Anarchists; or, why Anarcho-Liberals?
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Its actually 6th (per capita GDP) in sub-Saharan African. There are 2 oil states, one mining state that fueled the rest of the economy and two countries that managed to diversify without natural resources.
Its worth remembering that most African countries didn't exist until 1950-1970. Than there was a fistful of civil wars, US and USSR backed forces and the joys of state building. Still they managed to pull of about 4% GDP growth per year for about 2 decades (don't quote me- this is half remember from Bad Samaritans). Than they hit a wall- wheter bad economic advice, a credit shortage, or AIDS spreading like wildfire across the continent... well, it wasn't favorable.
You could model Luddites by rebels that reduce RPs whenever they control a provence. Have it work so the percentage lost is equal populations of percentage of the country and it should be balanced.
As for modeling the victory of the workers revolution, why would the state give up power? There is still work for it to do- build the infrastructure to support the populance, root out revisionists, modernize colonies, spread socialism beyond the confines of our planet, social engineer the population to achieve there goals of breaking down nationalism, sexism, etc. This is something that would probably take more than half a century.
As for modeling anarchy by eliminating sliders, why? The sliders determine how much of the nations resources go into each category and who pays for it. While this is presumably done on a decentralized level, complaining about that is similar to complaining about the fact you have the ability to move the sliders in a democratic state... or tax people by social class, which is more suited to ancient regime France than any modern nation (which would use either excise, income or property taxes. Even when it is wildly inappropriate, the government is given more power to make things interesting for the player
You could make a country without a state... but it has to be run by an AI and while benevolent dictatorship is rare, most computer players managed to get decently close. Which means hands of management would go as well as LF did in the origional release.
Looking at the anarchy manifesto and, well...
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This seems to imply anarchists are not only against capitalism, but the self employeed, lending money and credit. So if you want to buy anything you have to pay in cash and the producer can't sell for more than a fixed amount so there will be constant shortages (because you have a price ceiling).
The page also repeats opposition to hierachial order as a core anarchist value, because that conciousness reduction delays plurality gain and movement joining. Unfortunately hierachial order tends to be created by division of labor so trying to eliminate it should massively hurt productivity. For example currency is centrally controlled. If you let it remain that would you have an authority that has power over everyone else- they can simply use inflation to become rich. You can have currency devolve to a local level... in which case trade takes a nose dive. And since it is democratically controlled, you have no guarentee that the value of the currency won't change dramatically when the population has to choose between currency stability and employment/fending off recessions.
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I think that the popular idea of "Anarchism" sprung to life before the popularization of Socialism and Comunism, it was something that was inspired by the "liberal revoultion" which they are trying to portray in the game. So in a way you could say that mass Anarchism came before mass Communism, for example syndicalism as an idea did not even exist when Anarchism was "invented". I modern times Anarchism would be more alligned ro left wing ideologies. However for the timespan of the game I think that Paradox have done it right.
For those who are interested there are a whole plethora of ideahistory in regards to Anarchism, why or why not that actually is a rightwing/leftwing ideology today. The debate very much alive and you can easily find by the arguments by googling.
Altough In this forum when debating this, we always have to remember to focus on the game otherwise I fear this thread could easily spin out of control.
For those who are interested there are a whole plethora of ideahistory in regards to Anarchism, why or why not that actually is a rightwing/leftwing ideology today. The debate very much alive and you can easily find by the arguments by googling.
Altough In this forum when debating this, we always have to remember to focus on the game otherwise I fear this thread could easily spin out of control.
Given that it occurs in 1848, I don't think it is actually anarchism, but what the description says- people who were disappointed by failure of the liberal revolution and have built a vanguard party in order to bring it about. Of course they will need to establish a state in order to safeguard democracy from upper orders (who are reactionary) and the lower orders (who are conservative) and so voting must be restricted. Sadly the middle class will support the extension of the franchise which would bring about the end of reform by giving it to the lower classes, so this government needs to restrict the political rights to reduce conciousness and increase supression. Don't worry- its only temporary.
tldr; liberals who want to insure full citizenship, LZ, free trade restrict democracy because the populance is conservatives and would never vote for them.
Er, how would it be different from the anarcho-liberals? They establish a society where the church does not have any power (atheism), the state does not support corporations (LZ and free trade), all citizens are equal (full citizenship) and the system is stable- lack of political reforms because frustrated political reform desire makes people anarcho liberals
tldr; liberals who want to insure full citizenship, LZ, free trade restrict democracy because the populance is conservatives and would never vote for them.
Er, how would it be different from the anarcho-liberals? They establish a society where the church does not have any power (atheism), the state does not support corporations (LZ and free trade), all citizens are equal (full citizenship) and the system is stable- lack of political reforms because frustrated political reform desire makes people anarcho liberals
If you read books like "Guns, Germs and Steel", you will find a thoroughly non-racist explanation for the poverty of Africa, though I guess I agree that "worked well" was an unfortunate wording.
What if I told you the vertical axis of Africa (as opposed to Euroasia) prevented the diffusion of important foodstuffs and techology (because of shifting climate zones), leading to technological stagnation, or that the (relative) lack of domesticable animals led to an increased suspectibility to diseases, which helped the europeans win in the struggle for colonization (though I guess this is more relevant for pre-columbian America).
Anyway it's an interesting read ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns_germs_and_steel ), and I assure you, it has nothing to do with racism. Though I think it's wierd of Comrade Chaos to associate Africa with anarchy, which was not really the case before some of the recent state collapses (Somalia springs to mind).
Actually the author of Guns, Germs and Steel sometimes go to almost comical lengths to assure us of how non-racist he is.
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Gun, Germs and Steel does not explain the poverty of Africa- it only explains why Africa was not first to develop a civilization capable of spreading to other continents. Its explanation applies equally well to Latin America which is much richer than Africa. Also, it only applies to sub-Saharan Africa; there is nothing in the book explain why North Africa was not part of the state building and technological development.
Having read your full discussion with lol887, I would like to come back to this point: Somalia indeed is an example for the practical being of anarchy (real world practical thing, as lol887 is talking about), which is different to the idea of an anarchist society (according to anarchist theories, as you are talking about). lol887 cites it as an example for the real world shortcomings of anarchical environments, which is fully valid. In fact, Somalia is the prime example in political science for this issue. To dismiss and denounce it as being "plain dump" just because it does not fit the ideas, models and claims of anarchist theory is just not correct.
Given that anarchism has never worked for a significant level of time on the theoretical level that was promoted by actual anarchists (as opposed to say Leninist Communists), it's not worth devoting huge amounts of dev time and resources to radically overhaul the game design to accommodate them.
At all the people saying "Africa, as expected, has never worked very well" is not racist need to close their laptops, pick up a book and get learned. If you don't see what's problematic with that statement (as opposed to saying "African societies have historically been underdeveloped") then I'm not wasting my valuable time explaining why.
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At all the people saying "Africa, as expected, has never worked very well" is not racist need to close their laptops, pick up a book and get learned. If you don't see what's problematic with that statement (as opposed to saying "African societies have historically been underdeveloped") then I'm not wasting my valuable time explaining why.
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Somalia is an example of a failed state, not the implementation of anarchist ideas and methods in a society to remove the oppression of the state.
We're not talking PolSci here in the game's context, we're talking Political Theory.
That´s what I said: it does not fit the ideas of anarchist theory. But this does not remove the fact that Somalia is an anarchic environment and shows how people behave in anarchic environments. It is empirical playground challenging the mentioned theories
Political theory is of course a part of political science, and what the example of Somalia points to is a conflict between theoretical assumptions (in anarchist theory) and real world findings. Of course if you are talking "theory only", Somalia has no place in it. And of course, no other example could be brought up, simply because there never has been any "true anarchist society" in the sense of anarchist theory.
But you should allow others, lol887 in this case, to challenge theoretical claims (in this case: anarchist theory) with empirical evidence (in this case: Somalia as an example how people behave in absense of a central authority i.e. state). He brought up a valid point, the contradiction of theory and reality, and does not deserve to just being turned away as "plain dump".
I played a wargame once with individual units in a city fight. There was a group of anarchists in the city. However, on double sixes, they had to cluster up and elect a new leader. I spent the rest of the wargame sitting it out while my anarchists bickered and squabbled. After reading about the Spanish Civil War, I feel that the game was a better represented it than I gave it credit.
I find the discussion amusing in how to make a game portray anarchists and anarchism correctly when the game itself requires you to sit there and make all the decisions yourself. Just sayin'
Personally I find the whole pro-anarchy movement a waste of time. It was defeated about 10,000 years ago as homo sapiens began to figure out how to progress past band societies. I don't understand why some are so keen on trying to repeat that process?
Personally I find the whole pro-anarchy movement a waste of time. It was defeated about 10,000 years ago as homo sapiens began to figure out how to progress past band societies. I don't understand why some are so keen on trying to repeat that process?
I find the discussion amusing in how to make a game portray anarchists and anarchism correctly when the game itself requires you to sit there and make all the decisions yourself. Just sayin'
Personally I find the whole pro-anarchy movement a waste of time. It was defeated about 10,000 years ago as homo sapiens began to figure out how to progress past band societies. I don't understand why some are so keen on trying to repeat that process?
You will understand, if you ever get a ticket for not driving in a seatbelt...
You will understand, if you ever get a ticket for not driving in a seatbelt...
I'm not sure I follow you? Is this a point being made in the 'You don't know what is good for you but society and people in charge higher up than you do' argument? To keep it in game terms as to not stray OT I see that no different anytime you decide what reforms to pick and when. You are just responding to what a more vocal part of your society wants who threaten violence if they don't get there way.
ps- I've never been cited for seatbelt but when younger I racked up some good moving violations. Live and learn, luckily I learned still working on the living part.
I've seen a mod which placed RGO's and factories under collective control with modifiers, but I believe that applied to the communists rather than the anarchists (not that there's a difference anyway, but the game models some sort of Stalinism).
Pretty simple: the want to resolve mankinds problems by building a better society. Look, writers of anarchist theories are not evil guys who want to drive the people into chaos, instead they truly believe their model of society would build a better world, solve the problems and shortcomings of the "traditional" world, and that their envisioned anarchist society would be better for man than the existing society. Same with communist theories, Marx himself was not evil, he never wanted things like Stalinist purges and Gulags, he really wanted to design a better society.
They really believe it.
Some where too utopian, some where naive, and some where power hungry and used the ideology to help themselves.
But this does not change the fact that the theories, when introduced in the real world, lead to starvation and repressions of people. Even though the people behind the theories did belive they would create a better society, they still bear some responsibility for the effects. Blaming it on them being naive is just not enough.
The latter point is worth debate. For most theorists (!) I do not think this is true, because most of them never got to power. Take a look at communism. I already mentioned above that Marx (a pure theorist) was not evil. He really believed. He did not set up his theories to help himself to power. Lenin (practical revolutionary, but can account for some worthy theory too!) was quite the middle ground. Of course he used ideology to get to power, and of course he ordered horrible attrocities, but it seems he also believed that in the end it would be for the better (of course, that does not excuse his crimes). The other point is Stalin (no real theoretican). He surely was fully aware that everything he did was pure powergrabbing, he may have believed in some parts of communist theory (ineviteable revolution and class struggle, for example) but he did NOT seek to build the utopian perfect peaceful communist society old Marx once had in mind.
Regarding "some too utopian, some naive", I agree with you. Some where, for sure.
Not true for anarchist theories, simply because they never have been introduced in real world
But if they were, I feel that you most probably would be proven right.
For communist theories of course, I can not say much against your point. One might raise the argument "communist theories never were PROPERLY introduced, they just did it the wrong way in real world", but this of course is academical debate and a self fulfilling prophecy, because the epitome of communist theory always is the lovely communist society (strongly related to anarchist society) and so any experiment in real world which did NOT result in the happy end outcome obviously wasn´t "proper communism" from the beginning
Anyway, whenever communism was "tried" in the real world, the results speak for themselves, and your point stands strong.
I would look closer into this. Blaming Marx for the Gulag is not that far away from blaming Jesus for the crusades, right?
(if I hurt the religious feelings of anybody, please forgive me, it was the first comparision coming to my mind, did not intend to hurt anybody)
I agree that blaming Marx for the Gulags is a bit far fetched. But he did support/and develop a ideology where(as described in the communist manifesto) whould introduce a Dictaorship, steal from people, introduce forced labour etc. While this does not necessarily lead to a Gulag, it does on the other hand facilitate the oppertunities for such repression. This because a One-party dicatorship does not have the necessary Checks and Balances to prevent a Gulag.
Of course Marx would have expected that once the righteous government of the working class is in place, this perfect government would do only the best for the people.
Lenin was much more realist about that, expecting the proletarian dictatorship would have to kill lots of people ("enemies of the people").
I think neither of in-game political governments is correct, as well as economical policies. There is too much power in Democracy, and too little in Abs. Monarchy/ Presidential Dictatorship.
Anarcho-Liberals is just an easter egg, I think. After 1900 a lot of countries are anarcho-liberal, while in reality anarchists never succeeded. These rebels just should be Jacobin. Or, if by Anarcho-Liberals PI meant just "a bunch of angry people", then they should teach AI to mobilize against rebels.
Anarcho-Liberals is just an easter egg, I think. After 1900 a lot of countries are anarcho-liberal, while in reality anarchists never succeeded. These rebels just should be Jacobin. Or, if by Anarcho-Liberals PI meant just "a bunch of angry people", then they should teach AI to mobilize against rebels.
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