#They were mad because of the layoff and automation and knowing soon there's going to be no mines for them to work. and then they'd starve

[singingcicadas]

The way it's depicted, Cybertron's pre-war societal issues had a lot less to do with Functionism and more to do with unchecked government corruption, massive wealth disparity, high layoff/unemployment rates, and disenfranchisement.

People were starving, they needed work, they weren’t getting any. Those that were fortunate enough to have work didn’t get paid living wages, much less have anything to spare for health contingencies. Even then stability’s still the luxury of the top few tiers; they live one cut away from layoff. The government cared only enough to exacerbate these issues by coming up with new ways for exploitation. Any attempts to protest or lobby were shut down through political persecution. As a result the masses turned increasingly to crime, drug abuse, thuggery, and violence. Extreme acts of terrorism gets lauded as long as the collateral damage's suffered by someone else. Morality and caution are eroded in the face of desperation.

Meanwhile the many alleged restrictions of Functionism are just lip service complaints made by the characters which doesn’t match up to most of the stuff we’re shown. Like if Rung could become a psychologist, a specialized job that requires higher education, despite having zero background on top of such a weird alt that he had to be classified as an ornament, then wow the functionists must be open-minded. If Dominus Ambus could be a scientist/doctor/explorer/author/successful social rights advocator during the height of functionist control with a minesweeper military-use alt (assuming that his secondary alt's the same as Minimus'), then wow the functionists must be accommodating. If Tyrest could become chief engineer under Nova and later go into law, a complete change of profession, while being a jet, then wow functionism's flexible. If Ratbat and Momus could become senators in a society that discriminates heavily against beastformers and labor frames, then wow that’s progressive. If every Prime from Nova to Zeta (with the exception of Sentinel, his alt’s a tank, he only has wings in Megatron Origin as part of his Apex armour upgrade), every single named pre-war senator other than Proteus and Momus, and four out of five of Nova Prime’s buddy club (only Galvatron's a grounder) were wingframes in a society that supposedly discriminates against wingframes, then wow that’s… inconsistent worldbuilding.

Megatron didn’t get into bloodsports or start a war because he didn’t get to pursue his dream job. He got driven into the pits and down the slippery slope of moral degeneration because his only source of income was cut off by the mine closure incident. People wanted livelihoods above anything else, it's the failure to provide that that made the miners go off the deep end and resulted in the death of a guard. If Functionism actually ensured that everyone could be guaranteed a job or at least minimized the unemployment rates, then stratified castes or not, there would have been no war. People, or societies, are generally capable of tolerating an incredible amount of injustice as long as the majority still have a chance at scraping by at the end of the day. But the government, and later Megatron, kept yanking the rug out from under everyone over and over until they no longer even had a chance at that; there's no other choice left but fight or die.

#I get that all prejudices are full of contradictions and inconsistencies meant to cater to the needs of the ruling class #for the sole purpose of upholding the social stratification #and tokenism is a common thing #but when you can pull out two or more examples as shown to the contrary for every one of a character's complaints #about how they suffered from functionism discrimination #then it's just a really bad case of inconsistent writing with all tell no show #like you cannot expect me to take the 'flightframes are low caste' thing seriously #because the entire pre-war upper class is almost exclusively comprised of flight frames. it's the ground vehicles that are the minority #honestly it just feels like something made up on the spot for Starscream's sake #and Thundercracker Skywarp Jetfire got benefitted by association #when was functionism introduced as a concept in the comic anyway #was it in that Megatron/Optimus conversation in Chaos Theory? #b/c I'm getting heavy retcon vibes there #I got no impression that functionism was even a thing that existed when reading Megatron Origin #Autocracy's written later but still no functionism #The main social issue is widespread poverty like I'm sure a lot of those ppl would be pretty happy if someone could assign them jobs? #the miners in Megatron Origin weren't mad because they had to work in the mines #They were mad because of the layoff and automation and knowing soon there's going to be no mines for them to work. and then they'd starve #idw transformers #transformers #maccadam