In a very strange post, Gevlon attempt the titanic task of attempting to compare geopolitical patterns to WoW guilds. I would suggest he fails, and I believe I have a very short counter-argument.
Key to his argument is the notion that any political grouping whose main exports are finished goods will almost inevitably form a meritocratic democracy. Specifically:
If the country depends on its own work, the smart people necessarily get into better positions. They get local power and the leadership cannot do anything about it unless they want to destroy the economy itself. These smart people and using the power (money) they gained during leading the local economy can fight for a better world. The French Revolution leaders or the Founding Fathers of the US were no illiterate peasants. They were upstanding citizens, rich men in the old system. They belonged to the top 10% of the country, and recognized that there is no way up for them as the system doesn’t let them higher. So they destroyed the system.
Looking at the USA as an example somewhat well known to me, I should note that the founding fathers of America did indeed tend to be Old Money; which means wealthy emigrants, or the children of wealthy emigrants, from England. These are people indoctrinated in the concepts of the Parliament and the Magna Carta. They hailed from the very small minority who were privileged to have an education in the history of British Politics. They were not producing a major break with established cultural tradition; rather, they were extending an existing cultural meme in a radical direction.
Indeed, the USA embraces within its borders a vast wealth of mineral resources, oil, coal, water, and arable land. Surely, then, we should have promptly evolved into a corrupt oligarchy where the coterie of rulers buys off the populace with handouts and mindless entertainment, yes, rather than the Libertarian paradise of small, unobtrusive government an generally equitable distributions of wealth, unperturbed by anything beyond the strict merit of the individual.
Finally, leaving aside the strange leap to WoW raiding, the following statement strikes me as hysterical:
In “social” guilds, you can be kicked for “causing drama” or “not being helpful” or “insulting someone” or such nonsense. The reason is that they don’t need you.
I would like to offer up the following, from WoWWiki, regarding a guild named “Nihilum” (whose members form a core part of the guld “Ensidia”, who recently made something of a splash):
Drama goes both ways. Guys can be drama too, females can be drama, whatever. Anyone can be drama so, I just want to state obviously, that we have nothing against whatever gender you are. You can be an alien so long as you kick ass, you have a good personality and have good gear, we don’t care.
I suppose, though, that Nihilum was a “social” guild, caring, as it apparently did, about “causing drama” and “good personalities”.
Actually I did not say that. While I assume that standing on their own feet causes democracy, the point was that NOT standing on their feet and depend on income sources not from their work (selling natural resources, getting outside aid) will sink into some form of dictatorship.
Also the reference to the natural resources of the USA is wrong, as back then mining was a very labor-intensive work, needed huge amount of population. Actually the first big strikes were in mines. Now minding is highly machinized, so an investor can build a mine without giving jobs to anyone.
“I suppose, though, that Nihilum was a “social” guild, caring, as it apparently did, about “causing drama” and “good personalities”.”
You’re missing the entire point. In a raiding guild, because the guild has more invested in the players, and vice versa, people are more willing to put up with some amount of drama. Thus, raiding guilds become known for having more drama, in that this drama is often more prolonged and having more of an effect on those who are socially uninvolved but practically become involved, and so then raiding guilds which are able to be choosy start mentioning drama in exactly the way in which your quote displays. This phenomenon, in which the surface level of a social feature resembles a mirror image of the underlying causation, is very common, so much so that it’s hard for me to convince yourself that your comments on this issue aren’t malicious– a task not lightened by your liberal use of sarcasm.
“They were not producing a major break with established cultural tradition; rather, they were extending an existing cultural meme in a radical direction.”
I’m confused by what this sentence means, exactly. “existing meme” seems to be referring to English parliamentary democracy, and “radical direction” seems to be referring to the new American Democracy. The cultural shift away from nobility was an obvious and direct result of the economic shift away from land rents and towards trade and industrialization. Gevlon’s point is about economics, so one the one hand you putting your argument in cultural terms is you avoiding relevance, and on the other hand you are just proving him correct at a deeper level. Stepping back a bit further though, this is all COMPLETELY beside the point, Gevlon said that america revolted because they were being economically exploited. This is incontrovertibly true, and your entire response to his first paragraph is apparently based on a misreading of his comments in the form of an obvious equivocation of the word “system” where you attempt to attribute to him some belief that American democracy is not highly based on British democracy. He simply never said anything of the sort.
“I would suggest he fails, and I believe I have a very short counter-argument.
Key to his argument is the notion that any political grouping whose main exports are finished goods will almost inevitably form a meritocratic democracy.”
From these consecutive sentences, I was expecting you to produce an actual counterexample, that is to say, a nation who mainly exports finished goods that is not a meritocratic democracy. The obvious counterexample would be China, and then Gevlon would respond that the leaders in China are mainly engineers, which he happens to be, and then I could chime in on how Chinese are fiercely nationalistic and how that makes them possibly more democratic in a fundamental sense, considering congruence, consensus, and proportionalism, than any number of nations that are democratic in the narrow sense of “voting = democracy”–and then we could discuss the likelihood of a legitimate voting process in China in the near future. They already vote there, right?
Surprisingly, you didn’t produce such a counterexample, you rambled on about the culture in America near the revolution and then observed that we had large amounts of natural resources. This clearly fails as a counterexample, but I’ll bite–why didn’t we just ship off these abundant supplies of crude oil and arable land? Wait, is that a real question? Those huge quantities of crude oil, which wasn’t being used in large quantities yet, and wasn’t in the thirteen colonies anyway? The arable land that produces not much that would last the voyage back, not that it would be worth the effort anyway? Ridiculous, but it gets worse:
“Indeed, the USA embraces within its borders a vast wealth of mineral resources, oil, coal, water, and arable land. Surely, then, we should have promptly evolved into a corrupt oligarchy where the coterie of rulers buys off the populace with handouts and mindless entertainment, yes, rather than the Libertarian paradise of small, unobtrusive government an generally equitable distributions of wealth, unperturbed by anything beyond the strict merit of the individual.”
This is irrelevant and completely explained by the reduction in the necessary labor force brought about by mechanization that Gevlon mentioned, but my issue with this paragraph goes deeper than that. In a reply which was generally sarcastic, this paragraph is in the form of a sarcastic aside to your own sarcastic point. Hence, I have difficulty understanding your intent–I mean, the paragraph is true, but for the wrong reasons, I just thought I’d ask if you realized you were blowing up your own argument here.
To be fair it’s very hard to take Gevlon’s views of geopolitics seriously when he starts off by randomly blaming the people of Turkmenistan for not having the will to run headlong into machine gun fire.
Hint: Sometimes a bit more research is helpful! http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2006/78845.htm
But of course, that goes against the narrative that only lazy people tolerate dictatorships, or, apparently, dysfunctional WoW guilds. Which is mindblowingly insulting to anyone who’s lived under an oppressive regime and as a bonus, ignorant of pretty much the entirety of human history.
Whether or not America as it stands is a representative democratic republic or an oligarchy masquerading as one, and whether a true economy/society run along classic Libertarian principles is possible or even desirable are other, more interesting discussions. But one I suspect is beyond the ken of auction-house-manipulating goblins.
@Kurt
You say “Gevlon said that america revolted because they were being economically exploited. ”
Gevlon said “…the Founding Fathers of the US were no illiterate peasants. They were upstanding citizens, rich men in the old system. They belonged to the top 10% of the country, and recognized that there is no way up for them as the system doesn’t let them higher. So they destroyed the system.”
For the sake of argument, assume Gevlon is correct about the facts here. Gevlon said nothing about the average colonists and their feelings about the matter, so you must be implying Gevlon said the Founding Fathers were being “economically exploited”. It seems like a very awkward use of the language to imply that “rich men in the old system” are being “economically exploited”. It’d be like Bill Gates complaining about his crushing tax load. He may feel like it’s unfair, but I’m still going to call him an insensitive prick for complaining.
@Bilsybub– I’m not sure why that seems like an awkward use of the language–it seems like you are calling the situation awkward, not any specific word choice I used. I’m not to blame for the facts of the matter.
These revolutions all proceeded from the same simple cliche…money is power. Eventually, when enough money accumulated outside the traditional power structure, these wealthier people realized that the entire point of accumulating money to give them personal power was being negated by the fact that these systems of nobility were holding power outside of their sphere. Of course, in the case of the colonies, this was compounded with the facts that A. Britain’s colonies were explicitly founded for the purpose of monetarily exploiting for profit, this was not a hidden fact–and B. governing a large and economically complex entity like the colonies was more difficult at a distance.
“It seems like a very awkward use of the language to imply that “rich men in the old system” are being “economically exploited”. It’d be like Bill Gates complaining about his crushing tax load. He may feel like it’s unfair, but I’m still going to call him an insensitive prick for complaining.”
That’s the thing…billionaires don’t complain, they do something about it. That’s why they’re billionaires. In this case, these people (the Founding Fathers, capitalized and everything!) are all dead, but we historically know that they did complain, but their complaints were not made on a personal level but on a noteworthy and inspiring larger level. I assume you are familiar with these complaints? Are you asserting that they were insensitive pricks? That seems like an awkward use of the language.
@Kurt
So what you’re saying is it’s totally cool, if not praise-worthy, for the elites to subvert the legal system they gained power in in order to improve their power, as long as they make us all feel better about it with pretty words?
@Bilsybub
What? My point was that your point about people complaining, since the original reference that Gevlon made was to the Founding Fathers, is clearly applicable to the inspiring writings of the Founding Fathers during that time period, which seems like an awkward thing to be implying.
This connection you are making with these statements justifying their efforts is nonsensical. Am I claiming that the Federalist Papers “justified” the American Revolution? No, that would be totally insane. The Declaration of Independence was was a relevant and important literary and social document, and the Revolution was an interesting historical event, but I have in no way made an argument saying that either one “justified” the other. Why would I do that? Why would you think I were doing that? Mysterious. Even if I were saying that, which I am definitely not, it would be an unimportant side point, so I’m not sure why you’re jumping on it, I’m not interested in debating ethics of any kind, especially not in either the category “people playing games” or “actions of people dead 200 years.”
An on-topic discussion would be for someone to relate Germany slipping into dictatorship while being an educated and industrialized nation to WoW raiding guilds of a certain variety, that’s what I’ve been thinking about in re: this thread but haven’t quite come up with yet.
So let me get this straight. You first claim ““Gevlon said that america revolted because they were being economically exploited.”
I then point out that no, in fact Gevlon said “the Founding Fathers of the US were…rich men in the old system. They…recognized that there is no way up for them as the system doesn’t let them higher. So they destroyed the system”, which is distinctly different.
Up until this point, I’m strictly talking about your own quotation of Gevlon. He did not say what you claim he said. Either you made a mistake in your quote, or you actually did mean to agree with Gevlon’s assessment and had just sort of boiled it down. I go ahead and point out that if you agree with Gevlon’s assessment, that the American Revolution was effectively fought by one group of wealthy merchants and colonial aristocrats against their counterparts in the Old World, that to call these merchants and aristocrats “exploited” would be an awkward use of the word (in the best case). Narrowly, it may arguably be applicable, but the enormous pejorative value associated with the word makes it seem rather trivially inappropriate when applied to already rich men feeling snubbed by their fellows in the Parliament.
This only holds if you, in fact, are trying to echo Gevlon that the Founding Fathers were rich men seeking additional power rather than asserting that the broader people of the colonies were upset over their apparent unrelenting taxation to pay for debts unrelated to their efforts with very little say in the political process.
However, you promptly misunderstand me, blithely claiming I couldn’t POSSIBLY mean that your word choice was bad, as it OBVIOUSLY wasn’t, so I must have meant the SITUATION was awkward..and you’re totally not accountable for that. Which would have been a fair enough assessment…you’re apparently unable to see the obvious, so I should have used more words. You’re not responsible for the causes of the American Revolution, so I certainly can’t take you to task for the “awkwardness” of that situation. Absolutely. I really did mean that if you meant to say that the founding fathers, as rich men in the existing system (who enriched themselves in the system), were being “exploited”, that was poor word choice. Really. It would be a terrible place for that word.
See, that could have ended it. But no, you really wanted to help me understand how it all worked…and that it was, in fact, the “rich men in the old system” reaching for more power that prompted the revolution. Since you had said “america revolted because they were being economically exploited. This is incontrovertibly true”, I have to assume that, as these rich men were the prime movers, you really DO mean that you think they were being economically exploited. So I stand by my sentiment. That’s poor word choice, as that word really doesn’t fit there.
But see, I can’t really mean that, because I would then be forced to call the Declaration of Independence the complaints of insensitive pricks, and those pretty words, written to express the fears and hopes and ambitions of a population couldn’t have been written by insensitive pricks…and I certainly wouldn’t want to call the Founders “insensitive pricks”.
Which is all very cute. Except, I was referring to Gevlon’s hypothetical “rich men in the old system” who “recognized that there is no way up for them as the system doesn’t let them higher. So they destroyed the system.” I never actually said I thought the Founders were such men. I said we’d assume it for the sake of argument, and that was it. It is you who asserts they really WERE such men. If, in fact, they were such men, then yes, I would call them insensitive pricks. Covering them in a blanket of pretty words wouldn’t change that.
Given that you seem to agree that they were such men, and that calling them insensitive pricks would be “awkward” because they wrote the a great populist version of Locke, that tells me you DO, in fact, find it “totally cool, if not praise-worthy, for the elites to subvert the legal system they gained power in in order to improve their power, as long as they make us all feel better about it with pretty words”. Because that would be precisely what Gevlon described and what you asserted happened, while you simultaneously state that they are praiseworthy for their words.
A jerk, frankly, is a jerk, whether they have a strong command of English and rhetoric or not. I further never claimed you felt the various writings of American political philosophers and leaders “justified” squat, if by “justify” you mean provide the an actual description of the motivations of the relevant participants. I said, pretty explicitly, that you seemed to imply they were cover; a sort of propaganda for the world. And I thought you implied it because you did. There’s nothing mysterious about it. You said the people writing those documents were primarily motivated by their personal aggrandizement. Since the documents in question do not mention the personal aggrandizement of the wealthy leaders amongst the colonies, then you must think those documents were written at least partially fraudulently.
As to whether you’re interested in debating ethics, well, you’re probably not. I know I’ve been here strictly for the purpose of debate in itself. I can reassure you, though, that we have been completely on-topic for this entire discussion, because I created this blog, among other reasons, as “A repository of ruminations I think are worth sharing”. Obviously, we’re both really concerned with sharing our ruminations, so this is about as relevant as it gets.
“So let me get this straight. You first claim ““Gevlon said that america revolted because they were being economically exploited.”
I then point out that no, in fact Gevlon said “the Founding Fathers of the US were…rich men in the old system. They…recognized that there is no way up for them as the system doesn’t let them higher. So they destroyed the system”, which is distinctly different.
Up until this point, I’m strictly talking about your own quotation of Gevlon. He did not say what you claim he said. Either you made a mistake in your quote, or you actually did mean to agree with Gevlon’s assessment and had just sort of boiled it down.”
I agreed with him while adding something to it, this is true. I was not intending for this to be a source of confusion, but for additional explication.
“I go ahead and point out that if you agree with Gevlon’s assessment, that the American Revolution was effectively fought by one group of wealthy merchants and colonial aristocrats against their counterparts in the Old World, that to call these merchants and aristocrats “exploited” would be an awkward use of the word (in the best case)”
I did not intend for this to be unclear. Let me rephrase it–America revolted because they were being exploited as a nation, and the Founding Fathers recognized that quickly such exploitation would be replicated domestically, because they believed that domestic exploitation would be more favorable to everyone involved, both exploiters and exploitees. Also, they would personally benefit, and be able to design a somewhat improved system for posterity. If you examine my original quote, you’ll notice I never specifically said “rich men were being exploited”, that is something you constructed by conflating my interpretation of Gevlon’s comments in a way that does not make sense to me for you to do. The reason I said that America was being exploited, not “the rich men in America were being exploited”, or “the rich men in America wanted to exploit America instead of the brits”, was not because I forgot to be more specific, but because the truth lies in a combination of the latter two concepts, making my simple description the most suited.
“This only holds if you, in fact, are trying to echo Gevlon that the Founding Fathers were rich men seeking additional power rather than asserting that the broader people of the colonies were upset over their apparent unrelenting taxation to pay for debts unrelated to their efforts with very little say in the political process.”
Why can’t I believe both of those things? Where’s the contradiction between them? If you assert that I can’t believe both of those things, then I can see why you are seeming to find my comments problematic. It’s true that Gevlon didn’t mention the latter concept, but I’ve already pointed out a few other things he didn’t see fit to mention, haven’t I? His post is an insightful and interesting observation, but it obviously isn’t comprehensive or perfect.
“Which is all very cute. Except, I was referring to Gevlon’s hypothetical “rich men in the old system” who “recognized that there is no way up for them as the system doesn’t let them higher. So they destroyed the system.” I never actually said I thought the Founders were such men. I said we’d assume it for the sake of argument, and that was it. It is you who asserts they really WERE such men. If, in fact, they were such men, then yes, I would call them insensitive pricks. Covering them in a blanket of pretty words wouldn’t change that.”
Why does that make them insensitive pricks? You are missing some necessary steps here, like examining the other consequences of their actions, right? Gevlon’s motivations for them are compatible with the popularly ascribed motivations, you don’t need to make this so black and white. Especially because we’re talking about a large group of people, each one of which would have a different mixture of motivations.
“I said, pretty explicitly, that you seemed to imply they were cover; a sort of propaganda for the world. And I thought you implied it because you did. There’s nothing mysterious about it. You said the people writing those documents were primarily motivated by their personal aggrandizement. Since the documents in question do not mention the personal aggrandizement of the wealthy leaders amongst the colonies, then you must think those documents were written at least partially fraudulently.”
Well yea, we’re talking about politics after all. What do you expect? The point is that they kept their aggrandizement and misrepresentation in check enough to be balanced and admirable, for politicians. Were they saints? I tried pretty hard to indicate I thought they were anything but.
“A jerk, frankly, is a jerk, whether they have a strong command of English and rhetoric or not.”
I expect that I would use a less aggressive manner if I weren’t responding to such a sarcastic original post, as I’ve already noted. If you want to bring it down a few notches, I don’t mind attempting to follow suit. I’ll admit I have a problem if you will
@Lum
“To be fair it’s very hard to take Gevlon’s views of geopolitics seriously when he starts off by randomly blaming the people of Turkmenistan for not having the will to run headlong into machine gun fire.
Hint: Sometimes a bit more research is helpful! http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2006/78845.htm
But of course, that goes against the narrative that only lazy people tolerate dictatorships, or, apparently, dysfunctional WoW guilds. Which is mindblowingly insulting to anyone who’s lived under an oppressive regime and as a bonus, ignorant of pretty much the entirety of human history. ”
I’m confused, his words on the topic:
“Why did the people tolerate him? I mean there was some violation of human rights and some opposing politicians and journalists found themselves dead, but there were no mass graves, concentration camps or revolts on the street. On the other hand in several other countries the people revolted against the tyrant, even when the mentioned leader was much-much less obviously unfit for command. Are they somehow better people than the Turkmens? They wanted freedom more?”
So he’s attempting to NOT blame them, his whole post is an attempt to not blame the Turkmens, by providing an alternate explanation to “they’re just bad/lazy people.”
I mean, it’s cool if you disagree with his argument, it’s fairly loose, but your response to him doesn’t make any sense, it’s completely opposite to the reality.
What’s your take on it? What do you think the people of Turkmenistan should have done? What would you have done if you’d lived there? I know I would have tried to leave, at least so I believe.
Yes, you are confused, since you attribute to Gevlon’s post a motivation (providing an alternate explanation for Turkmenistan not rising revolt) that is directly opposite what he wrote. The key bit, which you didn’t quote:
“On the other hand if you could magically make wealth (the currency of your suck country doesn’t count) to finance the enforcers and the symbols of your tyranny, most of your people would be cool about it. All you’d have to kill are a few young Utopists. Too bad for every wannabe dictators that there is no free lunch.”
In other words, the Turkmens didn’t care that they lived under a dictatorship, because they didn’t have to pay taxes due to an abundance of natural resources.
If I have to point out the fallacy in this argument, it’s really pointless having any further discussion.
It’s a gross generalization, but I don’t see a classical fallacy in it…
and I don’t see how the quote directly above is opposite to anything that I claimed. You seem confused. i think the problem for you is that Gevlon is assuming that ALL people are generally lazy/bad, but he’s trying to prove in his article that Turkmens are not especially lazy/bad, but that the circumstances in their country make it less likely for them to revolt. I’m not sure what you object to in this argument. Do you think they secretly have revolted and we just don’t know about it? Do you think they are more lazy/bad than the average human? Or are you just missing the point completely? I’m leaning towards the latter.
Guess you’re checking out of the debate though, cya.
Except Lum never mentioned a “classical fallacy”. He said “fallacy”, meaning the statement is false either due to improper logical structure OR due to false axioms (or both).
Nice try, though.
And just to really close the matter, above you said “his whole post is an attempt to not blame the Turkmens, by providing an alternate explanation to “they’re just bad/lazy people.””
Now you’re amending that “he’s trying to prove in his article that Turkmens are not especially lazy/bad”
So Lum was, in fact, effectively countering your original argument. No fair claiming you said something else. Gevlon did not provide an alternative explanation to them being bad/lazy people. That was precisely the reason he gave for them acceding to a dictator.
Try not to play word games or raise straw men; it does your argument very little good.