the general population to get alternative viewpoints to the repetitive clatter that they were used to hearing from their media conglomerates for so long. Of course, for several reasons, Excessinon's institutions were not entirely to blame for the city’s downfall, including an eagerness by many of the residents of Excessinon to live beyond their means and take out multiple lines of credit, complacency, and perhaps a tendency to gravitate towards what they wanted to hear.
But with the new tool, more and more began to understand at least the basic things that had led to the city’s decline, such as the resident’s increasing reliance on water imported from Exploitinon, and their once sound economic structure being gradually dismantled and usurped. A movement arose to try and reverse the trend. It was a daunting task, but the residents were determined not to give up. The first thing they did was demand from their mayor to end the city’s dependency on Excessinon’s water once and for all. The Mayor immediately went about drilling the super wells and funding research into how to use that water to its full potential. Technology was developed to efficiently break the water down into its components—hydrogen and oxygen—and then store those components more efficiently and safely than ever before. The City Council then passed an ordinance requiring that all newly made, mass-produced transport vehicles use the new fuel.
It was a day of celebration when it was announced that Excessinon had broken free of their dependency on Exploitinon’s water, but there was more to do. The Mayor listened to the people, and began to regulate the city’s trade with Exploitinon, exercise some control over city limits, and put the concept of the unregulated superhighway to rest. The new, gradually implemented tarrifs had an immediate positive effect. With new-found confidence, jobs began returning and the city’s coffer expanded, providing funding for public works and so forth. The city's banking institutions returned to doing what they were created for—spurring economic growth by making prudent loans, as opposed to high-interest usery. Eventually, the Mayor was successful in rolling back other things—no single one less important than the other—to an earlier time, such as the tax structure and associating Excessinon’s unit of trade with a commodity of actual value.
It took some time, but the city eventually returned to the stable democracy that its founders had envisioned, with a well funded government that served the common man and protected the minority. And equally important, a stable economy that allowed its older generation to live comfortably. And a new generation emerged that, although capitalistic in nature, did not worship greed and excessive living as many of the previous generation had done. The city of Excessinon once again stood proud.
The Beginning