Realpolitiks, a grand strategy game from Jujubee will see day-1 Linux support

Quoting: Segata SanshiroOne thing I'm curious about is whether they will have the fallacy of democracy and capitalism being one and the same, or whether they will allow for more interesting systems like authoritarian capitalism (ie. Singapore) or democratic socialism (Scandinavian model). That would probably be a dealbreaker for me.

Yes. In general, I'm kind of caught--on one hand, this is just the kind of game I'd be really interested in. On the other hand, my beliefs in terms of both political ideology and in terms of how economies work are quite different from the mainstream so the chance of such a game functioning in a way that makes sense to me and doesn't annoy me is small. So in practice, I doubt I'm going to see a game of this sort that I like. Ideal I guess would be a game like this where a lot of the parameters are quite moddable.

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: ArehandoroNo anarchism? Not real nor politics...

Surely it isn't a political system. Or are you one of those people who don't see the irony in organized anarchism? :)

There is actually no irony in organized anarchism. An + archy = no ruler. Not, no rules. It's perfectly possible to be organized without a boss.
Whether anarchism is feasible on a sizable scale, like say national, is a different question. But technology is making it more feasible on broader scales of late years. Once upon a time it might have been claimed that complex self-organized leaderless projects collaborating across the globe would be an impossibility. Heck, not so long ago you just wouldn't have strung those words together because it was way past the horizon of what people would think about. But now? Take a bow, various large open source software projects from Debian to Apache.

There was a time when technology didn't support national-scale representative democracy; for that you need a certain level of communication and transportation across the country, and probably the printing press.

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: ArehandoroNo anarchism? Not real nor politics...

Surely it isn't a political system. Or are you one of those people who don't see the irony in organized anarchism? :)

There is actually no irony in organized anarchism. An + archy = no ruler. Not, no rules. It's perfectly possible to be organized without a boss.

You won't find your definition in a dictionary.

Quoting: Purple Library GuyWhether anarchism is feasible on a sizable scale, like say national, is a different question. But technology is making it more feasible on broader scales of late years. Once upon a time it might have been claimed that complex self-organized leaderless projects collaborating across the globe would be an impossibility. Heck, not so long ago you just wouldn't have strung those words together because it was way past the horizon of what people would think about. But now? Take a bow, various large open source software projects from Debian to Apache.

Take another look at the internal politics of these software projects. Far from anarchistic I'd say. More like highly organized and bureaucratic in Debian's case. And none of these projects have prospered without leaders.

Quoting: Purple Library GuyThere was a time when technology didn't support national-scale representative democracy; for that you need a certain level of communication and transportation across the country, and probably the printing press.

Right. A level of technology an anarchistic society would have had a hard time achieving. :)

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: Purple Library GuyThere is actually no irony in organized anarchism. An + archy = no ruler. Not, no rules. It's perfectly possible to be organized without a boss.

You won't find your definition in a dictionary.

I wondered the same, but did the lookup:
[It is adapted from the ancient Greek (ἀναρχία-anarchia) meaning "absence of a leader”.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy_%28international_relations%29#Etymology:)


Last edited by Eike on 18 January 2017 at 8:28 pm UTC

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: Purple Library GuyThere is actually no irony in organized anarchism. An + archy = no ruler. Not, no rules. It's perfectly possible to be organized without a boss.

You won't find your definition in a dictionary.

I wondered the same, but di the lookup:
[It is adapted from the ancient Greek (ἀναρχία-anarchia) meaning "absence of a leader”.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy_%28international_relations%29#Etymology:)

A word's etymology is not the same as its meaning.

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: Purple Library GuyThere is actually no irony in organized anarchism. An + archy = no ruler. Not, no rules. It's perfectly possible to be organized without a boss.

You won't find your definition in a dictionary.

I wondered the same, but di the lookup:
[It is adapted from the ancient Greek (ἀναρχία-anarchia) meaning "absence of a leader”.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy_%28international_relations%29#Etymology:)

A word's etymology is not the same as its meaning.

Merriam-Webster, first explanation:
1 a : absence of government

Quoting: EikeMerriam-Webster, first explanation:
1 a : absence of government

Yes. I think having a system of government is different from having a leader.

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: ArehandoroNo anarchism? Not real nor politics...

Surely it isn't a political system. Or are you one of those people who don't see the irony in organized anarchism? :)

There is actually no irony in organized anarchism. An + archy = no ruler. Not, no rules. It's perfectly possible to be organized without a boss.

You won't find your definition in a dictionary.

You will find it in the traditions of Anarchism as a movement and in the basic derivation of the word. Please don't talk down to me on this issue, I have paid a good deal of attention to it over a large number of years; I may be wrong about it, but not in ways that can be got at with facile one-liners. The notion of Anarchism as a sort of every-man-for-himself crazy chaos thing is a largely North American one, while Anarchism's roots are mostly European. This false picture comes from a combination of propaganda, conflation with the distinctively American "Libertarian" ideology which actually is a bit like that, and idiot teenagers in coffee shops wearing black and blabbering about smashing the (whatever).

Quoting: Purple Library GuyWhether anarchism is feasible on a sizable scale, like say national, is a different question. But technology is making it more feasible on broader scales of late years. Once upon a time it might have been claimed that complex self-organized leaderless projects collaborating across the globe would be an impossibility. Heck, not so long ago you just wouldn't have strung those words together because it was way past the horizon of what people would think about. But now? Take a bow, various large open source software projects from Debian to Apache.

Quoting: tuubiTake another look at the internal politics of these software projects. Far from anarchistic I'd say. More like highly organized and bureaucratic in Debian's case. And none of these projects have prospered without leaders.

Returning to my simple and basic point, it is perfectly possible--indeed, almost mandatory at any size--for anarchy to be highly organized and bureaucratic.
As to leaders . . . well, to some extent, but define "leader". Someone designated to do a task isn't a leader. Do policies get decided unilaterally by these leaders?
Heck, even in those Free Software projects, like Linux, with a benevolent dictator, the whole thing is kind of weird--these benevolent dictators have no power to coerce because not only is membership voluntary but the whole deal can be forked.

Quoting: Purple Library GuyThere was a time when technology didn't support national-scale representative democracy; for that you need a certain level of communication and transportation across the country, and probably the printing press.

Quoting: tuubiRight. A level of technology an anarchistic society would have had a hard time achieving. :)

Yes, yes, how cute.
It's not so much that anarchistic societies couldn't work in the old days, or would have had less capacity for technological improvement. It's more a Celts-vs-Romans problem: Anarchistic societies could only get so big, and that maximum workable size was much much smaller than a despotic empire. With low tech, centralized is the only way to be big. So if you have dozens of decentralized tribes without much authority and one despotic god-king looking to expand, the math is pretty easy.
But with modern communications things potentially become different. It's clear that there are changes happening to just what kinds of social/political organization are possible. We have yet to really explore all the possibilities that new technologies unlock. I think it's quite plausible that larger-scale anarchism is one of them.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 18 January 2017 at 10:02 pm UTC

Quoting: Segata Sanshiro

Quoting: ArehandoroNo anarchism?

There wouldn't be ANY gameplay if there was anarchism. Just sit back and watch your lack of state progress on its own and, I'd argue, eventually re-develop itself into a state, but that's another topic :P.

Heh. Point. Although we already ignore similar problems with, as players, being individual despots running "Democracies", "Oligarchies", "Republics" and so on for centuries on end. I think the fiction that over the generations, the individuals voted for by the people, or the cabal of oligarchs running the place, always happen to have your exact preferences on how to run the empire, isn't really so different from the fiction that the anarchist self-organizing realm you're playing would always come to mass and/or tacit decisions that happen to be exactly yours.

Anyway. Fond of anarchism though I am, I would have to claim that if a game like this, set as it is in modern times, allowed it as an option, to be realistic it should be made a really super-hard one. It'd be like having a socialist option only even harder. Any attempt to establish an anarchist "government" in the modern setting would have to deal with a host of problems: The simple difficulty of setting up something that has basically never been tried in a big way, the internal problems coming from the wealthy having their stuff taken away and the various old hierarchies trying to stick, the financial, informational and simple old-fashioned violent warfare from all the normal countries who really don't want something like that to succeed . . . there are reasons why nobody's even really tried since Spain in the 30s. After all look what happened to them: Franco's Fascists, with help from the Germans (overt) and the British et al. (more covert), massacred the hell out of them.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 18 January 2017 at 10:21 pm UTC

Quoting: Arehandoro"Based on three main political systems (democracy, authoritarianism, totalitarianism), Realpolitiks allows you..." No anarchism? Not real nor politics... but that's another topic, so to stick to the game purpose... I won't buy it.

At first I thought that would be the same as "losing" the game since you lost any real power. Then I realized it could become some kind of Crusaders Kings-esque scenario in which you would be obligated to manage a bunch of autonomous soviets and convince them to follow a common agenda in order to make the game progress somewhere.