I sort of agree with Thomas that the argument is based on wrong assumptions, but I am too tempted to reply anyway
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Siphersh wrote:Human societies have always formed around the concept of biological family. From the most primitive pre-historic tribal societies up to the most enlightened bureaucratic monarchies. The only social and political systems that are mostly independent from the presence and historical continuity of biological families are the different modern forms of democratic societies.
That is a really strong statement which I think cannot be properly founded. How was ancient Sparta based on family? Or ancient Athens? Or systems based on religious or monastic groups? Or indeed as suggested the Roman empire? Or indeed the Soviet Union? Or contemporary Belarus? Or former military regimes in Latin America? Many monarchies are based on relatives inheriting the ruling position, but I think this was also a later development, not something that was there always.
Siphersh wrote:As a consequence, any kind of political system is doomed to dissolve into anarchy, except the different more or less democratic systems. Non-democratic means on-its-way-to-anarchy in Cantr.
Why would any non-democratic system dissolve into anarchy? Even if in the real world only democratic systems are not based on families - which is a wrong assumption in itself - why would this necessarily be the case? Why if in the real world democracies tend to stay and non-democracies tend to collapse (again, which I disagree with), would this necessarily be the case?
And even in Cantr - what makes you say that all non-democratic regimes are clearly on their way to anarchy, and democratic regimes are not? I see no foundation for that statement.
Siphersh wrote:I wonder if this is a deficiency in programming or intentional social filtering. Is Cantr as a social simulation supposed to be a black-and-white research on the process of becoming a democracy?
Cantr has no political agenda. This is not a research or simulation on/of democratisation. It is not supposed to be black-and-white on anything. Where was ever the statement made that Cantr would be about democratisation? Cantr is *partly* about institution building, yes, but definitely not specifically for one type of institution, like democracy.
It is also not a deficiency in the programming, I think, as I disagree in the first place that lack of families implies all the things you deduce from it. (Even though, of course, the biological family is a fundamental aspect of human societies and is something that is lacking in Cantr if you see Cantr as a copy of a real-world environment. There are, however, many things lacking, not just families.)
Siphersh wrote:Even if democratization is to be considered one of the basic political issues in Cantr, this simulation is way off reality by rendering everything non-democratic non-functional. Crippled by the lack of families, there is no realistic contrast to the possibility of democratic patterns.
Democratisation is not one of the basic political issues in Cantr. It might in effect be an important phenomenon, but not in terms of game design. There is no programmed preference for any type of regime.
And again, I completely fail to see how Cantr would render non-democracies non-functional. (Although there might be an argument that players care less about physical harm to their characters than they do in real life, which makes it harder for a regime in Cantr to threaten subjects phyically - but that's a whole different debate and has to do with roleplay more than game design.)
Somewhat on a side-note: the biological family might be an obvious way to divide society in groups that closely relate to each other, but that does not make it impossible to find other ways. For example, character often are friends with some characters and less with others. Or you can create dependencies that are family-like, like having all your citizens adopt newspawns and train them. To make a heridetary non-democratic system, you might need somewhat different systems than the ones in real life, but it is in no way impossible.
bellator wrote:First of all, in real life, non-democratic means on-its-way-to-anarchy. Empires always collapse. Pure political democracies are taken over by dictatorical governments. They collapse and democratic governments come up again. Your statement is not unique to Cantr.
Empires always collapse, yes. But what is the basis for the assumption that democracies do not (which you seem to imply) and that these collapses of empires will lead to democracies?
The oldest democracy is what, 200 years old? That is really peanuts compared to some Chinese empires or the Roman empire, which existed much, much longer. The fact that they eventually collapsed does not in any sense mean that they were not stable for a very long time. Any democracy currently existing has yet to prove that it can be stable for such a long period.
Most collapses of empires lead to a breakdown in small political units, usually with some anarchistic elements or just very weakly developed political units. They did not just end up being democracies. Democracies are not some kind of 'default outcome' - in fact, a majority of people on Earth are still living under non-democracies.
It is not just you guys who seem to make this error: even many academics writing on democratisation make this basic mistake. They assume, if you have a dictatorship, it will eventually collapse, and it will become a democracy. It makes people fail to see that if such a regime collapses, and a non-democracy arises, that this is not just some transitional, temporary stage, but the actual outcome (e.g. Belarus, Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, etc. etc.). Democracy is just one and a very particular outcome, and much more is possible, stable, effective, etc.
bellator wrote:Families are no impediment to democracy. I believe the opposite. Families would encourage order and stability necessary to democracy because they teach children to live peacefully with other people. In cantr, without the existence of families, theft and murder happen all the time because newspawns are not taught how to live peacefully with other people in a society. Families are crucial to a stable society that can actually be governed.
Although there is some truth in that, I think, I would disagree with the idea that only families can perform that function. Think for example about ancient Sparta, where all children were raised together, not in families. Society usually has someone or some group that deals with raising and educating children, but there really is no reason to assume this has to be the family.
In Cantr, little attention has yet been devoted to training newspawns, but this does not mean it is impossible because we have no families.
To more or less summarize my position: the lack of families is a huge difference between Cantr and real life (but by far not the only huge difference), but I disagree that this makes only democracies possible or even causes the slightest bias towards democracies. And I do think your point is based on seriously wrong assumptions, even though some of them are shared with many political scientists and politicians.
Oh, just to be clear: I attack your position, but I do like the fact that you brought this up
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