SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread I

[Coyote]

Yeah, but Bluey will probably be back, so we shouldn't dissolve his nation. His participation will be delayed for a period of domestic focus.

[loomer]

What? How the hell did that happen?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

What? How the hell did that happen?

Never ever use the wrong expletives.

[Coyote]

He blew his cool in the Off-Topic "FIFA World Cup thread" and used an expletive that is seriously frowned on. He apologized later but was still given a 6-month suspension.

[K. A. Pital]

Once again, Stas, I'd be interested to hear more about how the Commune might interact with Umeria; I'm trying to get more material on social structure and government policy out there to help inform the decision-making process

Umeria's heavy emphasis on sciences is worth a look. The Commune's theoreticians probably reasoned that Umeria has removed it's capitalist class from power, but for some reasons has not removed class divisions in the overall society. Still, it can't be called capitalist any longer, because capitalists do not control the means of production. So, while the Commune would hardly consider such a structure acceptable for itself, it may very well encourage technocracies around the galaxy, as means to weaken the inter-galactic bourgeois.

Obviously this means also the Commune will be willing to trade with technocracies, with certain rules applied. We have a state monopoly on trade, anyway, so we can hardly get unwelcome goods through the border.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Would a monarchy/theocracy/technocratic state which pursues Science for the sake of destroying Xenos come under the Commune's hate list?

"Science is God's Gift to Mankind; a tool to purge the xeno for the benefit of all Mankind."

[Steve]

We'll see his nation in as an NPC until his ban comes up for review around Christmas time.

[K. A. Pital]

Theocracy is a big no-no; xenophoby falls under racism, which is hardly cool with the Commune. And monarchy...

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Theocracy is a big no-no; xenophoby falls under racism, which is hardly cool with the Commune. And monarchy...

I guess it's fortunate you are on the other side of the galaxy then. We four on the other side are akin to a bunch of bickering housewives bickering over "who stole my tea" and we have many different axes to grind (besides issues such as heretical xenos, communist teddy bears, roving mindless robots, or mindless insects for that matter).

[PeZook]

Correction: We're malevolent, not mindless

[Zor]

Correction: We're malevolent, not mindless

What do you expect from a nation of theocratic barbarians who beleive that leadership should be determined by who can crush the most SUVs with his mind rather than actual competance in governing?

Zor

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Correction: We're malevolent, not mindless

What do you expect from a nation of theocratic barbarians who beleive that leadership should be determined by who can crush the most SUVs with his mind rather than actual competance in governing?

Zor

Apparently, you have never read my government structure.

But hey, like I care about that state on the other side of the map. Great also, that you decided to side with a race that razed most of one of my planets and killed billions in the process.

[DarthShady]

I guess it's fortunate you are on the other side of the galaxy then. We four on the other side are akin to a bunch of bickering housewives bickering over "who stole my tea" and we have many different axes to grind (besides issues such as heretical xenos, communist teddy bears, roving mindless robots, or mindless insects for that matter).

Hey! I resent that. We're not mindless, we have a mind, we have billions of them actually...

But hey, like I care about that state on the other side of the map. Great also, that you decided to side with a race that razed most of one of my planets and killed billions in the process.

Zor! Listen to me very carefully! RUN!!!

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Hey! I resent that. We're not mindless, we have a mind, we have billions of them actually...

Correction: We're malevolent, not mindless

It's figurative! Honest!

[Steve]

I can already tell the southeast corner is gonna be fun.

Stas, I so should've put you there....

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I can already tell the southeast corner is gonna be fun.

Stas, I so should've put you there....

He would ally with those damn wretched Communist Bears! And then Shroom will assail us with weapons of unholy imagination! ARGHHH!!!

[Kartr_Kana]

Just a note, folks - there really is no single 'Outlander Commission', so while it's safe to put suspicious or friendly towards them all as a whole, I'd like to encourage people to look at the Commissions themselves and then decide on the individual ones. I'm going to flesh out the political structures of all Ten later tonight.

For instance, I can't really see Socialist states or the Commune being suspicious towards the Socialist Commission - if anything, I'd expect them to be hostile to the other Commissions for quite happily oppressing them by force and offering support, overt or covert, to that one. Same for the Republicans or the Interventionists or... You get the picture.

We of the Clans are suspicious of the whole lot of you. Because our understanding of you is that you're a loose confederation of pirate, anarchists and ne'er do wells. We feel you're liable to explode and rain political, piratical and populace shrapnel on your nearest neighbors... Us(and those aliens to the Galactic south, rimward?). This in turn leads us to be wary about setting up trade with your people, any of them, and constantly monitoring developments in outlander space, via listening posts and patrols through the sectors between our nations.

If the Outlanders start to develop a more cohesive and unified government and establish a trend towards stability, then the Diamid would welcome the chance to establish more friendly relations.

[RogueIce]

Just a note, folks - there really is no single 'Outlander Commission', so while it's safe to put suspicious or friendly towards them all as a whole, I'd like to encourage people to look at the Commissions themselves and then decide on the individual ones. I'm going to flesh out the political structures of all Ten later tonight.

For instance, I can't really see Socialist states or the Commune being suspicious towards the Socialist Commission - if anything, I'd expect them to be hostile to the other Commissions for quite happily oppressing them by force and offering support, overt or covert, to that one. Same for the Republicans or the Interventionists or... You get the picture.

That would probably rate an Uncertain out of me. Some of your Commissions may be ameanable, while others are not. Lacking central authority and that we might have different views depending on who we're dealing with at the time, it would likely be best summed up as Uncertain if we were to choose a single block.

[Siege]

Ah, excellent...everyone is suspicious of Collectors

Suspicious? MARK IT HOSTILE!

Also, I decided to mark the Commune 'friendly'. I'm liking their approach to transhumanism and the fact that their government policies are a bit different from my own doesn't mean I have to be spooked by them.

I've also put a whole bunch of people down as 'neutral', but that's most often because either you're on the other side of the galaxy or I at this stage know fuck-all about you.

[Simon_Jester]

Umeria's heavy emphasis on sciences is worth a look. The Commune's theoreticians probably reasoned that Umeria has removed it's capitalist class from power, but for some reasons has not removed class divisions in the overall society. Still, it can't be called capitalist any longer, because capitalists do not control the means of production. So, while the Commune would hardly consider such a structure acceptable for itself, it may very well encourage technocracies around the galaxy, as means to weaken the inter-galactic bourgeois.

Fascinating. The most desirable trade goods Umeria produces are mostly research equipment, machine tools, and expert systems.* Though we're not a leader in the field of nanotechnology, we are good people to go to if you need an automated factory designed to churn out umpety-billion of something. We'll build the factory robots, program them for you, and it will work... though neural-interface equipped posthumans may be amazed that it can work at all, given that the factory computer is roughly as dumb as a post.

But in any case, small-number production of precision equipment and specialized software is our specialty!

*We do little work with Artificial General Intelligences, but can often match an AGI's performance using a fraction of the processor power using specialized expert systems. Umerians argue that the only way to reliably beat high-order sub-Turing expert systems with an AGI is to give it all the computer hardware it could possibly want. In which case you'd better pray that it decides to keep doing what you need it to do, without going crazy and deciding to convert the whole planet into a mass of paperclips or something.

To wax socioeconomical:

Umeria is... semi-planned. While not all means of production are state-controlled at any given time, private industry exists pretty much entirely 'on sufferance,' and generally only lasts very long if it consistently manages to both outperform state enterprises and do so under criteria that are largely set by the technocrats. It's also not organized along lines commonly seen in capitalist societies; see below.

A nationalized sector where everything is going swimmingly may occasionally see control of part of that sector farmed out to organizations headed by suitably educated people, if that seems appropriate at the time. That explains the origin of what private industry there is: mostly involves "corporations" organized by splinter groups of the intelligentsia who say "we'd like to experiment with the way this operation is run, can we take it and run with it?" The Ministry of Production signs control over, and they get to play with it as long as they keep doing a satisfactory job.

Incidentally, this is pretty much the same procedure used to found research labs- a group of respected specialists spin off their own operation from central control and are permitted to run with it as long as they achieve results.

Thus, the level of formal nationalization of industry in the Technocracy varies, though control never really leaves the technocrats as a class. Also, very little of the actual wealth ends up as individuals' personal assets; there is no equivalent of the joint stock company. There's also no real concept of limited liability. Taking stupid gambles with the "private company's" assets is a good way to wind up persona non grata among the intelligentsia, which in turn is a good way to wind up being effectively ostracized in the Athenian sense.

Finance is kept very strictly under technocrat control, which is one of the main tools by which various sectors get nationalized and denationalized depending on the technarchs' priorities. If the Ministry of Finance decides to start charging against your funding because of the increased risk that things will go wrong, your operation is liable to end up back under state control in short order.

In the industrial and service sectors, there's an ongoing competition between the Vimesian and Zapatist* schools of thought in the Ministry of Production. Zapatists call for a fully planned economy with an eye to optimizing the resources available for major state projects. Vimesians argue that there's no sense exercising tight control of industries where such control is not critical to the economy as a whole, if nothing else to reduce the number of ways to make mistakes.

Control of the main state ministries tends to wobble back and forth between the schools every few decades; after a generation or so of Vimesianism the Umerian economy starts to resemble a dirigiste semi-capitalist system, whereas after a long period of Zapatism, the government implements near-total control and planning of the economy. This has been going on long enough that everyone has learned to recognize the pattern; it's a well known and documented phenomenon that's liable to end only if outside forces bring about the collapse of one or the other of the two schools of economics.

Of course, the Commune would be far more sympathetic to the Zapatists, and vice versa, and one can imagine the Communards looking at Umeria and going "Come on, make up your damn minds already!"

*Named in-story for two early Technarchs, named out-of-story for two characters in a novel I like who had pretty much this conversation...

[RogueIce]

OK, so I updated some of my foreign relations and trade stances. If you're not marked it's because I'm not certain yet how I'd approach you (feel free to PM and we can discuss it). Note that for those unmarked, I'll probably start cruising the Wiki for info to see how I'd probably feel towards you. If you don't have info on the Wiki I probably won't mark you, since I won't know what you're like.

If you're marked but feel it should be lower or higher, also feel free to PM me and we can discuss things (Vyraeth, check your PMs dude). For foreign relations I generally marked those with whom I've had discussions with. For trade, in the most part, I went with your stance towards me (though Pollux got a Black Market Only, at least until I hear how the slave thing works out).

TL;DR version: if you're not marked or confused by how I marked you on the chart, don't take offense! Shoot me a PM and we can work something out.

[RogueIce]

And FYI, since I'm generally capitalistic and I read No Trade as "nothing is exchanged, EVER" I doubt I'll be using that one. Thus, Black Market is probably the lowest setting I'd have for somebody (not counting Unknown for those who are, well, unknown).

I might shift to NT in event of a war though. But even there I'm sure black marketeers would be doing their thing...

[Steve]

Frankly I think Black Market should indicate that it's government-sanctioned (or elite-sanctioned) Black Market Trade to get desired commodities, not simply that the only existing trade between the two states is "Black Market" stuff.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, you could have two cultures with such utter hatred (and intense policing of the border) that there is no trade.

A step down from that, and you have only illegal trade. Factions among the elite may tacitly encourage the trade, or not, but it's the equivalent of the drug trade in the US: there is real law enforcement opposing you if you try to participate in the trade, and they really are serious about putting you away if they catch you.

Then, a step down from that is unofficial trade that's ubiquitous enough that it is tacitly accepted- customs enforcement is lax enough to allow "illegal" shipments to flow across the border regularly.

I'd say it's reasonable to interpret "black market" as either of those.

[Zor]

Great also, that you decided to side with a race that razed most of one of my planets and killed billions in the process.

If you mean "accepted a number of refugees who fled from certain Annihilation at the hands of a genocidal force which gave up the Nobler aspects of their species in favour of vindictiveness, spite, cruelty and bloodlust" then yes.

Zor