Kuriko wrote:Also, meritocracy is not an ideology that needs to be espoused so hard. The idea behind meritocracy is that democracy is an inferior form of government, basically saying that at least 4 of the 9 GCRs are inferior to the rest.
Hello, awkward, but Kuri, girl, do not even get me started. I am so meritocracy strong at this point I'm practically my own sect of the idea. I've written essays. I've established it as a guiding principle in several regions. I'm for real about meritocracy. :p And what I would like to point out foremost is that a meritocracy is NOT a system of government. Meritocracy is a guiding social principle in a region, and while it is easiest to establish in an autocratic system because any autocrat any old day can just decide "we're meritocrats now" and that will be that, ease of establishment does not mean meritocracy is more successful in these kinds of regions. It only means that it is easy to change the culture of an Autocratic region from leader to leader. It is more difficult to change the culture of a democracy because more hands are involved, but establishing meritocracy always needs to heavily involve the community. The purpose of a Meritocracy is not to enforce a particular form of government, but to encourage the kind of community that purposefully and strategically invests in the success of its members. A meritocracy does not use its players to advance their region, it uses the region's resources to support its players. There's no reason at all that democratic regions could not build up their own population using the idea of meritocracy. To quote myself from another medium (which you can read here if you're really inclined to hear me out about Meritocracy rather than just going on assuming whatever you feel it's convenient for me to think):
...there is a misconception that democratically leaning governments cannot be meritocratic because elections mean that competency isn’t always guaranteed to win. Sometimes the popularity contest beats know-how. However, the ability to garner that kind of support is realistically it’s own brand of competence, and there is no reason that a group of people could not consistently elect meritable people. A community does what they think that they are “supposed” to and if it felt to them like they would be failing if they didn’t vote on merit, they would be more apt to think about these things. Is the idea of democracy to elect whoever has the most friends in a region? Of course not. Democracy ideally elects those who will do the best job and who have the best plan. That is meritocratic.
Meritocracy is not an endorsement for strictly autocratic forms of government. It's a ground up project to uplift your players, help them see their own visions come to life, and give them the skills they need to be successful in the game.
I'm not gonna like, jump in the middle of the fray here about any of this other stuff, but I do want to make it clear what I mean when I say meritocracy and that it is in no way meant to disenfranchise democratic governments. I believe all successful regions are at their heart meritocratic, because I don't believe they could be successful without investing in their players.