Editing Starship Troopers (section)

===The Terran Federation===
The Terran Federation in Starship Troopers is an interstellar constitutional democratic republic. A constitution limits and describes the powers and responsibilities of government, and citizens vote for representatives. The main difference between their society and ours is the distinction between citizens and civilians. Civilians have all the normal rights and protections of a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_democracy liberal democracy], except that they cannot vote. Voting is restricted to citizens, people who complete 2 or more years of federal service. Federal service is generally used for public works projects or military service such as space janitor, terraformer, starship pilot, or Mobile Infantry (or occasionally desk jockey, but they're mostly wounded vets of more dangerous jobs). Everyone in the Federation is guaranteed the right to (try to) become citizens, and the government is compelled to find something useful for them to do in their service without regard to race, religion, sex, class, disability status, or any other identity group.  If you're a blind quadriplegic but insist on taking the oath and sticking out your term, then they'll find something suitably dangerous and useful to humanity for you to do, like being a medical test subject or something; what matters is that it is hard, contributes to the common good, and that you will remember what your vote cost you (assuming you survive to enjoy it).

The Federation's justification for restricting voting to citizens is to ensure only people who have demonstrated that they actually give a fuck about humanity as a whole are allowed, via their vote, to exercise the violence of the state. Federal service is intentionally made difficult, dangerous, uncomfortable, and poorly paid in order to weed out people who are motivated by personal gain and would use their political power for corrupt personal advancement or the advancement of a particular faction. They argue that a person's educational, class, wealth, or hereditary status is irrelevant, and by limiting the franchise to those with proven moral status, the state will act more justly and responsibly. The proportion of the population that are citizens varies widely by province, from 2% to over 80%. The supreme commander of the Federation military is the Sky Marshal, and only those who have [[Autarch|commanded both a Mobile Infantry regiment and a Navy capital ship]] at respective points in their careers are eligible for the position. The Terran Federation has enjoyed peace, prosperity, and good relations with its neighbors for generations, making war between humans a distant memory.

A required, but audited, class in all high schools and officer candidate schools is "History and Moral Philosophy", which teaches the students, (and the reader) how the Terran Federation came to exist; as nobody has to actually pass it in high school, few students take it seriously there. Sometime in the 20th century, most nations were on the brink of anarchy due to rampantly corrupt governments, unaccountable and irresponsible electorates, and widespread criminal gangs. A major and devastating world war breaks out, which collapses the already shaky states into chaos. Returning veterans organized local governments that grew and coalesced into the Terran Federation of today. The Terran Federation would later blame the failures of the 20th century on politicians and voters that were unconcerned with the well-being of society at large, and the inability of society to instill morality into its youth. The resulting Federation institutions are specifically designed to address that failure. Thus, many discussions in the book are concerned with discipline, responsibility, punishment, and morality.

The Mobile Infantry are the mainstays of the Federation military: they are an elite and high-tech infantry corps that uses powered armor equipped with multi-spectrum sensors, lasers, jump jets, flamethrowers, missiles, tactical nuclear weapons, and various other bombs and personal weapons. Each Mobile Infantryman costs $500,000 (if that's 1959 dollars, that would be over $4 million today) to train and equip. Mobile Infantry often employ hit-and-run tactics by [[drop pod]]ding from orbit and then doing as much damage as possible while skimming over buildings and terrain with their jump-packs toward a designated dust off point. Formations of Mobile Infantry typically have several miles between individual soldiers, using missile launchers and grenades to cover a wide swath as they go. Mobile Infantry training is comprehensive and extremely difficult. Recruits train with everything from knives and sticks to rifles, lasers, and tactical nukes, and in all environments, from mountain ranger to spaceborne assault in vacuum. Large-scale training exercises are done Russian-roulette style, with 1 live round for every few hundred blanks, meaning there are real (albeit rare) casualties in training. However medical and cybernetic technology has advanced to the point that any wound that isn't instantly fatal can be rapidly repaired; indeed, the recruiting sergeant who signs Rico up is missing an eye and three limbs, but when he has his prosthetics on you wouldn't know it to look at him. He takes the prosthetics off during the day just to make prospective recruits think ''really'' hard about whether they want to sign up for federal service.