Welcome to the tenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!
This month’s banter leans a little, OK a lot, on the academic side. It comes to us from xiphos83 of A Misguided Adventurer, who asks the following: ” Victor Davis Hanson argues that western culture, comprising of ideals such as freedom, debate, capitalism, and consensual government, are what make western society so successful at waging war. These ideologies create a warrior who’s direct participation in government, ability to think freely, and desire to remain free, fights harder and is willing to suffer more than his conscripted foe. Though a military must remain a structured oligarchy to fight a war effectively, why in a world where military conflict is as familiar as breathing are there so few alliances that embrace these ideologies when governing their members?”
Wow! What a topic! It took a bit of thought to even decipher it but I think I’ve got an interpretation I can work with: The question Xiphos asks can be basically boiled down to this: “In a virtual world where practically any form of government is available to corporations and alliances, where are the democracies?”
Whilst I have been unable to find data regarding the political structures used by player corporations and alliances (maybe a project for the future) the original question posed by this banter assumes that most are run in a dictatorial style, or with a few key personnel making the major decisions. I’m not going to address the question of whether this is the case or not, but instead will assume that this is the prevailing state of affairs and proceed from there.
The universe of EVE is basically based on conflict, it is built on it. Be it military, economic, or psychological, New Eden depends on conflict and competition to make it the vibrant and dynamic universe that it is. This being the case, a more dictatorial or militaristic style of organisation is generally more efficient at meeting the challenges that such conflict inevitably throws up. When your success or failure in any endeavour is dependent on many different facets of your organisation working in concert being sure that any orders given are followed is essential.
Whilst some corporations and alliances are more relaxed in their attitude to such things, many of the more successful groups have rigid power structures with fixed chains of command. This highly regimented style of leadership is extremely efficient and has the benefit of every member of an alliance/corporation knowing their role and their place in the hierarchy. Whilst votes may be taken on major policy changes, many day to day decisions (including tactical and strategic military decisions) are necessarily made by a select few.
If a vote had to be taken by all members of an organisation about every little detail of the organisations actions, nothing would ever get done, fractures would develop and in the case of sensitive military and economic decisions details of what the organisation was planning could easily be revealed to the competition. So for efficiency and security reasons a dictatorial or limited representational style (decisions made by vote among a small elected committee/board of directors) lends itself better to the state of eternal conflict which exists in New Eden.
That being said, it is not the case that there is no such thing as democracy in New Eden. In practice there are so many corporations and (albeit fewer) alliances existing in the game that a player can often easily find one whose goals mesh quite well with their own. If after having joined one of these they find that their goals have changed, or that they didn’t coincide with the organistation’s as closely as they thought they can always vote with their feet, and go hunting for another corp whose goals more closely match their own. So democracy does have a place in New Eden, if we consider joining a corporation to be equivalent to supporting a political party.
So on a wider scale New Eden is ultimately highly democratic, with players showing their support for certain goals and endeavours through joining the corporations or alliances which they more closely associate their own politics/goals with. Conversely at the level of the actual corporations and alliances a more militaristic/dictatorial style of government is adopted because that is the form of government which actually gets things done.
CrazyKinux has set up a new way of collating the contributions of banterers for this edition, instead of a list at the end of the post he will supply us with a link to delicious page for each month’s banter and here it is
Till next time good hunting and don’t let the reds get you down.
