- Location
- florida
How do you feel about shooting money at our enemies?
A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
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- Tags
- a song of ice and fire a sword without a hilt d&d 3.5 dungeons & dragons 100% high octane dragon fuel ave corvidae battle action dragon diplomacy best sister bureaucromancy delicious soul-stuff dragon dreams come true dragon ta'veren greatest uncle hubris is a coward's word in defiance of gods and men mammon's folly mutually assured mage's disjunction qm murderhobo top tier coatl
- Location
- Germany
Azel has been doing that before.
@Azel just don't overdo it, or we'll have too much micromanagement on Viserys' desk when he could be doing useful things.
- Location
- Germany
Most of the actual ruling will be done by our administration and the lawmen, with Relath having to occasionally come over to sort out something. That being said, the system isn't wholly stillborn, just incapable of decisive action the moment a slight controversy happens. I've always made sure to keep things on a level of dysfunction where the local government is at least a well trained dog, not a toddler needing a nappy change every few hours.
- Location
- Germany
I mean, we have seen some examples where even a well-intentioned system can break under a few less-well intentioned individuals gaining influence.
I'm somewhat worried that this can happen even easier in an intentionally disfunctional goverment.
Of course we can sort out stuff like this with ease, not like Viserys himself is in any way constrained by the semi-democracy he is partially creating, but I already see having to come over and sort things out as a failure if anything less than a major infernal plot is at fault.
- Location
- Germany
The point of the system is to make sure that nobody can easily wield a lot of power there, limiting the amount of trouble even actively malicious actors can cause. You need a two-third majority in both chambers to be allowed to wipe you own butt, so a complete failure state isn't reached until more then half of the government is filled with people who are actively backing a malicious agenda. At which point no government of any kind would be able to still function.
And the Inquistion would have to really drop the ball to let that happen.
- Location
- Germany
But in return that means they need only 34% of the goverment to make sure nothing gets done, which effectly requires either an intervention to make them do things, or constant rule by decree from Relath or Viserys who have better things to do.
Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
Technically, if populist rule is the concern here, unlike reality where this would have serious ethical concerns attached to them, could we not simply lobby to adjust the ruling situation? We wouldn't even have to be blatant about it. Find several trade partners one or two steps removed from us (we are connected to so many people with our corporation and tracking who owns what isn't as easy compared to RL anyway), get them firmly established in the city, have them "fund local organizations" or movements which is in reality us funneling money and running false flags against people in our way, and boom.
This wouldn't even have to be a constant thing, allowing us to deploy a person under Mindblank to make most of the direct adjustments every few years when elections are held.
If we are setting them up for failure, we can also just use copious divination and manipulations both financial and political to set them up for marginal success.
- Location
- Germany
They are still governed by Imperial law, services are paid for from the Imperial budget, taxes levied by the administration, laws enforced by the lawmen.
Even at the best of times, the Elyrian government can't do more then the government of... say... Köln. They can shut down changes in city zoning, but not the taxes being collected, the laws enforced or any other important function. The local governments in the Imperium are largely theater about solving very localized problems, and said theater should consume as much of their time as possible. By making this government easy to shut down, it ensures that they will spend all of their time on resolving the day to day stuff, while eliminating the power, will or desire to do ill advised things such as challenging Imperial authority.
I mean, when was the last time you checked what you municipal government was up to? Did they decide anything important? Did they need months to resolve asinine crap that barely anyone cares about? Has this in any way negatively affected you? The goal here is to give a platform for this asinine crap to look like Important Business, sucking up the political aspirations and attention of the local populace. The important stuff happens elsewhere and can't be affected by the local politicians anyway, which is something that might cause resentment, were it not for the splendid distraction the current fight over the maximum number of stories a building can have in the inner city is providing.
This is the circus part of bread and circuses. Ruling is done in the bureaucracy at this level.
Yes. As per the imperial constitution, you have a local lord who has certain rights and obligations, and a Council of Voices, who can advise the lord and rule in his stead, but can be overruled by him at any point. This is the generic system, with every jurisdiction having the right to different methods of deciding who the Lord is and being capable of curtailing power in favor of the Council. Here, we would be building a hybrid, where the function of the Lord is split between the Council of Elders and the Archon.
Overall, it's important to leave room for local specifics, such as the Sealord, Zherys as the dictator of Volantis, Myr going full bi-cameral parliament and so on and so forth. It keeps people feeling as if we respect their local traditions.
Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
Yeah, I'm not seeing how this could have any negative effects unless a super-majority of a Bad Faith Actor took the reigns and started making policy changes intended to be as harmful as possible, and even then it would only be as harmful to Elyria as possible.
[X] Azel
[X] Azel
Ace of Scarabs
Mechanoid Pilot
- Location
- Singapore
[X] Azel
- Location
- Texas
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Azel
- Location
- France
I used to have this sort of opinion of my local city government. Then I entered the field of urban planning, and discovered that :
- Local government absolutely can sabotage bigger projects that it doesn't like, especially of local politicians are semi-important within the bigger party
- The local zoning laws decide who gets rich and who doesn't, whose properties tank and whose don't, and who can move here for the future (which will effectively define the political spectrum for the next 40 years). National government injunctions aren't able to effectively control this. This makes municipal authorities important for the locals, but it also grants them influence in the wider political sphere by letting you pressure rich people and by helping bigger politicians get votes and stuff.
- The effects of transport infrastructure, local green spaces and road layout/quality on everyone's lives and on the local economy are huge. Local town councils can't do any of this alone, but they absolutely can wreck anyone else's efforts to change things if they don't like them.
- Local councils can often become significant landowners (they have a budget and they can influence land prices however they want). Then they get a lot of influence as landowners on top of their existing powers (which often rely on their ability to set local rules and to grant building permits).
Sure, most municipal debates are things like "how big should the new bird bath be?", but that doesn't mean they don't also make important stuff happen. A mayor who wins a few elections (and thereby stays in power for a decade or two) can completely reshape a city and regional politics. A mayor who just so happens to be in power during a regular rework of local zoning can also have a pretty huge impact if he has a safe majority in the local council.
Nevertheless...
[X] Azel
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- Location
- Miilano
[X] The old aristocracy
- Location
- Germany
Well, my local goverment spend the majority of my lifetime arguing about one bypass road.
And the fact that I'm not revealing my location right now because that applies to several german towns speaks for itself.
So there's that.
On the other hand, there are often a bunch of local taxes and conditions for businesses which can notably affect things, make investors decide to open their factories elsewhere, so they can at the very least harm Elyria's own economy if we give them such powers.
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- Location
- France
In the suburbs of Paris, there are towns whose mayors have been there for decades. Those mayors are currently hugely influential in the multibillion € national "Grand Paris" new metro projet. The government's plans are on one wide of the negotiating table, and these local mayors can reshape them as needed for their local political interests, easy as pie.
I should know this, I'm defending a Master's thesis on the topic in a week.
And I'm not doxxing myself by saying this because the topic is so vast that there's been dozens of theses about variations of this every year since 2011 or so.
Honestly, building a deliberate dysfunctional system seems bad. If the local ruler were anyone other than Relath (who probably wouldn't appreciate having a politically powerful underling) I'd be against it, because it seems needless. But we made Relath a Lord and he seems competent enough, so let's not have an angry Dragon fighting with a local aristocrat.
I should know this, I'm defending a Master's thesis on the topic in a week.
And I'm not doxxing myself by saying this because the topic is so vast that there's been dozens of theses about variations of this every year since 2011 or so.
Honestly, building a deliberate dysfunctional system seems bad. If the local ruler were anyone other than Relath (who probably wouldn't appreciate having a politically powerful underling) I'd be against it, because it seems needless. But we made Relath a Lord and he seems competent enough, so let's not have an angry Dragon fighting with a local aristocrat.
- Location
- Germany
That's the thing though. We don't need a legal battle. We can just straight up overrule them by decree. I just want to use that power as little as possible, hence it being preferable if the locals don't get to make too many decisions that might require it.
Overall, I'm aware of the impact of zoning, but I consider it largely inconsequential for our purposes. Viserys is still an absolute ruler not beholden to any party, so many of the political ramifications of zoning are not a direct concern of his. Now, if we get widespread political parties in the Imperium, then we might need to adjust to deal with those, but that will likely take much different forms then messing with municipal zoning, simply due to the fact that we can straight up redraw the borders of electoral districts if that ever proves necessary.
Unless we remove the idea of local governments entirely, they will always have the ability to screw themselves over through stupidity or malice. My proposal actually makes it harder, since you need more idiots / bad actors to do it then many other jurisdictions. If, say, Salladhor passes away and gives the Basilisk Isles to a complete moron son of his, that son has a lot more power to fuck things up in a very direct fashion. Which, given Gorgossos happens to be part of the Basilisk Isles, would actually have national security implications.
- Location
- Germany
Don't forget that the French political system has many checks and balances that enable this. The Imperium doesn't. Power comes from the top, not the bottom.In the suburbs of Paris, there are towns whose mayors have been there for decades. Those mayors are currently hugely influential in the multibillion € national "Grand Paris" new metro projet. The government's plans are on one wide of the negotiating table, and these local mayors can reshape them as needed for their local political interests, easy as pie.
I should know this, I'm defending a Master's thesis on the topic in a week.
And I'm not doxxing myself by saying this because the topic is so vast that there's been dozens of theses about variations of this every year since 2011 or so.
Honestly, building a deliberate dysfunctional system seems bad. If the local ruler were anyone other than Relath (who probably wouldn't appreciate having a politically powerful underling) I'd be against it, because it seems needless. But we made Relath a Lord and he seems competent enough, so let's not have an angry Dragon fighting with a local aristocrat.
Also, your example assumes one person with strong sway over local politics. Something my proposal would explicitly make much harder to achieve.
- Location
- Argentina
We have right here a province ruled by the same family for 40 years or so. The good thing is that it is better than other places because they actually consider it their own property and so take proper care of it. The bad thing is that they control everything so there is actually no other choice because they have rigged the whole apparatus to their personal wealth and so can coerce everybody into voting for them because the alternative is losing your job or subsidies.
But our politics are pretty backwards anyway so there are worse places with the same guy ruling for 25 years with nothing to show.
All in all, this proposed system is basically speaking shit about democracy in a way that without an executive power who can act in emergencies the system is pretty flawed, but also guaranties that nobody will fuck things up on their own (it recognizes the will and sovereignity of the population to fuck everything up if all really want to do so, but that's also democracy for you guys). Still, in our current model with the real decisions handled by the administration, I'm fine with it.
[X] Azel
But our politics are pretty backwards anyway so there are worse places with the same guy ruling for 25 years with nothing to show.
All in all, this proposed system is basically speaking shit about democracy in a way that without an executive power who can act in emergencies the system is pretty flawed, but also guaranties that nobody will fuck things up on their own (it recognizes the will and sovereignity of the population to fuck everything up if all really want to do so, but that's also democracy for you guys). Still, in our current model with the real decisions handled by the administration, I'm fine with it.
[X] Azel