*points at athens*
I'd debate that they need to be healthy and fed well enough to make up calories, but these limits are below what you mean to be a standard of satisfactory care.
One of my paranoid fitful thoughts was I hope they don't become a problem for this tax crisis too. They shouldn't for a couple of reasons: namely that as long as we go for the not crazy complex option and start another econ crisis they have less to get onery about, and that now they are much more securely part of the system and not freshly spawned from opposing said First Tax reform. Beyond that we also with the Palace have a more detailed means of keeping our fingers on their pulse.
We'll see how long that lasts. Sure, the successes of the Chinese government regarding economic development can't be denied. They were in fact very clever in their strategies. But they have in fact been playing "catch up" so far and will be for a long time still. That makes conditions different. Foreign investors can easily ignore corruption and legal insecurities when personnel costs are that damn low. But to achieve and maintain a truly sophisticated high level economy, you do in fact need rule of law, to stamp down on corruption and avoid legal insecurities. And the best maintenance of rule of law is democracy. Otherwise, you'll always have a self-perpetuating and hence incesteous inner circle in power, which gives incentives to look the other way if they or their associates are corrupt.
Athens did have a direct democracy. Of course, that was greatly helped by the fact that it indeed only covered the polis of Athens, while its empire were basically just subjects. If everyone can meet in the city, then this makes logistics far easier. This of course wouldn't be an option for us, as we are geographically too far spread out.
I think that are chiefs are still nominally elected, or at least they were the last time we were informed.
AARs, IAARs which are similar to quests, Nation Games, RP, plenty. You don't have to know Civilization to participate in Civfanatics. It was so fun.
Wouldn't an Arsenal annex be better instead?
The exploitation saw in the update wouldn't have been any better if we were in a democracy.
All that call for Democracy
This is modern nonsense. Rule by elites is far FAR better than rule by the strong. And that's far FAR better than no rule at all.
I think I talked about this a few hundred pages ago as a little aside(gonna need to pull it out of the crystallized gygo), or maybe not(might have been something different but related), but I actually think a total Democracy is for Post-Information Age societies. You can certainly approach them in such societies, see America when the system works, but for the whole I would consider such countries like America to be transitional entities.
There are things we can do to reduce the hierarchy gap. Most of them are Governor's Palaces and Free Cities with a few other things like strengthening guilds and similar. Others are also increasing mechanization so that there is more skilled labor fields, though that is a long long loooong process.
I can't entirely agree with you on this.
Maybe? Like, I don't think this is even on the table as an option to shoot for yet, since we don't quite have the tools to develop the tools kinda situation in my mind. Got to remember that our options for directions of change are always limited.
Lawful Neutral with Good tendencies?
