[CharlieA]

The 3-way division of the world into "super-continents" and the constant war keeping the populace in a perpetual state of starvation and poverty, with the entire world in disrepair is so incredibly reminiscent of Orwell's 1984 it's scary.

If you haven't read 1984, it's a startlingly bleak view of a potential future (from a historical perspective, but still applicable today, I think) particularly through technology and a loss of privacy. It's the origin of terms like "big brother" and "doublethink" -- worth a read.

One of the most interesting excerpts from this piece IMO: "I wanted to stay a democracy, but the Senate would always over-rule me when I wanted to declare war... ...Anyway, I was forced to do away with democracy roughly a thousand years ago because it was endangering my empire."

Although I don't necessarily think it will be because of war, I can see a potential future where people/persons decide democracy is a less effective system because it's holding back the decision making process -- democratic process being (more or less) committee-based decision making, which proxies votes through individuals based on what is essentially a popularity contest. That's particularly true here in Australia at the moment (amidst a minority government with a lot of political sniping on both sides and seemingly very little real progress) despite the fact that we have a comparatively strong economy, low inflation, low unemployment and generally nothing really significant (again, comparatively) to complain about.

[nathan_long]

>> democracy is a less effective system because it's holding back the decision making process... seemingly very little real progress... we have... generally nothing really significant ... to complain about.

This mystifies me: people sometimes talk about legislative gridlock as though it's all bad.

Do you measure the quality of a development team by the number of lines of code they produce? Of course not. The development team does not exist to produce code; it exists to produce and maintain the best possible codebase. Refraining from writing bad code is just as important as writing good code.

You just said your country has very little to complain about. What makes you think that a "productive" legislature would make things better and not worse?

I much prefer a system where any law needs broad consensus and relatively few are passed. Dumb as I often think the U.S. government is, at the end of the day, we have police, roads, schools, etc. Not perfect, but good enough that I can live my life in peace.

Of course, a dictatorship would be extremely efficient: the leader snaps his/her fingers and things happen. The question is: efficient at what?

[lotharbot]

One of the reasons the US has a divided Congress is to induce gridlock. This was a design goal.

Remember, government is other people making rules for you. The more efficient they are at changing the rules, the riskier it is for you to do just about anything. The more efficient they are at changing the rules, the more likely they'll take an extreme position on a contentious subject.

[danudey]

But this is why a two-party system can be a liability. You artificially create an us-vs-them scenario, with the other side as the enemy, and any agreement with them on the issues is capitulation.

As a result, you end up with a scenario in which there is always one side with a majority, who are capable of doing whatever they like, and one side with a minority, who are left to scrabble for democratic scraps, pushing bills with little impact to feel as though they've accomplished something. The few bills that do pass with bipartisan support are usually so pointless or watered-down that there's little benefit to having them at all, or it's an issue important to the country as a whole (or, more specifically, their political careers), and so it's put through without appropriate debate or consideration.

With a three-or-more-party system (e.g. parliamentary democracies, such as the UK or Canada), you can end up with a result where even the 'ruling' party doesn't have a majority. This means that when they want to pass a bill, it has to be a situation where they can get the support of at least one of the other parties. While this still requires the same sort of give-and-take as a two-party system, it provides more options for bargaining. You won't approve my 'environmental impact' bill unless I approve your 'limiting access to abortion' bill? Well screw that, the other party just wants me to endorse their 'stiffer penalties for labour law violations' bill.

This seems to me to be a more efficient solution, and I've never understood why the two-party solution was the choice made for the US.

[lotharbot]

There was never an intentional move to create a "two-party" system. That's an accidental byproduct of the winner-take-all system, which tends to reduce the number of parties. But we've definitely had some time periods where there have been 3 or 4 viable parties.

But that's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is the divide between the Senate (2 senators per state) and the House of Representatives (based on population), and the inclusion of techniques like the filibuster. It's harder for one party to get a majority in both House and Senate than it would be to just get a majority in a single parliament. It's even harder to get supermajorities in both. It's even harder to also get a friendly president at the same time as all of those other things. This means that there's almost never a time when one party can just ram through its whole agenda. There's almost always gridlock.

From what I've seen of single-house multi-party systems (like parliamentary democracies) there's a lot more compromise, which is a good thing, but there's also a lot less gridlock, and that's a bad thing.

It's actually a good thing that successful bills tend to be either issues the vast majority of the country agrees on, or else very watered down.

[CharlieA]

I take your point, in part, and I don't necessarily disagree with you, because by and large the system does work. But (to use your analogy) when it comes to the law-making branch of government we have this massive sprawling "codebase" and it doesn't necessarily need a lot of new code (laws) putting in place, but rather, there's a lot of cruft and old legacy stuff that maybe needs to be removed or updated, and the time it takes to get things done is just incredibly slow, which can lead to a lot of frustration for a lot of people. While on the whole that may not actually be such a bad thing, as you rightly point out ("...law needs broad consensus and relatively few are passed...") it strikes me that the attitudes of many people (even myself, on occasion) are strikingly similar to the OP's in the excerpt I highlighted wherein due to a perceived inefficiency of government (rightly or wrongly) we may come to the conclusion that the best course of action is to abandon the democratic process in favor of something which addresses these inefficiencies...which in itself leads to...well...that's the scary part... I suppose. In a game of Civilization it's not a big deal. In reality...

My only real problem with the representative system of democracy generally, is the way we have to proxy our voting authority through our political leaders. It just seems archaic and ludicrous for a region of people (sometimes many hundreds of thousands of people) to have to boil down their political ideologies to a single "best fit" candidate. Even ignoring the potential for corruption, personal motivations, hidden biases etc. you've simplified thousands of separate beliefs on an equal number of issues, social, economic, all, into ONE PERSONS' beliefs and worst of all...that person then has a legitimate claim to believe that they're representing the people.

I suppose it's the difference between a politician believing that they're a "representation" of the people of the electorate, OR a "representative" of those voters. I think most politicians consider themselves the former, and I think that's a mistake.

[philwelch]

The use of representatives isn't just because direct democracy is unfeasible, it also provides a dampening effect, and hopefully provides a foothold for experts to weigh in alongside public opinion.

[JackFr]

But it's even worse than that. Because it is seemingly unfeasible for the legislative body to write the specifics into laws, they create unelected bureaucracies to implement the specifics of broad reaching policy goals.

[noodle]

simulated war, apparently

[_b8r0]

> If you haven't read 1984...

I'd also recommend that you read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World for a counterpoint. The sad part is that the way the world is going appears to be a mix of the worst elements of the two.

Of course, the perpetual war in 1984 was a big part of the story, but because we only ever see the world from characters living in Airstrip One, for all we know the war could've been over years ago.

[zokier]

Brave New World definately is a good pair for 1984.

http://www.totalitariers.nl/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Brave...

(yes, the message of that image is debatable, but i found it intresting anyways)

[nik_0_0]

I've read these types of posts hundreds of times, and they never seem truthful, but here is mine: I just want to say thank you for that image. I would like to hear your thoughts on your note, why do you find the message is debatable, and if you know where the image is from? It says the text is from "Amusing Ourselves to Death" which has just made it to #1 on my to-read list.

I found the apt summary of Huxley's points (plus the jarring images) resonated strongly with my current views on my life, which prompted me to really do some self-reflecting and organize myself. In addition, it vibes very strongly with the "create, not consume" mantra found here on HN.

[zokier]

I'm sorry but I don't know the original source of the image, it is one of those which just circulate on the internet. It has a web address at the bottom though, maybe it would give hints of its origin.

I feel that that image dismisses Orwells vision too easily, and attempts to make the situation seem more black&white than it actually is. As iuguy noted, the real world seems to be a blend of both, a viewpoint that the image ignores.

[ctchocula]

I really agree with your point. It reminds me of an article written by The Atlantic some time ago with the provocative title "Is Google making us dumber?". It talked about how easy it is to find information using Google, but albeit that we're being bombarded by so much information that nothing really sticks. Sometimes I find myself spending hours and hours on Wikipedia and articles on the web that seem to only leave a faint impression in my mind.

The "create, not consume" mantra seems like a good way out of this endless cycle of "Amusing Ourselves to Death".

[acheron]

_Amusing Ourselves to Death_ is very good. It was written in the early 1980s I believe, but if anything it feels more relevant now than ever. (Or it did when I read it in college 10 years ago.)

[fennecfoxen]

As long as we're throwing out reading recommendations, if you're into the dystopian-future sci-fi genre I'll point out C. S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength as an early prototype of that genre. It documents the fall of a nation into dystopia, specifically; George Orwell himself was fascinated by this, as evidenced by the book review he published. (However, his praise was qualified, it was apparently a bit too much C. S. Lewis for his style in the end. He went on to address the very objections he raised when he wrote 1984 not too very long afterward.)

It's the end of a trilogy but you can operate it as a standalone book (and if you must start with the other books, Out of the Silent Planet is a cute little homage, but don't let the dense and somewhat-dull Christian allegory in Perelandra get you down and make you skip Hideous.)

[pooriaazimi]

I haven't read anything in this thread yet, but my eye caught 1984 and wanted to second your recommendation. Brave New World is without a doubt, one of the best books I've ever read. Hard to believe it was written 80 years ago.

I like to listen to audiobooks (when commuting), and BNW's audiobook (produced by BBC) was also great: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0012QED5Y

[pacaro]

In the same vein, "This Perfect Day" by Ira Levin should be mentioned in the same breath...

http://www.amazon.com/This-Perfect-Day-A-Novel/dp/160598129X...

[pooriaazimi]

Looks perfect, thank you. I got its audio-book and will listen to it!

And I noticed she (Ira Levin) had written "Rosemary's Baby" - I had no idea the movie was an adaption! http://www.amazon.com/Rosemarys-Baby-Ira-Levin/dp/1605981109

[pacaro]

Every single Ira Levin novel [1] except This Perfect Day has been made into a movie...

IIRC this instance of an Ira is a "he" not a "she"

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ira_Levin#Novels

[waterhouse]

> populace in a perpetual state of starvation and poverty, with the entire world in disrepair

This is quite different from my experience. In most of my Civ II games, I produce hordes of engineers, which I use to terraform the hell out of the planet--getting railroads everywhere, irrigation and farmland on all plains and grassland, mining on all hills, turning mountains into hills and swamp and jungle into forest, and eventually turning plains and forest into grassland and hills. (Only terrain with special resources doesn't get leveled like this.) I'd probably have 30-80 engineers at some point, depending on how big the game was. Anyway, with this cleanup crew, even if the ice caps melted or whatever the exact event is (which I think changes maybe about 1 out of every 10 squares), all of the new swamp or whatever wouldn't last more than a couple of turns.

Also, what causes the global warming events is mainly pollution: terrain squares containing pollution. That takes two engineer-turns to clean up per square. I would probably be able to nuke two cities and clean up all the pollution and rebuild the terrain (a nuke generally damages and pollutes the 8 squares around its target) in one turn. Srsly, why does he have any non-terraformed squares at all, let alone pollution?

The obvious--and probably only--answer would be "war -> engineers keep getting killed -> can't maintain and use such a cleanup crew". But even then... SDI Defense defends against missile attacks within three squares of a city, I believe. He mentions spies planting nuclear devices in cities. However, you could simply put units in the 8 squares around the city you want to protect [generally try to do this with all your cities, starting somewhere and expanding outward]. A unit by itself can be bribed by an enemy spy (unless you're a Democracy--oh man), but two or more units stacked are invulnerable to spies, even if those units are not combat capable (spies, for example). Then your only problem might be enemy conventional arms. Assuming this is a problem: Use your engineers, build fortresses in each of those 8 squares, and put veteran mechanized infantry there (6 base defense x 2 from fortress). Now you'll have equal odds against the most powerful ground unit, the veteran howitzer (base attack 12) (computers tend to use tanks, though, which have 10 attack). The last problem is stealth bombers, air units with 14 attack; but I think that if you have (stealth) fighters in the city, they will "scramble" to defend against bombers even in neighboring squares. And if not, then you can still at least retaliate next turn and kill the bombers, and not fall behind in a war of attrition (assuming they don't take the city that turn).

Oh, cheapo strategy as well: Have a (stealth) bomber end its turn in a ground square. No enemy ground units--or sea, or bombers or missiles, for that matter--will be able to attack that square. They will only be able to attack with (stealth) fighters, which have 8 attack; if you also have serious ground defense units in that square [or on a sea square, have AEGIS cruisers, with 8 defense x 2 vs air], and if that square also is foresty/swampy or hilly, or has a fortress like I've been saying you should make, then that square is basically impregnable without much attrition on the enemy's part.

Anyway: defend yourself; make your cities prosperous; accumulate capital (engineers are capital, and so are thoroughly improved cities surrounded by thoroughly terraformed terrain), out-produce your enemy, and don't lose the fruits of your production faster than they do. Eventually you should have a large surplus that you can spend on advancing in their direction. If there is a large no-man's-land between your cities and theirs, you should build little cities in this no-man's-land so you can put SDI Defenses inside them and extend your absolutely-defended area outward (rather like the Zerg creep). If nuking really is a problem, then you might just keep building cities within 3 squares of each other--or 2 squares so that you can put out SDI-guarded unit stacks to block spies. If the crowding bothers you, you can force intermediate cities to disband by buying engineers and stuff.

Eventually you should have almost a direct railroad connection to them, and at the front, fortresses on hills (or at least forest) within 3 squares of an SDI-Defended city, full of mechanized infantry that serve as "rocks for them to crash the waves of their attack against". They'll waste resources on trying to kill your units, and you should be mostly able to do what you like. Then either stack up a bunch of howitzers and kill all their defenses (at least in that city, possibly in others) in one turn, or, if you like, use spies to plant nukes and then capture the cities. When you take a city... If you expect them to nuke you and retake it, then, hmm, I dunno; can they really produce nukes and military units that quickly for long? If they have SDI Defenses, try to take the city with them intact (bribing the city is good if possible); if they don't, then I suppose it doesn't hurt to just nuke them. Or ignore them and keep on with the Zerg creep, perhaps treating "capturing their city" and "building a city in that location" as equivalent.

> democracy

Speaking of which, in Civ II, democracy has the following bad things when it comes to war: a) every unit costs a production shield to support (in monarchy and communism, this is "every unit after the first 3", and in fundamentalism, "every unit after the first 10"); b) as mentioned, your Senate will probably stop you from declaring war or refusing cease fires or peace treaties; and c) every military unit that ends its turn not in a city, or in a fortress within 3 squares of a city, causes 2 unhappiness in its home city that turn. Thus, a democracy is slightly worse off support-wise for a defensive war, and is significantly worse off for an offensive war. (But note that my above strategy can be done without causing any unhappiness at all.)

Democracy is the best government in Civ II for production and prosperity. I believe you get an extra trade unit on every square that produces trade; this translates to large amounts of science research and/or cash. Some of it must be spent on luxuries to prevent civil disorder, but it's usually still a large net benefit.

Btw, one annoying thing when nevertheless conducting an offensive war as a democracy: If you take a city, then enemy partisan units appear around the city, and when your active unit next encounters an enemy unit, they will talk to you, and they will offer a cease fire, and you will be forced to accept it, even if you wanted to continue attacking and maybe take some more cities. This problem can be somewhat mitigated by delaying the capture of a city until you've done all the other attacking you want to do that turn; also, if you are in a position to do a thing like this, you can:

Destroy all defending units in two or more cities. Before capturing a city, surround it--at least put units in the 8 adjacent squares, and ideally units in the full "city radius" of 20 squares. Then, when you take the city, no enemy partisan units will appear, and you will not be forced to listen to the enemy. You can then move up to another empty city and capture that as well (no enemy units, no contact with the enemy); if you have a bunch of maneuverable units (like spies or mech. inf.) and there are roads and mostly railroads everywhere, then you can even use the same 20 units for several enemy cities if you like. Of course, if you can do this, you probably won't have difficulty winning the game in any case.

[bstar77]

I'm not really interested in how he could have handled things to have a better outcome... What I do find extremely interesting is that he's in a particular situation that he can't get out of that's just a horrible cycle of death and destruction. And it seems to draw some eery parallels with real life.

[cantankerous]

The issue the parent points out is that the situation that the game player has worked himself in is most likely artificial. It's really, really easy to keep your land squeaky clean and productive in Civ 2. If you've played to year 4000 and haven't won yet and your land is trashed, it's because you wanted things to turn out that way.

[qznc]

In this particular case the player has won. He just continued an ended up in this Orwellian scenario.

[jpadkins]

I think it was excellent design that democracy is sub-optimal for defensive war and terrible for offensive war. You wouldn't want the choice best economy with no drawbacks. Otherwise, democracy would be the dominant strategy.

[skylan_q]

Played correctly, democracy is the best government in all cases!

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=87937

[kristianc]

"Although I don't necessarily think it will be because of war, I can see a potential future where people/persons decide democracy is a less effective system"

Its probably worth pointing out just how unlikely it is that it would be because of war. The democratic peace is probably the closest thing to a universal law of international relations that we have. So if democracy does have drawbacks in terms of speed of decision making, it has more than its share of upside too.

[scarmig]

Eh. The democratic peace theory really just relies on a perpetual no-true-Scotsman approach. Either something's not really a democracy or not really a war.

Native American tribes? Well, they had democratic societies, but they're very different from the liberal state that has come to predominate in contemporary times. Franco-Prussian conflict? Prussia's legislatures were dominated by a rich hereditary landowning class. American Civil War? Well, civil wars don't count, and the franchise wasn't universal. World War I? Well, Germany might have had elections and might have had a wider effective franchise than many parts of the USA, but it was a bad guy, so it doesn't count. Various conflicts fostered by the Western liberal democracies (Iran, Chile, etc.)? Well, those were coups and not really wars.

What "democratic peace" really seems to mean is "countries that are under the umbrella of the United States and have highly developed economies don't go to war against each other." Give it 20 years time, and when the newly elected government of China gets into a shooting war with the government of the United States over some stupid shit (poll driven aggression in the strait?) we'll go back to arguing that China isn't a real democracy because it had only had one or two national elections, or the United States isn't a real democracy because all its state apparatus and elections are controlled by an unelected elite.

[nl]

countries that are under the umbrella of the United States and have highly developed economies don't go to war against each other

Except in the case of the Falklands War. And the Israeli bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor (Iraq was a US ally at the time). And the Turkish/Greek air battles over the Aegean Sea (eg, Turkish & Greek F-16's dogfighting and crashing into each other in 2006: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek%E2%80%93Turkish_relations...).

I agree with your general principle though.

[TrevorJ]

The early Romans had some good success with temporary emergency dictatorships to cut through the deadlock in times of emergency. This didn't really stop working for them till they faced the threat of Hannibal, and appointed Fabius Maximus who spent a few years studiously avoiding direct conflict with Hannibal, and the Senate got impatient and wrested back control.

[philwelch]

There was also that one guy, Julius something, who didn't want to give back control ;)

[acheron]

Well, it started with Sulla first; that's where Caesar learned it from.

[kristianc]

I don't see what that has to do with the democratic peace, which is about nations propensity to declare war on each other.

[philwelch]

I was commenting on the Roman practice of appointing a dictator. See my direct response to you for some thoughts on the democratic peace theory.

[philwelch]

Hmm.... More on the "democratic peace" (it's not so clear cut): http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/demowar.htm

[grecy]

cough... Patriot Act... cough

Not to mention the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)

[joshcrews]

I too noticed the 1984 similarities. One difference is that the world of this Civ II game is the utopia state for the inner party of 1984-- perpetual war that only happens at the borders and doesn't really risk the existence of the 3 superpowers. Such a war keeps the people from acquiring wealth and leisure and justifies a totalitarian government.

[eta_carinae]

> Although I don't necessarily think it will be because of war, I can see a potential future where people/persons decide democracy is a less effective system because it's holding back the decision making process

That's something Darth Vader could have said.

Oh, wait, he did :-)

[Shivetya]

and yet much of science fiction that many us enjoy consistently reflects a much better possible future, as this 2011 article details http://lfs.org/newsletter/029/04/Somin.shtml

If anything technology offered just as many avenues for people to escape a totalitarian world as to succumb to it.

With regards to this guy's game, it probably brings reminders of all the silliness with regards to Civilization game. From melting icecaps to near constant nuclear war its a sign of an AI that that too easily bounces from one extreme to another.

[cynest]

> From melting icecaps to near constant nuclear war its a sign of an AI that that too easily bounces from one extreme to another.

Strategy games put the player in the role of the fascist dictator. Your goal is to further your own nation at the expense of everything else. In reality, groups of people have different incentives and act quite a bit differently.