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Victoria Falls: A Post-Collapse American Nation Quest [Down With Victoria!]

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Versharl said:
Subsistence level? Really? This section of the last update seems to indicate otherwise:


But it is interesting to learn that you do plan on forcing everybody to follow your ideological business model. I don't suppose you could be persuaded to just offer state support for the business model in the form of loans and subsidies for workers wishing to start their own cooperative businesses? The other plan seems a bit authoritarian to me and frankly unnecessary if we give the workers alternatives. If private enterprise is as exploitative and oppressive as you guys claim, surely the workers will jump at the chance to start their own Just™ and Democratic™ cooperatives. I'd like to note that I'm not at all opposed to worker-ownership of cooperations. I'm just opposed to enforcing it on all businesses by the state and the threat of violence. Because let's not mince words. You're forcing people, even small-business owners, to relinquish control of their property under the threat of violence by the state.

And that's not even going into the issue of how this type of authoritarianism is going to look to outsiders. Do you think other fledgling states are going to want to join us when they know we're going to be confiscating the private property of everyone who's middle-class and above?
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That's a lot of words you just shoved into my mouth right there.

How about you have this discussion in good faith instead of going all, "REDS UNDER THE BED!" like you are now?

Cause when I said giving preferential support to worker-owned businesses I didn't say anything about forcing anyone who isn't one into such a model. I've also, which I note you haven't engaged with at all instead going right for ideological arguments (which implies you don't have anything other than screaming loudly about commies), pointed out there's multiple practical economic and security benefits from implementing a worker-owned economy through supports, protections for workers engaging in such operations and other forms of passive support.

I haven't said anything about property seizure without compensation or even property seizure period. The closest I've gotten to that is calling for a massive, robust public works project that would employ as many people as possible working on tasks that are considered a key priority by the Chicago government. Hardly what anyone would call re-enacting the Holodomor as you are all but saying.

So let's hear your rebuttal to the argument of security (business owners have been proven, particularly in the case of Victoria itself, to be quite fallible and when a small number of people own an enterprise you don't need to flip that many people to flip control of the whole mess), efficiency (namely there's multiple studies showing worker-owned businesses and co-operatives outperform the alternatives) and social cohesion (worker-owned businesses tend not to engage in mass layoffs and instead look for ways to keep people employed in other ways, reducing risks of things like disgruntled workers). So far all you've given are walls of text on the abstracts, let's see if you actually have anything concrete to offer that doesn't depend on false accusations and appeals to idealized forms.
 
@Versharl it could be compensatory. The government buys the businesses at a fair market rate and gives it to the workers. Former owners have a huge pile of money.

Edit: all new businesses must be cooperatives.
 
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Antix_Shadows said:
Businesses are not personal property.

I agree with freedom of religion. But I also believe in freedom from religious ideology in govt.
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Define "freedom from religious ideology in government"?

If you mean "no state-ordained religion, the state favors no religion, and does not specifically try to structure itself around all aspects of 1 religion", then sure.

If you mean "no one in government ever acts or makes decisions that are in any way influenced or colored by their religious beliefs", you're fooling yourself.
 
One of the more interesting consequences that I've just also realized is that in the wake of a collapsed America, and a just-barely-newly-functioning Chicago Accord Government (until we agree on a better name), technically speaking, no entity owns anything yet.

So when we talk about "taking property away from people" I feel like we should be aware that there's effectively nothing on the ground; nobody really owns a home or business or workplace yet, not even the Chicago Accord Government, until we go about actually standardizing everything and recording who-owns-what and getting the whole snarl unfucked, basically. In that sense, we're basically free to redistribute property and equipment however the hell we see fit, especially abandoned and unused property and equipment, until our society and economy finishes stabilizing from the tailspin.
 
I am curious, have we set an idea about how franchise is handled? Does everyone get to vote or are we excluding some? If so is that due to circumstance/position(likely higher or authority) or some other thing (like say 'has to live here for X amount of time).

Also, if citizenship is time locked I really really want it to be 'a year and a day'.

It's impractical but we can sincerely state that 'a year and a day of city air makes you a free man'
 
huhYeahGoodPoint said:
One of the more interesting consequences that I've just also realized is that in the wake of a collapsed America, and a just-barely-newly-functioning Chicago Accord Government (until we agree on a better name), technically speaking, no entity owns anything yet.

So when we talk about "taking property away from people" I feel like we should be aware that there's effectively nothing on the ground; nobody really owns a home or business or workplace yet, not even the Chicago Accord Government, until we go about actually standardizing everything and recording who-owns-what and getting the whole snarl unfucked, basically. In that sense, we're basically free to redistribute property and equipment however the hell we see fit, especially abandoned and unused property and equipment, until our society and economy finishes stabilizing from the tailspin.
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I mean, we're not just a collection of random homeless people with zero equipment, logistics, or materials to our names.

There's stuff, and people are using it, and in quite a few cases have been using it for quite some time.
 
huhYeahGoodPoint said:
One of the more interesting consequences that I've just also realized is that in the wake of a collapsed America, and a just-barely-newly-functioning Chicago Accord Government (until we agree on a better name), technically speaking, no entity owns anything yet.

So when we talk about "taking property away from people" I feel like we should be aware that there's effectively nothing on the ground; nobody really owns a home or business or workplace yet, not even the Chicago Accord Government, until we go about actually standardizing everything and recording who-owns-what and getting the whole snarl unfucked, basically. In that sense, we're basically free to redistribute property and equipment however the hell we see fit, especially abandoned and unused property and equipment, until our society and economy finishes stabilizing from the tailspin.
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True; private property in the sense of ownership of capital, businesses, factories, etc, cannot exist without a state (or at least some overarching authority or legal framework) who will whack someone on the head for trying to take someone else's stuff.
 
Antix_Shadows said:
Businesses are not personal property.
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Ah, you got me! How could I have been so foolish to call them that... except for the fact that I didn't do that.
Aranfan said:
@Versharl it could be compensatory. The government buys the businesses at a fair market rate and gives it to the workers. Former owners have a huge pile of money.
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Those are some sound economics right there. Handing people a bunch of money that they can spend on absolutely nothing. What could possibly go wrong?
Also, you're still forcing them to hand over private property under the threat of violence. Compensation doesn't make that go away.

@LHB, if you don't want to enforce it through the state, I'm not going to argue against it. I'm more than happy to let the socialists in the thread have their little pet project in the form of subsized worker cooperatives.

Rat King said:
True; private property in the sense of ownership of capital, businesses, factories, etc, cannot exist without a state (or at least some overarching authority or legal framework) who will whack someone on the head for trying to take someone else's stuff.
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"You don't technically own the building you live and work in, so that makes it alright for us to seize it from you!"
 
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Versharl said:
"You don't technically own the building you live and work in, so that makes it alright for us to seize it from you!"
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That's not what I said, though; it was an observation on the existence of the concept of private property, not a justification for why it should or should not be taken. Private property cannot really exist without a legal framework and arguably didn't exist until we got those legal frameworks. It was also an observation that private property only really exists because of state violence used to enforce it.

Dream Logic said:
I am curious, have we set an idea about how franchise is handled? Does everyone get to vote or are we excluding some? If so is that due to circumstance/position(likely higher or authority) or some other thing (like say 'has to live here for X amount of time).

Also, if citizenship is time locked I really really want it to be 'a year and a day'.

It's impractical but we can sincerely state that 'a year and a day of city air makes you a free man'
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I think our only real requirement for franchise should be residency/proof of residency for X amount of time. If we end up with more 'workplace democracy' it could alternately be that once you've started working your trade, you are then eligible to participate in the local elections.
 
Simon_Jester said:
I mean, we're not just a collection of random homeless people with zero equipment, logistics, or materials to our names.

There's stuff, and people are using it, and in quite a few cases have been using it for quite some time.
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Yes, I agree, which means sorting out who exactly owns what is probably going to be an issue for a bit, but at the same time I don't think that we disagree on there still being loads of totally abandoned space that no one uses, which we're going to end up filling in order to kickstart our economy.

From the perspective of "who do we give this land to develop to", I don't think that there's a strong reason to prefer handing it all to a few would-be (or possibly small) business owners instead of creating a worker's co-op and handing the empty land and equipment to the co-op.

After all, we don't have foreign investors, we probably don't have large business owners that own much of the city, the mob might get involved in which case break the Vichies, so ultimately, why prefer handing the undeveloped space to singular people over a collective of workers?
 
KnightDisciple said:
I mean, I do think state regulated/mandated religion is bad/dumb, but it's a serious topic to me. Seeing you treat it so flippantly, even in the context of a game, leaves me feeling frustrated, and unwilling to work with you or consider your ideas in the future.
Have you considered that a less religion-hostile approach might garner you greater chances of cooperation and compromise in areas you consider important?
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While seeing you overreact was entertaining, now it's just annoying. You're throwing out all of my future contributions over a stupid argument, so here's the deal.

I don't give a shit for how you feel or what your opinion of me is. Your comments have only shown that I was right to not take you seriously and that I'm better off just ignoring you in the future.

As for being less religiously hostile, seeing as many on this thread are dead set on making some kind of state dominated by Catholicism anyway I don't feel a need to follow the herd.
 
Miner238 said:
While seeing you overreact was entertaining, now it's just annoying. You're throwing out all of my future contributions over a stupid argument, so here's the deal.

I don't give a shit for how you feel or what your opinion of me is. Your comments have only shown that I was right to not take you seriously and that I'm better off just ignoring you in the future.

As for being less religiously hostile, seeing as many on this thread are dead set on making some kind of state dominated by Catholicism anyway I don't feel a need to follow the herd.
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lmao dude what

literally every single proposal thus far has been essentially "secularism ho!"

some posters are acknowledging that Chicago has a significant Catholic population

other posters are in fact Catholic

but none of that points to us being anything remotely close to being "dominated by Catholicism"
 
Versharl said:
Those are some sound economics right there. Handing people a bunch of money that they can spend on absolutely nothing. What could possibly go wrong?
Also, you're still forcing them to hand over private property under the threat of violence. Compensation doesn't make that go away.
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1. What do you mean nothing to spend it on? I'm no communist. The worker cooperatives would be selling their goods and services on the market.

2. So what. The emancipation proclamation was the largest uncompensated expropriation of private property in USA history. And it was a good thing. Private property is important yes, but it is one right among many, not the be all and end all. There are sound moral reasons to do this, which have been put forth in the thread already.
 
Twiggierjet said:
Wait, are they? I know some people mentioned that we will need to take the large catholic population in our state into account making it difficult to be explicitly anti-religious, but I'm pretty sure the whole "catholic domination" thing was a non-serious proposal from the very start of the thread and no longer seriously discussed.
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I keep seeing underlying hints of it in the conversation so it's just my observation, but it seems some people are going for freedom of religion but the dominance of one deal. Secularism doesn't mean shit when the majority of the people in charge are of the same religion allowing them to shape policy to better suit their religion rather than others. Or just the usual majority oppressing minority situation.
 
How about this, Private enterprises are allowed, but if the workers decide to sieze them, the former owners have recourse to nothing beyond fair monetary compensation, the state won't force the workers to relinquish control
 
Poptart Prodigy said:
Hey, folks. I'm putting together a massive post in the text box in mobile right now, so I can't post this myself. Thanks to whoever picked it up for me! The gist: enough. The discussion is escalating to incivility. Calm it down, please.
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Sourced from the discord
 
Miner238 said:
I keep seeing underlying hints of it in the conversation so it's just my observation, but it seems some people are going for freedom of religion but the dominance of one deal. Secularism doesn't mean shit when the majority of the people in charge are of the same religion allowing them to shape policy to better suit their religion rather than others. Or just the usual majority oppressing minority situation.
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Okay but the thing about religious freedom is that the people benefiting most from it are the ones in minority religions, because the majority religion have the informal protections that come from being the majority. Your proposal to give the government power to regulate religions means that members of the large Catholic population that get into government have more opportunities to screw over non-Catholic religions.
 
Aranfan said:
2. So what. The emancipation proclamation was the largest uncompensated expropriation of private property in USA history. And it was a good thing. Private property is important yes, but it is one right among many, not the be all and end all. There are sound moral reasons to do this, which have been put forth in the thread already.
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The difference is that slavery is a violation of basic human rights while employment in a social democracy is... not. Never thought I'd have to say that.
Flectarn said:
How about this, Private enterprises are allowed, but if the workers decide to sieze them, the former owners have recourse to nothing beyond fair monetary compensation, the state won't force the workers to relinquish control
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If the owners of private businesses aren't protected from arbitraty seizure of their property, they're not going to want to invest in it.
Flectarn said:
said every landlord ever
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Lets try to keep the discussion limited to things that are actually relevant to the quest. The one thing I imagine Chicago has in abundance is housing.
 
rikalous said:
Okay but the thing about religious freedom is that the people benefiting most from it are the ones in minority religions, because the majority religion have the informal protections that come from being the majority. Your proposal to give the government power to regulate religions means that members of the large Catholic population that get into government have more opportunities to screw over non-Catholic religions.
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The state religion plan works best when everyone is being screwed over equally. If not then its pretty much useless.
 
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