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Paths of Civilization

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Abby Normal said:
I will note, if i understand things right, we aren't considering anything that would let someone amass some enormous amount of power so as to reduce others to serfs--we're not assigning ownership of land, we're assigning the responsability to work land. We're "just" considering whether to set up a system where the people in charge now can set up their friends and family with the easier-to-work/closer-to-town/etc bits of land...and even then while the long term effects are probably worse in terms of social movement, in the short term it might actually be better. From the update discussing this, a big problem is "chief assigns bad/marginal land to hard workers" -> "hard workers do hard work and improve the land greatly" -> "chief reassigns land to friends/family" -> "friends/family get extra food and luxuries for the lauded work of improving marginal land". Like...if i'm understanding right, you don't get extra food or luxuries from having the best land. You get extra food or luxuries from doing extra work, improving land, being pregnant, and straightup corruption (and straightup corruption in cooking the books wont be affected either way by this), and i think thats about it. Letting our chiefs set up their bloodline with the best land is a problem, but its not as bad as it would in a society that didn't treat most things as public property to be doled out according to needs and in recognition of service. Is that accurate, @Academia Nut ?
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Ooooooo...

So we'd solve the problem by legitimizing the people making the last hit bonuses with their friends and family and legitimizing the bad behavior. :(

That's what your post seems to say we would do.
 
veekie said:
Naw, Study Stars. It's climate based, and that's what Study Stars grants. We've critted twice on it already. Once for a writing upgrade, once for a Fortunate Weather.
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This does raise a good point that I've sort of been glossing over, though. If Study Stars actually can alter the weather, I am pretty sure that magic exists.

What it should honestly do is tell us what the weather rolls are and let us prepare accordingly. It really shouldn't effect the weather rolls for us in themselves.
 
bluefur87 said:
This does raise a good point that I've sort of been glossing over, though. If Study Stars actually can alter the weather, I am pretty sure that magic exists.

What it should honestly do is tell us what the weather rolls are and let us prepare accordingly. It really shouldn't effect the weather rolls for us in themselves.
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It was probably lucky coincidence and a good boon from our healthcare.
Adhoc vote count started by BungieONI on Apr 18, 2017 at 10:40 PM, finished with 19049 posts and 41 votes.
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Past:
Academia Nut said:
Something must give way, and people say so at a summer meeting that tradition and the glares of the elders can increasingly not control. Some decry the greed and avarice of their fellow man, and call upon them to cease their hording and scheming ways and to commit to charity among the tribe, to demonstrate their wealth by giving it away. Others suggest that the tribe has lost its way, that even though who tends the land has gone down through families the land is land and food is food. Most people assist each other with planting and harvest anyway, so since everything is a communal effort the rewards should also be brought together as a community. Somewhat unsurprisingly, those who benefit the most from the way that the system is set up currently state that things are fine and such reorganizations imposed by the jealousy of others are doomed to breed more strife than they hope to solve. Of course, despite the wealth of family their lands bring them, they cannot simply shout over the others, and they seek to bring those discontent with the distribution of fields into their camps so as to get force for their own ideas of political reform.
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veekie said:
Encourages land division by family, aka the basics of feudalism. Conflict will grow as generations pass, since the allotments will either spread out across families blobbing together, or fragment as extended families break up when their common ancestors die.
Cements class divisions, rich families will grow richer, poor families grow poorer. Creates a noble class, which also means that the rich will have the time and excess food to indulge interests in the arts and crafts.
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Present:
Academia Nut said:
There was considerable pressure to simply make a lot of responsibilities hereditary, to hand down who worked what land through families and only bother with reassignment when a family line petered out or there were more new people in a family than land to work and a new spot needed to be assigned. This was also more familiar to the people who had only arrived in the past few generations, and for the fishers. There had also been a few recent scandals involving local chiefs repeatedly reassigning people different plots of land over short sequences in order to direct the credit for pioneering or excellent management from the people who did the work to their friends and relatives, thus taking away bonus food and luxury rations for good work from the people who actually deserved them. There was a strong clamor from those affected to have mechanisms in place to make the transference of land management be much harder and thus avoid these forms of corruption. It would also undoubtedly transfer power away from the sprawling networks of political friendships and favours among the local chiefs and subchiefs, who didn't necessarily have to have any significant personal achievements to their name in order to gain influence, just to be born with their parents knowing the right people.

The council was obviously ambivalent about all of this, in that while it would probably result in them losing power, but while they still had power they could also set up their descendants quite nicely by insuring that they had guaranteed inheritances. Of course, there was also a strong strain of tradition against such actions, but then again tradition hadn't restrained lower level politicians from being greedy and short sighted.
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Imo, even if food is still distributed in an authoritarian way, people who get the best land will get more rewards, more credit, and more ability to acquire even more land. This will provide them with more power to get better jobs, more influence, and more power. Thus a noble class will be formed, albeit one that is - unless they change things with their enhanced political power - fed about as much as anyone else.
 
Sivantic said:
Do it in the way we are trying with Military. Not by higher numbers, but by better tech.
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Tech leads to improvements, but it could also lead to pluses in relevant numbers, which would be a severe problem if it doesn't also raise our Hierarchy's cap.

Moving on to other reasons, if it holds to the same pattern as last time, we'd lose stability for a low chance at a new tech of unknown method vs. a guaranteed stability and a system that would eliminate the current form of corruption. Basically, it's chancy, and has no good knock-offs, as opposed to hereditary's very clear benefits. And future problems are inevitable either way.

BungieONI said:
So we'd solve the problem by legitimizing the people making the last hit bonuses with their friends and family and legitimizing the bad behavior.
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The bad behavior is taking away the credit one family has earned for improving the land, which the new system would eliminate. The previous reward system of Hard Work = More Shinies would remain, so the chief can't redirect shinies to his favorites by shuffling the actually hard working family into some distant corner somewhere.

It's not legitimizing bad behavior, it's removing the mechanism that they were using to enact it.

tryrar said:
You know, we should see what options we get before we argue about all this.
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I'ld love to, but with how fast this thread moves I have to get my arguments in in advance, otherwise we'll have 20 votes already in and I'd just "NOPE" right on out of there.

3049
 
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Umi-san said:
Past:




Present:


Imo, even if food is still distributed in an authoritarian way, people who get the best land will get more rewards, more credit, and more ability to acquire even more land. This will provide them with more power to get better jobs, more influence, and more power. Thus a noble class will be formed, albeit one that is - unless they change things with their enhanced political power - fed about as much as anyone else.
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So do you support going hereditary? It's n0ot completely clear. I'm assuming you don't from previous comments.

I don't want to go to hereditary because our community has kept us cohesive for 600 years. We should advance this sense but not change it to hereditary.
 
Academia Nut said:
which was to run to the nigh mythical Hill Folk. She knew little of them, other than that they existed and made exquisite dyes that were coveted by the wealthy and powerful for the vivid colouration, and they were said to have more food than anyone and could accept almost anyone. It was her only hope of both her and her child's survival, so she took it, even if
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Huh, just realized that the average Dead Priest supplicant has a mildly positive view of us. Maybe the core Dead Priest society might return our animosity, but maybe not. I'd be deeply amused if the extended multi-generational withdrawal from conflicts in the area has left the loathing the People have for the Dead Priests entirely one-sided.

They don't have a playerbase controlling them to give them long memories stretching back thousands (?) of years. And probably don't have the People's institutional tendency towards beuracratic record keeping. Plus they may not have something similar to our recently lost Sacred War trait, to keep the hatred ingrained.
 
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Sightsear said:
Tech leads to improvements, but it could also lead to pluses in relevant numbers, which would be a severe problem if it doesn't also raise our Hierarchy's cap.

Moving on to other reasons, if it holds to the same pattern as last time, we'd lose stability for a low chance at a new tech of unknown method vs. a guaranteed stability and a system that would eliminate the current form of corruption. Basically, it's chancy, and has no good knock-offs, as opposed to hereditary's very clear benefits. And future problems are inevitable either way.


The bad behavior is taking away the credit one family has earned for improving the land, which the new system would eliminate. The previous reward system of Hard Work = More Shinies would remain, so the chief can't redirect shinies to his favorites by shuffling the actually hard working family into some distant corner somewhere.

It's not legitimizing bad behavior, it's removing the mechanism that they were using to enact it.


I'ld love to, but with how fast this thread moves I have to get my arguments in in advance, otherwise we'll have 20 votes already in and I'd just "NOPE" right on out of there.

3049
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Sorry @Sightsear but could you outline your thought process on how going to hereditary would fix the mechanism? It's not fully clear and it's late here. Halp? :confused:

Edit: are you saying that by going hereditary the families would be stuck(?) where they are assigned and then the Chief can't change them willy nilly? I'm worried about it giving more power to the chiefs and our current government form says to be wary of our governess/chiefs. My thinking is that our current communal thinking mitigates some of this and it sounds like a move to hereditary would move us towards classic feudalism and exacerbate this weakness.
Adhoc vote count started by BungieONI on Apr 18, 2017 at 10:55 PM, finished with 19059 posts and 42 votes.
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Umi-san said:
Past:

Imo, even if food is still distributed in an authoritarian way, people who get the best land will get more rewards, more credit, and more ability to acquire even more land. This will provide them with more power to get better jobs, more influence, and more power. Thus a noble class will be formed, albeit one that is - unless they change things with their enhanced political power - fed about as much as anyone else.
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Them establish a average quota of production, a family would be receive a warning if their production quota goes down, and will have a generation for recovering the levels - quotas would be suspended in times of strife or ecological problems - and every time a family produces more on a "bad-land" than a person on a "good-land" they would have the right to challenge that family for the plot of land.

EDIT: the quota would be based on the deepness of black-soil of the land, the more black-soil the higher the quota.
 
Tally? Yee.
Adhoc vote count started by BungieONI on Apr 18, 2017 at 10:40 PM, finished with 19049 posts and 41 votes.
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tenchifew said:
Pretty much this.

We will just get a bit different set of problems.

We are currently running elections and frankly have a system far ahead of our time, let's not scrap it and exchange it for something that is far worse, just because we are not policing corruption, something we will need to do either way.
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Quite.
With our system we've avoided the following problems by avoiding individual ownership and inheritance:
-Prevented institutionalized span of poor leaders from Hereditary leadership. We get consistent leadership, if less heroic ones, we don't get leaders that cock everything up.
-Power grabs greatly diffused. With communal ownership and allocation of resources by caste, it's hard to accrue power. Our chiefs manage it anyway by trafficking in soft power, but soft power builds over generations.
-Abuse of migrants greatly limited. They lack the soft social connections, but high social mobility means that it's just a matter of time to fully integrate. Anyone can marry anyone else without concerns that it'd diffuse power out. Anyone can have as many children as the rations and rules allow, including none.
-Small gaps in quality of life. Half-exiles aside, the king lives in the same areas as his guards, and wears the same clothing. He is accorded greater access to art and status symbols for the purpose of diplomacy, but likely less access to meat than his guards due to his largely sedentary and administrative lifestyle.
-Food security. Everyone gets fed what they need to work, even the lowest castes.


Overall, what our theme here is stability. People can progress, but with a great deal of work and over the course of generations.
 
mastigos said:
They don't have a playerbase controlling them to give them long memories stretching back thousands (?) of years. And probably don't have the People's institutional tendency towards beuracratic record keeping. Plus they may not have something similar to our recently lost Sacred War trait, to keep the hatred ingrained.
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1) They have AN, 2) her people aren't DP, I don't think, so they wouldn't hate us.

Not @ you but still: bureaucratic recordkeeping as a result of communistic equitable redistribution of food.

Malevolo said:
Them establish a average quota of production, a family would be receive a warning if their production quota goes down, and will have a generation for recovering the levels - quotas would be suspended in times of strife or ecological problems - and every time a family produces more on a "bad-land" than a person on a "good-land" they would have the right to challenge that family for the plot of land.
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So institute auditors and another layer of bureaucratic record keeping?

BungieONI said:
So do you support going hereditary? It's n0ot completely clear. I'm assuming you don't from previous comments.

I don't want to go to hereditary because our community has kept us cohesive for 600 years. We should advance this sense but not change it to hereditary.
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I oppose hereditary in the sense that I don't want families to be 1000% tied to land and able to get the best land for themselves. I don't oppose hereditary in the sense that I value a sense of deep ties to land, and the increased proficiency in farming it that comes with knowledge of its particular habits, which is gained over decades.
 
[x][Main] More Blackbirds
[X] [Secondary] Study Metal
[X] [Secondary] Establish Annual Festival
 
BungieONI said:
Sorry @Sightsear but could you outline your thought process on how going to hereditary would fix the mechanism? It's not fully clear and it's late here. Halp? :confused:
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Sure. The problem isn't that Good Land = Great Rewards. The problem is that Improving Land = Great Reward. The abuse is that the Chief is taking the people who did the improvements, shuffling them off somewhere else, plopping some friends into the improved land, and than lauding them on their brilliance and dumping shinies on there heads.

The hereditary solution is to tie the land to bloodlines, so that the chief can't quietly shuffle previous occupants out of the way, and then install his own people in there, meaning that the credit will go to the people who did the actual work.

Umi-san said:
I oppose hereditary in the sense that I don't want families to be 1000% tied to land and able to get the best land for themselves. I don't oppose hereditary in the sense that I value a sense of deep ties to land, and the increased proficiency in farming it that comes with knowledge of its particular habits, which is gained over decades.
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Well, the good news is that a change over would lead directly to the bits you like. The bad news is that corruption over the course of generations will slowly lead to the bits you don't like. The worse news is that the corruption we're trying to solve is, in fact, the powerful taking the best land (and the credit for turning it into such) for themselves.
 
Malevolo said:
We have the grain-counters, but seeing by the hierarchy look... Auditors would be good, but over-hierarchy would be bad...
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Like I said, the only solution I can think of, other than allowing Hereditary, has very high risk of pushing our Hierarchy even higher. Hereditary may be problematic, but an over-clocked stat like that? Probably worse, both short AND long term.

3051
 
I think we should do Grand Sacrifice soon, if not now. We don't want to lose Greater Good by not using it like we did Sacred War.
 
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Sightsear said:
Sure. The problem isn't that Good Land = Great Rewards. The problem is that Improving Land = Great Reward. The abuse is that the Chief is taking the people who did the improvements, shuffling them off somewhere else, plopping some friends into the improved land, and than lauding them on their brilliance and dumping shinies on there heads.

The hereditary solution is to tie the land to bloodlines, so that the chief can't quietly shuffle previous occupants out of the way, and then install his own people in there, meaning that the credit will go to the people who did the actual work.


Well, the good news is that a change over would lead directly to the bits you like. The bad news is that corruption over the course of generations will slowly lead to the bits you don't like. The worse news is that the corruption we're trying to solve is, in fact, the powerful taking the best land (and the credit for turning it into such) for themselves.
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Ok so your reasoning was like I thought. GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA


This is annoying. It's not critical or life threatening but Jesus is it persistent. We have two groups of Cockroaches -> The DP and this pansy dansy land shuffling. Grumble Grumble.
 
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