La Marx

While Sir Pwnage makes his case well for making INT the best military power that it can be, I have already made it clear that my thesis does not concern military effectiveness or even military aas. My claim is for communist aas true to that word, not militarist Stalinist banana republics run by emotionally unstable pixelophiles.

All of which was arranged by INT's double agent. If you read the logs Hereno posted, you will see that, as my adviser, there is nowhere where he categorically states that what I am doing will lead to my complete destruction. Where does say there will be reprisals, it is in the unstated context of trying to find an exit where there won't be. And if you read the logs he didn't post, his logs with Baron Terror, you will see that he was scheming to allow for my maximum destruction, deliberately asking and prodding me to a certain position. That is the whole nature of Hereno's betrayal. If you even want to talk about any of thisproperly, it has to be in the context of the entrapment arranged between Baron Terror and Hereno. Did I want revenge on INT? Yes. Did I plot with the advice of Hereno to steal aid? Yes. But that was entirely Baron Terror and co's plan, it just worked better than expected because I was happy to put aside the risk of being called "traitor" to sate my lust for vengeance on the clique who expelled me. [OOC: Where the logs are supposedly "incriminating" etc, or where i reveal a sufficient self-consciousness to make my claims dubious, they are simply OOC.] My nation has already sustained, due to my own self-mutilation, more than 20 m loss in infra. The most INT can do is raid my small bit of tech and cash. Implementing my policies in INT would not have damaged INT, it would've damaged soultaker's pride alone. There will be no revolution in digiteria until there is a revolution in INT first.

The policy is pure Stalinism. 1. Yes I did steal aid, per Hereno's rubber stamping. 2. Since when is lying to NoR a crime? At any rate, I told nothing false to them. 3. I didn't "try to undermine the gov." That was a slanderous accusation leveled against me by you based on the fascist equivocation of my motion to recall craig as "underming the gov." I said that I would recall them if I could and that I would run for Trecom. This is all within the democratic norms of INT. There was scheming with NoR. I've seen all your logs too. No he did not inform me I was being a moron, nor would I call the alliance/coalition "anti-stupid." It's this sort of crude cheapness that you hand doll out liberally and arrogantly that brings the credibility of the entire aa down, besides your narrow and undemocratic construal of the constitution, and your haranguing me bitterly and ridiculously over my proposals on the OWF. Why do you think I wanted to run for Trecom? My proposals in the OWF were just generalities, it was your ridiculous bitterness and pettiness that gave me the idea of implementing them in INT just to test how far you would go - basically open conspiring with enemies of INT against me - to remove me.

It's still there. No reply. As for whether I committed "treason" or not, who cares. The bourgeois norms of bob were not exactly ever formulated for anything but complete slaves. When you have been persecuted and oppressed, treason is logically a rational response. Anyone who is actually a communist knows this. I don't think there are any communists in INT, just posturing, and "war time now so we can't propose a motion that might recall our gensec!" Yeah, well hang the Gensec and send his family to the gulag if he isn't following the constitution, even IF they wrote it. Its power doesn't come from the author, but those who agree with it. Hereno double-crossed me and advised and guided me in my treason too, which I wouldn't have been able to do without his advise and guidance. Because I came to him in a quandary and he promised "to handle it". So Hereno, working with the people in INT who are against my ideas and my radical style, not only laid a trap for me, but actively advised me on how to walk into the trap. Hereno assured me that INT couldn't hit me if I followed his advice to the letter, which was all backwards advice and involved me just putting myself in the most vulnerable position possible so that the people in INT against me could attack me and shout "See! Traitor!" etc, and then have these inane orgies of self-congratulation and "We were right all along" - and the more irritating and patronizing - "If you stayed and learned the ways of bob, you would not be in this predicament, young padawan." I have been on bob longer than my nation. NoR and INT coming together - that is my biggest triumph. There's nothing I could say against INT more than this.

Speak for yourself.

This is a good analysis. I would like to think of this as the ultimate evolution of Gerontocracy. The Gerontocrats now do not need alliances to control the rest of bob who cannot ever threaten them. Through their sheer material power they can demand and shape the world without any politics.

I'm not sure many will either, INT gov is in the hands of reactionary scum allied with the major bourgeois powers.

The Indignados hereby declare their existence. We are a small alliance founded on the principles of communism, democracy, egalitarianism, and cooperative trade and tech relations with capitalist bourgeois powers. We were formed when La Marx, founder of the Indignados, left The International after a campaign of intimidation, persecution, harassment and an attempt to vote to expel him from the alliance for proposing a democratic measure for the recall of Comrade Craig for constitutional irregularity. A number of other false allegations - such as attempt to weaken The International through discussing alternative tech relations, "Disloyalty", and slander of the alliance and its GOV (for pointing out the constitutional irregularity under Article 5 Subsection 6) were laid at the door of La Marx by an anti-La Marx coalition led by soultaker and Baron Terror. La Marx's "desertion", as INT have later reformulated La Marx's response to their proposal of expulsion, was orchestrated however by a double agent of INT's working within NSO, Hereno, who betrayed La Marx who had trusted him as a comrade and a friend able to help him when he found no friends in his own alliance. Hereno tricked La Marx into thinking that it was possible to leave an aa during war without repercussions - that that was normal - and that a surrendered nation would be protected by the coalition to which it surrendered. While Hereno assured La Marx of all these things and told him he was orchestrating La Marx's peaceful transition into another alliance based on Hereno's upstanding international diplomacy and reputation, he actually plotted with Baron Terror and others within INT in the Anti-La Marx coalition to have La Marx attacked and encouraged and entrapped La Marx and have sought to use this retroactively as "justification" of the expulsion proposal they themselves proposed. While this was going on, INT and Hereno were scheming with NoR and informing neutrals in order to enforce a ZI order and zero sanctuary for La Marx. La Marx is still being attacked by INT. Comrade Trotsky of INT discovered these intrigues and reprimanded his fellow comrades soundly. Trotsky gave La Marx the opportunity to address his accusers in INT. Indignant at these humiliations and the conspiracy against him, La Marx demanded 100million in reparations from these conspirators - including soultaker, Baron Terror, Azreal, and another. Although one or more comrades appeared supportive of this measure, the anti-La Marx coalition responded triumphantly and with paternalism that they rejected this "noob's" demands, and having the majority of experience and government on their side, reaffirmed his ZI, his retroactive expulsion, and so on. It is out of the indignity of these goings-on that the Indignados was formed, to resist against and reject the culture of humiliation, indignity, enslavement that penetrates into the hearts of so many alliances and which seeks to ruin anyone who challenges it or wishes to have no part of it. The Indignados are currently seeking a protectorate to negotiate reparations from INT and restore La Marx's nation to its former place of security and wealth; a protectorate to work with us in protecting all alleged "deserters" and giving them shelter. The indignados is an alliance of and for the oppressed, the humiliated, the exploited, the ostracised, and the marginalised of all bob, we who fight for our dignity and right of recognition in a world structured to please a self-serving elite. Signed: La Marx, Secretary of the Presidium of the Indignados, Unofficial spokeperson for the General Union of Tech Sellers.

(And this is an IC forum.) I disagree with that claim too. I never naively equated the Gerontocracy with tech buyers. I have tried to stress that it is rather a system, which is constituted by a range of classes of tech buyers. Whilst tech sellers constitute a fluid and upwardly mobile class(and there is much complexity here too, because as they move up, the Gerontocracy scales upward too) that doesn't negate their exploitation and oppression. As for whether any of the dates and lengths of time suggested are reasonable and fair, well, I would probably disagree.

Yes I have. But I have not implemented any of these ideas yet. That's true. But I have applied to join WTF. La Marx

INT endorsement of communism is dubious.

I La Marx, hereby officially surrender to NoR. I am in the GATO POW until a NoR POW is created.

No I'm sorry but I am more interested in developing my thesis and replying to critics of it who address its claims rather more theoretically. Your own practical suggestion - the project of alliance building - for me remains stuck within the ideology of Gerontocracy. It does not effectively challenge it. I am operating in a theoretical manner against this ideology, and the hermeneutic and methodological tools of marxism - just as deep in ideology as any other system of thought and not any "more ideological" as the term is popularly used - in order to critique this system. So that's all I really care about at this stage. The general Union of tech sellers is just an experiment (and not operational at the moment - so still only a theoretical one), but a more radical one than your idea of syndicalism, because it naturally involves cross-alliance federation, a direct political challenge to the alliance-structures that sustain Gerontocracy. That said, as a project of alliance building, your syndicate does sound interesting. But for me it is an interesting co-option. It is ultimately not disruptive or counter-hegemonic enough. Really it becomes nothing more than a guild who specialises in being exploited by tech buyers. Do you honestly think your proposal challenges the Gerontocratic system? (And maybe you don't even admit this theoretical thing called Gerontocracy, so we have to grapple with the theory first!) Your version of syndicalism to me is just an accommodation to the Gerontocracy, a sort of false-medium of "syndicalism" that is really only a more effective form of exploiting sellers permanently. So I repudiate that alternative altogether. I am unsure of practical solutions at this stage. I think it is better to just clearly formulate a critique of the Gerontocracy. It clearly cannot be militarily opposed in any fashion. I find the syndicalist route basically a dead-end too. Also though we disagree - ideologically, practically, methodologically, hermeneutically, etc. - I appreciate your willingness to reply. But I don't feel it grapples with the ideas I have put forward in my thesis other than a sort of bland handwaving about "ideology" and marxism. Ideology is inescapable. The less obvious the ideology, the more powerfully it functions. In digiteria the most powerful ideology is clearly the Gerontocratic, which most people do not even admit "exists."

If buyers (Gerontocrats) were not moved to take action against the union, it would confute my entire thesis of Gerontocracy as an effective power structure. The most strongly worded (standard alliance politics) objections raised against my thesis comes from my good comrades in The International, CN's leading communist alliance. They have argued - successfully I believe - that a strong top/upper tier - a Gerontocratic Elite - is necessary for the alliance. This is because the strength of the Gerontocratic layer is decisive during war. Thus it is a priority for younger nations to sustain this elite as they are protected by it, rebuilt by it after war, and so on. Furthermore, in order to be successful at all in alliance wars (and here there is little room for argument it seems), the current exploitative regime must be maintained, otherwise The International will lose its ability to effectively compete during war with the uppers tiers, great treasure chests and repositories of wealth, tech, etc. that must be destroyed or attacked in wars in order to be victorious over other alliances, otherwise their continuance will maintain the lower-tier you are fighting against. My answer to this may seem quite radically pacificist to my comrades. I answer them that the International would be better served, in the interest of Communism, to stay out of the inane bourgeois power struggles of the World Gerontocracy and to cultivate an egalitarian society that is, like GPA etc. neutral, or rather, positively disengaged from all the idiocy of the Gerontocratic power struggle. As I have demonstrated above, such power can never be possessed, it will only possess those who strive after it - like Tolkien's magical Ring. Thus the argument against collective action for a reduction in exploitative and reform of the the tech market is "NO! You can't reform the tech market! Because reforming the tech market will harm ability of the Gerontocratic system to wage countless and endless wars against each other." Wars which are, like the genteel wars of the 18C before Napoleon, managed and directed by a small elite, and dependent upon the sacrifice, humiliation and exploitation of the masses. The attitude identified here is thus the fallacy of alliancism, which goes against a truly internationalist attitude to digiteria.

Ten thousand philosophers descended on the great Juhuntuhunyafuhyuh in the Republic today to discuss the oppression liquifying and engulfying all the nations of digiteria. Enrobed in purple and gold sacks made out of discarded lottery tickets, the proceeding were begun by the solemnest of those ancients there, a certain Professor Gope. "There is oppression upon us", he said, hollowing out that silent auditorium with the metallic strains of his voice. The crowd was silent. Another voice rang out from the silence, "And what is to be done, Professor - I mean Comrade - Gope?" The Professor was vexed and said nothing. Suddenly the entire auditorium erupted in violence. Philosophers began assaulting each other, declaiming violently while choking and stabbing each other with various writing instruments, yelling out premises, screaming their logic into the vapours as they inferred and deduced spectres of reason which pierced the veil of irrationality with the horror of irrefutable calm. Professor Gope watched over them from the safety of his impregnable podium, surveying the crowd with fourteen species of grimace and a penetrating eye. At last they all lay massacred at his feet, the bodies of ten thousand philosophes sprawled across the floor in patterns of slaughter and gore that the Professor had long ago deduced in the quiet omniscience of his study. He let out a long sigh and descended his podium, holding firm in his hand a small knife to deal with any zombies, walking toward the light that beckoned and radiated nobly at the portal of this den of unpredictable homicide. His form moved swiftly over the mountains of philosophical gore, negotiating the corpses with the well trained and executed movements of a logician and a companion of tight-ropers. As his form found the portal, his gaze pressed itself against the light, and renewed by the power of Helios, he looked back and took in the horror, smiling, and walked out, grasping in his hand the knife, which he plunged into his heart. The streets of the Republic were quiet that day. The birds and children gathered around him, asking him questions which he answered with silence and the wisdom of death. Finally he returned home, bleeding profusely but smiling all the while. He turned on the television and began to watch, his gaze intense, deep, unbelievable. And it struck him at once, all of a sudden, without reason, and with irrefutable calm, that it was his birthday. "Happy birthday", he said to himself, as he laughed vigorously, weeping and chuckling and dancing around the room. The laughter and the merriment filled his head and filled the room in which he was watching television, it filled the hallways and the streets outside of the house in which the room in which he was watching television was, it filled the auditorium where the ten thousand philosophers lay and it filled the empty corners of space and time until suddenly the Philosopher exploded into a rainbow of laughter and set the whole world on fire and rained death, horror and hilarity in all directions. And finally at that moment he died wholly, his soul leaving the body for the higher realms, the ethereal and vague element uncogitated or known by the great and solemn philosophers. His ashes are held in a tomb in the palace of proletarian sciences in the capital of the Republic, marked simply with a single letter "Z."

I will address here a number of claims that have been brought up in regard to my thesis, often in the guise of a total refutation. Many of these counterarguments and counterclaims do not appreciate the complexity we find associated with these problems, or the normative nature of this undertaking, or, more significantly, the normative form and contents of their own claims which are rather bluntly undertaking to disarm the criticisms of gerontocracy with the weapons and arguments of Gerontocracy. Here are some forms I identify: #1 the posture of the experienced elder of digiteria, who does not in anyway admit that his position of privilege gives rise to his or her defence of privilege, who makes the hackneyed declaraton of "seen it all before" etc., and thereby, with this claim, equates my thesis with many other theses and discourses "already seen before", and with a tired sigh, waves the hand of dismissal. #2 the posture of the counter-analyst, who isolates a few factors germane to one of the schemes suggested as solutions to the problem of World Gerontocracy, and declares that this factor is absolutely decisive in defusing the ticking time bomb of the revenge of the exploited classes. The main problem with the analyst's position is that she or he makes normative claims poing as statements about matters of fact. I decry this practice of making value-claims as if they were objective and factual assertions about the coordinates of the real state of digiteria. There is, in fact, no approachable real as such, only the universalisable perspective of the exploited, the slave class, and the particular and privileged perspectives of the Gerontocrats. And now the claims: While raw tech does not equal power, my thesis does put things in such a crude mathematical form. The undeniable Truth is that tech is the base (but the base is not ONLY tech), i.e. tech is one of the handful of key elements in the base of all power, it is economic capital, one of the most expensive and significant forms of economic capital, and unlike infrastructure, is, for economic reasons, dependent on a market, and the exchange value of tech. All power rests on this material basis. To deny the materiality of power and what it rests on is sheer lunacy, the idealism that can only be achieved by the privileged Gerontocrat who cannot understand how the tech slaves of the world think, perceive and understand the charnell house of Gerontocracy. The question of what power is by itself, or in itself, power qua power, is a metaphysical question that does not bear much on my thesis, but I will address the question in a more concrete form below. Presuming you are a person in a position of high power within the World Gerontocracy, your assertion that your power is a product of "something other than buy[ing] and sell[ing] stuff" is interesting in view of its clearly perspectival particularity, which leads to some other remarks on particularity. As a matter of fact: political power rests on a huge economic edifice of buying and selling, of collecting taxes, and in fact those in power - yourself - under the Gerontocracy are merely a product of the cogs of its inhuman machine. Your particular dispositions may have greased the wheels a little, but that is not so much a product of your particularity as of your particularity's conformity to the nature and demands of the reproduction of the system. You fit its bill. It doesn't fit your bill. In a more thereotical sense: you have conformed as closely as possible to the laws and norms of the Gerontocratic system, so that, your entire "success" - the obtainment of power within this system - relies absolutely on your being an empty category of its laws, a tabula rasa on which is inscribed the system's demands, a completely apolitical receptacle of power which is not a hinderance to the reproduction of the system, but an agent of that reproduction. This is the agency of emptiness which demonstrates the nihilism of the Gerontocratic system. I observe that agents have allowed the system to make liberal use of themselves -sacrificing all their freedom to it, in order to be granted the slave's privileges of power within it. In this sense, even the Gerontocrats are to some extent, slaves themselves, but slaves well-rewarded and indifferent and exploitative. Should a Gerontocrat like yourself choose, at some point, to try to change this system in any particular way, to introduce yourself as a particularity, an agent against this system, then "your" power will be for the first time truly tested. The lesson then will be simple: power qua power, in its universality and infinity, cannot be "possessed" or "owned" by a particularity, it belongs to the whole. And here of course one can say: the Gerontocratic system requires a managerial class - who ensure that exploitation is unimpeded, that the Gerontocratic structures of power are not challenged. Very simple. That - "ability to influence and control" is not the cause of power, but only a symptom of it, in the marxian terminology and structuralology deployed. As I have shown, it rests on a material basis, the base of power is in this completely virtual material space - tech, infra, wonders, all forms of capital, including money, which is capital in its most abstract form, if not capital qua capital. To deny the very strong parallel between age and size is not altogether a denial without some credence to it. My thesis only proposed this correlation as a general truth, not an absolute truth. The exceptions here "weakly" prove (i.e. test) the rule, but not in my view in any way to void the legitimacy of what is formulated as Gerontocracy - and obviously at a level of generality that is open to small bands of empirical skirmishers. The critics of this thesis betray themselves as a - more cynical than naive - group just as "self-serving" as they would paint my thesis and my motives, which is, indeed, a very unwarranted and conspiratorial criticism, that I think rather uncharitably refuses to take seriously the claims made therein. But the supporters - of which there are a growing but quiet minority - of my thesis are thankful and glad that not all critics lower themselves to the obscene level of hypocrisy demonstrated here. There is nothing to be gained from this sort of criticism except tit for tat. La Marx

While true that there are many complexities in the cause of equality and the struggle against gerontocracy, more than hitherto realised, apart from concerted efforts in the tech market, I cannot yet identify any alternative for smaller nations as a way out of the exploitation and oppression guaranteed under the status quo. The raising of tech prices is only one scale here - lowering them is another, and all as part of an active and co-operative politicisation of the tech market. The absence of politics identified in my thesis is premised on pure parapolitics: the depoliticisation of every sphere, the policing of the world by different sets of Gerontocratic gangs, and the illusion of politics produced by a world-treaty system, regular announcements and so on, which create zero political change for the exploited and the oppressed, and zero changes are imagined under this sytem. The Gerontocratic Leviathan is sustained by an ideology that assures us there are no possible or practicable changes, that the mechanics of the world, its laws, inhibit any possible alternatives - that people are acting in a necessary manner. This is the lie of Gerontocracy. Only by exposing this lie can any nation, buyer or seller, be allowed to posit the question of its own freedom in the Gerontocratic world system - the beginning. Therefore the critics of world gerontocracy repeat this Truth which will set us free: the scheme of raising prices is not impossible. The idea that it is impossible is a product of the daily murder of the imagination produced by the system Gerontocracy which crushes all thought under the steamroller of repression, alluded to above in the remark about insubordination. An alternative: raising prices may be made out selectively in order to reduce the power of the Gerontocrats. This is just one way of politicising tech selling. Of course there would be a reaction from many gerontocrats against this scheme, possibly including repression, but that is because politicising is the arch-enemy of policing, the maintenance of the status-quo. Tech sellers must demand their full democratic rights to set whatever price they deem acceptable. The alternative, direct price fixing by gerontocrats and repression for insubordination, will only expose the hypocrisy of those who maintain that the current system is not slavery. The reliance of all established nations on the tech sellers gives them what is perhaps the greatest unrealised political power in the game, and yet they have no political representation, are misled by the different ideologies of nationalism, alliancism, and so on, which mystify their own interests. The interests of tech sellers as a class, however fluid, is the greatest threat to World Gerontocracy.

That's true. But I see that more as one of the challenges of the struggle, rather than a complete game-ender. My analysis is that (1) alliances with lots of young nations that adopt more progressive pricing (12/100) will see a slower build-up of tech for the senior nations, but a quicker build-up of younger nations. (2) Alliances with less younger nations will have to buy from non-aa nations, and while it may seem better to exploit non-aa members as heavily as possible, non-aa sellers will not of course be willing to be exploited. So implementing less progressive pricing will be harder to do, presuming of course that tech sellers do start to raise their prices, organise into unions, making public petitions, shaming exploiters, attacking exploiters, and so on, which is something I would advise them to consider.

This is a pretty good analysis. My only criticism is that it doesn't realise how far this insight about leverage goes. "Market forces" are not moved by some invisible hand or collective unconscious. Leverage can be gained through conscious action that brings about a movement toward a new price consensus - e.g. 12/100. Unionising sellers, an organisational feat, is basically a voluntary effort whose results one can't determine. But there are more ways to change the price consensus than unions. Basically - politics - something rarely invoked here, could bring about a consensus. Invoking tech exploitation in the realm of military casus belli, making it a point of intra and inter-alliance politics, and so on. The limits of that strategy is that the holders of such power are tech buying gerontocrats, as my analysis shows. So I think tech sellers must rely on the tactic of raising consciousness, unionising, striking/boycotting, and/or attacking nations which sell at "scab" rates like 6/100 or 6/200, at which I currently sell. Although these things would need to be decided. I think that for the moment it would be worthwhile for those who agree that tech prices need to move toward 12/100 to start up a petition.

Many of the replies so far, and many more I imagine, will focus on the utilitarian point that even with the current exploitative regime of technology selling, some benefit exists to both parties. However, such a "benefit" and exploitation are not incommensurable: they are a product of the same. Keeping a woman or a man in a state where s/he is forced to sell her labour for a crust of bread - yes, that is exploitative, and yes, the crust is a benefit - but the overall scheme is what I am saying is not beneficial, just, right, fair, or good. And my point is this ethical or moralistic one. As for the dynamics of development that have led to the current situation of inequality and exploitation, well, yes, you may explain them as well, in great technocratic detail, but it is a naturalistic fallacy to argue that because the system is, that it ought to be. So, despite the fact that I claim my analysis of the factual situation to be correct, my critics should bear in mind that this is not so much an argument of facts as an argument of values, and they are gravely misled if they think that arguing, for instance, that buyers would never pay 12/100 (which is a gross exaggeration and a presumption) is a refutation. Were tech sellers to unite into a single organic whole across all political divisions and to refuse anything less than 12/100, then of course buyers would capitulate, even if some would not pay that, because for the majority even at 12/100 the use-value still would far exceed the exchange-value of 12/100.

By improving the material conditions of younger nations, it will give them greater chances of developing their nations in order for there to be reconfiguring of world politics. As I have demonstrated in my first post, the World Gerontocracy is sustained by the material basis of the greater development of older nations. There are other ways of opposing this gerontocratic structure than charging more for tech - such as charging less when selling to younger nations entering the mid-tier. And I am sure there are other material and non-material mechanisms too. Ending tech exploitation is just one obviously effective means.

The use of "deduce" there was in its standard ironic form "How'd you deduce that?", rather than any sort of pedantic go at smarmy logic-chopping. My point was more subtle: implicit in the political discussions on bob there is an assumption that there are no alternative political systems, that the status quo is eternal and natural. Yes, I agree completely with these, and consider them not a refutation but a supplement of my general thesis that age is the most significant determinant of economic strength, based on the temporal form of tax accumulation and the temporal limits on aid transactions. I think because of the clear power differentials between the two in the transaction, that one cannot speak of "consent", especially since there are no actual political alternatives available at the moment, apart from what I am proposing. With a lack of alternatives, if consent to the status quo is not given at the moment, one simply has to give up on the game. (Capitalism is a pyramid scheme.) Exploitation is not negated by ideas of "consent." Exploitation is a product of the contextual framework of that "consent." Under conditions where there were alternatives, consent to those tech deals would not be forthcoming. I amended my terms before I read your post from "profit" to "wage" in order to make my argument more cohesive with the rest of my terminological commitments. This is basically a misunderstanding of what surplus value is. The exchange value produced by the nation generating 100tech is, as I demonstrate, only 6million (or sometimes 3million), whereas the use-value to the nation buying it is often equivalent of 50 or many hundred million. I'm not saying exploitation is the only contributing factor to game stasis.

I don't know how you deduced that?

I don't really think, Commander shepard, (or depend on debating it) that negotiating with gerontocrats will work that well for the exploited, as you demonstrate. Direct action is needed I think.