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Towards the Future

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[X] Plan: Playing Hardball Against Reaction
- [X] Start Hardening:
- [X] Maximal Funding:
- [X] Default Membership:
- [X] Plan for a Snap Elections
-[X]Space Policy
--[X]Reactor Core Fabrication Facilities:
--[X]Control Systems Salvaging:
--[X]Start Launch Ramp Reconstruction(Stage 1)
--[X]Continue the Unmanned Surveyor Program (2k)
--[X]Build Old Generation Shuttles (8k, 2k Maintenance)
- [X] Reorganization of the Electoral System (DC 100 -> DC 0)
- [X] Investigation into the Ros Government (DC 60 -> DC 10)
- [X]Employee Protections (DC 60 -> DC 10)

The major thing a snap elections buys isn't some more seats, but two more years to prepare for next election, and for the populations to fully feel the impacts of the welfare state. This is a considerable boon to miss out on for the sake of bully the BFP into making concessions. Turning the emergency services to the army leaves them at best underfunded via dilluting government finances for a vital institution, or at worst a PR boon for the army, further entrenching the authoritarianism in the system. "The starfleet pivot" isn't achieved
 
Who gives a shit if the Army is popular? Starfleet is wildly popular among the society that funds it. If they perform the disaster relief mission well, then good! They're performing a vital service for society, if they're good at their jobs everybody wins. If they don't, then ok cool we get to blame the generals for Hyper-Katrina next election cycle. I don't even really care if they want to keep dangling the threat of military coups over everybody's head, I could not care less about abstract ideals of democratic control as long as they're spending the military budget on spaceships instead of supersonic bombers. They can even put guns on the spaceships if it would make them feel better, my concern is solely about wasting resources on dead end planetary hardware when we could be spending it on industry or space hardware to mug aliens and steal their FTL drives with.
 
Anyway, we really shouldn't ignore the social revolution part of our platform. So we need to do the Equality Amendment soon.

It's a good way to get more women votes and keep the entire party happy since they all agree on the need for social reforms. End to exploitation due to sex or gender based discrimination is an important part of establishing a socialist society. This would be the first necessary step on that road.
 
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Crazycryodude said:
Who gives a shit if the Army is popular? Starfleet is wildly popular among the society that funds it. If they perform the disaster relief mission well, then good! They're performing a vital service for society, if they're good at their jobs everybody wins. If they don't, then ok cool we get to blame the generals for Hyper-Katrina next election cycle.
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I suspect that choosing Maximum Funding instead of giving it to army would simply provide more capabilities to solve the actual problem. It's not only "who will get laurels/take a fall" question, but "would the actual job be done".
 
Crazycryodude said:
Who gives a shit if the Army is popular? Starfleet is wildly popular among the society that funds it. If they perform the disaster relief mission well, then good! They're performing a vital service for society, if they're good at their jobs everybody wins. If they don't, then ok cool we get to blame the generals for Hyper-Katrina next election cycle. I don't even really care if they want to keep dangling the threat of military coups over everybody's head, I could not care less about abstract ideals of democratic control as long as they're spending the military budget on spaceships instead of supersonic bombers.
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The issue is that we don't have starfleet, a military firmly subordinate to civilian authorities. We have Elf-Kemalism, with the army reserving the right to remove any government that strays from their idea of constitutionally compatible thought. Not caring about coups or the army's popularity is a good way to increase the chances of ending up in a society that is actually controlled by the military, with the army deciding to place firmer limits on constitutional acceptable thought and outlawing dangerous ideas like "maybe the military shouldn't get to dissolve governments at will". We are one ambitious crop of ambitious young authoritarian officers away from a south-American system dominated by rivalling military cliques.

Just handing the army other institutions other than guns doesn't decrease the risk of sliding into authoritarianism. Getting them into space doesn't change the threat of coups at home. Your lack of concern for military coups and for the impacts on the left government, if disaster relief is underfunded is going to cause problems in the long term. A bad disaster relief is also going to reflect on us negatively, not just the military.
 
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We need to find ways to justify the military's existence, abolishing it would simply mean we would get couped which is not what we want. Giving them money to play with new jet fighters and MBT's is doable but huge a waste of money, but pivoting them towards space means that they can provide some economic utility. I don't think we should hand off disaster relief to them though, that option is very obviously a stand in for a "minimum funding" one and I do think we need to have good civil defense in order to not eat shit from super Katrinas.
 
[X]Plan Cynical Starfleet

Red Rationalist said:
The issue is that we don't have starfleet, a military firmly subordinate to civilian authorities. We have Elf-Kemalism, with the army reserving the right to remove any government that strays from their idea of constitutionally compatible thought.
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Given the shape of our current constitution and what it allows, and what the army seems comfortable allowing in the civilian sector, I'm not sure that's as big a problem as you think.

If we're trying to specifically lay groundwork for a vanguard dictatorship "of the proletariat," then yes, we may have a problem there. Much of the thread doesn't want that, and much of the in-character coalition currently making up the government doesn't want that.

The problem is that freezing out the army so that they have nothing to do but spend their painfully large budget on fancy toys that serve no practical purpose leaves them with all the reason in the world to sit around and fantasize about coups.

The specific combination of circumstances and forces we're under makes it a lot more practical to eliminate the army's desire to coup us, than to eliminate their ability to coup us.

We are one ambitious crop of ambitious young authoritarian officers away from a south-American system dominated by rivalling military cliques.
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And the best way to ensure that such a crop of ambitious officers withers on the vine is to create pathways within the military system by which ambitious officers who aren't authoritarians can rise to power. People who are genuinely happy to be serving the people by getting sandbags filled and passing out bottled water and reinforcing levees and planning resupply missions to moon bases and so on.

When the military does nothing but drive around and go on what are in effect glorified camping trips with high explosives, it's easy for them to think of themselves as "warriors" distinct from the civilian population. That's very much what we don't want. Since we can't starve down the military budget to a tiny remnant (they will coup our asses if we try, plus we lose their political support for our coalition), we have to find some way for the military to function in a way that normalizes their participation and engagement with civil society, rather than becoming a separate hostile community that exists outside that society.
 
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[X]Plan Slightly Less Cynical Starfleet
-[X]Governmental Decisions
--[X]Revive the Ecology Program
--[X]Give it to the Army
--[X]Default Membership
--[X]Take a Hard Line
-[X]Space Policy
--[X]Reactor Core Fabrication Facilities
--[X]Control Systems Salvaging
--[X]Start Launch Ramp Reconstruction (Stage 1)
--[X]New Communication Networks
--[X]Start Crew Rotation Programs
-[X]Governmental Actions
--[X]Employee Protections (DC 60 10)
--[X]Work Safety Institutions (Autopass)
--[X]Updates to Building Codes (DC 65 15)
--[X]Lower Council Reforms (DC 70 20)

In which we actually make an attempt to reduce how unlivable the planet gets instead of just hunkering down in bunkers waiting for a new starch-based ecosystem to stabilize in a century or two.
 
Simon_Jester said:
Given the shape of our current constitution and what it allows, and what the army seems comfortable allowing in the civilian sector, I'm not sure that's as big a problem as you think.
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The army does so currently. As it stands now, the army is fine with democracy for now. This doesn't mean this won't be a problem in the future. The positive regard the army has can sour, and that could be especially a problem if they convince the average population of the need for a more unburdened executive. If the sun shines right now, should we not plan for rain?
Simon_Jester said:
The problem is that freezing out the army so that they have nothing to do but spend their painfully large budget on fancy toys that serve no practical purpose leaves them with all the reason in the world to sit around and fantasize about coups.
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Where am I proposing to freeze the army out? I'm opposed to the "diluted funding for emergency services" because it's has several rather bad potential consequences, and I regard the idea of that shifting military culture overall by giving them emergency services to be dubious.
Simon_Jester said:
And the best way to ensure that such a crop of ambitious officers withers on the vine is to create pathways within the military system by which ambitious officers who aren't authoritarians can rise to power. People who are genuinely happy to be serving the people by getting sandbags filled and passing out bottled water and reinforcing levees and planning resupply missions to moon bases and so on.
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Do you think placing a military officer in charge of emergency logistics makes them intrinsically less authoritarian? Plenty of prominent authoritarians were people with no history of either frontline service, or military career overall. There isn't a -hidden 15% authoritarianism support modifier for having a role in logistics or emergency response.
 
[X]Plan Slightly Less Cynical Starfleet
-[X]Governmental Decisions
--[X]Revive the Ecology Program
--[X]Give it to the Army
--[X]Default Membership
--[X]Take a Hard Line
-[X]Space Policy
--[X]Reactor Core Fabrication Facilities
--[X]Control Systems Salvaging
--[X]Start Launch Ramp Reconstruction (Stage 1)
--[X]New Communication Networks
--[X]Start Crew Rotation Programs
-[X]Governmental Actions
--[X]Employee Protections (DC 60 10)
--[X]Work Safety Institutions (Autopass)
--[X]Updates to Building Codes (DC 65 15)
--[X]Lower Council Reforms (DC 70 20)
 
Red Rationalist said:
The army does so currently. As it stands now, the army is fine with democracy for now. This doesn't mean this won't be a problem in the future. The positive regard the army has can sour, and that could be especially a problem if they convince the average population of the need for a more unburdened executive. If the sun shines right now, should we not plan for rain?
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The problem with this approach is that it treats the future political attitudes of the army as being 'weather.' An external force that we cannot influence, only brace ourselves for. This places us into an adversarial relationship with the army and, I fear, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy over time.

What we need to do is work to find a way to peacefully, without forcing a conflict against the army, steer the army down a path that doesn't involve overthrowing present or future democratically elected governments. Since the nature of our current alliance with them makes taking away their capacity to do that impractical, we need to concentrate on removing their desire to do so, and undermining the likelihood that they will desire to do so in the future, while not openly threatening their future as an institution.

The way we handled the education issue was a good example of this. We didn't lock the army out of the schools, but we did lock them out of getting to write the social studies curriculum, and that's what matters most for this purpose.
 
It also is just a bad idea in general to just treat our military as a enemy, when number one have all the guns and two we will eventually need it when hostiles appear.
 
Simon_Jester said:
The problem with this approach is that it treats the future political attitudes of the army as being 'weather.' An external force that we cannot influence, only brace ourselves for.
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This also true. We don't decide who is promoted inside the military, we don't decide on the officer's curriculum, hell we aren't even aware of it. The internal factions of the military and the BFP are outside our control or awareness.
Simon_Jester said:
What we need to do is work to find a way to peacefully, without forcing a conflict against the army, steer the army down a path that doesn't involve overthrowing present or future democratically elected governments. Since the nature of our current alliance with them makes taking away their capacity to do that impractical, we need to concentrate on removing their desire to do so, and undermining the likelihood that they will desire to do so in the future, while not openly threatening their future as an institution.
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And this has already been done. The army has space, and is in the process of changing towards space exploration force. Giving them emergency funding doesn't change that equation, it's just a way the civil government to loose control over Elf-FEMA funding and enshrine the special role of the military inside society. The best we can do against coup proofing right now is develop a civil society that is pro-democracy, avoid parliamentary gridlock that might lead to a remergence of authoritarian thought and simply wait for the military to get used to accepting orders from parliament. We can only do so by waiting.
Simon_Jester said:
This places us into an adversarial relationship with the army and, I fear, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy over time.
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I'm not planning to defang them, or to actually combat the military. This isn't currently possible, nor the biggest problem on our list. I'm just being realistic when I note that the military is still a potential threat, that we have no guarantee they won't at some point turn on the left (after, say, the higher-ranking officers start buying mansions and stock in companies) and their power and privilege in society need to be contained, rather than giving them more as a treat. I'm against picking a fight against them, I just want us to keep in mind that treating a wolf-dog like a puppy is a bad idea.
 
Red Rationalist said:
This also true. We don't decide who is promoted inside the military, we don't decide on the officer's curriculum, hell we aren't even aware of it. The internal factions of the military and the BFP are outside our control or awareness.
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1) That sounds like something our own assets could in fact research and learn about given actual effort and prep time.

2) This kind of misses the point. The thing about weather is that you not only don't know all the details of what it will do, but you literally cannot affect it. At best if you have the right scientists you can predict it. The political actions of the military in this situation are not like that. We absolutely can affect them, for better or for worse. And indeed, we must affect them. Simply trying to passively endure the military without taking steps to control it is a losing game.
 
Simon_Jester said:
1) That sounds like something our own assets could in fact research and learn about given actual effort and prep time.
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God luck trying to establish a civilian spy apparatus for controlling the military without getting couped immediately. This would only work in a situation where the military is willing to submit to civilian control, thus making the reason for it's existence void.
Simon_Jester said:
The political actions of the military in this situation are not like that. We absolutely can affect them, for better or for worse. And indeed, we must affect them. Simply trying to passively endure the military without taking steps to control it is a losing game.
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To use a rough metaphor for our relationship to the military: They are a constitutionalist liberal monarch, we are republicans. With the system right now, our politically controlled organ (parliament) could be shut down anytime by them if they wished. We are fortunate to have a crop of officers inside the military that are supportive of progressive aims, but there is no guarantee that will last. The winning strategy is to carefully and gradually roll back the excess power of the military without triggering coup against us, with the eventual goal of cementing civilian control of society. The latter only rely happens by either abolishing/severely restricting the coup privilege, something that will only happen with the ascent of the military and plenty of political pressure for it. Reaching this end goal is something that is quite slow and takes an considerable amount of time, but it can protect us from future coups.
Giving them emergency services is at best unrelated towards our goal of civilian control, and at worst gives the impression of the military as "the people who get stuff done" while the parliament bickers, thus increasing support for a military run state during any time of political dysfunction.

To be entirely honest, I wanted to argue for my plan much more on the merits of a snap elections and parliamentary strategy than have prolonged discussion over the exact merits of the stand-in decision for "minimal funding" and if a thin coat of non-military paint transforms the military into starfleet-esque hippies. The impacts of this error are limited in the medium term if the decision doesn't turn into a PR-disaster, I just don't agree with giving up even more civilian institutions to a parallel, strictly hierarchical institution while facing no pressure to do so.
 
The plan is literally called Cynical Starfleet, and I want them in space so that they can murder the first aliens who show up and steal their FTL drives. That wasn't a joke, I think it's our best way to actually escape the home system. Idk where you got the idea that I think they're going to turn into hippies, I just want them spending money on things that aren't supersonic fighter jets that will never be used on anybody.
 
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