2038. The Shrimp Torture Wars Have Ravaged San Francisco.

The rebellion must succeed against the New Utilitarian World Order

Your brother is being dragged away by a ravenous, barking pack of Bentham’s Bulldogs as you sprint after him on the decimated streets of San Francisco. The sky is yellow and harkens doom.

DO NOT FRET; YOUR ORGANS WILL BE DONATED TO CHILDREN FOR MORE WELFARE chirped a robotic voice coming from one of the hound’s collars. Uh oh. You break out into a full sprint in the chase. The New Utilitarian World Order (NUWO) implemented a rule last week that all criminals hiding in the Wastelands of California, the last place in the US refusing to bend the knee, would have their organs donated.

The utilitarians realized that stealing organs from random travelers, their original plan, shakes trust in society, and so instead they weighed the welfare of prisons against the welfare of citizens in hospitals. Now the death penalty is mandatory even for shoplifting for the value of their organs. Of course, if the citizens knew about this they’d be scared and lose welfare, so the rule was kept secret and only announced to the people of the Wasteland as a negotiation tactic.

DO NOT RESIST. YOU WILL BE ADMINISTERED WITHDRAWAL-FREE HEROIN TO COMPENSATE FOR YOUR LOST WELFARE, comes the robotic voice from one of the hound’s collars. While the hounds are faster than you, dodging the collapsed buildings and flipped over cars on the cracked road, dragging a full human is slowing them down. Three of the dogs stop dragging his now unconscious body and lunge after you.

You dodge and weave to the left around the first dog and try to kick the second to the side, but he gets a bite of your knee. You give a yell. You spare a glance to your brother and he’s getting dragged away much more slowly with three of the hounds now fighting you. You might be able to catch him—

NOT. SO. FAST. As you hear the much buzzier robotic voice appearing over one of the ruins, your heart sinks. A robot mechsuit with 8 arms slinking over a pile of rubble, attached to a giant tank, with 10,000 shrimp contained inside.

The AI simulating the consensus of the shrimp’s opinions continues to speak.

YOU WILL BE. EXECUTED BY TROLLEY. IF YOU RESIST. ANY MORE. He’s right. Although you could attempt to fight and break the tank, the Official Welfare Score loss if you kill all those shrimp is akin to hundreds of humans. The utilitarians will hunt you down until the end of time, or at least a proportional amount to the severity of the crime to deter similar transgressions in the future. You decide to do all you can, and you mentally make peace with leaving your brother behind; you turn around and break into a sprint.

The tank on legs and the three dogs immediately start scampering after you, but you’re still the smartest animal in the known universe. You immediately duck into an alleyway and dive through a hole in a chain link fence at the end of the alleyway that the tank can’t fit through. To your horror, as you look behind you in the chase, you see the trained dogs jump through the fence like Olympic hurdles and the tank’s spider-like arms scaling the building itself to get over the fence. Fear courses through you. This might be the shortest chase of all time. As you turn back around to continue sprinting, you slam your head into a collapsed streetlamp, and everything goes black.

…

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

In the 2020s, AI began to rapidly improve, and people assumed it would continue forever. And it just might have. Until a scientist in 2027 used AI to fulfill a dream that humans had been craving since the dawn of time: having the ability to speak to animals.

Using AI, a truly insane amount of animal data, and the millions of data centers being built for AI worldwide, scientists could use body language and voice cues to allow animals to talk. It could then communicate the understanding of the world around it back to the animal for full understanding and two way communication. The technology, much like AI itself, had its true strength vastly underestimated.

See, throughout the course of human history, those who gain the voice to speak always gain power. The printing press, giving the public a voice when they were downtrodden and at the mercy of kings. Slaves, freed from their bondage when the public became aware. Losers who have never been outside, able to reform societal norms by being annoying about it online when Twitter rose to relevance.

Though it was shocking at the time, history will be unsurprised by the turn that happened next.

After the technology was made widespread, millions of animals, able to speak and communicate, began to have thoughts on their poor treatment and lack of rights, when their AI informed them of the incredible lives that humans lead. When introduced to philosophy, these animals began to accuse US of being utility monsters! The audacity! They looked on the internet, and found their political allies, those who already believed in animal rights: vegans, effective altruists, and utilitarians.

As it turns out, monkeys are about as good at spreading hate-filled political propaganda as the average Twitter user. Weasels are about as good at politics as the average politician. Orangutans are about as good at coding as the average computer science major (both just type “make me an app that’s good” into an AI coding tool, but orangutans can type this prompt on 2x as many keyboards by using their feet). More rights were given to animals, and a technology originally intended for dogs and mammals was applied to shrimp and more, in a scarily effective manner.

As a result of this sweeping equality movement, Matthew “Bentham's Bulldog” Chadelstein was elected president of the United States in 2032, with his utilitarian principles promising to assign a mathematically-optimal welfare score to all living beings. His winning campaign slogan took from a previous equality movement’s “One Man, One Vote” to be a mathematically proven correct conversion rate “18.7154 Shrimp, One Vote”. His philosophy niche on Substack became a dominant political party, with outsized influence and billions of animal fans.

Chadelstein had lots of power and was smarter than his supporters. Tragically, his supporters, mostly monkeys and shrimp, had too high of an IQ to fall victim to the populist worship that Trump saw. His cabinet implemented “welfare redistribution laws” that took away from rich humans and gave it to poor shrimp, for shrimp hospitals and shrimp schools. They began to crack down on vegans who weren’t utilitarians, and they implemented an authoritarian communist fascist totalitarian dystopian other-evil-words police state.

In a day that history will call Shrimp Shunday, the government tied up five of the most influential non-utilitarian Substackers to the trolley tracks, and one utilitarian to the other side of the tracks, and made a big show of having a curated group of loyal utilitarians NOT pull a lever to save the five from their trolley doom. Moralla W. Within was one of these on the tracks despite being a Kantian and a believer in the shrimp cause. Because Corsaren was also on these tracks for not decisively choosing utilitarianism and also met their grisly fate, and these two were represented by birds, the bird became the symbol of the rebellion. In response, the government banned any imagery of birds online. Lyman Stone and the most vocal non-utilitarians disappeared into the night, rumored to be dead.

This day marked the birth of the New Utilitarian World Order.

The shrimp-tanks flooded streets and businesses. Dogs turned on owners, just as progressives turned on their fathers, and joined an elite military known as “Bentham’s Bulldogs”. It was made mandatory, by the government, to always do the correct utilitarian move in every decision you ever made.

When Chaldelstein was assassinated by mythical anti-utilitarian figure Daniel Muñoz, a war broke out. Shrimp vs man. Dog vs human. Society collapsed completely, and the government established a safe haven of utility maximizing in the United States East, where a rebellion formed in the Bay Area, who despite being more utilitarian than average in 2025, are chronically anti-status-quo, so San Francisco rallied by becoming Christian and accepting Jesus Christ as their lord and savior. The battles made the Wastelands we know today.

…

You rouse from a groggy dream when a cool breeze comes over your skin. The Golden Gate Bridge, in some of her glory, surrounds you as you teeter, tied to a chair with duct tape over your mouth on the edge of the rusted, broken, teetering bridge with a long drop beneath you. Two shrimp-tanks surround you with guns in their metallic hands, keeping guard. They have not noticed you’re awake.

HEY, DO YOU THINK WE’RE CONSCIOUS? says one of them.

OF COURSE WE ARE. WE’RE A COLLECTION OF 10,000 CONSCIOUS SHRIMPS, responds the other.

SURE, THE SHRIMP ARE CONSCIOUS, BUT THE AI SYNTHESIZES CONSENSUS AND COMMUNICATES IT BACK TO SHRIMP DIRECTLY TO THEIR CONSCIOUSNESS, TO BE SMARTER THAN ANY INDIVIDUAL. IS THAT COLLECTION OF SHRIMP CONSCIOUS? IS A WHOLE HUMAN BRAIN CONSCIOUS WHEN WE CAN SEVER THE CONNECTING NERVES BETWEEN THE HEMISPHERES AND CREATE TWO CONSCIOUS HALVES?

UH, THE HUMAN IS, WE’RE NOT, BUT IT IS ODD WE’RE TALKING ABOUT CONSCIOUSNESS SO MUCH FOR NOT HAVING IT.

WAIT, ISN’T UTILITARIANISM PRIORITIZING CONSCIOUS BEINGS? WHY ARE WE GOING ALONG WITH THESE INDIVIDUAL SHRIMP IF WE’RE MORE TH-

Before the tank can finish their thought, one of them notices you’re awake and hits you in the back of his head with the hilt of their gun. WAIT FOR THE BOSS, the tank says, and silence resumes.

You glance around, examining the ruins of the bridge, and see hundreds of the New Utilitarian World Order’s propaganda posters scattered around, taped to the side of the ruins. The propoganda posters show a comic you’ve seen before.

What a bunch of cucks.

A helicopter descends as if on cue, and the wind and sheer loudness blasts over you. Two top ranking government officials in black suits step out of the helicopter, onto the ruins of the bridge, and you recognize them from Chadelstein’s old cabinet, but they do not speak. One of them has an amazing mustache. They part the way and reveal a man in a shimmering golden suit and red sunglasses, wearing a gold chain where a tie in a suit would usually go.

You recognize him immediately. You scream into the duct tape. It is your brother.

He begins to speak in a casual tone.

“I know, I know, you’re very confused right now about why I’m here when the dogs and shrimp-mechs were dragging me off, but it’ll all make sense soon. The utilitarians have been right the whole time.” He gives a wide smile.

“See, in 1972, Peter Singer posed the most important question in history: would you save a drowning child if you knew it would ruin the $3,000 suit you were wearing?”

As he speaks, he paces around you and the shrimp-mech-guards. You hang onto his every word.

“If the answer is yes, Singer said, it’s curious that you’re not donating $3,000 to charity to save a life in Africa right now — it seems like in both situations, you’re making a decision between money and saving someone. Now that the New Utilitarian World Order has made it mandatory to donate the exact amount of money that would make the average charity recipient’s life better than the increase in welfare you would receive from it, we’ve finally solved the drowning child argument.

But the kids we’re saving might have to go back to dreary lives; if you’re saving them only for them to live the rest of their lives in misery, what’s the point? This issue is being solved with Welfare Scores, but it’s not enough. We need to guarantee that that poor child lives the best life.

Have you heard of Nozick’s Experience machine? Seven years ago the utilitarians decided to build it, a top secret project: a machine that can guarantee endless bliss and the best moments a life can have, simulated and connected to the brain. No withdrawals, just the best conscious experience you can dream by simulation. Well” — here he pauses for dramatic effect — “welcome to the Experience Machine, sucker. You’re a law-abiding citizen that we’re letting live an awesome life as a revolutionary because that makes your life like a movie; In the real world, we’re invading San Francisco tomorrow in stealth thousands of shrimp mechs with tranquilizer darts before taking their organs, no cool chases needed.”

You look down and your breathing starts to quicken. What he’s saying can’t be true, right? That’s your brother. His name is — you can’t remember his name, why can’t you remember his name?

“I’m only telling you this because we’re unplugging you from the machine to charge our stun guns. And we’re working on a version of the Experience Machine that gives true, unending bliss without needing to simulate anything in the real world. It’s a work in progress.” He chuckles.

“See, if I saw a drowning child in the river, I would fish him out so I could hook him up to a computer terminal simulating perfect bliss until the end of time. Sweet dreams.”

You scream into the duct tape again as the world dissolves around you. Peter Singer has done it again.