About NationStates & Do right Libertarians exist?

This discussion was moved from here.


NationStates is a nation simulation game. Create a nation according to your political ideals and care for its people. Or deliberately oppress them. It’s up to you.

Old web-based game but fun for a month or so :slight_smile: and its free as in beer. The book from the author is decent as well (Jennifer Government). Though nothing like the good dystopian crackers such as Snow Crash and the like.

For an explanation on the political compass instead of spectrum (x-axis and y-axis instead of only x-axis for left vs right) see the website Politicalcompass.org

2 Likes

Anarcho-socialist, cooperative socialism, call it what you will, I like direct democracy and a cooperative socialist economy…

Lmao, this game is pretty biased… Being socialist makes your economy go down, even though what most people think of as the biggest “socialist” economy on the planet–china’s–economy has been the fastest growing for some decades now…

Also, political compass is pretty clearly propaganda… You can’t be a libertarian capitalist, or an authoritarian socialist. Both are clearly oxymoronic.

In fact, the political compass test–originally called a Nolan Chart–was made by the first president of the American libertarian party–a Koch funded strain of Austro-fascism. It has no weight in academia, and makes little sense inside of a greater global historical context for any group to have either title…

1 Like

The game’s not recent; it is from early '00s and went viral. Fun fact: back when I played it in early '00s there was actually a rich left-wing community around, including one for left-wing anarchists. Back then there was a lot of criticism to e.g. the Bush government.

Of course the game is biased; I never claimed otherwise.

As per the FAQ the game shouldn’t be taken too serious. The FAQ does address this: Q: “Isn’t this “simulation” biased towards your politics?” A: “Very possibly. Not intentionally, though.”

Every sim game (called just “sim” in the rest of the post) is -eventually- biased. You can find biases and factual flaws in sims like Civ as well. I own a license for VI but only played V and I can confirm: there are multiple biases and inconsistencies in the game. That doesn’t make these games good or bad per se though.

The name you describe is the result of your votes, and follows a x-axis, y-axis, and z-axis as explained here. The used terms are generally humorously meant as well.

Your example isn’t very good because China isn’t pure socialism, especially post-Mao. Same for the Scandinavian socialist states (link) are neither full capitalist nor full socialist.

The point of Political Compass is to put systems in perspective. This is difficult to achieve accurately, no question about that. The same is true about an implementation such as NationStates. Having read Jennifer Government I can’t say it is very positive about right-wing capitalism, btw. I’d say the book is a critique to right-wing capitalism just like Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash.

Your position is answered in the Political Compass FAQ: You can’t be libertarian and left wing.

Both are perfectly possible, in fact the latter is quite common. An example of authoritarian socialist was indeed Mao, Stalin, as well as the Kim dynasty. Libertarian capitalist most certainly also exists; Ayn Rand’s works (whom David Nolan indeed did influence, but there’s quite some people whom she influenced including the dude who started Wikipedia). Right now, it is called libertarianism or (more extreme on the spectrum) anarcho-capitalism in the USA (the term liberal in the USA has a different meaning than liberal in the USA). It is also a matter of which time perspective you look at. If you look example at the 17th century, then laissez-faire is right-wing liberal indeed.

Political compass doesn’t claim to be perfect either. It is an attempt to be more accurate than the traditional x-axis, and I think it succeeds there.

4 Likes

Still is, left wing anarchies seem to–mostly–top the charts of the game still, but that doesn’t mean whoever made it isn’t biased as hell–they pretty clearly are. A lot of the things in the opening frame when it asks you all the questions are propagandized as all hell…

Yea I made one, it seems interesting, never played shit like this before…

Now that’s some propaganda! Anarchy is a right wing ideology now? Wonder what Proudhon would say… :joy::joy::joy: seriously dude, stop with the charts, they are very wrong…

China was state capitalist–never was socialist. However, most of the world thinks of them when they think of socialism, and that makes it humerous to me that clicking socialism makes it go down, as most people think of a place like china when they think socialist–at least here in the states…

https://chomsky.info/1986____/

No, the point of political compass was to make room for ideologies that don’t exist, nothing more. You can’t be a libertarian and a capitalist, or an authoritarian socialist. It’s oxymoronic, right wing propaganda from America.

Uhhhh, I said libertarian and right wing. Capitalism is antithetical to liberty. Libertarians are anarcho-socialists historically.

Mao and stalin were state capitalist, not socialist. You really want to argue production was controlled communally in those states?

Ayn Rand is a austro-fascist, not a libertarian.

anarcho-capitalism is not a thing either. Anarchism is socialist by definition. You cannot have chiefless capitalism!

It’s not a matter of perspective. It’s a matter of factual history. Right wing libertarians don’t exist until the sixties, a lot of Koch money, and a dipshit named Nolan. In reality, they don’t exist at all, because capitalism is antithetical to liberty. Every private business is a little monarchy or oligarchy, and that’s not very libertarian, especially that’s where most people spend their adult lives…

this book shows where the form of “libertarianism” you refer to actually came from… There are others too, but this one is written from a child from inside the movements perspective…

https://www.amazon.com/Wrapped-Flag-Personal-History-Americas/dp/080707750X/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

Political compass is unacademic crap. The left right spectrum is far more accurate.

Either you are confusing Libertarianism with Social-Liberalism, or they simply changed from what they were historically.

Nowadays Libertarians are capitalists who believe the market should regulate itself (economic liberalism) and people should “regulate” their own lives (social liberalism).
And just because a political philosophy doesn’t make sense to you or they didn’t exist historically doesn’t mean they don’t exist now.

You can believe in things that didn’t prove themselves as “working” by history. And if a group of people believe in some political ideas that automatically means that political believe exists.

People think of different things when they talk about liberty.

3 Likes

It hasn’t changed, nor can it to something so antithetical to it’s original definition. All a libertarian is is a person who advocates civil liberty. Capitalism destroys civil liberties, and therefore is antithetical to libertarianism.

The thing you’re thinking of when you think of libertarianism is actually a weird form of re-branded austro-fascism.

Yes, and when your beliefs are exclusively derived from those movements, and those movements have bad PR, I see no reason you should be able to steal another’s name and distract people from the unforgivable situations the ideology resulted in the last time round. They are fascists, plain and simple, not libertarians. The only reason they call themselves that is because fascism has really bad optics…

Not when they steal the word they choose to describe themselves from another group.

and especially not if they already have a name they’d rather the rest of the world forget–fascists.

And yet, capitalism is still antithetical to liberty to all people, whether they realize it or not, unless they are very rich. You don’t have liberty at work. That’s unarguable in capitalism.

Furthermore most of the world that lives under capitalism has no choice about where they work–the common capitalist counter argument.

I could go on, this really isn’t opinion though dude, it’s simple fact. I can prove it with people like Zinn or Chomsky or Proudhon, Bakunin, etc… Proudhon and Bakunin would laugh their asses off at an anarcho–capitalist, because the term would make no sense to them. Since they are the ones that made the modern definition of anarchy to mean no state, you’d think that would still be relevant…

1 Like

Original definitions can change too. Originally the earth was defined as a disc. Hasn’t that definition changed too?

You can have capitalism and women rights, queer rights, religious freedom and so on.

So what? New Amsterdam was re-branded to New York. Does that mean New York doesn’t exist?

Again that would mean New York doesn’t exist because they “stole” the word from York.

I’ve been in New York and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t just a dream.

Yes: most. Most is not all. Therefore some are different. Therefore something different exists.

Yeah and Trump doesn’t make sense to me, still I have to accept that he exists.

That is still relevant. But you can have capitalistic companies without a state.

2 Likes

That doesn’t mean they always should either. In this case, they clearly should not have.

also, the definition only changed to certain parts of the population, not everyone, and certainly not academia.

Hmmmm no, no you can’t. At least, no one has really done it yet.

Sigh, this is getting silly, and very unacademic…

New york isn’t York. They didn’t steal the name so directly, and new york isn’t the polar opposite of new Amsterdam.

Again, that analogy doesn’t fit, at all…

All that are not extremely rich.

And no, we are all part of the same big system, something different does not exist, that’s not what I said and you know it.

I accept libertarians exist, fuck I am one. I don’t accept that fascists are libertarians though. At all.

But that’s not the full definition of anarchy. When Bakunin and Proudhon defined anarchist–the word they actually defined–they defined it to mean stateless because they couldn’t envision a state without chiefs. This doesn’t mean that the no chiefs bit dropped out of the definition though–it is still there to this day. It was their belief in chief less society that made them want to have a term to refer to themselves as anarchists in the first place…

So, in order to be anarchists in the modern sense of the term, you not only can’t have a state, you can’t have chief’s or rulers anywhere in society. This is antithetical to capitalism, as I already said.

If it’s relevant then you have to agree that you can’t have anarchism and capitalism in the same society… they are mutually exclusive by definition…

And again, these facts are widely accepted in academia, just not in the common discourse…

1 Like

Regarding NationStates, you cannot right away start an extreme-left or extreme-right state. You always start in the middle of the z-axis and from there work your way to your political system by answering questions. IIRC that’s answered in the FAQ but if it isn’t in the FAQ it was certainly mentioned on the forums back when I played it around 2002.

You’re constantly bifurcating and resorting to extreme black-and-white thinking while we are discussing nuances (and that is the point of NationStates and Politicalcompass) but we’re getting somewhere:

Oh, you are a libertarian? Here you wrote:

:roll_eyes:

The political compass axis seemingly doesn’t make a distinction between economic and personal freedom. I consider the lack of a z-axis a flaw. Libertarianism is on the right end of the x-axis though, but on the bottom of the y-axis regarding personal freedom. The cube from NationStates allows 8 different extremes instead of 4, but the terms used aren’t too serious, as mentioned numerous times throughout the FAQ.

What you are resorting to is guilty by association though. You claim Ayn Rand is a austrofascist (without providing a source). The list of people she’s influenced is impressive. She influenced Alan Greenspan, Jimmy Wales (article is down though) and even the libertarian Ron Paul. Rand has influenced many libertarians. The fact she influenced people does not make them followers, nor fascists.

As already argued definitions are constantly in motion. Furthermore, the importance of what people in an ivory tower believe is relevant is relative; not absolut. What’s more relevant is what the common people have regarding terminology because that is more likely to pass on. I’d say Wikipedia is a relatively accurate way to assess what the common consensus is amongst the people, but there are going to be without a doubt some exceptions. We’ve seen terms getting flat out abused and changed in the past by different parties, including the media. One example of that, is the word “hacker” which used to have the meaning of say “tinkerer”, “phreaker”, or “programmer” but now has the same meaning as “cracker” or “scriptkiddie” ever since mid '90s.

My opinion is that anarchism doesn’t work, and that anyone using TCP/IP while being an anarchist is both a hypocrite and a very funny fellow. The entire OSI model, protocols like TCP, DNS, BGP, switches or even database clusters with masters and slaves it all eventually is based on authority as well as consensus on standards (RFCs).

Consensus-driven decision making means the biggest loudmouths rule, but everyone’s gotta shut up cause they had their say. Clever psychological trick.

Its not common, but anarchism isn’t common to begin with. Its been done though:

“Having done it” is relative; not absolute.

1 Like

absolutely.

Anarcho-socialist is libertarian. It’s what it means.

https://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/noam-chomsky-kind-anarchism-i-believe-and-whats-wrong-libertarians

Again, the political compass is nonacademic. Come with something based in fact…

Libertarianism is a left wing ideology by definition. How could you have no chiefs in capitalism? makes no sense…

Source? Mises and Rothbard. They both clearly were fascist, both are the fathers of the modern austro-fascist movements you’re describing.

No, they’re not though. They change slowly, and they shouldn’t always necessarily.

Furthermore that’s irrelevant anyway. They should _never_change to something that’s the polar opposite of what they meant before, and that’s what has happened here.

No one said shit about an ivory tower. Philadelphia is no picknick dude, especially compared to anywhere in western europe…

NO, it’s not. It’s a horrid one.

Define anarchism. Because unless you have chiefless, your missing a big piece to most anarchists.

I know all about Franco, and no it hasn’t . They never actually had control, they were constantly at war.

The best example is the zapatistas in Mexico, but they sorta have a state, so not really fully anarchist…

No, its absolute. All of those countries still discriminate, just less than before. I can list countless ways if you like, but its not that hard to think of them dude. I can also prove discrimination with basic math.

LMAO, no, that’s what happens with representation, just with money.

Look at the Kung, the loudmouths don’t rule at all. There is 180,000 plus years of human evolution that says your wrong, not to mention the tendency of nature to cooperate more than fight.

No, I’m calling people who believe in fascist policy fascist, there is a huge difference. Ron Paul is a great example of a modern fascist!

Alan Greenspan is a neoliberal, got no love for them either.

I think the basic problem in this discussion is summed up here.

@b-dubz, you seem to take this discussion quite personal, feeling your political views misinterpreted, its name used to describe things you don’t believe in.
Seen from a distance, this seems like a lost fight. Insisting a definition shouldn’t change does not make it reality. If enough people accept the new definition, it has changed. Even if it “shouldn’t”. Language changes all the time, words are used to describe different things (or used to describe things differently). It has always been like that, you cannot change this process because you liked it better the old way.

3 Likes

NationStates is in hybrid sleep AFAIK, and back in early '00s there were also people QQing the game was biased. Yet I was perfectly able to make my nation based on the political ideal I had back then, and keeping it that way. Maybe it takes a bit longer time but who cares? If you want to get the most fun out of it I suggest the roleplaying components. Does require some creativity, imagination, and social interaction though. I’m getting on a tangent here but games can serve a need for the user (gamer): teaching, competitiveness, and pleasure. NationStates isn’t a competitive game. If a game isn’t competitive, then it needs to serve a different goal. Roleplaying can tick the pleasure box.

I had to look it up, and surprise surprise it is still like 15 years ago: there’s no consensus on the exact way the term anarchism is used, but there’s always a fellow on a forum who wants to shove their unique and sole definition upon the throat of everyone. I’d like to kindly ask you to not only stop that here on this forum, but on the Internet in general. You’re being counter-productive.

After I read into it once again and quite frankly wasted my time doing so my conclusion is these are not synonyms; they do however overlap. More important the fact you’re unable to define yourself with one term hints us about the trouble we (society/mankind not ivory tower people) got with the terminology. Wanting to stick to old terminology is akin to an appeal to tradition.

I already gave the example of the word hacker. Another example is begging the question vs raising the question.

Furthermore, from your link:

By being self employed? Or how about an anarchist community or collective in a non-anarchist society? Stop seeing everything on macro level all the time. Anarchism doesn’t scale; so you’re only going to see it on micro level.

Rather, there appears to be left-libertarianism and right-libertarianism:

That you don’t like one of these is crystal clear, you made that point and continue to repeat it in each of your posts (booooring) but no amount of you stomping your feet is going to change that :slight_smile: right-libertarianism exists. The mods can verify that’s not remotely my choice in this poll, but it nonetheless does exist. Whether its existence makes sense is a complex discussion, but not one I find particularly interesting. Nor relevant. A significant amount of people do use the term libertarianism (or right-libertarianism, or they refer to right-libertarianism) in public debate ie. it is part of the status quo; then it exists, just like the dictionaries adopt all kind of words which have spawned on the internet by the general population (words you or I might never use and don’t approve of). Its esp used in USA. I… or rather, we just gotta accept its existence and move on. Even if the introduction of the term as it is was nefarious, even if the second meaning was an ill attempt, a diversion, a conspiracy by fascists, that all won’t change its existence. Just like the term hacker got FUBARed. It won’t be changed because we cannot convince the majority of people of such a non-issue. “They” won. Accept its destiny, mortal.

Yes, of course Wikipedia is a terrible tool. It constantly contradicts you :joy: Wikipedia is exactly that consensus driven meritocracy which you seem to adore, but it focuses on up-to-date terminology and NPOV; not b-dubz-POV.

There’s the Greek meaning of the word (well, two words) but apart from that there are different schools of thought. What I said applies both to being against hierarchy/authority, as well as the rather simplistic chaos explanation (I don’t like that one because there’s this other word already called… chaos… but that explanation & usage is rampant to which we must adapt).

It is inherently linked to the imperfection of human beings and furthermore it being relative is practical. The links underline that. If you wanna go the route of discrimination still existing I got bad news: every human being discriminates, including anarchists (of any school of thoughts). And what I said applies to both individual as well as social anarchism.

The point is that some of our societies have massive improvement for rights of the mentioned groups. If you’re a member of one of these groups (as well as others; these were just common examples), and living in such a society, you will directly reap the benefits of that. That’s how the situation is in its practical state.

So, case in point: if you are homosexual and living in The Netherlands the tolerance is going to depend on where exactly you live and in which city and even neighbourhood [I readily admit it isn’t equal everywhere]. The same is true for Russia. But if you compare the two countries at a whole, on average, then you’re living in a vastly more tolerant country (with regards to homosexuality) in The Netherlands than Russia. That’s relevant, that’s practical, and the same is true though in different weights for other groups such as women (see the Pussy Riot debacle), entire LGBT* community, soft drugs, euthanasia, political preference (compare being against Mark Rutte versus being against Vladimir Putin), or as Chomsky wrote about in the link you mentioned: “concern for the environment”, indeed. At the same time, as you argued all is not well, there’s massive room for improvements, but if you’re considering migrating and are deciding between Russia and The Netherlands these details matter. Then the comparison is practical.

I don’t believe you’re linking to a source. For an academic, your method of discussing and using references is … well, you never quote from sources, you linked once or so to a link, and in this case its crystal clear you’re using a fallacy (an appeal to tradition).

Representation scales, anarchism and consensus-based decision making does not. But it doesn’t have to be or/or; it can be and/or. A board of directors is, for example, arguably both.

Also, I got bad news, once again: humans discriminate. They use fallacies to bring their points across. Such as threats with violence, or calling names (such as calling everyone and their mother a fascist like you appear to be doing :expressionless: ).

Here we go again. Of course, Ron Paul is a fascist as well, I could’ve guessed that.

I’d like to invite the reader to read at least the top of that Wikipedia page and form their own opinion but I’ll quote this here:

(Emphasis mine)

Yeah, clearly a fascist!! :roll_eyes:

I guess its all part of the fascism conspiracy. Maybe you should start mentioning all the people who you consider not a fascist. A shorter list, I suppose.

Out of the 4 parties, 3 out of 4 is what I consider pro personal freedom with the 4th (Bob Barr) as well but being wishy washy and inconsistent in the past but he’s still on the bottom of the personal freedom axis (y-axis). They are each against neoconservatism/neoliberalism, generally for issues I care about such as poverty, education, as well as the ones already mentioned elsewhere in my post.

Btw, it was also very entertaining reading someone claim that authoritarian left does not exist (you shifted the conversation away from that ya 'lil rascal but I’ll end my post with it). I guess you deny the existence of Mao, Castro, Ceaușescu, Honecker, Stalin, and a slew of other Soviet leaders. Or wait, let me guess! They were all clearly right-wing and fascists as well? Yawn. Start facing it, not everyone in their mother is a fascist (general consensus), and some left-wing people did some horrible things in the previous century.

1 Like

Uhhhhm, no, I look at it academically. So, emotionless.

What exactly did I describe that I don’t believe in, other than various forms of capitalsim? is pretty normal for a socialist to critique that…

Insisting it is missdefined when it clearly is is not.

It hasn’t in academia, this case does not apply here.

This is simply untrue. Furthermore, if what you were saying is true, then it can always change back.

That’s because it favors you. If you choose anarcho-syndaclist policies you get bullshit autocracy as opposed to the anarchist policy you chose…

Meh, more like the boredom box, nature ticks the pleasure box for me, but it’s not always so hospitable…

What un-anarchistic bullshit. If you don’t like history that’s on you. It doesn’t change history though…

:joy::rofl::joy::rofl: How is the air up in that ivory tower anyway? Us pleebs would love to know…

And where are you looking things up?

Oh, and I’m using the old terminology. Specifically the Greek. You not knowing the history is not my issue if you don’t want to learn…

Comically irrelevant again…

What?! make a cohecive argument for me to rebut dude…

So, you think everyone can be self employed? Talk about utopian…

And stop citing wikipedia. It mean less than nothing…

A point you refuse to even attempt to rebut–that it’s rebranded fascism.

Unfortunately there’s already a name for it, and it’s fascism, not libertarianism. That is, authoritarian government through the market. The modern term is inverted totalitarianism.

Actually it proves me right here. It’s just a shit source is all…

No, there aren’t outside of socialism. It’s not anarchism without the original Greek definition.

I’m done dude… go to school is my best advice for you…

This topic was automatically closed 182 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.