Xylephony
commented
11 months ago Also, while I generally disdain meme events, thinking about it I actually think if an Anarcho-Liberal nation manages to survive until the lategame and since this mod has nukes, if an AnLib dictatorship has nukes there should be a rare event for a citizen purchasing a nuclear weapon that increases the nation's infamy and militancy by a huge amount. It would be rare enough to not just be a worthless joke event while also being something that could actually happen in an anarcho-liberal state.
I had a bit of an argument with HPM about this back in the day. I think that the representation of Bourgeoise Dictatorships is already extremely stupid and that it would be much better to model them as a democracy that simply has insane bonuses to the rich vote (I'm talking like +10000% or something), but I digress. Like it or not, anarcho-liberals don't believe in the concept of the centralized state and representing them as a centralized dictatorship doesn't fit them ideologically, and unlike communism doesn't even have the benefit of real-life examples to show that even a fraction of the ideal was never realized. At a certain point an ideology needs to be represented properly, or at least with rationally unique mechanics, if it’s to be included at all. A slightly edited version of my reply to HPM's concerns below:
Every Anarcho-Liberal called for the abolition of the state and yet their government system is already represented as a dictatorship. For communism at least there there’s the Marxian excuse that socialism must be achieved before communism can be; there’s some precedent within Marx’s writings at least that allows for moving to that authoritarian bullshit as an ‘intermediate phase’. Anarcho-Liberals didn’t call for any intermediate stage, any gradual buildup or any “well, with caveats.” At the VERY least it would make sense for the bureaucrats within that state to be forcibly demoted, because that way at least the internal structure of the polity is being rationally represented as adherent to the ideology. In a true Anarcho-Liberal ‘state’ there WOULD be what other states would consider crime: mafias, political machines and the like would not be considered illegal in such a system. And, what’s more, the reduction in state oversight would permit for widespread terrorism and anarchist movements, and that would also be realistic, because there wouldn’t be any central policing system.
In other words, what I’m saying is that not all things should be balanced. Not everything should be something you can just bounce back from. Anarcho-Liberals are a rare enough and niche enough ideology that I believe it’s fine to represent them as the massive blow to a state’s organized structure that they would realistically be, to the extent that the state basically loses its ability to govern itself for so long as they’re in power. There should probably be serious benefits in exchange: for example a base admin efficiency modifier to represent private policing and privatized government structures throughout the state. Or, though the state loses the ability to really make money for itself, private enterprises could get huge benefits to throughput, RGO output could increase. Wages should go down due to absolute deregulation and the permissibility of falling into a state of serfdom or direct slavery if debt is accrued, but with overall output and throughput up even the poor might see some small benefits. It should be a system under which POPs (at least those that can get their needs) can thrive, but in which the state that leads them absolutely does not: a completely laissez-faire, hands-off system where the state can do almost nothing while the POPs really take the reins and do whatever they want.
And if you’re really worried about balance, you can always just make a decision for nations that have come out of an anarcho-liberal dictatorship that allows for the instant conversion of a certain percentage of landowners, intellectuals and/or officers to bureaucrats, so the state can bounce back a little more quickly. That would prevent it from being something that nations just absolutely couldn’t recover from, while still making it pretty punishing and a very serious blow to the state in the short-term.