Oolite Bulletins

Selezen wrote:

Disembodied wrote:

I think this is maybe a misconception about the term "Anarchy". This is an external designation, and all it really means is "no overall central authority".

That's only half right - the dictionary definition of anarchy is "A state of disorder due to absence or nonrecognition of authority". Having no central authority is not anarchy but is often the precursor to anarchy. The recent fall of some regimes has caused a measure of anarchy in those countries until a central government has been reinstated or created, but not all the time. The state of anarchy can come dependent on what the populace decides to do when the controlling authority is no longer present.

Terrorism and anarchy can quickly replace ANY form of government if it falls or is pulled down.

But that's the dictionary definition for here on Earth (and there's also definition 2. "Absence of government and absolute freedom of the individual, regarded as a political ideal"). I would argue though that the Co-operative's Register of Worlds uses its own definitions: as far as it is concerned, if there's no central authority to represent the planet in the Co-operative, it's an "Anarchy". The definitions used must be very, very broad - that's how they can fit what must be a vast multiplicity of different political organisations under just eight headings.

Some "Anarchy" worlds will probably be violent places, with roving war-bands preying on each other - or even, depending on the species, a collection of lone individuals who come together only very infrequently, to mate. Like tigers, perhaps - as dangerous to each other as they are to other animals. But others could be wonderful places, with peaceful, enlightened individuals free to do as they please.

I think a better clue as to how dangerous a planet is would be the phrase "civil war" in the planet description (although even that could be misleading, depending on the planet's culture: a "formal war", for example, might be entirely voluntary, fought under strict rules and within absolute boundaries). You could have a planet like, say, Enonla, in Galaxy 1:

Enonla
Radius 3427 km.
Corporate State, Poor Ind. Pop. 5.8 B, Prod. 40832 MCr. TL: 13, Human Colonials.
Enonla is ravaged by dreadful civil war.

Enonla is a Corporate State: the planet is represented within the Co-operative by the Boards of Enonla's governing corporations. It's pretty high-tech, too, with a large population. Yet, oddly, it's listed as "Poor Industrial": I suspect that's because of the "dreadful civil war". Probably the corporations and their mercenaries only actually control a fraction of the planet: most of it is out of their hands. Large swathes of territory will be held by one or other of the many rebel groups fighting against corporate rule: other parts will be fought over again and again, as first one faction, then another, briefly gains an upper hand.

No doubt the corporations, desperate to cling to power, use their status as the Co-op-recognised government as a diplomatic weapon. Doubtless, too, they're keen to keep the spacelanes open, to ensure access to a vital supply line. So they keep paying for the Viper patrols, and up above the atmosphere, things are pretty peaceful. But underneath the clouds, for most of the planetary population, Enonla is an Anarchy of the first, worst sort: "A state of disorder due to absence or nonrecognition of authority". As far as the Register is concerned, though, Enonla is a Corporate State. They don't care what it's actually like, on the ground.

Disembodied wrote:

I think a better clue as to how dangerous a planet is would be the phrase "civil war" in the planet description (although even that could be misleading, depending on the planet's culture: a "formal war", for example, might be entirely voluntary, fought under strict rules and within absolute boundaries).

I completely agree with this. I've been working on some background information for the "Old Worlds" that originally formed the core of GalCop and Riedquat falls nicely into that exact category, even having some expansion of the concept in Frontier's gazetteer.

It's true that in my personal impression of the Elite Universe GalCop has no influence on the governance of a planet outside the supply of resources and goods but the same need not be true the other way round - as seen in the games Anarchy systems are unsafe to fly about it and Corporate States are safe zones for traders. This must mean that there are some elements of the planet's politico-social structure that influences the space lanes. As I noted before the relative lawfulness of the trading would decrease with the political instability of the planet as more profit could be found by unscrupulous individuals trading in guns and drugs for the war. I think the real impact would be the economic state of the planet - anarchic worlds would likely have no centralised banking structure and thus far less global trade and industry with which to pay for the services that GalCop are selling. No money = no police.

Your point about the broader definitions of "anarchy" is a very very good one, and one that I do indeed agree with, but I do prefer the broader scope of the definition I quoted earlier, in that the anarchic state is more an indication of the nature of the populace than the consequence of just missing a government.

The civil war issue is an interesting one. We class civil war as wars within countries. Broader definitions would be needed for a stellar society, and civil war could mean war within nations, continents or even worlds if the government is a completely centralised one. Civil war in an anarchy could mean war between countries (Scotland vs England?) whilst civil war in a corporate state could mean a political or superiority war between two megacorporations!

When you look at the combinations of government type and planet description, coupled with the tech level, a rather diverse universe starts to appear. Procedurally generated politics!

Elite and Oolite can still amaze 30 years down the line.

Selezen wrote:

Your point about the broader definitions of "anarchy" is a very very good one, and one that I do indeed agree with, but I do prefer the broader scope of the definition I quoted earlier, in that the anarchic state is more an indication of the nature of the populace than the consequence of just missing a government.

I think the principal issue with all these definitions is to remember that the Co-operative Register of Worlds is always written from an external point of view: it reflects what offworlders think the situation is, from their offworld perspective. It doesn't matter what the inhabitants might be thinking, on the ground.

Even definitions like "civil war" are external: it means "people from the same planet fighting each other", just as today we use "civil war" to mean "people from (what we view as) the same country fighting each other". Externally, we tend to see all countries as discrete bodies - although they often cut across older political, ethnic and cultural divisions. Like e.g. if Florence was to attack Venice now, that would be a "civil war"; if they did it pre- the unification of Italy, it would just be "war" (or "business as usual", for any scholar of Renaissance Italy ). If war did break out between Scotland and England, would that be "civil war" because both countries are part of the UK? Would that mean that if France and Germany went to war, that would be a "civil war", because both countries are members of the EU? These kinds of definitions are usually pretty arbitrary, especially when they're made from an external perspective. The Register of Worlds, for starship pilots anyway, is, I think, only really interested in what the situation is like in the spacelanes.

Selezen wrote:

When you look at the combinations of government type and planet description, coupled with the tech level, a rather diverse universe starts to appear. Procedurally generated politics!

Elite and Oolite can still amaze 30 years down the line.

It is indeed amazing how easy it is to rationalise these things, grown from a tiny mathematical seed ...

Disembodied wrote:

... if Florence was to attack Venice now, that would be a "civil war"; if they did it pre- the unification of Italy, it would just be "war" (or "business as usual", for any scholar of Renaissance Italy)

<chortles>

Disembodied wrote:

I think the principal issue with all these definitions is to remember that the Co-operative Register of Worlds is always written from an external point of view: it reflects what offworlders think the situation is, from their offworld perspective. It doesn't matter what the inhabitants might be thinking, on the ground.

So you feel that GalCop as a power is one that would not communicate with or closely observe the inhabitants of a world before classifying it? It's an interesting theory and actually does hold water the more you think about it. Why else would "The planet Zaonce is a tedious place" be a permitted description of the planet without throwing all those human colonists into a fit of pique? Unless they all read it and thought "Meh, fair enough. It's a cold, barren rock with some big glass domes on it."

I do think that in the case of most worlds GalCop would care enough about the membership of that world to at least consult with them to find out what they would like written about them.

Selezen wrote:

Why else would "The planet Zaonce is a tedious place" be a permitted description of the planet without throwing all those human colonists into a fit of pique?

If you consider how many of the other descriptions generally involve things which are really dangerous - killer wildlife, civil wars, natural disasters, lethal beverages, etc. - or could lead to embarrassing or worse cultural misunderstandings - silliness, shyness, mating traditions, loathing of sit coms, sporting obsessions - then there's probably a good proportion of the galaxy which might long for the day when their world can be reclassified as "dull" or "tedious".

The descriptions on F7 are clearly written by and for the benefit of interstellar travellers (and as such, trimmed down to the smallest possible size, to increase the chance of people actually reading them). "There is nothing special you need do before coming to this world to protect your safety, and the culture, while different to your own, is reasonably navigable by outsiders" is probably a major tourist attraction.

Diplomatic (or at least xenobiological) training would have to be supplied as part of any pilot/trader/ship person's training though, and should at least head off some of the inherent problems with so short a description for each planet. For example, the manual describes how humans need to mask their smells so as not to offend felines. And the Dark Wheel points out the differences between Thargoids and Oresrians that can fend off a small civil war in your face. So there are many nuances to the diplomacy of Elite that just can't be found in the Planet Information screen!

Again, more reason for the constant interest in Elite - so much imagination fodder.

Selezen wrote:

So you feel that GalCop as a power is one that would not communicate with or closely observe the inhabitants of a world before classifying it? It's an interesting theory and actually does hold water the more you think about it. Why else would "The planet Zaonce is a tedious place" be a permitted description of the planet without throwing all those human colonists into a fit of pique? Unless they all read it and thought "Meh, fair enough. It's a cold, barren rock with some big glass domes on it."

I do think that in the case of most worlds GalCop would care enough about the membership of that world to at least consult with them to find out what they would like written about them.

I think, personally, that the Co-operative exists in roughly the same way as the United Nations exists, but with added distance - physical, political and psychological. It's possible on Earth to talk about "human rights", and still trample all over long-established cultural sensitivities and practices (mostly, in my personal opinion, pretty repellent cultural sensitivities and practices, but that's another story). But to try to create some agency which can comfortably accommodate hundreds of different planetary cultures (not to mention thousands of sub-cultures) and species will require a very, very long arms-length principle indeed. A huge number of the Co-operative's population might not even know that the Co-operative exists. For many more, if they've heard of it, it's remote, and has nothing to do with their daily lives. They're citizens of the Co-operative in the same sense that we're citizens of the UN.

As far as we can see, the Co-operative is about mutual agreements on interplanetary trade, with a bit of collective defence against the Thargoids - although it's possible that latter is handled at a more exclusive "security council" level, made up of the richer and more high-tech planets. There are doubtless other factions within the Co-operative, based on political, economic, technological, regional, religious/philosophical, cultural and possibly even phenotypical grounds, and likely there are other divisions as well. Then there will be campaigning groups, opposing slavery, for example, or seeking to further restrict traffic in weapons, or in livestock. There will be lobbyists promoting slavery, or asteroid mining, or planetary mining, or eating sentient species, or genetic manipulation to produce underclasses or overclasses; and so on. Possibly a phrase used by pro-Co-operative commentators to describe this situation would be "dynamic tension"; more cynical reporters might speak of "inertia" or "stagnation".

Selezen wrote:

Diplomatic (or at least xenobiological) training would have to be supplied as part of any pilot/trader/ship person's training though.

Well, probably not "have to" - if you're just planning to do in-system flights, or hang around your local cluster, then you can get away without it - but certainly the more reputable flight trainers are going to spend some time on it. With two thousand worlds and between 8 and a thousand species (depending on how you count) most of this training is probably going to be "how to look things up", though.

Disembodied wrote:

Selezen wrote:

When you look at the combinations of government type and planet description, coupled with the tech level, a rather diverse universe starts to appear. Procedurally generated politics!

Elite and Oolite can still amaze 30 years down the line.

It is indeed amazing how easy it is to rationalise these things, grown from a tiny mathematical seed ...

Or to try to see patterns where there are none, as there seems almost no signs of a multi-system empire anywhere. Almost no 2 neighboring systems are similar in terms of species, gov type, etc.

Switeck wrote:

Or to try to see patterns where there are none, as there seems almost no signs of a multi-system empire anywhere. Almost no 2 neighboring systems are similar in terms of species, gov type, etc.

Ah, but there's more than one way to have an empire: a Corporate State, say, might exercise control over a couple of nearby star systems via colonial administrators with dictatorial powers. The governed don't have to enjoy the same privileges (or even be the same species) as the governors.

As I said - imagination fodder.

cim wrote:

Selezen wrote:

That's only half right - the dictionary definition of anarchy is "A state of disorder due to absence or nonrecognition of authority".

Well, a definition of. OED gives:
"Absence of government; a state of lawlessness due to the absence or inefficiency of the supreme power; political disorder." but also "A theoretical social state in which there is no governing person or body of persons, but each individual has absolute liberty (without implication of disorder).".

With almost 300 systems classified as Anarchy across the 8 charts, there's probably room for plenty of both sorts.

The word "Anarchy" comes from the ancient Greek word anarchia. An, "not, without" + arkhos, "ruler", meaning "absence of a leader", "without rulers".

It is a political ideal just like (true) communisim and utopia (loosely translated as no-place).

Speaking as a committed anarchist myself, I must say how refreshing it is to see the concept being discussed rationally, and without influence from the misinformation, propaganda and disinformation usually levelled against us..

Carry on, gentlemen..

Tricky wrote:

The word "Anarchy" comes from the ancient Greek word anarchia. An, "not, without" + arkhos, "ruler", meaning "absence of a leader", "without rulers".

It is a political ideal just like (true) communisim and utopia (loosely translated as no-place).

You see, one just would not get this sort of conversation on a Call of Duty bulletin board...