Why is the Corporate Dominion civic bound to egalitarian?
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The problem is that you are tucking in equal opportunity into Stellaris egalitarianism. That's one way of seeing it but it does not need to come packaged with the concept equal legal status for everyone (of the primary species anyway). I'd be surprised equal opportunity has anything to do with the ethos in flavor text or elsewhere, particularly after all the forum drama few months back.
Basically, egalitarian is the ethos diametrically opposed to acceptance of serfdom or slavery (in the real deal non-metaphorical sense) while authoritarian is the ethos supporting it. That's all there is to it.
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I would actually say that, since Egalitarians are described as valuing an equal playing field I would say they do value equal opportunity.
And while it's become a bizarrely popular fallacy to take that value of an equal opportunity to a comical extreme and assert that egalitarianism should be about abolishing all wealth, property rights and hierarchy, it's still a fallacy to assume that even fanatic egalitarians would engage in this weird strawman's version of liberalism by force. Or to go to the other extreme and assume that even a fanatic egalitarian should only be able to embrace this anarcho-capitalist wish fulfillment fantasy.
Fair point. They might value it but can't enforce it as they are supposed to be diametrically opposed to authoritarians. And once they enact utopian living standards, even human species might actually have it.
We are talking about a science fiction fantasy game. If this were a PDS historical simulator there might be a discussion here. But, should not the player be allowed to simulate fantasy?! Egalitarian is a relatively neutral word, that just means a society values equality among it members. The form of equality that takes should be open to the players imagination to role play. Hence the problem with restricting the corporate civic to egalitarian empires.
What civic is that? Doesn't match with any list I've seen so far.
Not sure I agree with your assessment in ethics, but I guess that'll come down to a matter of different political orientations. My pseudocommunist revolutionary society will be Fanatic Egalitarian Materialist with Idealistic Foundation and Environmentalist. I just hope the flavor text for that combo is Direct Democracy, but I'd be happy with Moral Democracy as well.
No, you can't force it. You can give it though, via public schools including public universities, and a basic social safety net that prevents people from starving to death or having to take a position as a wage slave to guaranty basic survival. You're never going to stop a millionaire's son from being able to, hypothetically, fail his way into the highest office in the land while a dozen more qualified people languish on the sidelines. But you can make sure that everybody has access to as much education as they want.
Well, two points here. The first is that egalitarian CAN be a neutral word, if not put in context. The developers have put egalitarian into context by providing a clear definition for it. So, while there isn't a discussion here, it's not because the development of the game has favors the players imaginations in this one case.
The second is that I'm actually okay with people trying to roleplay some weirdly impossible anarcho-libertarian or even communist utopia. It strains MY disbelief, but I don't care what others do, if they figure out how to wrap their mind's around the obvious problems from such extremist points of view, more power to them. The problem here is that people are requesting game balance and mechanic changes based around their interpretations of these ideas. So it becomes useful to remind people that what they think egalitarian means doesn't match what was developed, if only so they'll make more convincing arguments to get what they want.
Not in game from what I can tell. Maybe not put in because they thought adding a civic that matched a recently removed ethos would be confusing? Or because they figured that sort of thing was better to roleplay via other civic choices.
Either way, it's not the only mistake he made while attempting to lecture us.
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Woops, could have sworn I saw that somewhere
Well it doesn't help that I have to go fishing for Dev Diaries whenever I want to make sure of something
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The language about individual freedoms in the flavor text does not exclude a society organized around material equality, such as communism. Individual freedom is not synonymous with equality of opportunity. Both communism and liberalism are theoretically based on the principle of individual liberty. Liberals claim that communism excludes individual liberty because communism insists on collective equality (the individual is oppressed by the collective), while communists claim that liberals exclude individual liberty because they deny material equality (individuals are oppressed by inequality). That was the 20th century ideological argument during the Cold War. Can we get back to Stellaris?
If the existence of anarchical syndicalism in a fantasy universe among fantasy societies totally alien to humanity personally offends you, than science fiction might not be the right genre for you. One of the virtues of science fiction is its ability to open us to imaginative possibilities beyond the confines of our worldview, whether that be in terms of physics or sociology.
To try and get back the OP. There is a valid reason to question the limiting of corporate rule to egalitarian empires.
No, individual freedom is not synonymous with equality of opportunity. Unfortunately for your argument, Egalitarians are specifically described as valuing a "level playing field" which does, literally mean, equal opportunity. I feel like I may have had this conversation already.
I'm trying to figure out what this has to do with anything I said or you said before. Are you just worried that I think you don't know what a communist is? Or do you think I need to be told about conflicting ideals and the moral quandary that is formed when you believe people should have equal opportunity, but the only way to guaranty that is to strip others of their property?
Yeah... we probably should stick to Stellaris.
I don't recall ever using the word offend, I said it strained my disbelief, as in, I have trouble even believing it would work for a fantasy society. That is my problem with alot of BAD science fiction, I tend to pick it apart and when it falls apart too quickly or hand waves away serious problems, it leaves me unsatisfied intellectually. I actually love good science fiction though, because even if it doesn't hold up under a microscope, if it holds up long enough that it makes me think a new way about a topic, well, that's just delightful. Sadly, it's also why a lot of the science fiction that really moved me in Highschool doesn't hold up now.
Still though this is amazing, you have missed conversations that have already occurred, and have born witness to conversations that haven't.
Absolutely, and people have provided those reasons, and those reasons have been talked about. For four pages. Despite odd digressions about Mussolini, Hitler, and Communism. And all by people who don't understand, more than theoretically, how their request will interact with game balance or game mechanics.
I'm personally leaning towards the view that a simple "not authoritarian" restriction would be satisfying. I'll form a real opinion within the next couple of weeks, when I've had a chance to play both an Egalitarian and an Authoritarian under the new system.
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Egalitarian as the game is asserting likely means legal and/or political egalitarianism, not economic egalitarianism. But yeah it should be libertarian instead of egalitarian.
I find the competing ethics a bit odd, considering the blatant presence of inequality in many corporate states in science fiction. The Ferengi and Orion Syndicates in Star Trek both treat sentients as chattel (though the Ferengi really aren't that different in regards to their view on female rights than many human societies throughout history). I do think that some nuances have to be up to the imagination of the player, as the program can only convey so much.
so by wage slave I assume we're talking about Shadowrun, in which case employees for megacorps are property and are regularly traded and stolen. they get paid money that is only good at corporation stores and promotion is rarely a good thing unless you somehow get promoted to a director of some kind, in which case you're still property, but at least you have security of health and from bullets.
wage slave is still better than chattel slavery because they have decent living conditions.
to add onto this, corporations are like mini nations who are concerned more with the control of resources than land.
Corporations foster their own culture and promote ideals, corporation have internal politics and struggle in almost a mirror of a nation. Many even invent their own dialect or Jargon for their practice.
Many Corporations even defend their territory by hiring security or even defending it themselves. In less restricted times, corporations would even mage war on other smaller businesses usually through economic means but occasionally with violence. Corporate espionage is something corporations worry about and usually have multiple layers of defense against it.
In almost all important ways Corporations act like nations with no sovereign land, it really is quite strange.
because of this, I almost hand to wonder if you can actually call any corporation that gains sovereign land, a corporation anymore.
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The reasons are actually in short supply. As you've pointed out, a lot of these conversations haven't really addressed the issue as much as they were tangentially related squabbles over semantics. Admittedly, there's quite a bit of text at this point, so I could be missing something, but your main point for why Corporate Dominion should be tied to egalitarianism seems to be that you believe corporations outside an authoritarian state will have some sort of competitive advantage over ones in an egalitarian state, justifying the bonus. The implication of this seems to be that authoritarian states have command economies in your view while egalitarian ones do not. Is this correct?
I don't find this reasoning convincing. If corporate domination provides extra money in a less oppressive society (which itself is a simplistic take, but let's not get into that), there's no reason why it wouldn't do the same in a more oppressive one, and as has been noted, corporations have no inherent investment in a free society. Stronger, more prosperous corporations may even have an active interest in stamping out equal opportunity (which I agree is not the same thing as abolishment of property, etc. etc.)--that's certainly been the case on Earth. Second, it seems to imply that a society can only have high economic and social freedom or low economic freedom and low social freedom, and I definitely disagree with that. However, this seems to be tied up in Stellaris's definition of authoritarianism--more on that in a moment.
This also applies to you, no? We are all people who don't understand how our stances on this will interact with game balance and mechanics. That goes for any argument based on gameplay, either for or against limiting the civic to egalitarianism.
I remain in favor of no restriction at all. You mentioned earlier that you thought how Paradox defines these terms is clear, but I disagree. I think the main problem with individualism vs. collectivism, namely that it conflated democracy with a Randian free market and greater state intervention with oppression, hierarchy, and dictatorship, lingers on to some degree, and this civic is a prime example. I'm not that surprised, since authoritarianism versus egalitarianism doesn't entirely make sense, but I hope Paradox works to improve their implementation of politics--there's still work to be done, even if it's better than it was.
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Corporate Dominion does make sense in its current position from a gameplay point of view. It is an exceptionally powerful Civic; depending on your empire makeup, it can be more powerful than Miner's Guilds. Forcing players to be Egalitarian & Oligarchic makes a lot of sense to help keep people from thinking "it doesn't matter what ethics I take, I should always take Miner's Guilds/Corporate Dominion". It also blocks people from some of the nastier T2 government combos; you can't be Miner's Guilds/Slaver Guilds/Corporate Dominion ever, and you need to be Egal/Oligarchic for Miner's Guilds/Corporate Dominion/Functional Architecture.
From a roleplaying perspective, I can see a case being made. It doesn't make sense for an Authoritarian people to accept corporate dominion; the Authoritarian ethos suggests that one specific 'class' of people must be in rule. The aristocratic class must be in control of society, and this can't be impinged upon by the predations of merchants- that aristocratic class can't be the merchants themselves, as successful corporations are meritocratic and thus, to some degree, egalitarian. A corporation that runs well doesn't really have much of an interest in the mostly sentimental idea of royalty, or in the top-down control of a dictator.
Similarly, can a corporation thrive in a society which does not care one way or another about the rights of the individual in regards to free trade and property rights? An empire without Egalitarian ethics is still a non-egalitarian empire, and a corporation cannot survive if its assets are constantly being plundered by its government- hardly in any way that would constitute dominion.
Oligarchy also makes sense. A corporation does not need to be respondent to every one of its workers, which is implied by a democracy; a corporation is beholden to its bottom line.
From a roleplaying perspective, I can see a case being made. It doesn't make sense for an Authoritarian people to accept corporate dominion; the Authoritarian ethos suggests that one specific 'class' of people must be in rule. The aristocratic class must be in control of society, and this can't be impinged upon by the predations of merchants- that aristocratic class can't be the merchants themselves, as successful corporations are meritocratic and thus, to some degree, egalitarian. A corporation that runs well doesn't really have much of an interest in the mostly sentimental idea of royalty, or in the top-down control of a dictator.
Similarly, can a corporation thrive in a society which does not care one way or another about the rights of the individual in regards to free trade and property rights? An empire without Egalitarian ethics is still a non-egalitarian empire, and a corporation cannot survive if its assets are constantly being plundered by its government- hardly in any way that would constitute dominion.
Oligarchy also makes sense. A corporation does not need to be respondent to every one of its workers, which is implied by a democracy; a corporation is beholden to its bottom line.
Actually my argument was two-fold, the first part being, "It sounds like something they'd do for game balance, lets see what happens after the game launches."
The second part was, "As an authoritarian you're described as having an ordered and stratified society. So you probably lose quite a bit of efficiency given its lack of social mobility or upward advancement. Some of your best and brightest are languishing away, only barely educated, working 12 to 16 hour shifts as manual labor for a subsistence wage. Being forced, by contract, to allow the installation of neural boosters that increase work output, reduce dissatisfaction, and almost certainly burn their body's out. I expect you'll get a lot of minerals and food out of them, but I'm comfortable with that meaning your marketing and sales department loses out on a bonus."
I feel the distinction between my position and your view of my position properly addresses the next paragraph.
True, but I'm not asking for a change to be made in the game. I'm in fact waiting until I know something before requesting any changes beyond the cosmetic.
That's cool, I've quoted the definitions they used twice already and they seemed pretty clear to me. I would have personally hoped, with a set definition to work with, we could have moved past the entirely unproductive conversations about what "egalitarian" and "authoritarian" COULD mean, and transition to slightly more productive conversations about how any proposed change could be more or less in line with the design philosophy that they've adopted in this one context.
I certainly don't think going back to complain about the prior iteration of these ethos will be all that useful, nor do I think it's justified in assuming that's what is at work here when game mechanics are designed first and names are tacked on afterwards. If the choice of names for the civic was the result of some lingering tendency to equate individualism to a free market economy, despite them having turned the planetary stock exchange into a universally available building, than the proper solution to that would be to leave the mechanical restrictions in place but simply rename the civic.
As things stand, I think there's more confusion on the part of prospective players than there is in the game design itself. Most notably in regards to Authoritarian as an Ethos. The name Authoritarian seems to encourage people to consider it in terms of governments, when as an Ethos it's only tangentially related to government itself. As an Ethos, Authoritarian is a guiding philosophy within your society on par with Materialism or Militarism. It will inform what types of governments your people will have formed by game start, but it doesn't actually tell us about the government itself.
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I never did like the political division into single word adjective because we will never be able to agree on what they mean. When I use Authoritarian or Egalitarian I will mean "as they seem to be intended here". I will use Corporation to mean a group of people working together for a common cause within a well defined law precedence. Corporations do not need to be for the purpose of creating money as non profit organizations or donation driven organizations often act and look like corporations.
Authoritarianism seems like all the state being a single entity. All people are part of the state, all opinions are of the state, and non-conformity is identical to rebellion. Slavery is accepted since it prospers the state. Ethics are not allowed to diverge, because it would alter the state. Corporations as collective efforts of people outside of the state are unthinkable. Even if slavery does not exist as a word the greater good is commonly used as a reason to have people in slavery in all but name. The individual is not subservient to the state, it is part of the state. This means authoritarian here is an ethic that can encompass both Fascism and Communism in ideology, but not in how either were implemented IRL. You can be both a dictator and a slave trader without Authoritarianism but Authoritarianism here means the purpose of an individual is what the state needs the individual to do which makes it dictatorial-like and slave-like, without ever needing to use either term. As a matter of fact, those terms would never be considered native parlance, as they would mean that the state does not automatically have the right to both.
Egalitarianism here is that the state should not have the right to interfere with whatever aspects it so chooses. People and corporations need protection from eventual failings of the state, because in Egalitarian thought, states can and will make mistakes. The greatest violation of personal rights is the institution of slavery. It allows both injustices and neglect, but it means that the state does not have any rights not granted to it.
Both of them can and probably do claim to be a government of the people for the people, but they differ fundamentaly in what rights the state has. In Fanatic Authoritarianism the state is the only right, there is nothing in society not part of the state. In Authoritarianism the state has all rights, but can grant rights to things in some circumstances. In Neutral the rights go many ways and can be mixed up with other more dominant concepts, and other times it is firmly established but split. Egalitarian allows the state certain specific priviliges, the rest being protected by law and constitution, people and corporations are always on the lookout for abuses by the state. In Fanatic Egalitarian the state has no rights not explicitly granted, meaning if it is a greyzone legal issue in person vs state, the person always wins by default. The State asking a person or corporation to do something would be met by hostility and suspicion.
Egalitarian here is a nation of individuals and their representatives (other people or corporations etc) allowing a state, where Authoritarian here is a state composed of individuals who may or may not be given rights. So it makes no sense for Corporations as we think of them to exist in Authoritarian. Neutral might either be the perfect grounds for them to thrive, or a perfect reason for them to be undermined. So it might be reasonable to allow them for neutral. +10% Energy Credits is not very strong either, so I don't buy the balance argument. Egalitarian would probably always allow corporations in some form, as if people want, the state would not automatically have the right to stop them (democracy or dictatorship).
What would make more sense for a civic is something concern the laws around corporations. You could have both civics that ensure with laws so corporations and/or government do not exploit people, and in another laws that give corporations power of local government. Both of these are unthinkable in Authoritarian, but both would be possible in Egalitarian.
Authoritarianism seems like all the state being a single entity. All people are part of the state, all opinions are of the state, and non-conformity is identical to rebellion. Slavery is accepted since it prospers the state. Ethics are not allowed to diverge, because it would alter the state. Corporations as collective efforts of people outside of the state are unthinkable. Even if slavery does not exist as a word the greater good is commonly used as a reason to have people in slavery in all but name. The individual is not subservient to the state, it is part of the state. This means authoritarian here is an ethic that can encompass both Fascism and Communism in ideology, but not in how either were implemented IRL. You can be both a dictator and a slave trader without Authoritarianism but Authoritarianism here means the purpose of an individual is what the state needs the individual to do which makes it dictatorial-like and slave-like, without ever needing to use either term. As a matter of fact, those terms would never be considered native parlance, as they would mean that the state does not automatically have the right to both.
Egalitarianism here is that the state should not have the right to interfere with whatever aspects it so chooses. People and corporations need protection from eventual failings of the state, because in Egalitarian thought, states can and will make mistakes. The greatest violation of personal rights is the institution of slavery. It allows both injustices and neglect, but it means that the state does not have any rights not granted to it.
Both of them can and probably do claim to be a government of the people for the people, but they differ fundamentaly in what rights the state has. In Fanatic Authoritarianism the state is the only right, there is nothing in society not part of the state. In Authoritarianism the state has all rights, but can grant rights to things in some circumstances. In Neutral the rights go many ways and can be mixed up with other more dominant concepts, and other times it is firmly established but split. Egalitarian allows the state certain specific priviliges, the rest being protected by law and constitution, people and corporations are always on the lookout for abuses by the state. In Fanatic Egalitarian the state has no rights not explicitly granted, meaning if it is a greyzone legal issue in person vs state, the person always wins by default. The State asking a person or corporation to do something would be met by hostility and suspicion.
Egalitarian here is a nation of individuals and their representatives (other people or corporations etc) allowing a state, where Authoritarian here is a state composed of individuals who may or may not be given rights. So it makes no sense for Corporations as we think of them to exist in Authoritarian. Neutral might either be the perfect grounds for them to thrive, or a perfect reason for them to be undermined. So it might be reasonable to allow them for neutral. +10% Energy Credits is not very strong either, so I don't buy the balance argument. Egalitarian would probably always allow corporations in some form, as if people want, the state would not automatically have the right to stop them (democracy or dictatorship).
What would make more sense for a civic is something concern the laws around corporations. You could have both civics that ensure with laws so corporations and/or government do not exploit people, and in another laws that give corporations power of local government. Both of these are unthinkable in Authoritarian, but both would be possible in Egalitarian.
Case in point. I can't even get mad about this because the terms are so loaded with preconceptions that this is all but impossible to avoid. However, while what you've described certainly would be AN authoritarian government, the authoritarian ethos in Stellaris is broader and more flexible than that.
The authoritarian ethos in Stellaris represents a tendency by your people, via their own philosophies and culture, to prefer a well ordered, stratified society with limited access to political power. It can describe governments as diverse as a totalitarian socialist state, a technocratic oligarchy where subcitizens are forced to serve the ruling academician class, or a loose collection of feudal nobles who keep serfs in bondage to their lands.
I'm hoping this will be more apparent in 1 hour and 42 minutes when the Banks patch drops and the game becomes playable.
I hate to burst your bubble, but to avoid your confusion in 1 hour 38 minutes time:
3pm CEST, the time listed in the email paradox sent me with my utopia activation code from purchasing it in their store as the release time for utopia is in 2 hours 38 minutes, not 1 hour 38 minutes.