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[JesterHell696]

I was talking of starting off in a development sense, dwarves start off with whatever initial policies are defined in their raws.  As the various policies get more extreme, they get further away from the present economic setup; while the lack of policies gives you basically the way things work at the moment.  'Socialism' then is a negative thing, it is the absence of the institutions of 'Capitalism' as opposed to a set of policies that are implemented.  This situation derives from the 'backwards' way that the DF government is initially self-sufficiant of any external input from scattered peasants; the catalyst however is that the creatures lived in a different manner before Yr 0. 

I understand that the "socialist society" is the basis of society and I did say earlier that ancient human tribal society did engage in a type communal ownership.

My stance from the beginning is that the goal of DF is to have a fantasy world simulator where the player can take part in all the standard fantasy tropes and if the ant society that you champion as perfect dwarven society, which objectively speaking it is, continues to persist then the consumption or destruction of all other types of society is inevitable just like you've said then the end result of any world gen will be an "age of peace and prosperity: in which the peoples of the world lived in relative harmony cooperating for the good of all" and while the story of how they got to that point might be interesting its bad for the game as a whole if it consistently starts there because then you end up with a world full of Argentine ants.

The reason that I think its what Toady "wants" is because what he wants is for the player to take part in standard fantasy tropes many of which are built upon the foundation of a feudal economy thus ensuring that feudal economy's can consistently survive world gen is a must. So I feel like if it did consistency result in an "age of peace and prosperity" he would alter whatever parts of the game are necessary to stop that from happening and if that meant forcing dwarves to be Romans and fortresses to be Rome so be it, so it not really what he "wants" but a side effect of getting what he wants.

The key thing here is that the objective four pillars of any economically independant site; at the moment these realities are there but their solution is abstracted away.  It does not matter whether the creature is an angel or a demon, Communist ant-person or Capitalistic Farengi, those pillars are there.  The society must 1. get it's creatures to work, it must 2. get them to work efficiently, 3. it must distribute the wealth produced in an orderly way and it must 4. keep outsiders from leeching away more value than they produce.  To refer to the dev page plans.

Fortress Starting Scenarios

    Framework
        Expand framework of law, custom, rights, property and status as needed to provide a variety of scenarios
        Foundation of laws, both natural and supernatural
        Explicit standing of different citizens vs. civilization authorities
        Possible expansion of religious and family concepts to provide sufficient scenarios

As written, the foundation of laws appears to have to be simply be some combination of natural raws and the supernatural RNG (random number god).  However on closer thought, the foundation of the majority of laws, custom, rights, property and status are related to the above 4 pillars of a functioning economy.  The laws against theft for instance are directed against problem No.4, thieves are what we call a type of outsiders that leech away value but do not add an equal or greater amount of value (the latter group we call merchants ). 

The reason why the palaces did not set legally set up a system of common ownership despite the 'site-based' nature of their existance is because as a tax dependant site they do not have to worry about the 4 pillars; however the pillars do apply to the thousands of individual peasant producers that pay the taxes, thus despite the fact that the peasants do not have the power to make the laws the fact that they pay the taxes causes the real-world laws to privilage private property to the extent they do.   

I have been saying that items listed on the dev page are about adding the framework necessary to make the economy to work, also right under what you quoted is this.

Starting scenarios

    Various possiblities that guide or govern fortress activity: frontier settlement, religious site, prison colony, mining company, military citadel, roadside inn, secondary/future palace of the monarch
    Drastic changes to migrants based on starting scenario
    Caravans/diplomatic relationships based on starting scenario
    Reclaim mechanics should be folded into this
    Generalize starting scenario relationships to every site foundation

Hill/deep dwarves

    Ability to bring extra dwarves appropriate to the starting scenario
    Entity populations surrounding your fortress in appropriate environments, both above and below ground
    Ability to move dwarves in and out of surroundings
    Relationship with surrounding dwarves
    Ability to trade/demand food in depot or similar place with surrounding dwarves

If one starting scenario is a secondary palace for the monarch then whats the first? I think it'd be the first fortress and mountain home of the dwarves but the part about future palace does brings that into doubt and thanks for the quote, I knew I'd seen something about fortress as the palace before but I wasn't sure where (I've been looking though DF talks ) also the ability to demand food from surrounding sites doesn't seem to far removed from taxing them to me.

It is funny that indoctrinate is actually a good word in this context.  You see how Biology is very much on the Dark Side, if the goblins mainly inherantly evil then they will destroy their own societies before moving on to destroy everybody else's through migration.  If the goblins are mainly evil ideologically, then the goblins being evil simply leads to the cannibalising of the goblin society by the other societies who can then indoctrinate them into become non-evil.

I think that all society's are built on indoctrination and as for dark-side, light-side, good, evil, its all relative to your subjective values as far as I'm concerned and considering its a topic that philosophers still debate today it seems like its not an unreasonable view to hold.

[Ribs]

You are like a person that like to eat meat while claiming to be a vegan because "they are morally against slaughtering animals". You praise the arrangement of things in Chile, but yet condemn the means by which this was brought about; without your Pinochet regardless of whether Chile would be better off or not, the 'free-market' Chile you praise would not exist. 

You are also very much an ideologue.  The reason you cannot see this is similar to how "dwarf fishery worker" is just called "fishery worker" in the game while a "goblin fishery worker" gets the full title.  If an ideology is normal enough it becomes invisible it's advocates. 

i·de·o·logue
ˈīdēəˌlôɡ,ˈidēəˌlôɡ/
noun
an adherent of an ideology
one who is uncompromising and dogmatic.

I'm just a liberal. I believe in democracy, individual freedoms, etc. I'm not agaisnt modern welfare under capitalism. I'm not a libertarian. My ideology is comprised of milquetoast western beliefs, and I wouldn't be considered much of an ideologue in any western country. I support whatever seems to work, and accept compromises when resonable. I am skeptical towards utopical belief systems.

You are the one with the cringe, uncompromising ideology but you can still call me an ideologue too if that makes you feel better, goblin.

None of those things did anything to make the country more productive, that Communism managed to make progress despite those things does rather call further into question to Capitalist argument that Communism cannot work because of Reason X. 

It failed regardless, doesn't matter how many excuses you have for its lack of success compared to capitalism. How much support did it need to work? Literally every country in the world adhering to it? Also, insisting that only communism could have increased those countries "progress" is ridiculous. I could just as easily state that under capitalism, they would had eventually progressed much more and would be much more successful and developed today.

If there is a war then people tend to get killed.  It is all about escalation, to start off things remain peaceful and both sides restrain themselves to words.  Then somebody actually gets what they want, at which point the other sides escalates to trying to sabotage that thing so they can prove it does not work.  They then respond by forcefully repressing said attempt at sabotage, which then leads to violent reactions etc.
(...)
You are very much deceived.  Chavez and Maduro are not dictators but extremely popular democratic leaders who won multiple elections and if their government is crumbling it is because they have not escalated sufficiently while the opposition has (the opposition murders government people).

Chavez and Maduro are populists. Populists often manage to rise politically fairly easily in banana republics, but usually only stay in power for long when they decide to slide more and more toward dictatorship. Seeing that the apporval ratings of the Chavist government have been going downhill for years now, it's becoming more and more obvious that Venezuela is not really what you would call a democracy anymore. They have arrested elected government officials, displaced thousands of people from their homes, killing dozens in the proccess, among other gems.

And by "not escalated sufficiently" do you mean "not systematically sabotaged and killed people from the opposition"? Something like that in Venezuela, today, would be impossible without going through a massive, bloody civil war. You'd have to flood the streets with the blood of the capitalist scum to have your utopia, amigo. Good luck with that.

Those places were already major grain producers before the Romans came along.  The Romans themselves (ie Latium) neither invented anything nor produced much food at all.  The Romans stole nearly all their technology and food from those who they conquered.  They stole the engineering from the Greeks, their sanitation from the Etruscans, their food from the North Africans and even their famous style of weaponry was Spanish.

Who are you arguing against? I don't remember saying that the romans never took other people's advancements for their own benefit. Also, the north african food was much more due to geography than to technology at the time. And also, the romans developed greatly the land of less advanced societies they've annexed, such as the gallic peoples. Also, the iberians you are reffering to living in what we today call Spain were not spaniards. It became known as Hispania and after the romans went through it and latinised it.

The Romans themselves (ie Latium) neither invented anything nor produced much food at all.  The Romans stole nearly all their technology and food from those who they conquered.

That's an extreme, and very uninformed opinion.

They stole the land from those they had conquered and then they 'quasi-privatised' that land, carving up the collective system of land ownership of the various conquered into private plots which were leashed to individual soldiers.

it is anachronistic to talk about private property in the full sense

It's a bit to late to even mention anachronism by now, don't you think?

So in the sense what drew them into service of Rome is basically the topic of the OP, they could have really have their own land in Germany and were thus consigned to wander about doing the bidding of the various tribal communities in return for supplies until they 'retired' and simply became a normal person again.  By becoming a Roman legionary however, they would be able to accomplish the dream of the OP, to retire as more than what they started off as.

I don't think you understand what's even going on here. People are suggesting to add things in the game so they can simulate these very situations and possibilities you are discribing (albeit sometimes poorly, as you are ideologically opposed to anything capitalist). You're the one who apparently don't see the point in adding this or that into the game because we already have a perfectly functional economic system and the idea that people would have greater sense of necessity when it comes to private propery in DF is somehow a modern social construct that shouldn't be in, etc.

You're being a stick-in-the-mud, Cookie. You put your ideology ahead of the simulation, and would prefer to keep features out of the game as long as it remains as "communist" as possible in your view, which isn't even the case. You even fanatically deny the words of the developers, who seem to have a different opinion when it comes to where the game is going when it comes to the ecconomy, etc.

[Ribs]

I loved the way you slowly break down opposing arguments; explaining why surplus labor is nonsensical in an ant-person based society, how bandits, a world that requires adventurers, and several other added features creates Anachronism, and the difference between a massive organization that absorbs surplus (Rome) versus one that creates it (a Fortress).

I think it's good to remind people that the main reason a fortress in DF "creates surplus" in the way it does has nothing to do with the economical/political/societal system the dwarves organize themselve under. The reason why they creates so much surplus and the fortress becomes so independent is because much of the production in the game is completely broken, especially in terms of agriculture. You currently need a 6x6 plot to produce enough plump helmets to support a 200+ population. Not only that, you don't even need irrigation, soil maintence, etc. It's very incomplete, and Toady said time and time again that this is subject to change.

In reality, you'd generally need 3 or 4 hectares(hectare=10,000 m²) of land to support a a single famiy (of 5 or six people) and maybe create a bit of surplus produce. More than that to also support large animals. That's why Toady said that he'll change the way food is produced and make the fortress less self-sufficient in the future. Also, the economy will be there, and it will look nothing like what comrad goblin is suggesting:

Yeah, so there's towns and there'll be markets and the markets will have workshops, there'll be people living in them, there'll be people coming in to work there and then we'll have to manage the merchants arriving(...)
You're not supposed to be a major agricultural player, because you're just a fortress, you're not several villages with thousands of people altogether farming big tracts of land and selling all the produce; you're more specialised than that, and you're dwarves. So those aren't the types of monopolies you should be shooting for, although as soon as you can get armies on the map then you'd be moving at a different timescale again and you would be able to create worldwide economic trouble by exerting your force in places. So it's not like you can't have that kind of influence

This suggestion went from sounding somewhat interesting to being a totally impractical fantasy solely because of how you broke down every counterargument. Of course an adventurer would never have anything to offer to guards that a fortress wouldn't, without simply creating a fortress site himself! The thread does seem to be heartily derailed now, but it was amazing while it lasted.

I've never seen single decisive argument from him. Are we even reading the same thread? He keeps dancing around the fact that the developer of the game himself actually said that the direction the game's economical model is going is the opposite of what he claims/wants it to go. It's always the same thing: people like JesterHell696 start to quote Toady and our good friend commissar Gobbocook pretends they have nothing to do with the subject. It's painful to read. Also, he's done it before.

[GoblinCookie]

You are like a person that like to eat meat while claiming to be a vegan because "they are morally against slaughtering animals". You praise the arrangement of things in Chile, but yet condemn the means by which this was brought about; without your Pinochet regardless of whether Chile would be better off or not, the 'free-market' Chile you praise would not exist. 

You are also very much an ideologue.  The reason you cannot see this is similar to how "dwarf fishery worker" is just called "fishery worker" in the game while a "goblin fishery worker" gets the full title.  If an ideology is normal enough it becomes invisible it's advocates. 

i·de·o·logue
ˈīdēəˌlôɡ,ˈidēəˌlôɡ/
noun
an adherent of an ideology
one who is uncompromising and dogmatic.

I'm just a liberal. I believe in democracy, individual freedoms, etc. I'm not agaisnt modern welfare under capitalism. I'm not a libertarian. My ideology is comprised of milquetoast western beliefs, and I wouldn't be considered much of an ideologue in any western country. I support whatever seems to work, and accept compromises when resonable. I am skeptical towards utopical belief systems.

You are the one with the cringe, uncompromising ideology but you can still call me an ideologue too if that makes you feel better, goblin.

None of those things did anything to make the country more productive, that Communism managed to make progress despite those things does rather call further into question to Capitalist argument that Communism cannot work because of Reason X. 

It failed regardless, doesn't matter how many excuses you have for its lack of success compared to capitalism. How much support did it need to work? Literally every country in the world adhering to it? Also, insisting that only communism could have increased those countries "progress" is ridiculous. I could just as easily state that under capitalism, they would had eventually progressed much more and would be much more successful and developed today.

If there is a war then people tend to get killed.  It is all about escalation, to start off things remain peaceful and both sides restrain themselves to words.  Then somebody actually gets what they want, at which point the other sides escalates to trying to sabotage that thing so they can prove it does not work.  They then respond by forcefully repressing said attempt at sabotage, which then leads to violent reactions etc.
(...)
You are very much deceived.  Chavez and Maduro are not dictators but extremely popular democratic leaders who won multiple elections and if their government is crumbling it is because they have not escalated sufficiently while the opposition has (the opposition murders government people).

Chavez and Maduro are populists. Populists often manage to rise politically fairly easily in banana republics, but usually only stay in power for long when they decide to slide more and more toward dictatorship. Seeing that the apporval ratings of the Chavist government have been going downhill for years now, it's becoming more and more obvious that Venezuela is not really what you would call a democracy anymore. They have arrested elected government officials, displaced thousands of people from their homes, killing dozens in the proccess, among other gems.

And by "not escalated sufficiently" do you mean "not systematically sabotaged and killed people from the opposition"? Something like that in Venezuela, today, would be impossible without going through a massive, bloody civil war. You'd have to flood the streets with the blood of the capitalist scum to have your utopia, amigo. Good luck with that.

Those places were already major grain producers before the Romans came along.  The Romans themselves (ie Latium) neither invented anything nor produced much food at all.  The Romans stole nearly all their technology and food from those who they conquered.  They stole the engineering from the Greeks, their sanitation from the Etruscans, their food from the North Africans and even their famous style of weaponry was Spanish.

Who are you arguing against? I don't remember saying that the romans never took other people's advancements for their own benefit. Also, the north african food was much more due to geography than to technology at the time. And also, the romans developed greatly the land of less advanced societies they've annexed, such as the gallic peoples. Also, the iberians you are reffering to living in what we today call Spain were not spaniards. It became known as Hispania and after the romans went through it and latinised it.

The Romans themselves (ie Latium) neither invented anything nor produced much food at all.  The Romans stole nearly all their technology and food from those who they conquered.

That's an extreme, and very uninformed opinion.

They stole the land from those they had conquered and then they 'quasi-privatised' that land, carving up the collective system of land ownership of the various conquered into private plots which were leashed to individual soldiers.

it is anachronistic to talk about private property in the full sense

It's a bit to late to even mention anachronism by now, don't you think?

So in the sense what drew them into service of Rome is basically the topic of the OP, they could have really have their own land in Germany and were thus consigned to wander about doing the bidding of the various tribal communities in return for supplies until they 'retired' and simply became a normal person again.  By becoming a Roman legionary however, they would be able to accomplish the dream of the OP, to retire as more than what they started off as.

I don't think you understand what's even going on here. People are suggesting to add things in the game so they can simulate these very situations and possibilities you are discribing (albeit sometimes poorly, as you are ideologically opposed to anything capitalist). You're the one who apparently don't see the point in adding this or that into the game because we already have a perfectly functional economic system and the idea that people would have greater sense of necessity when it comes to private propery in DF is somehow a modern social construct that shouldn't be in, etc.

You're being a stick-in-the-mud, Cookie. You put your ideology ahead of the simulation, and would prefer to keep features out of the game as long as it remains as "communist" as possible in your view, which isn't even the case. You even fanatically deny the words of the developers, who seem to have a different opinion when it comes to where the game is going when it comes to the ecconomy, etc.

Tempted as I am to respond, I cannot see any point in continuing to escalate things into a pointless real-world political flame-war, I have better things to do with my time.

I think it's good to remind people that the main reason a fortress in DF "creates surplus" in the way it does has nothing to do with the economical/political/societal system the dwarves organize themselve under. The reason why they creates so much surplus and the fortress becomes so independent is because much of the production in the game is completely broken, especially in terms of agriculture. You currently need a 6x6 plot to produce enough plump helmets to support a 200+ population. Not only that, you don't even need irrigation, soil maintence, etc. It's very incomplete, and Toady said time and time again that this is subject to change.

In reality, you'd generally need 3 or 4 hectares(hectare=10,000 m²) of land to support a a single famiy (of 5 or six people) and maybe create a bit of surplus produce. More than that to also support large animals. That's why Toady said that he'll change the way food is produced and make the fortress less self-sufficient in the future. Also, the economy will be there, and it will look nothing like what comrad goblin is suggesting:

Yeah, so there's towns and there'll be markets and the markets will have workshops, there'll be people living in them, there'll be people coming in to work there and then we'll have to manage the merchants arriving(...)
You're not supposed to be a major agricultural player, because you're just a fortress, you're not several villages with thousands of people altogether farming big tracts of land and selling all the produce; you're more specialised than that, and you're dwarves. So those aren't the types of monopolies you should be shooting for, although as soon as you can get armies on the map then you'd be moving at a different timescale again and you would be able to create worldwide economic trouble by exerting your force in places. So it's not like you can't have that kind of influence

You do not seem to understand what I am talking about when I talk about surplus value.  Producing surplus value is *not* the same thing as being self-sufficient, although being self-sufficient requires that you not produce negative value.  When someone or an institution produces surplus value, that means that the total economic value produced by the institution or individual exceeds the amount consumed by that institution or individual.  When something produces negative value that means that the institution or individual consumes more value than they produce.

You cannot have negative value producers without surplus value producers.  Since children are initially negative value producers, this means a society of mortal beings must be able to produce surplus value even in order to continue to continue to exist.  Inherently negative value producers are dependant upon surplus value producers, which means that even if negative value producers have enslaved the surplus value producers, they are still bound to look after their welfare since should they cease to function they will perish.

It does not have anything to do with whether a given institution or individual is self-sufficient.  If the fortress produces a surplus of zinc crafts, which the hillocks demands while the hillocks produces a surplus of plump helmets which the fortress demands and the fortress trades surplus zinc crafts for demanded plump helmets then both parties are surplus value producers.  A real-life castle (like all modern capitalist states save those who own their own oil) on the other hand is a negative value producer, it depends upon an external supply of surplus value from taxation in order to be *able* to buy the food that it needs. 

Since a normal dwarf fortress is always going to be capable of producing enough wealth through mining and manufacturing to buy the food that the hillocks produces, as per the above example; everything I say will remain true even if farming is made so land-intensive that the whole of a 4X4 area cannot feed 200 dwarves.  Only when fortress dwarves are rendered unable to produce surplus value at all and without a supply of external tax revenue they will not be able to sustain themselves will 'Dwarf Feudalism' make any sense.

[Ribs]

You have stumped me on so many points that it would be too difficult and time-consuming for me to continue this political debate

Understandable. I won't hold it against you, gobbo, but Lenin's ghost is probably very disappointed right now.

It does not have anything to do with whether a given institution or individual is self-sufficient.  If the fortress produces a surplus of zinc crafts, which the hillocks demands while the hillocks produces a surplus of plump helmets which the fortress demands and the fortress trades surplus zinc crafts for demanded plump helmets then both parties are surplus value producers.  A real-life castle (like all modern capitalist states save those who own their own oil) on the other hand is a negative value producer, it depends upon an external supply of surplus value from taxation in order to be *able* to buy the food that it needs.

Here's your problem right now, and I admit I should have brought this up on our last debate:
Castles often had towns around them.


In fact, human towns currently organize themselves like that.

So, a dwarf fortress is composed of fortifications, a town where the commoners live (usually highly specialized artizens, as Toady described), and palacial structures where the unproductive nobles and patricians reside. Perfectly Feudal. You could potentially tax your surrounding peasants more so you could rely even less on internal trade to support your fortress, so you could afford less artizens and replace them with even more knights and soldiers instead. Or maybe just make your nobles richer.

[GoblinCookie]

I don't think that our understanding of language is subconscious, our ability to infer intent from the tone of the voice is not a subconscious understanding of words used, a insult said in the same tone as that of a compliment is indistinguishable from a compliment to the subconscious mind this I why I bought up language comprehension because even if you don't understand the language if the tone is hostile or insulting you understand that subconsciously but if its said in a friendly manner then the subconscious is taken out of the equation and this is where it becomes apparent that language itself is conscious in nature.

At best the subconscious can pick up a single word like "dinner" or "listening" and draw conscious attention to them but it can't understand a sentence or words in general because "Dinners going to be late" and "Dinners ready!" can both trigger the same subconscious response of "food" if the listeners not paying attention.

Yes, our ability to understand language subconsciously is limited.  If we can make an analogy to ant pheronomes, what that means is that in order for pheronomes to transmit detailed information to an ant, that ant must be aware that there are pheronomes. 

I understand consciousness, if you think of all animals as being biological von-neumann machines (I do) then the brain is the computer control system and the conscious mind is the computers "user" and the subconscious mind is all the background processes that the user doesn't directly effect.

I tend to see animals (and people) like that too.

I see this as the result human consciousness being of a higher order, if the brain is a computer then a human brain is a modern computer with an OS like windows 10 installed while an ant brain is like an old analog computer, by comparison to our modern computer the "user" (consciousness) of an analog system is far more limited in both what infomation they receive from the system and what commands they can give the system.

The ant "consciousness" is aware of pheromones because pheromones are a simple "analogue" information "food", "follow", "attack", "defend", "ours", theirs" ect and the effects that this has is more pronounced on their simple computer then our modern one because they have 5 background "processes" and less processing power while we have 50 background processes and power to spare, so what input they do receive from pheromones has a much larger effect on the computers overall processes making the "user" aware of it.

Because of pheromones simple analog nature and our computers greater capacity we've been "phasing" out there use for thousands of years making them a smaller part of the overall input we receive resulting in them being reduced to a background process that the "user" is unaware of, yet even so they can have profound effects on our physiology and psychology.

Every ant colony on earth has their own unique pheronome, so the information potential of pheromones is clearly quite vast.  The reason we have phased out our awareness of pheronomes is because sound is our primary means of communication.  Getting rid of pheronome consciousness frees up more 'memory' for our conscious awareness of sound and for our general conscious intelligence in general.  We could equally have gone nearly deaf but have developed a similar awareness of pheronomes that ants have. 

Is it a "conscious" decision or is it a simple analog system responding to input? I personally feel that an ant "consciousness" is far to simple to actually be called a consciousness at all when comparied to mammals but whether they are consciously aware of pheromones or not (I think they are) isn't really relevant when my whole point in this topic of discussion is that pheromones have a stronger more inherent effect on the system (brain) then that of words.

There is no direct evidence to believe that any creature other than ourselves has an actual consciousness at all.  Saying that any one other creature than humanity has an actual consciousness leads however to a slippery slope, if monkeys have consciousness then why not rabbits?  If rabbits have consciousness why not birds? If birds have consciousness why not reptiles?  If reptiles have consciousness why not amphibians?  If amphibians have consciousness why not fish?  If fish have consciousness why not insects? 

Correct, the problem is that the indoctrination process for the second system (indifference to bullies) generally does not start until after the bulling has already begun leading to the damage you mentioned while the indoctrination process for the first system (universal empathy) is started after birth but if you start the indoctrination for indifference earlier then this isn't an issue because the system will be in place before the bulling begins.

Universal empathy gets there first.  We have to learn to *not* emphasise, the whole stuff about indifference to bullies is part of the general anti-empathy training that starts at birth. 

I think that it mostly tone and infliction that bypass consciousnesses and carry the emotional content.

As for advertisement the fact that we pay little or no attention is bad advertisement, a subconscious desire for a product of a certain type (food) doesn't make as want their product this is why many add are design using music, tone, infliction or colorful imagery so that you do pay attention and want their product.

Yes it is mostly tone that carries the emotional content.  As for advertising, if you are aware of an advert it normally annoys you and has the opposite of the intended effect.  An ubiquitous advert that is ever in the background but never in the way works best (or so the advertisers seem to think). 

Hypnosis is mind control if powerful enough and I'd imagine that its effect is stronger on simple minds.

Yes, but now prove those simple minds do what they do because they are hypnotised. 

Pheromones are chemicals that effect with brain chemistry and drugs are also chemicals that effect with brain chemistry, there's only one thing that really separates the two ones source is inherent to the animal (pheromones) and the others source is not inherent (drugs).

Basically pheromones are drugs which is what I've been saying about them having greater effect then words and language

pheromone

Definition of pheromone in English:
noun
Zoology
A chemical substance produced and released into the environment by an animal, especially a mammal or an insect, affecting the behavior or physiology of others of its species.

drug

Definition of drug in English:
noun
1A medicine or other substance which has a physiological effect when ingested or otherwise introduced into the body: a new drug aimed at sufferers from Parkinson’s disease
More example sentences

1.1A substance taken for its narcotic or stimulant effects, often illegally: [as modifier]: a drug addict figurative mass adoration is a highly addictive drug

This is why I see the scientific article about the bee queens "drug" pheromone as valid.

No it is not.  The term pheronome has such a broad meaning that it's use alone does not specify what exactly they are talking about.  In this case we are talking about essentially an anaesthetic drug pheronome and not the kind of pheronome that the ants use to communicate.  No information is being transmitted, merely pain/distress is being dulled by it's effect. 

The point is it a soft cap not a hard cap, there's room to increase the basic amount of sites with optimization and I've gone as high as 2000 sites without culling history figs but it takes a long time to gen.

I have managed to increase the site cap to 3000 before, but still the world is unnaturally undeveloped.  The site cap is not something that is in there because Toady One wanted to limit the number of sites, it is in there because there is a limit to how many sites the memory can cope with.  Adding in a whole legion of small peasant hamlets will result in a rather empty world, since it will hit the site cap quicker and thus stop growing. 

I said way back when this discussion started that I support Toady in making his dream game even if he not the most "efficient" developer also Toady started game development as a hobby.

Toady One's Wiki Page

In 2006, he started his post doctorate in Texas A&M, which was his goal since his undergraduate days. He decided to leave during the first year due to the increasingly stressful situation[3] and is said to have broken down in the head of department's office. He left in the same year after receiving a stipend, to devote his full attention to developing Dwarf Fortress and other games, which was until then only a hobby. He said, "At the end of a math problem, you have a paper and maybe you publish it, and the paper can be a building block for the edifice of mathematics, but to me that’s not so important. But working on a problem and having a game when you’re done? That’s pretty damn cool."[2]

He's learnt allot since then but if features he introduced early need to be removed or altered to advance further then so be it.

It really does not matter if it was originally a hobby.  Ultimately he is making something and even if it is only for himself the less he has to throw out/replace existing mechanics to move ahead then the better he is at what he does.  The problem is that everbody makes mistakes/bugs so some replacing is inevitable, but the more the new mechanics can seamlessly build upon the older mechanics the better the game developer is. 

So the fact that hillocks around your fortress are meant to be your hillocks under your abstract control isn't a change? seems to me like your fortress is the barons keep or castle town and the hillocks are your "lands" and the residents your peasantry a la CK.

No it is not a fundermental change.  We already have a central government that assembles armies larger than that of one site; it is merely abstracted.  Now all we are doing is becoming a cog in that central government, ruling over a region and commanding it's forces. 

Except that he decided that he does want to model the production elements and not abstract the game any more then strictly necessary for it to function.

99.9% of the game elements are already abstracted.  The only elements of the world that are *not* abstracted are what appears on the map in Fortress Mode and what comes into the immediate proximity of your adventurer.  Here in the computer-world, memory and dev time are both finite; this means the game does not model every detail in the game world but only that which is relevant to the kind of game you are playing. 

So what? how does it matter whether Crusader Kings bothers with those details or not? having similar elements "feudal politics" doesn't mean that the entire game is copied, DF has a far more grandiose goal then CK does anyway.

Because in any computer game, whatever is not relevant to the player's experiance of the game is abstracted away; because *both* dev time and memory are limited.  This means that if you do not wish the player to concern themselves with work and production then you abstract these things away to focus on things that do concern the player.  A Feudal Castle does not concern itself with the details of the peasants growing stuff, it concerns itself with taxing the peasants and ruling over them. 

Then why cant the fortress be modified do the same?

It can, however it involves completely altering the basic nature and mechanics of the game! 

What I meant was system run by private individuals (nobles, wealthy merchants) for private individuals.

In a word modern Capitalism, something that did not develop until 17th Century Netherlands/England. 

As I've said I hold the position that things will develop in a way where the the Hillocks/Mountain Halls/Present DF Fortresses will become more like Rome or medieval England or any ancient economy system that had taxation of individuals by local lords and of those lord by the crown.

You hold the position that rather than the game continuing to expand, it will simply be scrapped and replaced with a new game. 

You can know its a trick and choose to play along as to reap the benefits of that system for yourself at which point your no longer being deceived but joined the deceiver in deceiving the sheeple.

Precisely.  While you can use Sociobiology against those infected with it, you should never allow yourself to fall for it. 

I'm not confusing anything because I know what they mean, its just that somethings have no objective truth.

What subjective means is.

Definition of subjective in English:
adjective
1Based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions: his views are highly subjective there is always the danger of making a subjective judgment Contrasted with objective.

1.1Dependent on the mind or on an individual’s perception for its existence.

What objective means is.

Definition of objective in English:
adjective
1(Of a person or their judgment) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts: historians try to be objective and impartial Contrasted with subjective.

1.1Not dependent on the mind for existence; actual: a matter of objective fact

From what I can tell part of the issue is my dyslexia, this.

Gravity is an observable objective truth and I would say that evolution in objectively observable though fossil record and DNA testing.

Was meant to say this

Gravity is an observable objective truth and I would say that evolution is an observable objective truth that can be observed though fossil records and DNA testing.

I got it the wrong way around and I did a double take when I reread it just then. 

I understand.  The key thing here is that is no direct way to arrive at the objective truth from a subjective experiance, our ability to observe objective truths depends upon a process of reasoning, however basic and instinctual.  This means that two people can observe the same information and come to different conclusions, which of them is correct is determined by whose reasoning is most sound. 

An objective truth exists independent of our observation of it, gravity and evolution are observable objective truths because they are true regardless of our ability to observes them but can be observed, however knowing or understanding an objective truth comes though reasoning but something that is based purely in subjective experience like morality or ethics has no objective truth to be observed because like beauty it only exists in the mind.

Morality and ethics are ultimately no more subjective than the question of whether a man is dead or alive. 

Dwarves aren't ants or mole rats and them living in "hives" is a new thing and as I've said a number of time I see the current situation with the first fortress as a place holder because dwarves aren't like that imho.

Given that all aspect of the game are replaceable and that in version 21.93.19a an entire civilization amounted to only a single fortress, town, dark fortress or forest retreat but now we have civ's that grow with multiple site type and that starting scenarios are to introduce new site types there is no reason to think that the statue qou with year 0 forts will remain.

I think that there is a number of possible way for Toady to bring in a private individual based economy but for them to make sense within the simulation would require change to other aspect of the game and we know Toady doesn't have a problem doing that.

I do not see much replacement going on in the way you describe the game as developing. 

I think that whats good is an entirely subjective issue because it depends on your personal values after all I am a morale relativist so I've already rejected Plato’s ethics on "the good"

Just this part of Kelly's post on Free Keene sums up my thoughts on the matter.

What is it that defines good? According to Webster’s dictionary, it is defined as “being positive or desirable in nature “. Is good then a subjective value to be determined by each individual according to what they find desirable? If that were the case it would mean that there is no such thing as good or evil, that man’s life has no meaning, that there is no existence outside of consciousness; that the world is nothing but an accidental playground of pure, unbridled nihilism and that we are the devil’s children with empty, cackling, infinite nothingness as our total sanction and final purpose.

She goes on to say this belief is "wrong" and only held by psychopaths but its the one I hold to be true and I'm no psychopath as I'm pretty sure the psychologist I saw for manic depression would have picked it up.

So while ant society is perfect from many points of view its imperfect from mine. There's also the fact that I view the act of change itself as good while static perfection as bad, so never "committing" to a single social structure but having a constant state of flux is the natural truth and ideal.

Ant's: objectively perfect but subjectively imperfect and bad for change.

Human capitalism: objectively imperfect but subjectively perfect and good for change.

Ultimately I think that you like the ancient Greek philosophers but I prefer people like Stephen Hawking because physics, chemistry and biology provides objective answers while philosophy provides subjective answers.

Good and Evil are as mentioned before, no more subjective than Life and Death.  A Good creature or society has the characteristics of the living, it is growing, unified, whole, stable and functional.  An Evil creature or society has the characteristics of the corpse, it is diminishing, divided, disintegrating, unstable and non-functional. 

The society of ants and naked mole rats is not necessary for living underground its just ideal there are animals that live underground without devolving into ants and the thing is its also an "ideal" system on the surface but it doesn't happen because its not necessary, dwarves only need to cooperate as much as the Romans, Egyptians, Incas and who ever built Derinkuyu did becasue each of them built something that was akin to a fortress and before you bring up fortress self sufficiency I will say again that I think that its just a place holder.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derinkuyu_underground_city http://sometimes-interesting.com/2014/05/09/derinkuyu-the-underground-cities-of-cappadocia/

I was talking about self-sufficiency in surplus value terms.  That is never going to go away without making a fundermentally different game, but self-sufficiency might well go away. 

I think the hack is a place holder nothing more and once the political framework, supply & demand, law's & ownership is in he can work on making a system that'll stop that independent viability from being a problem and its not that Crusader King is the "Goal" but that its a side effect of the goal, much like the difference between demon intending to create poverty stricken peasants and poverty stricken peasants merely being a side effect of the economy as I mentioned earlier.

Toady doesn't like abstracting things so why would he abstract that? I mean look at how he's done temperature where every single "cells" temperature is checked constantly he could have abstract it and it would have been easier or trees he could have just made them all generic "wood" like most games do but no that's not what he wants he wants a simulator that can simulate all aspects of the world from the ground up and I'm sure if it was possible he'd have every single peasant in the world be a tracked history figure.

Toady One abstracts 99.9% of all the content in the game. 

Its not altruism if the goal or motivation is that enjoyment then its just a reward system at work.

A reward system that rewards us for being altruistic is an altruistic reward system not a selfish one.  Nobody does anything without some kind of reward system being in place because that is how the mind works, it acts to achieve something it deems desirable.  What you seem to be trying to say is that altruism subjectively works by means of selfishness, but objectively they are acting altruistically. 

The definition of altruism is not relative and it mean selflessness.

altruism

Definition of altruism in English:
noun
1The belief in or practice of disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others: some may choose to work with vulnerable elderly people out of altruism

1.1 Zoology Behavior of an animal that benefits another at its own expense.

If their motivation has any self interest its not altruism because it is the "reward system" disqualifying them from being considered selfless or altruistic as far as I'm concerned and it means that working towards equality is not altruism because its not selfless because equal rights for others reinforces the belief of that you have rights yourself.

selfless

Definition of selfless in English:
adjective
Concerned more with the needs and wishes of others than with one’s own; unselfish: an act of selfless devotion

Synonyms
unselfish, altruistic, self-sacrificing, self-denying;
considerate, compassionate, kind, noble, generous, magnanimous, ungrudging, charitable, benevolent, openhanded
View synonyms

You are welcome to think of it like you do but I don't and its unlikely I ever will.

We have two words, a word called altruism and another word called selfishness.  Why do we have two words, because we are talking about different but related things.

Altruism sometimes requires selflessness, but selflessness does not require altruism.  To sacrifice yourself in order that another person might be cured of a common cold is selfless but it is not altruism; this is because altruism is fundermentally opposed to selfishness.  When seen backwards, to allow somebody else to sacrifice themselves to cure you of a common cold is quite selfish, that means that you are propogating selfishness through your selflessness as opposed to altruism.  Selfless and Selfish fit together like two opposite poles in the same magnet, Altruism on the other hand is hostile to the very existance of Selfishness. 

Evil Cannot Comprehend Good comes into mind here.  A selfish person cannot comprehend what altruism really means since his frame of reference is selfishness.  To him then, altruism is simply the inverse of what he is; so it is the self-sacrificing selflessness by which other people destroy themselves for his sake.  That is because he cannot really comprehend anything outside of his own intellectual framework, the Self, he cannot think of Altruism as anything but Selfishness backwards. 

The motivation is more important than the action itself, if the motivation for having more "workers" is that there's less work for you then its not altruism but selfishness because its ultimately about making your own life easier and this is why social behavior exists in the first place because it has personal benefits "I'll watch your back if you watch mine" and the good feeling you attribute to altruism is a biological reward mechanisms that trains the individual to act in a certain way where the personal benefits aren't immediately clear.

Indeed, selfish creatures do sometimes cooperate.  Once they start doing so the group they create will either fall apart or they will develop altruistic tendancies because they end up having to think about what is good for the group (and their long-term interests) as opposed to themselves (and their short-term interests). 

I never said that they had to just that I think at lest some of them would rather do that then be reduced to a mere peasant.

They do not need money anymore since everything they need can be replicated at no cost.  So why is being a mere peasant worth the end of the world? 

I am a commodity, you are a commodity, every single human is a commodity, your only worth is the value that others in your society assign you this is why your life is more valuable to your family and friends then to a stranger and it also why people without any family or friends can die without even causing a ripple, being forgotten and rotting away in their apartment or home for weeks/months until it start to inconvenience others with the smell or though unpaid bills.

I think that society is founded on selfish desires and everybody works together not for the common good but for personal gain, ants have just taken this so far as giving up on any selfish desires completely by converting to a communal good system on a biological level and have become a lesser creature for it.

According to Capitalism you are indeed a commodity; you sell your labour power to the Capitalists, whether they be individuals or abstract collectives.  I do not see myself in that way, I see myself as a force or power; the more of me that there is, the more power or force I have. 

The fewer of you there is, the weaker you are.  Yet since you are a commodity, your value is dependant upon your scarcity; resulting it the bizzare world we live in where the 'rational' thing for the individual worker is to kill off all the other workers so there are fewer of them despite the fact that more workers can accomplish more than less workers. 

Yes, but the elites are better one for one and a hillock doesn't have enough numbers to soak the damage elites can do and while yes they can all band together and starve out the fortress with Gandhi style non violent resistance so the question is how do you stop them from doing that? by dividing and conquering.

You cannot divide and conquer people who are in contact with eachother and whose interests and circumstances are exactly the same. 

I've never seen it as "overturning" the game just that the result of the implementation of certain dev goals result in there being something similar to a dwarven Rome.

 

Given the amount of fauna that live in the DF caverns and the size of some of the fauna I feel that something must be producing enough oxygen for it all.

Depends upon how much oxygen there is in the DF atmosphere.

That's why you use deceit to hinder the competition and stop them from figuring out your game. as a note Toady does want to introduce lying and misinformation to DF.

What happens when they figure out your game?

I wasn't thinking of the crafters as public sector workers but private workers contracted by the public sector with the guild being their "corporate" front.

They are not private workers if the state/fortress is their direct employer. 

So what to stops Toady from introducing those private leaseholds for the exact same reason?

Nothing as such, as I said you can add in anachronism all you wish, it is just irritating and causes problems if you want to make a more detailed simulation. 

The reason is that the fortress, as a surplus value producing entity has no need to tax the hillocks in order to sustain itself.  It can just continue to mine stuff and make stuff, while the hillocks can continue to grow stuff.  The two peacefully trade their respective goods, becoming more interdependant and consequently being drawn into forming a larger political union that can accomplish what they alone cannot. 

You keep saying this over and over again as if I don't understand that if everybody rebels the system fails and that with the statue quo that rebellion is inevitable but I do understand this because Gandhi's whole premise was that if everyone refuses to follow an "unjust" system it stop working which is the only reason why non violent resistance can work.

This is also why the phrase "divide and conquer" exists, changing the statue que to enable the parasitic Roman "fortress" by dividing the hillocks both from each other as sites and internally though individual competition its only way you can subjugate them and have a dwarven Rome because if you don't change the statue quo it just wont work.

Divide and conquer is exactly why you have private property leashes and then eventually true private property when the goverment loses control of what they have leashed. 

Think of government as an exchange.  The palace 'produces' government while the peasants produce taxes for the palace but while the palace is happy to have the taxes, the peasants do not want to part with them.  This means that eventually the system by which the peasants produce surplus value and the palace produces negative value is inherantly unsustainable for reasons you know well, the peasants pay for the palace's ability to crush them for not paying. 

If the peasants live in any sense in a collective, communal fashion then they *are* a government, which means they have little need to 'import' government from the palace.  The question for the palace is then how to create such a scarcity of the government commodity that people are actually going to pay for it.  By dividing the people up (or keeping them divided) into private plots they are both in need of protecting *and* at the same time poorly able to stand up to the palace.  The palace therefore 'solves' the problem that they produce negative value by artificially inflating the value of the one commodity they produce in abundance by destroying the competition.  Think of it as an example of hoarding goverment in order to drive up the market value *of* government so that people would actually willingly pay for it. 

The result of course is not very nice, but all the problems that their new institution creates drives up the demand for government.  People are impoverished and starving, well enter the government welfare state which naturally needs taxes to fund it.  Impoverished people become criminals, no problem enter the government police and government prisons; they also need taxes to finance.  On top of all the problems caused by the government created artificial lack of government that the government needs to solve there is of course a 'little extra' to sustain the lavish lifestyles of the government elite. 

The same thing however would not happen simply if we placed hillocks under the control of the fortress.  The reason that the fortress may represent a higher rung in the goverment of the civilization, but it is not actually trying to sell government, owing to it producing surplus value.  It wants strong, unified and stable hillock goverments because they are it's hillock government, the fact that the hillocks and fortress form part of a larger economic whole binds them together quite tightly.  The stronger their hillocks are in every sense, the stronger they are while ruling a swarm of scattered peasants makes them weak.

Personally I see a difference, when I think pure "white" DnD's lawful good is what I picture and when I think pure "black" DnD's chaotic evil is what comes to mind. True morality cant be measured on a good vs evil scale and is Infinitely more complex which is why game systems tend to abstract it though measurable values and why I don't like those purist systems.

The thing that annoys me is more the Lawful/Chaotic axis; Law *is* Good and Chaos *is* Evil.  Chaotic Good just means less good (4E actually got it right) but still not as evil as Neutral. 

Which is why I called the values of a society its genes, while genes can lead to the death of the creature that creature can still be considered successful if it passes its genes on to the next generation, to put it in the terms you used, if someone whom posses a congenital defect passes that it on to their children they succeed even if the defect kills them.

A virus is simply what we call a gene that behaves in a 'selfish' manner, sacrificing the individuals that it is a part of for it's own propogation. 

I have no problem with you locking them as ant people so long as I don't have to play with ant people and there's an economy system in game that supports a capitalistic play style.

That is the best solution indeed, to have a variety of different economic/political systems rather than the One True System.  At the moment we have the One True Communist System, before that we have the One True Capitalist system.  Most civilizations should end up in the middle somewhere, because that is realistic and is probably what most people will want as well. 

[GoblinCookie]

I understand that the "socialist society" is the basis of society and I did say earlier that ancient human tribal society did engage in a type communal ownership.

My stance from the beginning is that the goal of DF is to have a fantasy world simulator where the player can take part in all the standard fantasy tropes and if the ant society that you champion as perfect dwarven society, which objectively speaking it is, continues to persist then the consumption or destruction of all other types of society is inevitable just like you've said then the end result of any world gen will be an "age of peace and prosperity: in which the peoples of the world lived in relative harmony cooperating for the good of all" and while the story of how they got to that point might be interesting its bad for the game as a whole if it consistently starts there because then you end up with a world full of Argentine ants.

The reason that I think its what Toady "wants" is because what he wants is for the player to take part in standard fantasy tropes many of which are built upon the foundation of a feudal economy thus ensuring that feudal economy's can consistently survive world gen is a must. So I feel like if it did consistency result in an "age of peace and prosperity" he would alter whatever parts of the game are necessary to stop that from happening and if that meant forcing dwarves to be Romans and fortresses to be Rome so be it, so it not really what he "wants" but a side effect of getting what he wants.

Dunbar's Number comes to the rescue here.  What we do is give all sites a hefty bonus to their functionality under the initial communal system (or whatever raw-defined system they are using) when their population is below a certain number.  This means that initially they can indeed live like Argentine Ants, but once they reach a certain number defined in the Ini. file then the problems start to kick in that force solutions to be found.  It might also be a good idea to wait until the site limit has been reached as well (helps make things interesting in post site limit history). 

So basically changes to the initial system are only to happen once a site reaches a certain size.  This means that folks can still have the wrong values for their economic setup but their initial growth will not be crippled by it. 

I have been saying that items listed on the dev page are about adding the framework necessary to make the economy to work, also right under what you quoted is this.

Starting scenarios

    Various possiblities that guide or govern fortress activity: frontier settlement, religious site, prison colony, mining company, military citadel, roadside inn, secondary/future palace of the monarch
    Drastic changes to migrants based on starting scenario
    Caravans/diplomatic relationships based on starting scenario
    Reclaim mechanics should be folded into this
    Generalize starting scenario relationships to every site foundation

Hill/deep dwarves

    Ability to bring extra dwarves appropriate to the starting scenario
    Entity populations surrounding your fortress in appropriate environments, both above and below ground
    Ability to move dwarves in and out of surroundings
    Relationship with surrounding dwarves
    Ability to trade/demand food in depot or similar place with surrounding dwarves

If one starting scenario is a secondary palace for the monarch then whats the first? I think it'd be the first fortress and mountain home of the dwarves but the part about future palace does brings that into doubt and thanks for the quote, I knew I'd seen something about fortress as the palace before but I wasn't sure where (I've been looking though DF talks ) also the ability to demand food from surrounding sites doesn't seem to far removed from taxing them to me.

At the moment the central goverment is simply looked after by the capital city and the local representatives of the central government (the barons) are looked after by their respective sites.  This is quite functional arrangement actually provided that the total civilization is small.  If the civilization gets very large however, this setup becomes a problem; the reason being that the local government of the capital city (the primary palace) which produces the surplus that sustains the core central government now has undue influence over the central goverment. 

Likely all the fortresses would collectively agree to pay for the palace precisely because it does not produce surplus value.  This means that they can create a neutral ground of sorts, that allows the central government to not favour the capital city. 

[GoblinCookie]

Understandable. I won't hold it against you, gobbo, but Lenin's ghost is probably very disappointed right now.

Lenin's ghost is quite proud of me for my discretion and revolutionary discipline.   

Here's your problem right now, and I admit I should have brought this up on our last debate:
Castles often had towns around them.


In fact, human towns currently organize themselves like that.

So, a dwarf fortress is composed of fortifications, a town where the commoners live (usually highly specialized artizens, as Toady described), and palacial structures where the unproductive nobles and patricians reside. Perfectly Feudal. You could potentially tax your surrounding peasants more so you could rely even less on internal trade to support your fortress, so you could afford less artizens and replace them with even more knights and soldiers instead. Or maybe just make your nobles richer.

The Palace cannot produce surplus value, but they can extract surplus value from the peasantry.  However the surplus value of the peasantry does not actually consist of all the goods that the Palace needs for it's sustainance but merely the value of those goods.  The goods that the peasantry do not have a surplus of, things like manufactured things still have to be imported from elsewhere, but it is still only able to do this because of the surplus value extracted from the peasantry.

This means that around the palace grows a town, a town that is dependant upon supplying the palace with things that it can only buy because it has an external source of surplus value.  This is key to how Capitalism clashed with Feudalism and became the dominant system and the reason is this.  The setup by which the town simply lives off the surplus value extracted by the palace in exchange for selling it's own surplus value to the palace is how Feudalism would *like* things to be.  The question is this: what would happen if the palace lowered it's taxes on the peasants so that they had surplus value?

Surplus value is of course of no use to the peasants (hence why it is surplus) and what the peasants do is spend it on the things that the towns have the offer?  That way the town gets the surplus value that the peasants produce and the palace fails to tax anyway.  This brings the palace face to face with the very nightmare that it invented semi-private property in order to avoid, the palace needs the town but the town does not need the palace.  The initial results are fairly predictable, the town manages to get itself exempt from taxation and organises it's own quasi-independant government and there is little that the palace can do about it. 

This is how Capitalism is born (in the sense that babies are born rather than in the sense of coming to exist).  All that surplus value is still left in the hands of the palace and restricting the market for the towns goods; so the next thing to do is to invent actual private property (rather than the old feudal leashhold system).  Once you do that you can convince all those peasants that taxation is theft, the key other part of this being convincing them that their rights are "inalienable and endowed by the creator".  This convinces them that they "have their own land" and can hence sell it as they wish without having to get permission from the boss.  The clever bit is that the people who do the buying are the people who have the money (townspeople) while the people who do the selling tend to be the people who are poor (peasants).

Of course the townspeople who now own the land do not wish to actually become peasants.  They simply rent out the land on an explicit contract that binds the people to them as opposed to the palace but unlike with the previous situation there is no political means to collectively resist, since you are no longer paying taxes to the government but rent to a private landowner; the former cannot easily exile you but the latter can simply kick you off his land.  All the time the palace is kept on life support, perpetually in debt and basically a placeholder to keep anybody from taking over the State and using it to undermine private property rights. 

In time of course industrialisation happens and the peasants are turned from impoverished tenants into industrial proletarians.  Nothing really fundermentally changes however about the situation described above however in regard to the state, it is kept on life support, heavily indepted and essentially a placeholder.  Add to this ideological chains, so called 'checks and balances' and the whole doctrine of 'human rights' which back up property rights by giving them a basis other than State decree and we have a pretty strong setup for all round evilness. 

Consider what happens however when the State manages to acquire itself surplus value producing powers.  This can happen in three ways, the first is when some valuable resource is discovered and *not* immediately fully privatised (your favourite neighboring country ), the second is when the state siezes control of private production and the third is when the state conjures capital out of thin air by printing money to spend.  Now the state does not need private capitalism anymore and all that prevents it from simply establishing de-facto Socialism are the ideological chains that the particular State wears. 

[Ribs]

blablabla capitalism came to be when the shifty bourgeoisie became powerful when cities started to reappear in europe. Also industrial revolution lol

blablabla capitalism and the very concept of private property is evil *winkyface*

...what the fuck am I reading? I didn't ask for a marxist's interpretation of fifth grade history. Look comrad, you kept insisting before that just because some dwarves produce anything at all in the fortress and are able to export their products it is impossible for it to be considered a feudal society. I provided evidence to the contrary. I guess you don't have a counter-argument?

This is completely off topic, though. If you want to go back to our real world political/economical discussion just say so. You do understand though that this is my main problem with you here, right? That you plow through every argument just to impose on the rest of us the idea that in the end introducing non communist institutions/socio-economical or even cultural organizations in the game should be avoided because you think they are morally evil, etc. Again, you're just being a stick-in-the-mud with that attitude.

[GoblinCookie]

...what the fuck am I reading? I didn't ask for a marxist's interpretation of fifth grade history. Look comrad, you kept insisting before that just because some dwarves produce anything at all in the fortress and are able to export their products it is impossible for it to be considered a feudal society. I provided evidence to the contrary. I guess you don't have a counter-argument?

This is completely off topic, though. If you want to go back to our real world political/economical discussion just say so. You do understand though that this is my main problem with you here, right? That you plow through every argument just to impose on the rest of us the idea that in the end introducing non communist institutions/socio-economical or even cultural organizations in the game should be avoided because you think they are morally evil, etc. Again, you're just being a stick-in-the-mud with that attitude.

Your ignorance is rather getting in the way here.  There is no point in having a discussion with a person who refuses to read, as is shown by the fact that despite the fact that I have been covering the matter for the last 4 pages you still do not realise why a Feudal system is not compatible with having a surplus-value producing government site.  You brought the fact that towns grew up around castles and I gave you a detailed 7 paragraph response as to why they did this; which you then dismiss as a "marxist's interpretation of fifth grade history" despite the fact that your argument is the basic sort that requires such a historical response.  To put the counter-argument nice and simply in one paragraph without any length Marxism history passages.

If the palace makes up for it's lack of surplus value production by taxing the peasants, then it still has to buy the things that the peasants do not produce in surplus.  This means that towns grow up around palaces, sustained by the value extracted from the peasants by the palace which is traded to the town in return for the things the palace cannot get from the peasants.

If you also bothered to read, you would also know that I am *not* against adding non communist institutions/socio-economical or even cultural organizations into the game.  It is merely that I do not want the One True Economy; that is a single uniform, unalterable and unalterable economic system for the whole world. 

[Ribs]

There is no point in having a discussion with a person who refuses to read

Oh, but I really did read your post. It's just that the whole thing seemed so redundant that I found it difficult to recognize it as a counter-argument.

If the palace makes up for it's lack of surplus value production by taxing the peasants, then it still has to buy the things that the peasants do not produce in surplus.  This means that towns grow up around palaces, sustained by the value extracted from the peasants by the palace which is traded to the town in return for the things the palace cannot get from the peasants.

...?
What's getting in the way of your argument, I think, is that none of this is an impediment to a palacial structure to exist. How does any of that nulifies the existence of a 'feudal' society where a palacial elite tributes other sites to sustain itself? What?

I guess I should go through your lenghty postulations one by one. Let's...God help me... go back to your previous post.

(...) Once you do that you can convince all those peasants that taxation is theft, the key other part of this being convincing them that their rights are "inalienable and endowed by the creator".

What the hell is this, libertarian counter-theory? Peasants don't need a concept of capitalism or "inalienable rights" to believe that they are being over-taxed. Peasants have revolted agaisnt excessive demand for tribute from their 'betters' since time immemorial. You seem to be implying that societies were perfectly collectivist and worked much more harmoniously, completely understanding the need for taxation before capitalism came along. This seems ridiculous to me.

Of course the townspeople who now own the land do not wish to actually become peasants.  They simply rent out the land on an explicit contract that binds the people to them as opposed to the palace but unlike with the previous situation there is no political means to collectively resist, since you are no longer paying taxes to the government but rent to a private landowner; the former cannot easily exile you but the latter can simply kick you off his land.  All the time the palace is kept on life support, perpetually in debt and basically a placeholder to keep anybody from taking over the State and using it to undermine private property rights.

Again, this isn't an argument. Even if this was the case, it wouldn't stop a society where a palacial group tributes other groups from existing. And why are you so certain the 'townspeople' (that you seem to interpret as the bourgeois class) would have so much power in this situation? Stop applying marxist theory blindly like this. History isn't so linear and structured that you can just assume these things as if they were mathematical equations.

First of all, the 'town' in the fortress is a very contained place. It has a limited population of civilians, and large number of soldiers. More importantly, it houses the military elite (officers, knights, etc), and those also function as nobles who protect the interest of nobles.

(...) the whole issue is if you want to have a strategic impact on the world and have a political impact on the world you just need a bunch of warm, fat, drunk bodies to get that business done, and you can't do that with two hundred dwarves. But you can't have a thousand, two thousand dwarves running around on screen or the game will ... not run. So you've got hill dwarves to supplement things, or to form like the bulk of your military for example, of your unskilled military. Your dwarves will still be like the equivalent of your, say, knights or whatever and your sergeants, your leaders.. for your military; they'll be the ones that know what they're doing. And then you'll have a bunch of drunks.

So while the 'town' inside the fortress would have some power, and even enjoy some independence (hence the presence of a mayor), it's still at the mercy of the palace. They would still be strong-armed into being taxed and ordered around by the "martially-inclined" nobles and their well-armed goons. Also, Toady mentioned that you were the one sending dwarves from the fortress to train/arm the peasants for war. Your fortress is still the place where your skilled leaders come from. The Hill-dwarves have very little in terms of military leadership, and are highly dependent on the fortress for protection, even if they have a bigger population.

Also, the palace has something the town doesn't have: traditional leadership. The reason people flock around the figure of a king is because a king embodies the living standard of a civilization/ethnicity/culture/nation. They provide a function, and whether you like it or not.
 

If you also bothered to read, you would also know that I am *not* against adding non communist institutions/socio-economical or even cultural organizations into the game.  It is merely that I do not want the One True Economy; that is a single uniform, unalterable and unalterable economic system for the whole world.

If you weren't so paranoid, you would have realized that no one wants there to be a "one true economy". All people are saying is that we'll probably see coins, taxes, private property, etc. in the game. We'll have adventurers being able to buy large manors, and probably have servants working at them. This is predicted to be developed by the creator of the game himself.

We are very sorry if that upsets your socialist sensibilities, but what you should do is create (or necro) threads proposing the possibility of more collective societies being generated in the game, that maybe would be philosophically against the whole concept of private property. There are dozens of threads like those, and no one is hostile to them.

[GoblinCookie]

...?
What's getting in the way of your argument, I think, is that none of this is an impediment to a palacial structure to exist. How does any of that nulifies the existence of a 'feudal' society where a palacial elite tributes other sites to sustain itself? What?

I guess I should go through your lenghty postulations one by one. Let's...God help me... go back to your previous post.

Which was is exactly what I was saying!  The existance of the orbiting suplus value producing towns around the central negative value palace does not change the fundermental relationship between the palace and it's peasants.  You presented the existance of orbiting towns around the palace as some kind of countargument to what I was saying, but it has no bearing on anything.

What the hell is this, libertarian counter-theory? Peasants don't need a concept of capitalism or "inalienable rights" to believe that they are being over-taxed. Peasants have revolted agaisnt excessive demand for tribute from their 'betters' since time immemorial. You seem to be implying that societies were perfectly collectivist and worked much more harmoniously, completely understanding the need for taxation before capitalism came along. This seems ridiculous to me.

Indeed they have always rebelled, because the palace/peasant conflict is fundermental to Feudalism.  If all the peasants are simply angry about being over-taxed they can rebel and all that will happen is that the tax rates will be lowered.  The most they can manage to change therefore is the exact level of taxation and perhaps to do that they will have to change the personality of the ruler.  However when peasants are rebellious, then if you inject what you describe as "libertarian counter-theory" into the mix, like a seed planted into fertile soil you begin to actually undermine the whole system in a certain way. 

If all land is held to ultimately belong to the King/State and is then leashed/subleashed out to individuals in return for variable duties to those above them in the chain, whether to pay taxes or fight for their superiors all that a rebellion can accomplish is to modify the terms of the leash in favour of the leash-holder.  However once you inject the notion that people have inalianable rights to their property that are *not* endowed by the State, then we begin to undermine the whole idea that everybody's property *is* a leash at all. 

Taxation is now theft, so the question is not "how much should we pay" but "why should pay at all?".  Then the government is forced to give representation to people in order to survive, since people must now consent to be governed in order to continue justify collecting taxes.  Previously it was just "we gave you that stuff" so "give us stuff back"; hence while there was plenty of potential for conflict there was no need for representative government to justify anything.

Again, this isn't an argument. Even if this was the case, it wouldn't stop a society where a palacial group tributes other groups from existing. And why are you so certain the 'townspeople' (that you seem to interpret as the bourgeois class) would have so much power in this situation? Stop applying marxist theory blindly like this. History isn't so linear and structured that you can just assume these things as if they were mathematical equations.

First of all, the 'town' in the fortress is a very contained place. It has a limited population of civilians, and large number of soldiers. More importantly, it houses the military elite (officers, knights, etc), and those also function as nobles who protect the interest of nobles.

The townspeople have the power because they have the money and the organisation, conversely the peasants have little power and little organisation.  The townspeople also invented the ideas that the peasants believe in, which give them a marionette character of sorts in relationship to the townspeople.  By pupettering the peasants they can wield power against the palace, but they also hold power inherantly because of the fact that it economically needs them to produce stuff they need. 

The town *in* the fortress is not what I was talking about.  That kind of town, because it mainly houses militery elite and servants is simply an extension of the palace; the interesting kind of town is the kind of town that produces surplus value. 

(...) the whole issue is if you want to have a strategic impact on the world and have a political impact on the world you just need a bunch of warm, fat, drunk bodies to get that business done, and you can't do that with two hundred dwarves. But you can't have a thousand, two thousand dwarves running around on screen or the game will ... not run. So you've got hill dwarves to supplement things, or to form like the bulk of your military for example, of your unskilled military. Your dwarves will still be like the equivalent of your, say, knights or whatever and your sergeants, your leaders.. for your military; they'll be the ones that know what they're doing. And then you'll have a bunch of drunks.

So while the 'town' inside the fortress would have some power, and even enjoy some independence (hence the presence of a mayor), it's still at the mercy of the palace. They would still be strong-armed into being taxed and ordered around by the "martially-inclined" nobles and their well-armed goons. Also, Toady mentioned that you were the one sending dwarves from the fortress to train/arm the peasants for war. Your fortress is still the place where your skilled leaders come from. The Hill-dwarves have very little in terms of military leadership, and are highly dependent on the fortress for protection, even if they have a bigger population.

Also, the palace has something the town doesn't have: traditional leadership. The reason people flock around the figure of a king is because a king embodies the living standard of a civilization/ethnicity/culture/nation. They provide a function, and whether you like it or not.

Since you are completely blurring the distinctions between the Middle Ages and DF, I am therefore unable to respond adequately to most of this thread. 

Historically the king's role of traditional leadership was an obstacle that took centuries to overcome.  The towns started by undermining the local barons and dukes, playing them off against the king to the effect that they were able to get the king to give them more autonomy from these local rulers.  My own city Newcastle started off as a fortress town (thus an extension of the palace, which is why it is called what it is) and then developed thanks to the ample supply of coal locally into a surplus-value producing town.  It then managed to claw itself independance from the local rulers of Northumbria before going on to support Paliament against the King himself in the Civil War.  *That* is what I am talking about, they started by taking down the 'little palaces' and then progressed all the way up to the 'big palace'. 

If you weren't so paranoid, you would have realized that no one wants there to be a "one true economy". All people are saying is that we'll probably see coins, taxes, private property, etc. in the game. We'll have adventurers being able to buy large manors, and probably have servants working at them. This is predicted to be developed by the creator of the game himself.

We are very sorry if that upsets your socialist sensibilities, but what you should do is create (or necro) threads proposing the possibility of more collective societies being generated in the game, that maybe would be philosophically against the whole concept of private property. There are dozens of threads like those, and no one is hostile to them.

I am not paranoid, I am merely deeply worried about the future.  At the moment the world's development is basically internally consistant with the Socialist "One True Economy" that it has, the world develops exactly as makes sense given the economy of the world; there are clusters of communal villages and a few central markets supported by those villages trade.  With the introduction of the above mentioned things however, the world looks set to descend into a morass of anachronism, senseless institutions and ideas dragged out of history and thrown in without either need, logic or explanation. 

Do not ever blur the lines between DF and Middle Ages.  Just because they have the same basic technological level does not mean their society is the same and nothing save fundermentally altering the basic nature of the game could ever make them similar enough that it will be possible to even make analogies between the two.  This does not mean that they would necceserily remain a Socialist One True Economy, but we should not simply chuck middle ages things in simply to add medieval flavour.

[callisto8413]

Yes, a adventurer should be able to buy a plot of land and build on it.  Or maybe buy a existing house and lands.  There will be workers available to work the land or build the buildings, because the adventurer should have money and may even promise them jobs in his household that are better than the dirt farming they may already be doing.  Also there are, of course, younger Dwarfs, Humans, and Elves who are just reaching adulthood.  I doubt there is a zero-growth population - parents don't just have two kids -otherwise they would all die out, what with the wars and conflicts and werewolves and vampires and badgers.  So there are going to be serfs available for employment.  Even those who have employment will have idle periods where they can work for some extra coin. 

And if the adventurer takes over a town can't he direct new projects and invite new citizens to his holdings?

Or maybe allow players to finally build, cut, dig, and so on, allowing them to at least make log cabins on their own.  Oh wait, that's UnReal World.

Oh, and Africa (or I should say the province made up of the northern coast of Africa) by the time of Vespasian was producing more 'corn' than Egypt.  The reason Egypt is at the forethought when we link 'corn' with Rome is that they organized it so the grain was transported in fleets who had to travel 1,700 miles (2,720 km), making the arrive of the grain from Egypt a 'event'.  Grain shipments from Africa would only be organized into fleets around the time of Commodus. 

The Corn Supply of Ancient Rome by Geoffrey Rickman may seem a boring read but not to us who love Roman history.  And understand it. 

[Ribs]

I am not paranoid, I am merely deeply worried

Being deeply worried about a video game makes you seem paranoid. Not saying your shouldn't care about it, but relax.

At the moment the world's development is basically internally consistant with the Socialist "One True Economy"

What economy? Maybe dwarf mode right now resembles a socialist economy, but the world economy certainly doesn't resemble any human economy very strongly. You're the one imposing those things to the game, because that's your interpretation of how it should work. But who's to say human shop owners don't own their own shops and pass them down as property? Who's to say families don't own their own land? Maybe they have little deeds that they aquired after buying it from the state. Can you prove that this is or isn't the case?

The whole thing is tremendously abstracted right now, but because dwarven society shows signs of being "socialist", you can confortably ascribe that to the entire world surrounding it. Dwarves also show a tremendous ammount of tolerance for some of the player's genocidal actions. They are not in communal societies, they are in robotic societies.

Adding features that make the economy look more capitalistic will actually make the current world "economy" (as well as several features that are planned to be in the game) make more sense. It will justify people having mansions, highway banditry and the coins already existing in the game. Most people really want those things to be in DF, so you're losing the war here.

Here's a discussion about hats:

Rainseeker:   I want to get a job as a hat merchant. Make hats, and sell them.
Toady:   This will happen. Your dreams are going to come true, isn't it great?
Rainseeker:   I can't wait. I want to put flowers on them ... and also feathers ... I want fancy hats.
Toady:   Let's see, when is that ... release, release, release ... Release 9 is when you're going to be guaranteed to be able to trade and sell things and so on. However release 8 lets you buy cottages and other properties, so we're getting into that whole ... you know, is the game going to be like one of those things more like Patrician, where you can be in multiple towns and have properties and move your caravans around, that sort of thinking ... we're been reading a lot about how those things are structured. The things that might be difficult for you to get into as an adventurer is that kind of production and retail thing where if there's a guild structure that gets put on top of this, which is very likely, then you might have a lot of trouble breaking in if you don't choose that as a character generation option because you weren't apprenticed early on ...
Rainseeker:   Yes, I was in the hat guild early on in my characters development.
Toady:   Yeah, so then you might have a chance at that kind of thing. But guilds aren't a foregone conclusion for every city either, and then you can just be the guy who makes necklaces and sits out on the street and sells them to people that walk buy on a little mat until you get chased off by the guards ...
Rainseeker:   'Do you have a permit for those necklaces?'
Toady:   So we're hoping to give you some opportunities there. The big thing is going to be the trade orientated thing, like you'd be able to buy up certain goods from one town and then set up a warehouse in another town perhaps and sell to local vendors, for them to sell further if you don't want to set up a store yourself or are not able to. We'll be exploring that stuff in releases 8 and 9 and hopefully ... We haven't thought quite as much about how the economies would go in a village, because there were peddlers that kind of move from village to village, like 'I'll sell you a hammer and I'll buy your ... whatever, buy some vegetables or buy a cow you don't need and move it to the next town and sell it there' - I'm not sure they took livestock per se, but you know what I mean - and just being one of the local peddlers would be a lower status version of the larger caravan operations that you could engage in. But when it comes to actually making stuff and then selling it you'll just need to find an avenue for doing that, but hopefully we'll be getting into stuff beyond the trade, but the trade is going to be the main focus in those late releases. What else can you do as an adventurer ...

It turns out capitalism can be fucking adoreable. People seem to like games where you can open businesses and become filthy rich. It's a power fantasy like any other. Like making empires or being so skilled in martial arts that you can brutally murder an entire village worth of people using kitten, puppy and baby corpses as projectile weapons, and then bathe in their blood. The latter is something you can kind of do right now in DF, and I dare to say it's more evil than capitalism. But that's just me

[Ribs]

Yes, a adventurer should be able to buy a plot of land and build on it.  Or maybe buy a existing house and lands.  There will be workers available to work the land or build the buildings, because the adventurer should have money and may even promise them jobs in his household that are better than the dirt farming they may already be doing.  Also there are, of course, younger Dwarfs, Humans, and Elves who are just reaching adulthood.  I doubt there is a zero-growth population - parents don't just have two kids -otherwise they would all die out, what with the wars and conflicts and werewolves and vampires and badgers.  So there are going to be serfs available for employment.  Even those who have employment will have idle periods where they can work for some extra coin. 

And if the adventurer takes over a town can't he direct new projects and invite new citizens to his holdings?

Or maybe allow players to finally build, cut, dig, and so on, allowing them to at least make log cabins on their own.  Oh wait, that's UnReal World.

I think this is very planned. I also like the idea of starting a settlement on your own on adv. mode. Possibly one of the most fascinating power goals in DF.

Oh, and Africa (or I should say the province made up of the northern coast of Africa) by the time of Vespasian was producing more 'corn' than Egypt.  The reason Egypt is at the forethought when we link 'corn' with Rome is that they organized it so the grain was transported in fleets who had to travel 1,700 miles (2,720 km), making the arrive of the grain from Egypt a 'event'.  Grain shipments from Africa would only be organized into fleets around the time of Commodus. 

The Corn Supply of Ancient Rome by Geoffrey Rickman may seem a boring read but not to us who love Roman history.  And understand it.

...corn? You mean wheat, right? I'm pretty sure that maize wasn't around in Europe or Africa during those times, as it was native to the american continent. Are you using corn as a generic term for grain?

edit: apparently corn can mean any cereal in british english. I guess I learned something new today.