Pre-ChaNES: Into the Void

That is a matter for the future; at present most colonies can't really hope to make the latter a viable alternative. Later, though, I imagine that it would become an issue of primary importance.

OOC: Well, it is working towards the ideal of ethnically diverse colonies, as opposed to your ideal of ethnically streamed colonies with the option of becoming open and multiethnic.

As for the input of colonies- actually, remind me of that another time, I'm starting to get tired and having trouble thinking straight- or if you wish to make a predictable dig, starting to have even more trouble thinking straight.

OOC: That portends badly for you updating today, doesn't it?

Lord_Iggy said:

OOC: Well, it is working towards the ideal of ethnically diverse colonies, as opposed to your ideal of ethnically streamed colonies with the option of becoming open and multiethnic.

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OOC: "Them 'Liberals' (disgrace of the term!) are gonna tell you how to live your life! Gonna tell you need to see Dr. Smith ten miles away and can't see Dr. Jones just down the street because that's what your healthcare covers! Gonna tell you you gotta bus your kids halfway across the city to meet some quota! Gonna say you gotta pay for the braces of that brat Timmy across the street with your taxes! That sound right to you? Or you wanna live your life the way you think you should? Why you gonna let some bigwig hotshot way the hell off in the capital say your opinion don't matter and to shut up and do what they think is best?!"

I disagree. It's more that our society regards protection and respect of individual human rights and freedoms as its paramount concern. Yours, much like the PRC, regards social stability as the chief problem. It is not a disagreement on policy--it is a fundamental difference in character of the states.

P.S. Trisymmetric aliens are going to come get us now and it's all your fault. Admittedly, their technical name is "Intersolar Commonwealth" but I believe the stupidity of that has already been covered.

You know, after all this time, I still don't get why the US is in the Solar Fed. It gets nothing from participating except military obligations.

a_propagandist said:

You know, after all this time, I still don't get why the US is in the Solar Fed. It gets nothing from participating except military obligations.

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OOC: I had no idea a guaranteed Blue System and being a leader in the most powerful political entity in history was such a trifling thing. Guess me and flyingchicken are deluded, shackling ourselves to a bunch of weak countries. The one who has all the secondary benefits already is Russia.

Symphony D. said:

OOC: I had no idea a guaranteed Blue System and being a leader in the most powerful political entity in history was such a trifling thing. Guess me and flyingchicken are deluded, shackling ourselves to a bunch of weak countries. The one who has all the secondary benefits already is Russia.

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The US is what makes the Solar Fed "the most powerful political entity in history". The US going on a route of colonization by itself would probably get more than a single system. If the US had not joined the SF, it likely would have been able to take most of the currently SF-colonies for itself.

a_propagandist said:

The US is what makes the Solar Fed "the most powerful political entity in history". The US going on a route of colonization by itself would probably get more than a single system. If the US had not joined the SF, it likely would have been able to take most of the currently SF-colonies for itself.

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OOC: This isn't 2008. All that was needed to beat any given one of the previously existing superpowers in terms of output was contained in ASTRIS before the US showed up. I'm afraid your grasp out of the situation is sorely out of touch with reality if you believe the United States composes even a majority of the economic output of the SolFed. To wit, BRIC. You can bet the US's relative numbers will decline further than the 2050 projections given this happened in 2137 and all.

It doesn't matter anyway. Your supposition is built on an If. The United States didn't go on a colonization path and fell quite far behind. Why take on all the risk and development costs yourself when you can spread them around and reap the rewards of the labor of others? What you're advocating could be termed Iran Syndrome. Opposing the leading bloc is generally stupid and expensive--it's much easier to buddy up with them, let them take the flak, and gain all the benefits such partnership brings.

Things such as reduced military overhead relative to GDP, belonging to history's largest free trade zone (federally regulated interstate trade), technological benefits, and so on. The United States is a core component, but it's not the engine.

I would think of it as how the IC is looking for long-term peace and prosperity, rather than the immediate satisfaction of individual member states at the expense of long-term peace and stability.

Lord_Iggy said:

I would think of it as how the IC is looking for long-term peace and prosperity, rather than the immediate satisfaction of individual member states at the expense of long-term peace and stability.

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OOC: I'm curious how allowing the people in the colony to voice whatever opinion they choose somehow fulfills the objectives of their country of origin. Particularly when it might directly contradict the wishes of the country of origin. Please explain that one to me.

Look, your policy is to tell people they must be neighbors with other nationalities regardless of what they want. Ours gives them a choice. That's the bottom line. It's no different than if you mandated conscription and we had a volunteer force, or if you forbid abortion and we gave women the right to choose. You're saying the government knows best, and we say that citizens have the right to decide for themselves.

As a man far more eloquent than I, one Alexis de Tocqueville put it: "Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude."

Symphony D. said:

OOC: I'm curious how allowing the people in the colony to voice whatever opinion they choose somehow fulfills the objectives of their country of origin. Particularly when it might directly contradict the wishes of the country of origin. Please explain that one to me.

Look, your policy is to tell people they must be neighbors with other nationalities regardless of what they want. Ours gives them a choice. That's the bottom line. It's no different than if you mandated conscription and we had a volunteer force, or if you forbid abortion and we gave women the right to choose. You're saying the government knows best, and we say that citizens have the right to decide for themselves.

As a man far more eloquent than I, one Alexis de Tocqueville put it: "Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude."

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It's not "allowing the people in the colony to voice whatever opinion they choose" that drives the schism of belief. It's the idea that the initial waves of settlers are pre-determined and essentially limited to one country.

Let's take your "choice" examples and work with that. Suppose you colonize a country with mostly pro-lifers. Wait 20 years and give them a referendum deciding the legal status of abortion in the colony. How do you think they will vote? Replace pro-lifers with, say, Brazilians. You can have your referendums, but you have already stacked the results by following the nation-state concept and expanding that into the nation-system.

a_propagandist said:

Replace pro-lifers with, say, Brazilians.

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OOC: Makes sense aside from the fact that several nations, eg: Brazil, Russia, Australia, Canada, America, Indonesia, etc. have by this point in time highly diversified ethnic compositions and will probably think terribly little of continuing that policy.

As I said quite a long time ago, the notion that a homogeneous colony is automatically bad is pure supposition on the part of the EU, and the EU alone, and can be easily disproved with real world examples (Japan, Iceland, etc) which generally do not have a history of going around invading people for the hell of it under democratic systems. This is also setting aside the long-ago mentioned fact that invasion of other planets under such a streamed principle is effectively impossible. A fully mixed system actually promotes the idea.

It's also detrimental to preserving or respecting the identity of human cultures, and excuses this by simply saying that it will create new ones to replace them. Some people most likely do not think replacement is necessary. They should be afforded that choice. We are giving it to them.

You can say this is still stacked against mixed colonies, despite the fact all empirical evidence suggests it will probably wind up with a majority mixed distribution. However, I can just as easily turn your argument around and say that all mixed efforts will inherently prohibit direct colonization every bit as much as direct might inhibit mixed. To say either is to state the obvious. That one outcome or another will be favored is invariable. There is no system which does not carry intrinsic bias except to randomly select the designation of a colony, which would be highly authoritarian and nonsensical to boot.

The difference, once again, is that we are offering a choice, even if it is in circumstances that, when paired with certain groupings, make it unlikely for that choice to be selected. That remains more than ICom offers, which is no choice at all. When you can make an argument that I can't defeat by just repeating the same point over and over, you can try again.

The IC's goal is not enforced diversity in its systems- it is refusing to accept ethnic streaming in its systems. We do not force, as you implied, any sort of population movement.

OOC: There exist A and B. X uses A, with the option to convert to B. Y uses only B, and forbids A. Replace "A" with "Direct Streaming," "B" with "Mixed Colonization," "X" with "Solar Federation" and "Y" with "Interstellar Commonwealth".

Nice weasel-wording there at the end. I have never said anything about the method through which people arrive at the colony. What I have said is that once they're there, you force them to live with whoever else is there and become one big happy new society (not that that happens in reality anyway; Chinatowns, Little Odessas, Little Cubas, ad infinitum--people inherently like the familiar and on initial inspection dislike the unfamiliar). You can say it however you want--you don't give people choices to choose what type of colony they want. If they go, they are forced to live next to whoever. Some people don't like that idea, and you don't respect that notion.

That is the bottom line. I have repeated this now a good six times, and you have yet to do anything but throw up smoke and mirrors around it. I am not interested in hearing your propaganda. Save it for some stories or something.

OOC: Ah these sound like they will lead to interesting disputes, and stories. Thankfully I do not care about colonization, and likely will not for quite some time to come. Has made for interesting reading though.

I'm slightly curious then.
Are Israelis allowed to settle in anywhere other than Zion? Honest question because I had the impression people were only allowed to colonise their own nation's system under the SF system.
Also, my impression of the IC system was that colonists can settle wherever they want, it isn't enforced mixing. Rather, it is we-really-don't-care-what-nations-colonise-what-systems.

Just wanted to clarify.

BananaLee said:

Are Israelis allowed to settle in anywhere other than Zion? Honest question because I had the impression people were only allowed to colonise their own nation's system under the SF system.

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Symphony D. said:

[...] we've enacted the proposed legislation (colonial mandate) which you decided to ignore for years

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BananaLee said:

Also, my impression of the IC system was that colonists can settle wherever they want, it isn't enforced mixing. Rather, it is we-really-don't-care-what-nations-colonise-what-systems.

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OOC: "If you want to come to our system, you will live with these other people and play by our rules," is enforced mixing, on site. You can say that all the people who don't like that won't go in the first place, and that would be a valid argument.

However once again, for the seventh time, it means that people are being denied the right to modify or alter in any way the status or arrangement of their colonial setup. It is a "love it or leave it" system. There is no room of any sort for local government to in any way impact the decisions made by Brussels on the matter.

Some people are not interested in creating ethnically diverse societies. Some are. Both are forms of human expression. Neither impinges upon the rights of those living in the location (both may dissuade adherents of the other not to go). To deny one and not the other is an infringement upon the individual right to choose, and is discriminatory. You could argue that preventing a colony from adopting a particular form of government--let's say absolute monarchy--is similarly discriminatory, but in that case it may be argued that such a government will remove choice from the population, causing a negative impact. Given there is more than one colony, its selected colonization methods are not negatively impacting upon humanity as a whole, and it should be allowed the right to self-determination of its composition and make up. This is a fundamental question of (hypothesized) security vs. (actual) freedom.

A security question which is of no consequence for between 250 and 500 years, at the earliest, and one which is driven by the distant and ill-defined fear of evil, xenophobic ethnic space-empires (which will for some reason want to dominate wholly different populations across interstellar space). A fear which is far less realistic and immediate than the equally probable (and historically verifiable) one that mixed populations will undergo friction and break apart into opposing nation states if not managed carefully.

So ICom justifies denying people the right to self-expression because it is concerned about something which, failing massive advances in technology, only the great³ grandchildren of the current population might live to see. Here's another quote for you:

"Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power."
- Benjamin Franklin

OOC: actually, the way I read it, the EU (now IC) DOSE NOT enforce any policy regarding weather multiple culture groups colonize a planet or that a single culture colonizes a planet. the EU citizens that have chosen voluntarily to immigrate from all the nations of the EU and have chosen ON THEIR OWN to make the colonies multicultural.

the SF and ASTRIS on the other hand DID start out with such a policy in place, which the EU complained about. you changed it to entice the EU to join you, but they decided not to for whatever reasons.

The systems are Identical, or so nearly so to not make a difrence. their is nothing in the EU policy preventing a single cultural group from forming a colony solely for that cultural group. and with your change in policy as you pointed out, your system allows for a nation to chose the colony to be multi-cultural from the start if they wish.

Accept that the EU chose not to join the SF for other reasons, and drop this whole colony matter. your starting to repeat, and your argument has no foundation.

TerrisH said:

The systems are Identical, or so nearly so to not make a difrence.

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OOC: And that just goes to show you don't know what you're talking about. The IC does not permit any restrictions on colonial immigration. Whoever wants to go can, regardless of what the citizens in place want or think. The SF does, depending on what the citizens want. That's a very big difference.

Accept that the EU chose not to join the SF for other reasons, and drop this whole colony matter.

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This doubly proves you don't know what you're talking about. I'm saying that there isn't a moral leg to stand on for this position. I'm saying the idea of a different superpower bloc based around the idea of this position is at its heart intellectually bankrupt. I've said that the formation of a group for the purpose of endorsing it is foolhardy both IC and OOC.

You want some metagame discussion? Fine, here's something else I've said: were the aims of this IC successful, it would effectively destroy the limited chances of this game for producing "action" (since a lot of people seem to think the future is war, or something). I'm adamant about that because it's the same thing we (the SF) were wrongly accused of earlier. Rights-emphasis coalitions enable chaotic growth, security-emphasis coalitions disable it--and players inherently want opportunity and chaos. The SF is inherently uninterested in policing its colonies because it is self-absorbed. It is creating colonies as release valves and dropping money into them. When they become more trouble than they're worth, they get cut loose, because the SF can afford their loss. The IC and the PRC are centrally controlled entities that do police their colonies, cannot afford the loses, and as long as they exist and exercise that control, they will necessarily impede the independence of their colonies through in-character behavior.

You want this game to be maximally interesting when it "starts" as is the apparent desire of several players? Then both of them ultimately have to disappear, because they will not only restrict control of colonies, they will more highly restrict the nature of colonies, as is being done here.

If we really wanted to get the EU to join, we would just concede to Iggy's demands to do open colonization. And if we wanted to get the PRC in, we would simply relax our adamant stand on human rights. And then this game would be over, and we would have the United Federation of Planets by some other name.

In short no, I am not pissed that the EU didn't join. I am opposed to this concept both in character, and out of character, for a wide variety of fully justifiable reasons. I have simply chosen to explain myself. So you may kindly excuse yourself from this discussion, because you don't have a place or a reason to be in it if you can't recognize those very clear facts.

Sheesh, isn't this just ASTRIS and the EU operating under different names? The government structures have changed a bit, but the modus operandi are basically the same as before.