Aileron

You mean this bullet? *Pulls bullet out of SeVeR's left lung* These are the signups for something a little more serious, so please stop with this routine. Not for my sake, but for the sake of the other people who want to get a serious game going. Play serious for Manus' and Greased's sake, or don't play at all please.

Communism isn't a future economic system, its an ancient economic system that got replaced when mankind started farming for food instead of smashing food on the head with a club. I guess there are certain industries that need to be regulated, such as electricity and transportation. However, I disagree with you Monte. Corporations are a relatively recent development in capitalism. Before the industrial revolution, there was capitalism but no corporations. However, that was the 1800s, this is today. There are certain industries that probably need major corporations to function. However, there are others that there really is no need for. There's no reason the world needs large international fast food chains or supermarkets. I'm not a believer in the whole "Walmart is evil" philosophy, but at the same time I can see no reason why having a large number of local businesses instead would fail to get the products to the consumers. And I don't think that corporations are an integral part of capitalism. Yes, some businesses are bigger than others, but a corporation isn't merely a big business. They are en!@#$%^&*ies with simultaneously many and no owners. Instead of ownership, corporations are run by what can only be described as a miniature government, complete with official policies, legal workings, and buerocracies. Invariably, most corporations have administrations that are not even in the in the same state as their industrial facilities, let alone in the same building, as what should be necessary. Generally the people calling the shots are accountants who crunch numbers in headquarters instead of managing production of the product at the factory. I guess the best way to describe the problem is to cite the Discovery Channel's "American Chopper". If you compair Orange County Choppers with Honda corporation, there are many differences other than the mere size of the company. For instance, look at the guy running the place. He's a motorcycle nut. He probably used to do the grunt work, and knows more about how his business runs than his workers. He fits the finances of the business to what he wishes the buisiness to become; he doesn't fit the company to the financial situation he wants. This business is a life achievement for him, as well as his long-term future. The guy who runs Honda on the other hand is probably some suit who wouldn't know how to !@#$%^&*emble a Honda motorcycle. He probably lives and works far away from any place where motorcycles are built, and to him personelle, products, and finances are all just stats on a powerpoint presentation. This isn't his company, its his stockholder's company. It was around long before he showed up. The point is, a CEO views their company as a job and the shareholders as bosses, but the single business owner, whether its large or small, views his business as his or her whole life.

Sorry, a new rule, rule 3 3/4, was added...all characters builds, whether before or after the time the edit was made must comply with that rule.

We haven't had a working 17th Parallel Bar topic in a while. So, signup your character here so that I can see how many people are interested. Here is the revised (and much shorter version of the rules) Thread posting Rules: 1. No post containing the actions of any other member 2. No destroying the bar 3. No character superpowers (I'll decide what is and is not a superpower) 3 1/2. Character choices are as follows: Human, Cyborg, Genetically Modified Human, Android, Genetic Creation, or Living Machine. 3 3/4. Don't be a dumb!@#$%^&* with your character choice. 4. If the previous post has broken any of the rules, ignore its entire contents. Rule 3 1/2 has been added due to a lot of abuse by almost everyone, myself included. Additionally, penalties will be applied the farther to the right you are on that list. For example, an Android might not be programmed for social interaction, might break down in certain environments humans can tolerate, or might be vulnerable to certain weapons. As for plot, I think I'll use the same basic plot as the dismall failure of IV. However, this time I won't have an actual character myself, but rather controll the scores of NPCs that come, go, or get blasted into oblivian. I will also spontaneously add problems for PCs to face, and party members to help them out. In short, I guess I'll DM this one. There will also be a point system added, which I will keep track of. Generally you earn points by being a 1337 roleplayer. The problem is that the only way to keep track is to have me judge, which adds a lot of bias. So, points will in no way affect your character's interaction with the roleplaying universe. Maybe, if this thread is popular enough, I can persuade the staff to prize people super or bounce in game for having a lot of points here, but I doubt it. Attached to this post is optional reading describing the history of the 17th Parallel Bar and the universe its in as well as details of the proposed point system. Note the word optional...the points mean nothing as of yet and even in the real world you can survive despite flunking history.

Greased, I'm not quite sure that last joke obeyed this topic's rules about PG-13 content only....oh well. *sneaks into nearby army base and steals a tank* *drives tank up to Chuck Norris* *blasts Chuck Norris with the main turret gun* *when the dust settles, all that remains is a smoking crater* "Woot! I beat Chuck Norris" *starts celebrating by dancing around in stupid ways* *Chuck Norris suddenly steps out from behind the tank and knocks me down with a single punch* *Chuck Norris then loads me into the cannon and shoots Iran's nuclear reactor* *Chuck Norris receives a Nobel Peace Prize for averting a potential international incident.*

Oh, I forgot to respond to these; Just because the country is small doesn't mean that their soldiers are 2 feet tall. They could easily have been as strong as the Germans unit for unit, stonger even (large armies often decrease their individual effectiveness if they outnumber the enemy too much), so atleast they could have held out long enough for allied reinforcements to arrive. That is really easy to say at arms length. My opinion doesn't change. I'm not scared of people. The worst thing one person can do to another is kill the other person. Evil, on the other hand can lay claim to the heart and soul. If you cooperate with those such as the nazis, they can get you to do things that will destroy who you are and forget what you believe in...a fate worse than death. But this is the real reason this needs to be addressed. The French government is in place to serve France, not France's allies. If they knew that Belgium was too weak to hold off the enemy* for any amount of time, they shouldn't have hesitated to take the diplomatic hit and do what needed to be done. Maybe diplomacy will recover, maybe it won't. If it meant losing an ally, then all they lost was really a back-door into their country. Take the case of a security contracting company which provides non-firearm carrying security personelle to business and persons. A 5 foot tall lb woman who has no extrordinary martial arts skills shows up looking for a job. If the owner doesn't hire her, he takes a PR hit for discriminating in the workplace. If the owner does and has her protect a client, its worse though, because any attacker can overpower the guard and do what he wants to the client anyway, costing the company a reputation to its clients, who are the people they serve. *A fact they did NOT know admittingly...they thought that Belgium would be able to hold of the portion of German soldiers sent their way. Hmmm..letsee... Germany hates France because a long time ago Germany was the Holy Roman Empire. (Neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire, its just a name.) The nature of their political structure made them divided, and for the longest time France had did all they could to keep them divided, which caused French involvement in the Thirty Years War. Italy hates France because France kidnapped the Pope, in attempts to get him to proclaim all French foreign policy to be holy. Spain hates France because Loius XIV convinced Phillip II (I think...which Spanish king was the mentally re!@#$%^&*ed one again?) to name Loius' nephew heir to the Spanish crown, causing the War of Spanish Succession. England hates France because France was the centerpiece in a boycott of English goods by all other European countries, which didn't work. (England pwned all of them put together economically.) And for the Hundred Years War. (Not really a war that lasted a hundred years, more like a century of off and on hostility...the Thirty Years War on the other hand was indeed a war that lasted 30 years, and the only one in which the Swiss participated if I know my history.) And actually, it sort of was France's hobby to invade England...the Norman invasion is what historians consider to be the beginning of the Renaissance.

Capitalism (with appropriate industries regulated) has no flaws. However, corporations by their presence puts flaws in our economic system. They basically are financial !@#$%^&*ans that can take the free out of free market by blowing away the compe!@#$%^&*ion with a variety of unfinacial tactics. An old fashioned example would be selling products for a loss for a short turn period of time. Smaller establishments cannot compete and hold a profit because there is no physical profitable way to sell that product at that price. Thus, the small business goes out of business. The corporation suffers a loss of income, but once all the compe!@#$%^&*ors are gone they raise their prices again to ridiculous levels. This particular practice was outlawed decades ago, but generally corporations find loopholes in anti-trust laws and can exploit them faster than legislatures have been plugging them up. One of the biggest problems with corporations is that they are considered en!@#$%^&*ies of themselves. Their owners are not personally accountable for the corporation. If a corporation commits a crime, it is the corporation, not the owners, that are accountable (though there are hundreds of things the owners can be charged with). If a coorporation goes into bankruptcy, the owners do not have to pay off the debt. Also, there needs to be some limitations on how much fixed income executives can earn. The way capitalism is supposed to work is that the caveat of beng in charge and making a lot of money by owning a successfull company is that if the company you are in charge of fails, you lose money or at very least you stop getting paid. Today executives that are in command of disasterous failures still make 7 figure incomes. Still, I didn't watch that do!@#$%^&*entary and I don't have the time to.

Students do have a tendancy to be left winged. That law is a mistake, but there are appropriate channels to challenge the bill and one does not need to resort to violence in this case. Low voter turnout in youth is indeed a severe problem in democracies, because it leads to the rights of youth being ignored as in this case. Just because the bill is clearly and severly wrong doesn't make the rioting right. And, social upheaval is not necessary in democracies, such as in England, which managed to make political progress on its own peacefully for centuries with only one civil war.

Actually France never got the crap kicked out of them before WWII...they've had some take-over-the-world schemes fail, but that's "failure to kick the crap out of somebody else". People hate them because they did some nasty things during that time period. The US is hated because we are on top...if the EU ever grows to be stronger than the US people will hate their policies. All human action amounts to playing god. If there is an injustice in a minor nation going on, the choice of a large nation is to intercede, in which case they are taking the role of judge, or ignore it, in which case they are considering themselves "better" than problems in which others are suffering. There exists no political policy that will please everybody.

Well, I didn't really mean to say that Europe's secondary education is lacking as much to say that the US's secondary education is better. Really, those points are minutia and I probably should have picked better ones...its just that there are few solid problems that don't depend on point of view. Cultural bias was the exact reason for the long post instead of simply stating the conclusion. Europe says the US is too far right and the US says Europe is too far left. However, somewhere on the political spectrum there must exist a center, to state that its all purely relative produces tons of logical flaws which I'd prefer not to mention here. Since it is a function of government to in general solve problems and create opportunities, the point "center" is the political climate that solves the most problems and creates the most opportunities. To eliminate bias, I am only considering problems and opportunities that everyone would agree on, technically impossible, but there are a few issues that have overwhelming 99%+ majorities. (Example: Health Care...there's a few sadists in the world that would prefer to see patients die of disease than be healed. Nevertheless I'd consider "sick people should be healed" a universal opinion.) The tricky part is summing up all the issues. I didn't mention economic problems because both the US and Europe seems to be facing the same ones, (namely outsourcing of labor to 3rd world countries.) Crime rates seem to be higher in Europe. (Though crime rates involving firearms are higher in the US.) Rioting isn't exclusive to France, but in general I was compairing a nation vs. a continent, because in many ways the culture of Europe is coming to resemble that of a single country. I mean, there really isn't much to go on here, because both the US and Europe are both really close to center, and our differences aren't as great as one would think. Its just that France for one European nation does seem to have a current streak of lawlessness, most likely from being left of center.

Well, the theory doesn't work if there's genocide going on...Nazi Germany and Bosnia are proof of that...the genocidal's ability to simply kill off minorities works faster than the time it takes for a split in the majority to form. However, as you said, no one's stated purpose is genocide. The likelihood is indeed so small in this case that we can safely just assume it won't happen. I was just plugging a logical hole in my theorey.

Well, we weren't really talking about the EU in particular...more like arguing over the definition of "empire". Really though recent events opened a new line of discussion. Indeed, but Europe is mostly full of whackos. There have been anti-government riots in France yet again. I don't really have much to back this claim on, but it seems that Europeans tend to hate whoever is in charge regardless of their policy, that in an effort to be counter cultural they have come to disrespect all forms of authority. This is an inherent aspect of liberalism. Its not necessarily a wrong behavior...there are times when those in power are wrong and should be opposed. However, most of the time those in power are just doing the best they can, and just can't make everything perfect for everybody, and the problem is that if there are too many people who are too left wing, they sometimes oppose good governments and sound policies. Politics, like everything, needs balance, and Europe is too far left wing. The major problem is that left and right are relative, and the position of "balance" can often be misinterpreted by point of view. However, the fact that people may have different points of view about where the center is does not disprove the existence of a center. I for one would define the center would be the proper combination of conservatism and liberalism that leads to the fewest non-political governmental disasters and most non-political governmental benefitial events. I will define "non-political" disasters and benefitial events as events in which both sides would agree upon the desirability of the event. For instance, the current war in Iraq would not count as non-political, because some support it and some oppose it. A high crime rate would be non-political, because everyone who isn't a criminal opposes crime. Political events cannot be counted, because doing so would make the balance simply the sum of everyone's opinion...leading to the statement "the majority is always right" which is clearly flawed. So, if we compaire the US to Europe, the exclusive non-political problems the US was the sloppy handling of hurricane Katrina, poorer primary education, and health care. The exclusive problems Europe has is rioting, poorer secondary education, and high crime rates. Overall, I'd say the US is closer to center, because hurricane Katrina was in the end an act of nature, whereas rioting is a correctible social problem. It seems the center is a little to the left of the US and a lot to the right of Europe. So, it is correct to claim that Michael Moore is indeed a left-wing looney.

Russia, though considered a European country (most of their major cities are west of the Ural mountains.) is too independent to be in the EU...they simply don't think like western Europeans. I for one don't hate France. I also don't subscribe to the belief that they are weak cowards. The only time they've ever been occupied is in WWII, and that was because of strange cir!@#$%^&*stances. They predicted the next war they would fight if any would be with Germany, so most of their military was in the form of stationary defences on the German border, called the Maginot line. They didn't fortify their border with Belgium. Belgium continued the Maginot line in a fortress they built along their border with Germany. Their stupidity was that they contracted German engineers to design the thing. By the time WWII started, the German army simply asked the engineers for the schematics, and not only had the complete schematics of the base, but had built scale models of the fortress to train for the capture. When then finally attacked the fortress, it fell within days. This allowed them to go around the Maginot line...cutting off the French defenders from their best hardware. As for the French soldiers fighting for the nazis afterwards...those who are unwilling to give their lives to fight an enemy that is clearly evil are indeed cowards, but it is an entirely different matter when the lives of your wife and children who that enemy is practically holding hostage are concerned. They didn't really have a choice. Thus, France was never cowardly...they just made an oversight in that they should have fortified their border with Belgium as well....a historical lesson that international cooperation isn't always a good idea. As for the EU, if that's what Europe wants who, am I to argue? I'd just recommend that they be carefull when dealing with matters relevant to their defense, such as immigration. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

Yeah, I guess the war planners only !@#$%^&*umed that the insurgency would only be old loyalists to Saddam and that they wouldn't be importing foreign jihadists. On the other had maybe they saw this coming and figured it would be better to have those jihadists attack our soldiers in Iraq than have them attack our civilians around the globe. I am considering two types of dictatorship: One in which the government represents the majority and another in which it represents the minority. A true democracy is not mere majority rule, but also includes several mechanisms to allow minorities certain rights. The Baathists were a minority ruled dictatorship. They were only of the Sunni race and stood for putting everyone in Iraq that wasn't Sunni - % of the population, under their thumb. True democracy in Iraq would mean all the races cooperating together. Now, if this turns out badly what we would get is a majority ruled dictatorship with a democratic mask. It wouldn't be real democracy, more like the majority !@#$%^&*erting their will on the minority all the time. With the Shi'ites, about 60% of the population, oppressing the Sunnis. That's still a step better, at very least because before % were being oppressed and now it would be only 20%. More importantly though if you leave two people alone for a long enough amount of time they will disagree about something. Thus, if the Shi'ites were left to rule Iraq, it would not take long before at very least two political parties formed. Once that happens, there will be two 30% factions competing, and suddenly appealing to the 20% Kurdish and Sunnis populations will look interesting. Both political parties would start appealing to minorities just to beat the other. If more than two political parties formed, then the minority faces would get their rights in flat votes. This is !@#$%^&*uming ofcourse the government in question officially grants basic life and liberty even to minorities. If one of their stated purposes is genocide, they will ofcourse never grant rights to minorities. I'm not takeing this possibility into account due to its unlikelyhood.

Empires have one common currency throughout and allow citizens to immigrate all over their territory freely*, so yes, in the aspects currency and immigration the EU is empire-like. The tricky part is that most empires controlled many more things than basic economics. The EU doesn't look like the USSR because the USSR controlled practically everything, and the EU only controlls a handfull of unimportant things. Suppose you had seven men each holding a full gl!@#$%^&* of water. They each pour half of their glasses into a bowl in the center of the room. Now the bowl has water in it. The seven men represent different nations, and the water represents political power. An empire is when one nation has political power over another, so in this example all it would take to create an empire is for someone to pick up the bowl...and since political power can't just be set down someplace, someone has to pick it up. As I said...there's no way I could be wrong here, because the statement I'm making isn't that profound. Its a direct corollary to "Power cannot be created or destroyed, only transferred from one body to another." "Power" is not a natural physical object, only a man-made concept. Thus I cannot prove this statement by anything other than axiom. *Many empires had racial definitions for "citizen". Thus, whole populations were not given the right to immigrate, but only because those populations were not considered true citizens and were denied a mul!@#$%^&*ude of rights.

I don't remember really. I didn't really pay attention to the first two, because I didn't think it would happen again. The last two were posted by guests. BTW, is there any way to make that forum require people to log in before posting? That also would solve this problem, and I for one get annoyed when I forget to log in and post as a guest.

That's the very reason I compaired it to the 50s...during that time period racism and hate were a big part of it. That's also why I think its good enough, because we didn't need any violent revolutions (riots and shootings notwithstanding) to advance from the 1950s to today. The point is that while a racist Shi'ite dominated democracy wouldn't be perfect, it would be good enough that we could withdraw troops and let them sort out the rest on their own. History has shown that majority ruled racism can evolve into true democracy, but minority ruled racism cannot. You can't use a statement to prove itself. Besides, we don't know the result of the Iraqi War yet, so you couldn't use that statement even if we were talking about another country. The point about Afghanistan is that they probably would not have been able to fight off the British nor the Soviets if they were in a state of civil war. They needed a unified leadership, the Taliban, to do it. I don't think there is a single historical case of a nation successfully fighting both a civil war and an outside invader. Infact, some of the biggest territorial gains have been made when the aggressor nation moved in while the losing nation was fighting themselves. Your overall point about how military defeat may not necessarily equal total defeat is true though. However, in this specific case Hussein's rule was only by military force. Without that presence, there is at best room for a democracy and at very worst a power vacuum that can only be filled by the groups large enough to dominate. So, worst case scenario is strict majority rule, which can be made to into a democracy.

But then in the aspects of currency and immigration the EU is empire-like, isn't it? What I said was true...it just wasn't very profound. If individual nations put power into a large international en!@#$%^&*y, then the international en!@#$%^&*y will have power equal to the sum of all the donations. To that end international organizations scare me. Wheras national governments are elected by their citizens, international organizations are not. Thus, all they do is take power out of the hands of voters and into the hands of whoever is running the international organization. In this particular case, the EU controls little. Currency isn't as important as the hard products that back up the currency, and immigration only matters if there are large-scale migrations of people. Still, the summation of economic control is changing Europe from a group of national economies to a single continental economy. All I did was slap the "empire" label on that single economy.

Ok, though it may take a while for him to post again.

Even clashing sects could possibly be unified against a large outside force. The British and Soviet attempts at invading Afghanistan are two of many proofs that this can happen. In this case the victory we want is stable democracy, so if our situation is victory then the underlying issues have indeed been solved. The insurgents and suicide bombers can't form a dictatorship. The most they could ever hope to form is a shadow government, because they can't hope to build occupation forces needed to control a government. A democracy will be formed with or without them. The only way they could rise to power again is to be voted into it, but that's not going to happen with sectarian strife. The Shi'ites will vote for Shi'ites and the Sunnis will vote for Sunnis. Since Shi'ites are the majority ethnicity, Shi'ites will be voted into office. This government probably won't respect the rights of the minorities, but majority rule is better than the totalitarian minority rule that was previous. It won't be a perfect democracy, but it will be close enough to one that we could let them develop the rest on their own. To use SeVeR's example, by the time this is done we will have brought Iraq from the 12 century to the 1950s. The resulting democracy certainly have flaws in that it won't respect minorities, but will be good enough that it will develop on its own in a reasonable timeframe under subtle international pressure.

True, the EU is indeed taking longer than "instantly", but only because it keeps skirting along the lines of affecting the member nations' sovreignty. Really, all its doing is simplifying trade agreements that probably would be occuring anyway. I wouldn't really count the EU as a sovreignty affecting international organization.

Many of you may or may not have noticed the spam messages advertising various MMORPGs. I would like to point out that this forum is not here to advertise them. Topics with the sole purpose of advertising will be deleted. This isn't to say that if you are a forum member who finds an RPG that you personally like and want to invite other people to that you can't post that kind of topic. As long as you aren't abusive of the forum you will be fine. Just use common sense.

A guest has been using spam bots to start illegal topics in the 17thRPGForum...I've had to delete 4 topics so far. Two have been advertisments for an MMORPG (If they want to advert, they should pay for the spaces at the top of the window like everyone else.) Two more were spam in I don't even know what language, with a link to what I think is a pornography site. (I didn't actually click on the link, but did a quick check the url address it headed to, something like www.blahblahblah.com/sex.) Obviously I didn't really scan these topics for details; I didn't feel like translating the page to count how many rules this guy violated. Is there anything more I can do about it other than delete the post?

Marxism doesn't work. All historical attempts at true sovreignty-affecting international cooperation instantly dissolved into effective empires.

Yes, I do think they would have happened anyway if Bush didn't invade Iraq and Afghanistan. If anything, those attacks would have been much more well planned and had higher death tolls if Bush didn't go on the offensive, removing most of their leadership and forcing the rest to spend more of their time running and hiding than plotting.