The trend of politics in CN is that movement occurs multilaterally; WoTC, Karma, the World Wars, Unjust war, you name it, they all were effected on the coalition level. Thus, an approach to politics with a unilateral focus, such as the historical trend of signing non-chaining treaties with "friends", and not judging the political implications of "their friends", runs counter to the way politics actually occur. This carries with it the threat of having one's interests marginalized and one's movement paralyzed. If you aren't connected to the multilateral organizations purposefully and congruently you are left on the side lines, your ties become strained, or you end up being used in someone else's schemes.
Nothing is more indicative of the broken nature of our treaty structure than seeing alliances and blocs fight on both sides of a global conflict, or some alliances failing to enter altogether in the name of 'non-chaining'. So many alliances conduct their affairs with a unilateral yet mandatory approach that when the big multilateral organizations stir the whole system contradicts itself and you end up with many FA causalities as alliances process the new information and reform their ties with a mind to avoid a similar occurrence, using the same approach as before. We find many alliances rinsing and repeating after finding themselves the latest victim of political reality.
This historical trend of signing with 'friends' irregardless of their place on the web is the biggest threat that competitive balance faces today.
Politics relates to how power is used. Power is the ability to affect outcomes. Now more than ever, due to the diffusion of power amongst individual actors, alliances find themselves impotent to effect global outcomes. Movement, in terms of using the "declare war" and "spy" buttons, is paralyzed unless you target the unaligned, which in turn effects the character of the assault and limits the occurrence of competitive war.
This paralysis makes perfect sense when you consider the multilateral nature of politics contrasted to the unilateral approach of most alliances. The unilateral approach dictates that one is the center of one's treaty web. 'Z' alliance treaties alliance 'A', 'B', and 'C' (and usually many more), and their influence is diffused 3x. 'A' treaties 'D' & 'E', 'B' treaties 'F' & 'G', and 'C' treaties 'H' & 'K', further diluting the influence of treaty partner 'Z'. 'Z' wants little to do with 'H' or 'G', nor do 'A' 'B' or 'C' want much to do with each other, and so on. By its very nature the unilateral approach ignores other actors; they have tied themselves tight, purposefully ignorant of outside forces.
Historical analysis shows that multilateral organizations find these unilateral spheres to be easy prey. There tends to be some germ which sprouts a multilateral movement. The germ focuses intent and propels multilateral cooperation until critical mass is reached and the unilateral bystanders are caught up in its wake. An alliance either surfs the wave, wipes out in a mess, or breaks away from the mass and finds itself alone and adrift. Whatever course an alliance follows one thing is clear, the mandatory ties binding alliances unilaterally to the mass are strained and leveraged against its will because the alliance didn't connect itself purposefully and congruently to a multilateral organization.
Competitiveness refers to freedom of movement. Balance implies stability. Stability in this case refers to equality of opportunity. Equality of opportunity can only occur when all parties are fully conscious of their place in the social network we call CN. Competitive balance is then the conscious freedom of movement for each nation within the social network. Ignoring your friend's friends is to purposefully remain unconscious of your place in the social network, to purposefully (though granted unwillingly) decrease your own competitiveness. Maintaining only a small, elite, base of movers that act multilaterally creates imbalance; there are those few puppet masters, and a multitude of puppets.
The community has seen leadership on this front. From Xiphosis choosing congruency over convenience in the GOONS cancellation, Umbrella consolidating their sphere into PB through countless hours of diplomat work, Mushroom Kingdom cancelling all their treaties and marking out a path free of contradiction, or even the most current statement from Bob Janova regarding the future direction of Grämlins FA:
The way forward is clear thanks to those examples and many others. Diplomatic work is much more than answering the question "Do I like these guys", it is "Do I like these guys, and their friends". Each alliance is a synthesis of their friends, of all the forces tugging at their interests, you either accept them holistically and make room for them in your agenda, or you turn the blind eye via a non-chaining pact and get swept up in the inevitable tide.
I've always enjoyed the morality debate to an extent, so here is my attempt to chime in.
Morality identifies transcendent qualities for appropriate interaction; it recognizes a system wide connection with proscribed purpose and intention. Morality in RL fails as a transcendent concept simply by nature of unique consciousness vs. universal unconsciousness; “I” is by nature separated from “It”, and any transcendent purpose and intention is hidden within the universal unconscious, if indeed it is there at all. We cannot currently know of the meta-system of which we are a small part of due to the limitations of our science.
On Bob this conflict takes on an entirely different nature. There is a clearly identifiable architect (admin) and as such an accessible universal unconscious (the game's code) and a clearly definable purpose and intention (the game's limits, i.e. rules and defined limitations to movement). We can know clearly of the meta-system that makes up this game. “I” can know “It” intimately.
This clear merger of “I” and “It” means that we can determine what is “moral” in terms of game play, what pattern of clicking our mouse or keyboard will provide us with ‘absolute profit’. However, we do not play in a vacuum, and as such the relationship between “I” and “It” covers only part of the behavioral spectrum; there is still the consciousness of “We” and “You”.
“We”, and “You” are meaningless outside of social complexity, and it is through understanding social complexity combined with a correct knowledge of the game that we can find an objective morality for our community.
Social complexity implies the blending of the consciousness’s “I”, “We”, and “You”. This blending is heavily influenced by system. As I said, we can know the system of Bob on a different level than we can the Universe, as I’m pretty sure Hawking is still working on his Theory of Everything. But what allows us to blend “I”, “We”, and “You” you ask? It is that we share in the human condition. We are only different in degree, not type. Our brains and bodies are structured in the same way and produce roughly the same hormones and whatever else physiologically makes us tick. This means we can rationally determine correct social behavior based on empathy, or the ability to feel and experience what another feels and experiences. When you combine rationally derived correct social interaction with awareness of the purpose, intent, and function of the world, you arrive at an objective morality. This is what we have here on Bob.
So what is this morality? Ultimately and broadly it is framed by three levels of interactions: “I” and “It”, or building your nation, “I” and “We”, or interacting in a win-win game with other players, and “I” or “We” and “You”, or interacting in a win-lose game with other players. If you lack an understanding of the game’s core features (what I’ve been describing as “it”) you will build a crappy nation, and if you do merge with other players and they don’t understand the game you will build a crappy alliance, and if you enter into a conflict with someone who does have that knowledge, you get destroyed. You are doing it wrong. So that relationship is fundamental.
I find that while understanding the game is fundamental, it is understanding the nature of the “I” and “We” and the “I” or “We” and “You” relationships that is pivotal. “I” and “We” pretty much comprises the highest level of social complexity that this game has to offer; without the community this game is nothing. On the macro level “I” needs “You” to become “We”. On the micro-level however we are driven by win-lose games. The ranking system drives the micro win-lose level, “I” will have more or less NS than “you”, and “I” will compete against “you” to get ahead. However, the micro-level competition needs to be reined in by the macro-level sense of community. This is due to the need to preserve an environment where those micro-level win-lose games can occur. If “I” were to follow out the drive to gain security and self-replication ad nauseam with no higher order function to rein in “I” the game would eventually reach an end, and this game is not that sort of game by its nature. By its nature following out the drive for security and replication to its logical conclusion is immoral.
-E
Was is active; either hot or cold, direct or indirect. I'm going to focus on direct war today. It connects individuals and groups in a struggle for dominance, whether in a wide or narrow window. War is the key transaction around which our system of politics is built, due to its disproportional influence on NS.
Direct war is one of five transactions for connecting our nations. They are War, Trade, Aid, Spy, and Make Donation. Aid, trade, and donations are all conducive to the accumulation of NS; War and Spy are aversive. Pragmatically then, the more efficient we are with our slot usage the closer we get to absolute profit. These five transactions bind us to each other; efficiency in the social network translates to efficiency in slot usage.
In terms of my previous entry, the games' many transactions represent the different "I", "We", and "You" consciousness. "I" manage all the isolated transactions like taxes, bills, and so on. "We" trade, send aid, and exchange donations. "You" war and spy against "I" or "We". War is a base level interaction, an "I" or "We" vs "You" interaction, and a natural product of our rank system and the game mechanics. This "I" or "We" vs "You" interaction is one of the most profound interactions offered in the game, but its logic shouldn't be the most dominant. War should be governed by the morality of "We". "We" allows for a conducive environment where all three interactions can take place; War, or the "I" and "We" vs "You" interaction, can destroy this environment if unchecked by the morality of "We". The needed dominance of the morality of "We" over War has several implications for the morality of any given war. To understand these implications we will need to explore the universal human experience regarding our motivations and goals for war, and then contrast those motivations and goals against the morality of "We". (I may or may not have missed some stuff, feel free and let me know).
Motivations for War:
Greed
Removing a threat
Stoping unwanted behavior
Negative emotional attatchment, or the "I don't like you" logic
Boredom
Power
Goals for War:
Profiting
Removing enough relative NS to satisfy initial motivation (perhaps range specific)
Setting a condition which will precipitate future aggression
Reaching a point of control over future behaviors
Gaining supiority/presitige through victory
Entertainment
The morality of "We" is simply my nerdy way for describing our community holistically. We are all part of one big system. This system is defined by its rules and design. To state it simply, this game isn't designed with a specific end game in mind, or at least I don't see one. Instead we have something more akin to a sports' association. At the base level you have competitive win/lose interactions, or what I refer to as "I" or "We" vs "You". However, the base level realizes that there is value to be found in continuing those competitions and so they band together to create an association, or what I refer to as "We", or the complete system wide merger of "I" and "You". This is the win/win game that each participant plays. This association then serves to keep the base 'win/lose' interactions in check, so that those interactions don't end up destroying a part of the community and undermining the entire system as a result. It keeps the system from cutting off its nose to spite its face. Cyber Nations is a similar type of system.
So the morality of "We" boils down to not destroying other players to the point of undermining the entire system. We have seen the negative impact of this from such wars as the NPO/FAN war, and such practices as PZI/EZI. Each war will have a unique perspective on the abstract motivations and goals that I listed, but each war and its leaders should keep in mind their foremost responsibility, that being the well being of the community at large. Xiph once mentioned that the forces charged with preserving our community, the forces that make up our "CN Association" if you will, are embodied by Admin and his Moderators. I don't agree. Those charged with preserving our community are those very same people that we choose to lead.
