| Slare (Golden Rainbow) | Sunday, January 11, 2009 - 05:58 pm 
FarmerBob and I got off on a tangent in another thread recently, decided it might be interesting to expand the discussion a little bit here.
First I am not going to claim to be a expert on Morganthau, and after some quick reading I do think I probably did miss his point a bit in the other thread. More on that later...
I tend to be more interested in geopolitics more than political theory itself...where a country's national interest is largely determined by its geography. Access to seaports, trade routes, resources, and natural barriers for defense are all major reasons why countries act as they do toward one another in the real world.
For example....Russia has always had issues getting access to warm water seaports with access to the entire world. Thus its trade was largely controlled and restricted by its neighbors. To rectify this, its expanded to the Pacific, it fought The Great Northern War with Sweden so it could build the port of St Petersburg, and it has constantly meddled in the affairs of the balkans and has had its eye on Istanbul for centuries.
Additionally, it has no natural barriers except one....gigantic size. It has been invaded time and time again, mostly from the west. Solution? Buffer states in eastern Europe to take the brunt of any invasion. Thus we get the iron curtain, and the Warsaw Pact.
At this time we see Russia flexing its muscles in a slightly different way, but for the same reasons....cutting off gas supplies to Europe via Ukraine. This has very little to do with gas theft or non payment for product, and everything to do with reminding Ukraine and Europe that NATO's eastward expansion may not be in their best interests after all. It certainly isn't in Russia's interest...suddenly a potentially hostile alliance could be on its border once again, with no natural defense to invasion, and no buffer states.
In SC, none of this happens. Every country is essentially the same as every other. Resources exist everywhere. Barriers to entry in the market are tiny. Trade routes are a non-issue. Seaports are a non-issue. Hell, navies can sail on land even, so natural barriers are a total joke.
So I guess we come to political theory. Morgenthau may well be saying that National Interest=Power over others for its own sake. Feel free to educate me on this, cuz I certainly could be wrong.
IMHO, power isn't an end, its the means needed to protect the nation and to ensure that the National Interest (as defined by geopolitics) is fulfilled.
In the case of SC, with its lack of geopolitical national interests, power is the means to feed the player's ego. I am pretty sure that's *not* what Morgenthau had in mind.
Regards |
| The Grand Poobah | Sunday, January 11, 2009 - 08:56 pm
I have seen various actions and fabrications that lead to war. in RL and SC.
I have always thought that SC could be used as a template for a study on Human nature.
If you notice- some players build power and use it as a tool for control.
Some build power and use it as a tool of education.
Some players build power and don't give a rat's back end about anything.
Such is our basic sociology. |
| Alexander Platypus (Little Upsilon) | Monday, January 12, 2009 - 12:51 am
i agree Slare. people are just talking about "realpolitick" to try to aggrandize this silly online game in their own minds. it has zip to do with it. this game is obviously not like real life.... real life has SO MANY MORE variables. |
| The Grand Poobah (Golden Rainbow) | Monday, January 12, 2009 - 01:20 am
But you can see basic human traits exemplified through the game. You can compare some reasonings behind wars (especially the peace process) to RL. |
| FarmerBob (Little Upsilon) | Monday, January 12, 2009 - 02:14 am
I agree, Autia. While SC is certainly more simplistic, some of the dynamics relate to the real world.
Aproaching the relationships among players from the perspectives of schools of thought in the studies of international relations, is not entirely useless.
Thomas Hobbes defined the basic political motivation in humans as a struggle for dominance over others. Leviathan was a call to sovereigns to place a check upon the appetites of the people to do harm to each other.
The debates that have raged among scholars who attempt to define and explain the relations between nations have applications to SC.
Many of the factors in the cause of real wars, of course, do not exist in SC. Some do. Robert Ardrey, a noted behavioralist, argued that humans satisfied their needs for identity, security, and a release from boredom by engaging in war. See The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Inquiry into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations.
Economic Imperialism is a popular explanation for causes of war with both publics and many academics. Sound arguments are made for this explanation for warfare in both Richard Lewisohn's The Profits of War through the Ages and Lionel Robbins' The Economic Causes of War. Though rare today, SC rule changes, at times, made the raiding of other players' countries quite profitable. Hence, the Swag IS Good crowd.
The real world causes of war are varied and complex, and have varied throughout our history. However, since human activity and minds are at the center of both game and history, a comparison of the two is certainly valid, if for no other reason than evaluating how well SC manages to reproduce real world factors. |
| AFChairman David Walker (Golden Rainbow) | Monday, January 12, 2009 - 02:35 am
Most people have are biased to some degree before asessing the facts. It's after the facts are presented, can one assess those facts and then present a purely rational and prudent approach to the benfefit of all people.
Of all people? It depends who you're trying to satisfy and what you want to try to achieve.
Many countries have behind-the-scenes diplomatic workings like the UK who achieve much of their objectives out of pulic view or media attention.
Russia is flexing its muscles at a time when it knows it is rising in fortune and the West is suffering, and the new shape of the 21st century will begin to emerge. This will allow them to place themselves in a strong place for the new shape.
I can't blame them, we have done the same many times over around the world.
In biased reporting, I hear Eastern Europe was cut off from gas yet you hear no mention of Ukraine's homes cut off from gas, but they deny stealing any. So how are they getting any when they're 100% reliant on Russian imports?
If Russia is a strong unified country, it will be better for the world. They have already cracked down on the super-rich and nationalised important interests. The West could learn a lot of lessons.
Also, if we have less resources, we must learn to live with those on a local level to be truly long-term sustainable. Debt and aimed-for-dominance will be the downfall of Western capitalism as we know it.
National interest + power = perverse actions = world we have to day.
We need to question ALL facts (including the obvious) to ascertain the situation and really form an objective opinion. Surely, the next is to form a consensus. When does the West do that?
The US clearly showed it's national interest (Jewish financiers aka Syndenburg Syndicate)when being the only 1 of the Security Council of the UN to abstain on a motion asking for a ceasefire. Don't they want a ceasefire? They said they are concerned about and are waiting re. the terms and the Egyptian involvement.
The West would have been better not involving itself in the spread of communism and allowing a new country on top of another in the Middle East. The world would be a much happier, peaceful and more productive place. Instead of bombs we could be saving the world and its species instead of killing many today. |
| FarmerBob (Little Upsilon) | Monday, January 12, 2009 - 02:41 am
And thank you David for the Idealist School perspective with credits to Bertrand Russell. |
| AFChairman David Walker (Golden Rainbow) | Monday, January 12, 2009 - 02:42 am
Just to say I'm a local communist. Please, if anyone wishes to oppose, please check some information on the internet or dictionary about what I refer, and not some dictatorial regime presumption. I also have been working on plans to prove this is possible of a mass scale to show that happiness can prevail above wealth. Surely, that's what we're lacking when the US (West) is claim to lead in moral leadership? Is the West afraid to admit the rich would have to lose their wealth for all the people to gain true happiness, freedom and genuine democracy? |
| FarmerBob (Little Upsilon) | Monday, January 12, 2009 - 02:51 am
Lol David. I won't accept that challenge. The fallacies of Marx and Engels, Lenin, and crowd have been thoroughly demonstrated by history far better than any arguments of mine.
Communism is a lovely proposition that only ignores most of the historically demonstrated realities of human nature.
However, the intended purpose of this thread is comparison of SC to RW. |
| AFChairman David Walker (Golden Rainbow) | Monday, January 12, 2009 - 03:03 am
Some aspects of this game I would manage the same in real life but others wouldn't recognise what I would do in RL.
I believe assets in RL are theft of hard work of people, but in the game I'm happy to exploit my workers and simply adopt the most successful strategy to long-term survival in the game. 6 years notched up so far.
Players will have many political opinions yet will act in a way of their own morailty. Hiding people's religion and background etc. is fantastic as there becomes little prejudice with the exception of clumsy or dodgey posts.
The game is after all a virutal world with people's own actions, hints of morality and own educational understanding. |
| The Grand Poobah | Monday, January 12, 2009 - 03:26 am
"I believe assets in RL are theft of hard work of people, but in the game I'm happy to exploit my workers and simply adopt the most successful strategy to long-term survival in the game."-DW
I too share this view. I will throw away the lives of millions of my citizens to win a war of ego, but only in SC. My citizens are merely numbers to me. Maybe, this is the reason why corruption and politics have ALWAYS run hand in hand.
Wether it's depotism, totalitarianism, communism, capitalism or socialism, corruption is born from disconnected political bodies. Leaders who feel no more connection to their people then I have with my SC people.
Point being- We are all numbers untill our Finance index (annual income in RL) is big enough to make us important. |
| Alexander Platypus (Little Upsilon) | Monday, January 12, 2009 - 04:29 am
i think we can admit there is a certain group of political biases that went into the making of this game.... a lot of the ways to succeed in this game are really not at all the ways to succeed in governing a real life country. |
| Zetetic Elench dam Kahveh (Golden Rainbow) | Monday, January 12, 2009 - 10:12 am
DW:Is the West afraid to admit the rich would have to lose their wealth for all the people to gain true happiness, freedom and genuine democracy?
Unfortunately, I don't believe removing the incentive to accumulate wealth would be a good idea. I have more than my fair share of criticisms of capitalism (particularly the minimal regulation espoused by Bush and Brown that has contributed to our current crisis), but it remains a very effective system for rewarding productivity and hard work. If assets are the theft of hard working people, what incentives would your system provide for people to work hard?
Better to reform the current system to regulate the excesses out of the market and encourage corporate responsibility regarding the welfare of their workforce and the environment. |
| Tattooed Priest | Monday, January 12, 2009 - 06:54 pm
Quote:In SC, none of this happens. Every country is essentially the same as every other. Resources exist everywhere. Barriers to entry in the market are tiny. Trade routes are a non-issue. Seaports are a non-issue. Hell, navies can sail on land even, so natural barriers are a total joke.
At least W3C are planning to add natural resources to each of the countries in varying amounts and types in order to cause some countries to be more desirable and useful than others.
They also recently stated that military blockades will be added that will block a countries Navy from leaving its country.
While an online game will never be completely like real life, I think that SimCountry has made strides to replicate many of its aspects.
SimCountry is quite fun to me, I couldn't be happier with a game. I just love the building involved. The building of countries, empires, friendships, federations, militaries, economies, etc. |
| Slare (Golden Rainbow) | Tuesday, January 13, 2009 - 02:02 am
Oh, I enjoy this game a lot too, and I am actually really looking forward the the unequal distribution of resources and such. I don't mind war games, but in this game there really isn't much of substance to fight over...which is why I think SC war is currently a battle of Egos.
Egos surely have caused wars in real life too (especially further back in our history), but far less than in SC.
David....I am afraid I have bad news for you....as long as there is a scarcity of resources, there will be conflicts, and there will be winners and losers. If I had a majic wand and could suddenly make everyone in the world equal in terms of available resources, we'd STILL have wars and misery.
Somebody somewhere, give the same resources as everyone else, is going to do better with those resources than the other guys in some way, and suddenly the resource imbalance is back. Resource imbalance leads to conflict - someone else is going to have the desire and ability to take those resources away. Its not too many steps from there and that you have a world of nation-states, rich and poor all over again.
The reason the world is the way it is is because of resource imbalance and human nature. I think the latter can only be reigned in so much....the latter we *might* be able to minimize with technology, but it will never be eliminated.
One of my favorite books is Guns, Germs, and Steel my Jared Diamond. It attempts to explain why Europe "won" the struggle for world domination. It starts from the premise that all cultures in antiquity had essentially the same potential to thrive - no culture was inherently better than the others. Given that all early cultures were equal, why did some fail and others thrive?
To boil it down to simple terms, geography and the Earth's unequal distribution of resources favored Europe over the rest of the world. |
| The Grand Poobah (Golden Rainbow) | Tuesday, January 13, 2009 - 01:24 pm
"If I had a majic wand and could suddenly make everyone in the world equal in terms of available resources, we'd STILL have wars and misery."
Maybe we can never find peace because people like you say things like that. You must never give up hope for something better. If you except it as an inevitability, you have already lost. That's like not even bringing your cleats to the football game because your expecting a loss.
"To boil it down to simple terms, geography and the Earth's unequal distribution of resources favored Europe over the rest of the world."
North America is one of the most resourcefull lands. Hence, America's stunning manufacturing compassity during WWII.
Europe has a lot of resources. But, not enough gas. /see Gazprom scandal
/my spin
I'll tell you why some societies thrive and other fail. INTERNAL AFFAIRS!
"A house divided against itself cannot stand"- Lincoln
That's why Rome fell. That's why every major empire has fallen.
As a society ages, it's flaws become increasingly transparent. This leads to implosion.
Thus is the way of civilization.
Like a living creature- age is the greatest enemy of an empire.
Unless you're Egypt 
Poobah
P.S. I've seen this happen to large feds in SC.
Even Virtual reality cannot escape reality. |
| Tattooed Priest | Tuesday, January 13, 2009 - 02:23 pm
"A house divided cannot stand"- Christ |
| Slare (Golden Rainbow) | Tuesday, January 13, 2009 - 10:02 pm
Poobah:
Well, as I said, there are ways to help mitigate the problems we face, and hopefully such options will continue to grow in number in the future.
But eliminate entirely? You'd have to eliminate that which makes people human. Sure, you can lobotomize everyone and stop conflict that way, but I can't say as that peaceful world would be preferable to our conflicted world. |
| Stuart Taylor (Little Upsilon) | Tuesday, January 13, 2009 - 10:05 pm
So basically what your all saying is that in the real world, rulers of countries don't threaten to nike each other every 5 minutes? Seriously? I think we should get Obama, Brown and co. on here to show them how politics should work..... |
| Slare (Golden Rainbow) | Tuesday, January 13, 2009 - 10:33 pm
Poobah 2:
Internal affairs did indeed have something to do with Europe's rise to power. But *why* were they better organized? What if Europe's superior Internal Affairs was nothing more than the end result of its geography? That's what the book argues.
Think bigger. Not small scale like like a particular empire, but on a continental scale, and start about 15000 years ago at the dawn of human civilization. Note that all the great early civilizations sprang up mostly independently in Eurasia - the Nile, Mesopotamia, Indus, Yang-Tse. You don't hear much about the Mississippi, the Amazon, or anything substantial in Australia until thousands of years later. This predates any sort of internal affairs superiority....so why did it happen?
When the Europeans landed in the new world, why was it that the natives died by the millions of Europeans diseases, but there existed essentially no native diseases to harm the Eurpoeans? Again, nothing to do with internal affairs, and everything to do with geography and its effects on human development.
Read the book....agree or not, its quite a fascinating read. It argues that from day one, due almost entirely to geography, Europe was extremely heavily favored to dominate the world. The deck was essentially stacked in its favor. |
| The Grand Poobah (Golden Rainbow) | Tuesday, January 13, 2009 - 10:56 pm
Slare-
In the Mississippi region there was a HUGE advanced native empire that had imploded upon itself before the explorers arrived. The Mississippi actually gets it's name from this tribe. Through out South America you find such advanced civilizations as the Mayans, Aztecs and Incas. Having learned about these empires, it was mainly internal affairs that allowed their fall. The Conqistadors had something to do with it, but a corrupt and aging society fell from the inside.
The Natives had less than half the diseases that the Europeans had. They also lived healthier. The Natives practiced FAR superior hygiene than the Europeans. Which, in itself, will do wonders against disease.
Europe still stands, but it could have fallen dozens of times. From the Plague to Napolean. From the Mongols to Hitler. From Rome to Dark Ages.
As you can see, most of these problems are internal.
To tell you the truth, people don't know half of what has happened on the North American Continent. The Natives didn't use papers, charts Etc. |
| Slare | Wednesday, January 14, 2009 - 01:27 am
You are still looking at things in a very narrow range. European empires came and went...but "Europe" never fell. It was never colonized by people from outside of Eurasia: the Chinese, the subcontinent, Australia, Africans, or the Americas.
Diamond argues that Eurasian civilization is not so much a product of ingenuity, but of opportunity and necessity. That is, civilization is not created out of sheer will or intelligence, but is the result of a chain of developments, each made possible by certain preconditions.
In our earliest societies humans lived as hunter-gatherers. The first step towards civilization is the move from hunter-gatherer to agriculture with the domestication and farming of wild crops and animals. Agricultural production leads to food surpluses and this in turn supports sedentary societies, rapid population growth, and specialization of labor. Large societies tend to develop ruling classes and supporting bureaucracies, which leads in turn to the organization of empires.
Although agriculture arose in several parts of the world, Eurasia gained an early advantage due to the availability of suitable plant and animal species for domestication. In particular, the Middle East had by far the best collection of plants and animals suitable for domestication - barley, two varieties of wheat and three protein-rich pulses for food; flax for textiles; goats, sheep and cattle provided meat, leather, glue (by boiling the hooves and bones) and, in the case of sheep, wool. As early Middle Eastern civilizations began to trade, they found additional useful animals in adjacent territories, most notably horses and donkeys for use in transport. In contrast, Native American farmers had to struggle to develop maize as a useful food from its probable wild ancestor, teosinte. Eurasia as a whole domesticated 13 species of large animals (over 100lb / 44kg); South America just one (counting the llama and alpaca as breeds within the same species); the rest of the world none at all.
And once you have animals and agriculture and cities, the germs have ample vectors to spread to everyone, to which eventually resistance is developed - an "advantage" the native americans did not have (I use the term advantage very broadly here! An invasion would probably be the ONLY time widespread disease is an advantage)
It would have been nearly impossible for native Americans or Australian Aborigines to conquer the world. They had almost none of the geographic prerequisites necessary to do so. Not because they as a people were in any way inferior to other peoples.
It would have been possible if unlikely for the Chinese or Muslims to do so....they had everything they needed to do so. The problem was....they HAD everything they needed. They didn't need an oversea Empire.
Only Europe had the necessary prerequisites and the NEED to have an oversea empire. Thus they conquered the globe.
Its an interesting theory at least. I personally think it has a lot of merit. After all, many people have a belief that all people are created equally. If this is so, there is no reason why one group would have had such an outsized impact on the globe in comparison to all the others - unless there were outside factors that gave them advantages. |
| The Grand Poobah (Golden Rainbow) | Thursday, January 15, 2009 - 04:25 pm
1st- great post slare. You have any anthrolopological schooling?
2nd- I wonder is SC will ever experience the inevetable crash that a monatary system will experience? |
| Slare (Golden Rainbow) | Thursday, January 15, 2009 - 09:06 pm
Would you be disappointed if I mentioned I copped half of that from Wikipedia? I tried writing it all myself, but it wasn't particularly intelligible when I got done! So I gave up and used the mighty copy/paste feature to assist me.
Actually, no anthropological training...a former chemist working in IT these days. Who also got a history minor in college 'cuz I really enjoy this sort of thing. The history thing sort of morphed into a hobby of keeping up with modern geopolitics.
Guns, Germs, and Steel is right up my alley, a cross between ancient history, science, and geopolitics. Its not a hard read either, I'd highly recommend it for anyone interested in one or more of those subjects. |
| The Grand Poobah | Thursday, January 15, 2009 - 11:32 pm
I wonder is SC will ever experience the inevetable crash that a monatary system will experience? |
