The United States government may not always be seen as a flawless group, but moreover, it is more favorable than having corporations ruling over Americans. In Pills and Starships, Millet demonstrates how the change from a normal governing body to the control by corporations has influenced how Nat, Sam, and their parents act as citizens within their collapsing society.
Governing bodies in Pills and Starships do not function in the manner they do in current societies. In Nat’s world, the service corporations have taken over as the main and only form of government. Corporations rule over all aspects of the society. When trying to describe the corps, Nat says that they, “along with the energy and food and water corps, are either instead of government …show more content…
Later after some time with the rebels, Nat learns from Kate that the list of numbers Sam had was the amounts of people the corps have killed. Kate notes “they mostly used sneakier weapons, like gases and chemicals that killed people but left buildings intact” (243). This is a result of corporate greed and a consequent willingness to sacrifice citizens to achieve their goal. Most normal democratic governments do everything in their power to protect and serve their constituents. However, these service corporations do not imitate nor compare to a typical government as they are fueled by greed and money, which inhibits their moral obligations to the people. These corporate massacres did not affect Nat, Sam, or their family considerably, but the corps have another way to reduce population size – contracts. The contracts can be seen as a smaller scale version of the exterminations. These death contracts affect the main characters directly. Nat’s parents, who for a majority of their lives fought the corps, fall victim to the corps mass brainwashing and choose to take out contracts on themselves. The corps true power is shown in their act. The influences of the corps may be even more significant on citizens who have tendencies to rebel. Both the mass killings and the contracts occur because the corps need to hit their quotas and reduce threats. Even though Nat is conditioned by the corps to not feel too much grief due to her parent’s contracts, Nat says that she “didn’t want to let them go” (120). The corps even install a scheduled week where the children learn to cope with this. Any unorthodoxy, such as Nat’s emotional response to her parents contracts, is highly disapproved of. Nat and Sam are forced to grieve in a way that reflects the corps ideals in order to ensure the contracts will not withdrawal because the corps real mission is to reduce population