Forgive me, I haven't played it and it doesn't particularly interest me, but this game's premise is a joke, right?
Pave the road to a post-capitalist society · By
Well, yikes. I can't believe people still believe in communism in the age of information. The fact that this dev has the opportunity to make and get this game hosted is a product of capitalism.
Markets =/= capitalism, socialism =/= communism, there's no reason this game couldn't exist in a socialist society (though the subject matter might be redundant).
to live in a world with an economic and political system that does not favour you doesn't mean you need to support that economic and political system
Scandanavian game developers do some you great work, you know. pretty sure most of them qualify as socialist.
Actually they are more free market than the USA, they just have a massive welfare state and high taxes as a result. It is Captialism that funds it.
you are aware that a form of socialism can coexist with capitalism, and that this is very common.
socialism is about the social ownership of the means of production.
this comes in various forms, one of which is nationalized institutions.
"We, The People" then own and operate it.
Yes of course under Capitalism nothing stops you from starting a Socialist community. And there are examples of this, of course most fail and they do not scale well.
But under Socialism or any other Autoritarian system you are not free to create a business. Yet even under the most oppressive government's like North Korea there is black market Capitalism.
Peopel everywhere desire to be free. Nobody flees Capitalism to a Socialist country.
Think!
actually, communes and communities scale amazingly well, if they can work mostly independant of eachother.
a cell like structure is actually extremely common in business and government alike.
in governments, they are usually hierarchical as well.
the cells operate mostly independantly, but answer to the layer above and command the layer below.
Second, me and my 5 friends starting An Island Onto Itself won't work, because what we need to survive and what we need to maintain standard of living will be with held from us.
Yet there are no examples, they have all failed. Odd if it is such a good system that nobody has managed to make it work.
Nothing in your way other than hurdles that anybody else faces. You don't need an island. Yet there are people that put in the hard work and achive their dreams all the time. People that go off grid and live with very little outside interaction.
There are dozens of communes out there that seem to work fine. I'm not particularly pro-commune but it is very disingenuous just shotgunning all of them with your expectations of failure when many communes have been running for 30+ years, and Cuba has been doing about as well as the capitalist countries of latin america even through all the sanctions that made that government unable to trade with almost any other.
As I said people can choose to form a collective collony or group and make it work as long as it is volentary. But of course then it would be Capitalism and not Socialism and it does not scale well.
As far as Socialist or Communist countries they always result in misery for the people and collapse. I oppose sactions on whole countries as they harm the people and give the Dictators a scape goat.
Yeah, most European countries have what's known as "Social Market Economy" which is based on the free market. It's basically impossing socialist laws without changing ownership, just putting limits to the private hands. Because in the end it doesn't matter if the means of production are privately or socially owned as long as some social limits are impossed .This prevents huge monopolies from raising up and killing the small companies (in a way, protecting social welfare is the best way to protect capitalism).
Sadly, because US does not care so much about protecting social welfare, huge international companies based on the US rise up to eat up market, mess up with the competition internationally and more than once have clashed with the antimonopoly laws in Europe, or have to conform to things like the GDPR and other European social laws.
The fear the US has to socialism seems to have creeped into any kind of social reform, and any mention of social measures often gets automatically identified with communism as if they were equivalent. There's the irrational belief that it's impossible to have any form of social reform that doesn't lead to authoritarianism, and when presented with any possitive influence social reforms have had in any country (even in the US) they'll immemdiatelly attribute it to capitalism, or justify it saying that it's still capitalism, without acknowledging that it's thanks to those social reforms that capitalism (and economic competition) was healthy.
Socialism is an economic system not a government one. However a state can choose to support a capitalist or socialist system. If you read Marx he never actually said anything about what the state should do, and only wrote about the workplace and the power that people who work in the factory should have over the owners who hold tyrannical power over the means-of-production currently.
Capitalism requires policing to keep people from stealing.
all ruling systems i have taken serious so far require force somewhere, somehow.
not all uses of force are equivelant and that is common sense.
There is a big difference between using defensive force aginst agressors and using aggresion against innocent people.
State sponsored violence is bad and should be rejected by all. No kind person would support such a system. Just look at the recent protests against police brutality. Of course that is nothing compared to what people face under Socialism or Communism.
Someone who steals from private hands is as much of an aggressor/innocent as someone who steals from social hands.
Note that socialism is not about public (government-controlled) goods but socially owned (community/cooperative/group-controlled) goods. ie. in this case you should compare it to someone who steals from your local community (let's say.. a building where the ownership is shared) something that belongs to a group or a collective. Not necessarily to the government.
You are probably gonna argue that it's not the same to take money from someone than to steal a good. But as a matter of fact, taking money from someone is what is done in every purchase. When someone takes a good from your shop without paying for it, you are actually forcing him to give you money in exchange, in the same way as you pay taxes in exchange from being able to be part of a community with its benefits and obligations. You can always emigrate to the United Arab Emirates or any other country without taxes if you don't want to be in a community that has taxes as part of its social contract established by "we, the people".
You can't expect to have the police defend you from stealing and at the same time refuse to pay the salary of the police (which in the USA it's publicly-funded with taxes, same as the army, the sewage, the garbage collection/treatment, and other "evil" social services).
"Someone who steals from private hands is as much of an aggressor/innocent as someone who steals from social hands."
it's official, taking things from Lex Luther is equivelant to stealing the savings of millions of americans.
I'm not sure what you are trying to say there. I never implied they were equivalent, what I said is that stealing is an aggression also when you are stealing from social/public funds.
I don't think killing 1 person is equivalent to killing 100, but I would still say both are aggressions and I'd rather be defended against both situations.
The person I was replying to (Wulfgar_3D) assumed that stealing from someone was an aggression (to be defended against), but that it isn't an aggression to commit tax fraud (which as I illustrated, it's like refusing to pay after a purchase... or like not paying the rent , the electricity or the internet). For him, defending against tax fraud IS what's "using aggresion against innocent people", and my point was to show that that's just hypocrisy.
Calling "innocent" to someone who doesn't want to pay for the police, at the same time as he wants to use "defensive force against agressors" is not making much sense, specially considering that you need police for such defense..
I think then, this game is especially for people like you. I'm just about to play it and it seems like you are given statements that you, as the president, need to evaluate as reasonable or not. You might be surprised or shocked to find that certain values you fundamentally agree with may be considered socialist, and if that's the case, you may wish to reconsider what you believe socialism to be. In a game, it's cool because you can test drive it.
You criticize society despite participating in it?
Hypocrite, you are!
I am very smart.
This game is about introducing Democratic Socialism with a market economy, the same kind of system used in France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, etc. That's not communism, and if you think it is then you might like to read some books and think a bit more critically about where you get your political understanding from.
Sweden, Norway, France, and Germany are all capitalist, with Sweden and Norway being capitalist kingdoms. Welfare =/= Socialism. Government =/= Socialism. You are thinking about Social Democratic policies.
I can't believe in the age of information you think communism and socialism are the same thing and still think either of those ideas are inherently bad. Have they been misused by some, yes, has capitalism YES! Any system with people in power can be corrupted beyond recognition. Try actually reading into what each of those words mean and not just from capitalists. Not saying you have to come out wanting either but you'll learn a lot.
The developers produced the game with their own labour, in no step of the process was capitalism necessary. Capitalism is simply one mode of production and distribution, there were others before and it will be surpassed in the future.
i think they call this 'an argument from intimidation'.
just state the conclusion really confidently.
leave.
The dev didn't delete you shitting on him. Lolz. He goes with the masses. The dev is pro segregation for blacks. When I call him out on this he deleted my thread. He's a racist. You wouldn't have wanted to play his game. It wasn't even fun. It was just propaganda.
more than likely you haven't been informed on what socialism is or communism. The channel "second thought" on youtube is a good general source of what we believe. I don't think he'd "convert you" but if you'd like to at least understand this dev's perspective it would definitely strengthen your own political views and you'd leave more educated regardless if your views change or not. :)
1) you are wrong.
2) that said you can attempt to run ancap Laissez-faire hellscape economy if you want in the game. Everything from authoritarian isolationists to global socialist is present in the game for you to drive your people too. You don't have to be socialist, it just puts out scenarios, provides you economic tools, etc and lets you make choices to direct society limited by the constitution, public opinion and your current political power in the House and Senate.
Their a Senate/House arch to the right letting you know if your ideas will pass or not and there are 3 main power bars: Treasury (don't run a deficit) and don't risk inflation, Citizen engagement, Environmental impact (a side quest is to hit your emission goals, but you can ignore it if you want). It actually has a bit more to it than that, but that's a quick run down. I've gotten pretty good at it and can hit my environmental goals, while still getting political engagement, and go out of office on a surplus. Oh and yes there are midterms and presidential terms as there would be naturally, you get 2 Terms. I suggest you give it a try, it's very accurate with it's interpretation of constitutional law and economic impacts, etc. Oh and yes, you can make a completely failed socialist state that sends the economy into a crater and has the military hold a coup. Just so you know ;)
Thanks for the reply.
But based on the title, description of the game and your reply this is indeed Socialist propaganda.
Your own comment shows that you don't understand Capitalism and therefore the game can not be based on facts. "that said you can attempt to run ancap Laissez-faire hellscape economy".
Your game might be worth a look if it was unbiased but given the facts this is a hard pass. I suggest educating yourself and whomever worked on this game. Then maybe your next game will not be a propaganda piece and sothing worth playing. Or you could always avoid politics for your next game.
To clarify, I'm assumming that you did not mean this to be propaganda. You may actually beleive Capitalism is the problem. I assume you have been indoctrinated and just don't know any better.
Stop and think for yourself.
How can a system based on volentary exchange and freedom possibly be the problem?
I bet none of issue you precieve with our current Cronyism system are the fault of the free market.
Knowledge is power, don't be a tool of oppression.
> How can a system based on volentary exchange and freedom possibly be the problem?
ah, yes, voluntarily.
imagine being stuck on an island with your buddy, John, after your airplane has crashed. It's night so you go to sleep, and by the time you wake up, John gathered 98% of every single conceivable food resource and even crafted a couple of weapons. You wake up and you feel hungry so you ask him to spare a couple. John says that it doesn't seem fair for you to profit on his hard labour of merely picking-up fruits and coconuts, so he gives you a deal: If you blow him off, he gives you a couple coconuts.
You have to make a decision, thus your shtick with voluntarism, but you completely ignore the coercive nature of the deal: you got to choose between either slaving yourself to John in order to survive, or choose not to and live in the pillaged wild-land like no other and pray not to die by starvation.
It's the same as within our modern days and the same as subconsciously manipulating someone through the use of subtle propaganda, taboos, ads to do <something>, and the subject claiming he still owns complete free will. There's just not such a thing.
It's even more baffling to me someone could even imagine (traditional) corporations looking out for the greater good of the people when their sole motivation is to <<get profit>>. Pure Capitalism would completely disregard as much as its predecessors (mercantilism and feudalism) humans and enact acts of abuse against them for the sake of profit incentive, as there would be nothing, but a civil war, to stop you from that.
you're pretty much advocating for neo-feudalism, but with corporations in place of nobles; and that's without even questioning where you stand on individual freedoms like gender, abortion, immigration. Mises's work on Economical calculation is so lackluster and I'm not even in support of central-planned stuff in general, assuming you bothered reading theory.
you can do better than that.
Um yea that's a totally unrealistic senerio for one and has nothing to do with reality.
Sure a Corporation can be motivated purely by profit (greed). So what? In a free market they acheive profit by providing what their customers want better than the competition.
Socialism & Communism have done nothing but cause misery and death. Only ignorance or evil can explain why anyone would advocate for such an Authoritrian system. No I'm advocating for individual Liberty, what has been proven to provide the most opertunity and prosperity to the most people. No central planned or forced economy comes close.
Look at the gaming market for instance, it's about as free as any market under our current Cronyism. No license requirenments, no artificial barriers to entry. Anyone can start making games on their own as we see thousands here on itch. Sure most are garbage but you will have that. The bad will either improve or not continue in the market.
Peace, Love & Liberty is real progress!
You are so full of irony.
Communism is a classless, stateless society. There is no government. There is no capital. It is very difficult to be authoritarian while also opposing the tools of authoritarianism. Socialism ( most commonly ) is a transitory sate following ( most commonly ) a revolution by the workers to seize the means of production. A Socialist government is ( most commonly ) a democratic body of representatives who's chief function is preventing capital from reasserting itself until the need for this withers away and the society transforms to Communism.
Capitalism is where a few people own the means of production and extract a portion of the value added to goods from labor as 'profit.' Not all capitalist systems have 'free' markets, and markets are not unique to capital.
You have never actually read anything about these political systems. You don't understand the one you claim to favor, nor the ones you claim to oppose, yet you call others indoctrinated? You are operating on generations of cold war propaganda that was substituted for education and you were never curious enough to look deeper for yourself. You need to do the actual work to know what these things mean in order to be taken seriously.
Wow your clearly indoctrinated.
Under Socialism or Communision there is no free choice they rely on force, hence government. Hence they always result in misery and death for anyone that does not agree.
Capitalism is the only system that allows people to create any type of business how they see fit. If you and a bunch of your comrads want to start a community go for it.
Freedom v.s Slavery.
I'm pretty sure you don't know what any of these words mean at this point. You display an amazing lack of curiosity. It's okay though. I had the same shitty education, and while it took far too long, I eventually took it on myself, as an old man to educate myself. It can be done. most won't, but if anyone cares, the information is out there. You just won't get it from the usual sources. Their power relies on your ignorance. You'll have to actually crack the books.
Lack of curiosity?
Lol. Curiosity has nothing to do with me rejecting Statism.
I have and continue to read and educate myself hence my rejection of the main stream and political shift towards Statism.
But I agree their power relies on ignorance. They never use facts as the facts do not support their agenda.
What made you reject all common sense and be lured in by the propaganda?
if life is a zero-sum game, not everyone starts with the same amount of points.
even with the best strategy, most will lose points rather than gain points.
these points will flow to those who already had an advantage.
btw, on free game market as evolutionary playground.
evolution creates things that are the best "fit" for their enviroment, not the best. fitness is not strength.
what we should want is good games, not fit games.
It's not. Yes life is not fair, everyone is unuiqe. But nothing in a free market prevents you from improving your skills.
And clearly that is not how the gaming market or any other market works. There are plenty of example in gaming and in life.
i don't care about fairness in that argument.
i care about the best results.
free markets suck at giving the best results.
and getting better results is very realistic.
Yet all the evidence points to free markets providing the most prosperity for the most people by far. That is how the USA became the most powerful super power and the fastest growing nation by far.
Freedom has a way of motivating people far more than force. Who would have guessed. :)
Oh I am very familiar with Capitalism, world management and management theories. I have a degree in Economics and currently work for one of the largest tech companies in the world. XD
I've just been on the other end of the spectrum economically, and have done pretty much everything over the past 39 years: retail, barista, road crew, crash cleanup, construction, DoD Contract work (Army Corps of Engineers, Navy, FBI, Marine Corps), IT, Game Development, Program/Project Management...
Well I certainly would have never guessed that, judging by your previous comment and the game I would have guessed a fresh college grad from a Leftist University.
So what do you have against Free Market Capitalism?
Can you point to any major issues that are caused by Free Market Capitalism and not government?
Here are just a few issues caused by free market capitalism alone, without government intervention.
https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/77/economics/problems-of-capitalism/
The root issue is that currency is cohesive - it attracts itself. If you have a lot of wealth, it's very easy to make lots of money. If you have no wealth, it's very difficult to make any money. This effect is compounded over time and generations.
Yes, and it is supported by evidence.
Your meme is not facts.
Now if your point is that the current system in the USA and most of the world has major issues. Yes you would be correct. Yet none of them are due to the free market. I could raddle off the major issues but I can't think of any that a due to Capitalism.
Feel free to point out any major flaws in our or any system that are caused by the free market.
first: nice trolling through this thing.
second:
if a actor's reward function is how much profit they makes, it will create undesirable side-effects if it means making more profit.
this is what a rational actor would do.
an unregulated free market is therefore undesirable.
1st, I'm not trolling. Just trying to get people to think for themseves.
How so?
Companies that do better at providing what the customer wants tend to grow. Amazon is a prime example, Walmart was king and everyone thought unstoppable. Nothing remains static in the market, cusumer demand changes. Businesses adapt or fail.
It's only when the state gets involved and starts distorting the market that there are issues.
Exibit A: https://www.ccn.com/the-walking-fed-creates-zombie-horde/
you have to love people who say "do your reading" who haven't done proper reading.
You're conflating Socialism with Totalitarianism, and these two things are neither synonyms nor inextricably linked to one another. The whole point of Socialism is that the "means of production"- as in, the capacity to produce food, basic necessities, commodities, and so forth, lies with the people as a whole, rather than a handful who can then exploit their effective monopoly on these things to increase their profits. (You talk about greatness, but isn't one of the basic tenets of the country you're fetishizing "By, Of, and For the People"? )That has nothing to do with your allusions to censorship. Having a non-zero amount of regulation on keeping things affordable doesn't somehow inherently remove anyone's right to create, or put forth their creative endeavors towards the world. If anything, it should HELP- making resources more accessible across the board would give more people an opportunity to do so.
Quite frankly, you don't know what you're talking about. You're making broad, sweeping assumptions about the nature of certain economic systems based on the way you were taught about specific examples of them- by a country that stood in opposition to those specific examples, and actively benefits from you and everyone else believing that they WILL all be like that. Like, seriously, do you even understand how our political system works as it is right now? How much money factors into things? Between lobbying, donations to fund campaigns... do you honestly think the people with the money to influence things at that scale AREN'T going to try to sway opinions in favor of keeping the status quo, which is skewed so heavily in their favor?
It honestly sounds like you're arguing in bad faith, with no intention to form a coherent point beyond regurgitating things you've been told in service of a system that's BY DEFINITION screwing over everyone who doesn't have the resources to game it themselves.
"An economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state."
Like, literally, that's the dictionary definition of Capitalism. Google it. The "for profit" point is important. If that's the focus, the crux of our system, then everything happens in service of that goal. Raising prices, cutting corners, keeping wages as low as possible... all of that ups profits, and if you'd get your head out of the proverbial sand and open both your eyes and a damn history book, you'd be aware that the only reason things aren't WORSE than they are today as far as that goes is because of people who've had to fight tooth and nail to keep themselves and everyone else from getting eaten alive by capitalism.
If that's what you think a "functional" and "great" economic system is, then it's no wonder you can't- or won't- get your head around Socialism.
