Consular wrote:Solorni wrote:Silitone is correct! If you'd like to read about the type of democracies that Balder is based on and how democracy works, you could read about highly ranked democracies in real life that have monarchies such as Norway (#1), Sweden (#3) & Denmark (#5) that are also Scandinavian. This is above republics that are considered flawed democracies such as the United States (#T21) or Italy (#T21).
On the topic of Hobbes, the Political Science course I was actually taking at the time studied Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes & Locke. In some ways, the position could be considered as a "Philosopher Queen" or a "Leviathan" especially because in the latter it is avoiding the chaotic state of nature. But if I recall correctly the leviathan limited personal freedom, whereas I agree much more with Locke that the idea of a state should primarily be able to protect property rights, contracts and preventing individuals from inflicting violence on each other.
Yes those are lovely words you're putting down there but we're not talking about IRL nations, Solorni. We're talking about Balder. "But Balder is based on my favourite real life democracies!!" is not an answer to "When was your last election?". Does always dodging the actual question with pseudo-academic political babbling ever get exhausting?
Anyway -- what you're saying with that wall of irrelevance is you're unelected, right? That's what you're saying. You're a dictator.
Oh, unfortunately discussing Locke et al is not pseudo-academical! You can actually read their books if you'd like; York University actually has a PDF of
Two Treaties of Government. Also, let's be honest... a lot of features of NS regions are based upon RL nations. If you think about it, we actually replicate real life nation concepts even when it does not fully make sense. The whole concept of elected legislatures, monarchies, presidents, constitutions, many cabinet positions and much more are all based on real life far more than a concept that was developed to govern regions. That is, we imitate real life for the sake of it than to develop systems 100% to deal with NS problems efficiently.
Thus, I think it is perfectly valid to compare Balder to real life nations since this is where 90% of a region is actually based on rather than in game. I'd recommend researching what concepts like "dictator" or "autocracy" are, since it is very clear that either you do not understand what they mean or are purposefully misusing them. The separation of power and a system of checks and balances are important features in both real life democracies and in Balder as well as other democracies in the game. By that very definition of separating power and having checks and balances, Balder is inherently not a dictatorship nor an autocracy.
In fact, the power of the Balder monarchy and in particular the conventions I am bound to are stricter than say HEM's in Europeia when he was the Supreme Chancellor. I have not served in the legislature or the cabinet or as statsminister since becoming monarch. My proposals for changes for the region, such as directly electing the Statsminister or having a two house Storting where the new house would be for regional WAs are not approved of by the regional populace as a whole and the government. This is the antitheses of dictatorship or autocracy. It
would be like calling the Queen of England a dictator and similarly it would make as little sense in real life.
You might call what you do not understand "pseudo-academic", but I do feel like these concepts are applicable to the game and one of the most academic things one can do is to take concepts and ideas from one field and apply them to other fields. It is what makes for example the study of history when you apply economic ideas and theories to it, quite special. Or when you apply the close reading you learned in University English to History. Or when you take the concept of logic and apply it to other fields. This concept of applying Locke's ideas is a very old one for me and I do greatly believe in it. When you look at how destructive purges can be or when leaders are too heavy handed, the damage that can be done... it is something I never wanted for Balder.
Particularly back in the beginning of my current term, I was happy with how former elected delegates were not purged or pushed out with the exception of one who couped. That has not been the case in all Game Created Regions. Similarly, the concepts of the Locke and Constant came out of a recognition about the mistakes made during the English Civil War, the French Revolution while still preserving the liberty that they espoused. In fact, it was different from Hobbes since Hobbes lived through the English Civil War similar to how Machievelli had lived through a very violent part of Italian history and their solutions were much more heavy handed.
I was always cognizant of that and the political environment that Balder grew up was very violent for GCRs and often quite horrifying for communities that had been effected by that. Especially since in one of my previous UCRs, when the founder couped... a lot of my friends from that community never came back to the game. Even if they tried, they just couldn't get back into it. So as corny as it sounds, it was important for me to try to create this balance where you could have a region without purges while still being democratic and it just seemed to make so much sense to approach it from a Locke sort of perspective.
Obviously it is not always perfect but a lot of it reflects my own style of being a consensus builder and trying to build solutions that work for as many people as possible. But that in many ways is the nature of democracy and trying to build an active and stable sinker with a vibrant and healthy community. It's boring but I've always been into boring stuff and I get that it's not for everyone. But hopefully this clears stuff up for you. I'd really recommend checking out some of Locke's works and reading about the Glorious Revolution.