SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread I

[Agent Sorchus]

Done.

So that was you Ryan. Ha, joint work for the win

[K. A. Pital]

I've already registered for the SDNW 2 game, so I'm cool. I'll see what I can do with my nation's page. Oh, and thanks, Ryan.

The Commune might find the Umeria a worthwhile ally, but all other political systems (I skimmed through PC nations) are fundamentally alien to the Commune, some outright unacceptable. So here the Commune is basically the only would-be communist or socialist nation - all other nations have different systems. The Commune doesn't have a sphere of influence, thus, and can mostly count only on itself to deal with it's problems.

So there's one potential ally and 99% potential enemies. Hum-hum.

[Ryan Thunder]

Oh, Stas, we might get along to some extent.

Done.

So that was you Ryan. Ha, joint work for the win

Credit where its due. I thought I was going crazy for a moment.

[Akhlut]

I've already registered for the SDNW 2 game, so I'm cool. I'll see what I can do with my nation's page. Oh, and thanks, Ryan.

The Commune might find the Umeria a worthwhile ally, but all other political systems (I skimmed through PC nations) are fundamentally alien to the Commune, some outright unacceptable. So here the Commune is basically the only would-be communist or socialist nation - all other nations have different systems. The Commune doesn't have a sphere of influence, thus, and can mostly count only on itself to deal with it's problems.

So there's one potential ally and 99% potential enemies. Hum-hum.

The NenAltKik, while not following the Commune's political/economic system, also does not have any sort of animosity toward how other races conduct their own politics and would be willing to have some sort of diplomatic/trade relation with the Commune, if there are no objections on your end.

[Agent Sorchus]

Stas I think that there might be a sort of understanding between the EUC and the Commune, the EUC is set up in a similar way to a government of citizen/labor Unions. Not communist or traditionally socialist, and definitely alien; but more similar than most.

[Kartr_Kana]

Ok just got trillian working. If you guys want I'm KartrKanaSDN on AIM and I should be joshuajury4b@gmail.com for MSN.

[KlavoHunter]

I'm still not on the spreadsheet.

[Agent Sorchus]

You should be good now KlavoHunter.

[K. A. Pital]

Feudal and semi-feudal nations, those nations which have "Empire" or "Kingdom" in their name, as well as all monarchies (including constitutional ones) are considered ugly and despised by the Commune. Those which have "Republic" but are capitalist are viewed with obvious suspicion and dislike. Other forms are either viewed neutrally or positively. For example, anarchist or uncentralized systems are viewed neutrally or positively because it's easy to extract those who'd like to move to the Commune, as well as spread propaganda in abscence of centralized authority.

Swarms, orks and the like are considered being on a low level of social development and thus distrusted or thought of as hostiles.

[Dark Hellion]

So Stas, how do space commies view a hive-minded AI civilization utterly bent on the formation of a universe dominating coalition of willing species in order to fight a Pyrrhic war with an extra-universal godlike AI?

Will you be my friend? We could teach the petty biologicals the folly of their wealth-based capitalist systems.

By the way, would anyone be interested in RPing XylyX cultists within their faction? Doomsday cults are always popular amongst people and my faction can get righteously pissed about a bunch of stupid flesh creatures treating the most important ideological endeavor ever undertaken as a simply religion. Come on Fingolfin... I know you want more heretics to purge.

[Kartr_Kana]

Ok I've attempted to post my OrBat on the Wiki. Be warned I'm a Wikinewb so it's rather atrociously formatted. If anyone could give me tips on how to make it prettier I'd appreciate it. As for now I'm going to bed I'll finish it tomorrow.

[K. A. Pital]

So Stas, how do space commies view a hive-minded AI civilization utterly bent on the formation of a universe dominating coalition of willing species in order to fight a Pyrrhic war with an extra-universal godlike AI?

Will you be my friend? We could teach the petty biologicals the folly of their wealth-based capitalist systems.

By the way, would anyone be interested in RPing XylyX cultists within their faction? Doomsday cults are always popular amongst people and my faction can get righteously pissed about a bunch of stupid flesh creatures treating the most important ideological endeavor ever undertaken as a simply religion. Come on Fingolfin... I know you want more heretics to purge.

Opiate of the Masses! The Commune, however, acknowledges the threatening possibility of malevolent higher intelligences. The Mirage deals with all aspects of this fight - and as you know, people get paranoid quickly when working with this stuff. So you'd probably find some possible allies inside the Mirage and the Final Argument, if not in the overall Commune society.

[PeZook]

The Commune might find the Umeria a worthwhile ally, but all other political systems (I skimmed through PC nations) are fundamentally alien to the Commune, some outright unacceptable. So here the Commune is basically the only would-be communist or socialist nation - all other nations have different systems. The Commune doesn't have a sphere of influence, thus, and can mostly count only on itself to deal with it's problems.

Such high level of social development is most commendable, for biologicals. Of course, several important matters remain unresolved, but you may expect a visit from a certain Collector who suspiciously resembles an ancient action vid star or politician, unless your nation is one of those who hate AI for some reason

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

The Imperium's Inquisition does have an Ordos Traitoris which is essentially charged with internal security. Purging heretics following some religion belonging to a hostile alien race does fall under the purview of the Ordos Traitoris.

[PeZook]

You should find a Latinesque word for traitor, it would sound better.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

You should find a Latinesque word for traitor, it would sound better.

The Latin word for "Traitor" is "Proditor". But "Proditorium" isn't very... authoritorian sounding.

[KlavoHunter]

The Sultanate may be an Absolute Monarchy, but it is so in the sense that there needs to be one and only one person whom is ultimately running the show, trained to the task. There are no other nobility of any sort. For the average citizen, the Sultanate is really rather socialist.

[Siege]

Also, who wants to be friends with Space Dinosaurs?

You're a long way away from my part of the map, but considering you're Space Dinosaurs the Zigonian population of the Sovereignty probably gets along with you swell. They are, after all, Space Lizardmangs. So sure, friendly relations and trade?

I'm guessing the Sovereignty is ambivalent about the Commune, although maybe they use it as a place to dump undesirable revolutionaries not annoying enough to qualify for neural resocialization. Sort of like Space Australia!

But "Proditorium" isn't very... authoritorian sounding.

"Ordo Proditoris" sounds sinister enough to me...

[K. A. Pital]

We don't hate AIs and encourage them to settle... but few do, because AIs have fundamentally different goals than humans. They ponder about the universe and it's grand tasks, but rarely involve themselves in the Commune's matters. Which makes moving to us kinda pointless. Some AIs do so out of preferences (likewise unclear for humans). AIs can also enter the Commune's Supreme Soviet, but the quota for the clouds and AIs is the same. Clouds are considered non-biologicals like the AIs; restrictions of a general kind apply to all of them.

Technically we could even elect an AI president, but that wouldn't happen because the Mirage won't allow it, so far. Unless said AI takes over the Mirage (and learns a couple of dark secrets of Commune's methods of knowledge accumulation in the process). Which could be a plotline to consider.

Those who opress machine labour are considered by the Commune repulsive and the animosity borders on a Cold War level. I know some nations do. Ownership, exploit and sale of post-Turing machines is a capital offense in the Commune.

[Siege]

Interesting. That's something the Sovereignty and the Commune have in common then. CompInts (calling them "artificial" is considered a slur) are citizens just like any other sentient lifeform, and CIs are generally highly regarded as valuable contributors to society. In fact, the Sovereignty couldn't exist without them. Suppressing CI rights or treating them as mere machines to be used and discarded will earn you the ire of the U.S.S.

EDIT: In Shroom's absence I have created a wiki page for his Bragulan Star Empire which I'm sure he doesn't mind. This to give you some idea of what it's about.

Steve, can you add three additional sectors to the BSE on the map?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

The Imperium has a general distrust of AIs comes from the Collectors. Seeing what a voracious AI can possibly become makes us think twice about not monitoring them closely. That society has become too dependent on computers which may be exploited by a rogue AI implies that society has be to be doubly vigiliant, and every step of the way must be made to ensure that AIs never become rogue.

Hence, the three laws of Robotics.

[Akhlut]

Those who opress machine labour are considered by the Commune repulsive and the animosity borders on a Cold War level. I know some nations do. Ownership, exploit and sale of post-Turing machines is a capital offense in the Commune.

Ah, that's something I forgot to mention. The NenAltKik doesn't allow for alien species to become citizens; they can be subjects, but not citizens. Same for any sapient AIs.

The main idea is that the NenAltKik shall always remain a state composed of and for the kipaktli and moxli. Subjectship, however, is not a super-oppressive status, it mainly means that one lacks several rights (voting, ownership of certain property, cannot have a government job above a certain pay grade, etc.), but still having some of the benefits of NenAltKik society (access to welfare, police protection, etc.).

This is mostly moot, though, as very few non-Tlali species particularly want to live among the NenAltKik because things are designed for species of a very different physiology, and the language would be hard to reproduce (even though I gave it an orthography, that is a rough phonetic estimate of what sounds more akin to birdsong; sort of like cock-a-doodle-do is used for a rooster's crowing in the morning).

[Steve]

Interesting. That's something the Sovereignty and the Commune have in common then. CompInts (calling them "artificial" is considered a slur) are citizens just like any other sentient lifeform, and CIs are generally highly regarded as valuable contributors to society. In fact, the Sovereignty couldn't exist without them. Suppressing CI rights or treating them as mere machines to be used and discarded will earn you the ire of the U.S.S.

EDIT: In Shroom's absence I have created a wiki page for his Bragulan Star Empire which I'm sure he doesn't mind. This to give you some idea of what it's about.

Steve, can you add three additional sectors to the BSE on the map?

I can, but be warned the extra warp gate puts you over 26 NCPs. So do you think Shroom would prefer the warp gate or an extra colony sector?

[Steve]

Dahak has informed me by PM that he's out of the STGOD due to time constraints.

[Simon_Jester]

Those who opress machine labour are considered by the Commune repulsive and the animosity borders on a Cold War level. I know some nations do. Ownership, exploit and sale of post-Turing machines is a capital offense in the Commune.

Interesting. Umeria's relationship with post-Turing artificial intelligence is mostly of the form "we decided not to build that, thank you." They make very extensive use of "expert systems" software, sometimes with processing power comparable to that of a human brain, but the core programming required to make an adaptive artificial intelligence just isn't there. Mostly because they use these sub-sentient AIs for things like running paperclip factories, and you do NOT want your paperclip factory computer being adaptable and clever enough to break through its own constraints and decide to optimize production by turning the entire planet into a giant tangle of paperclips.

The Sultanate may be an Absolute Monarchy, but it is so in the sense that there needs to be one and only one person whom is ultimately running the show, trained to the task. There are no other nobility of any sort. For the average citizen, the Sultanate is really rather socialist.

Hmm. Could we draw an analogy to the Arab Socialist movement? Or am I missing something here?

I've already registered for the SDNW 2 game, so I'm cool. I'll see what I can do with my nation's page. Oh, and thanks, Ryan.

The Commune might find the Umeria a worthwhile ally, but all other polit.ical systems (I skimmed through PC nations) are fundamentally alien to the Commune, some outright unacceptable. So here the Commune is basically the only would-be communist or socialist nation - all other nations have different systems. The Commune doesn't have a sphere of influence, thus, and can mostly count only on itself to deal with it's problems.

So there's one potential ally and 99% potential enemies. Hum-hum.

I suspect that Commune analysis of the Technocracy would reveal that, for practical purposes, the state is mired in a bizarre variation on the class system, with the intelligentsia replacing the bourgeoisie entirely in the government, and to a large extent in industrial concerns (the Umerian economy isn't entirely state-owned; it's just heavily state-planned and subject to haphazard nationalization and de-nationalization depending on what the Technarchs think they're going to need that decade).

The basic, deep-level problem with the system (looking at it from a class perspective) is that while in principle anyone who wants to join the ruling class and has the intelligence to do so can... they have to sink something like five to ten years of their life into getting the academic training to do so. And by the time they do, their social ties to their origins are greatly weakened in favor of their new ties to the intelligentsia. To take an example, being a highly successful coal miner, or even coal mine foreman, isn't a ticket to high positions of political power in the Technoracy unless you go to graduate school and get a doctoral degree in mine engineering or something. And if you do that, by the time you pass your thesis defense and qualifying examinations, your heart isn't really in the coal mine anymore.

There are exceptions to that rule, of course, but the tendency of the technocrat class to forget their origins is a huge weakness in the Umerian system, because it effectively locks the lower classes out of political participation, in much the same way that the Confucian bureaucrats and Muslim imams were.* Arguably, it does so to an even greater extent than a democratic capitalist state, because it's much more difficult for a haberdasher, peanut farmer, or actor to ascend the ladder by political skill alone, unless they also have academic skill.

*Both of which are interesting studies as variations on the "ancient slave empire/feudal" economic models I'm familiar with from my cursory awareness of Marxism. In both cases, much of the power in society is held by what ought to be a meritocratic, class non-biased system... and yet somehow the scholar-class became an anchor that held the whole society firmly in place. And both examples have interesting application when we compare them to Umeria.

---

Anyway, Umeria's policy towards the Commune is going to depend heavily on the nature and scope of Commune activity in Umerian space. We don't mind trade, and we don't mind speaking up on behalf of a foreign nation that has an exotic political system (since we're pretty damn exotic ourselves). And the technocrat class can imagine living in a society like the Commune, though their image of what it looks like is going to be kind of... off, because they don't fully grasp the significant of the posthuman element in the Commune, or of the more or less complete abolition of economic atomization. So there's potential sympathy there.

On the other hand, if Commune agents (or what outsiders would see as de facto Commune agents, such as parties among the technocrats agitating for a reorganization of the state along more Space Communist lines) are a destabilizing influence within the Technocracy... you get the typical problem faced by communists throughout history. The states that they rule are held responsible for political unrest in other states whenever the people promoting that unrest bother to paint big red stars on things.