No, I probably haven't even used imagination in months since I don't fantasize. I'd suggest something along the lines of collective conciousness if it wasn't an endgame (transcendence). It's a common theme.
How interesting would THAT be?Well, all the factions emphasized the lack of any professional administration and what they replaced it with. Santiago made up for it with a junta, Peacekeepers with welfare benefits, Yang with serfdom, Believes with psychology, Morgan with capitalism, the Gaians were just agronomists, and the University just had drones. Only Yang even takes colonization seriously, as a primary focus, the other factions are mucking around. None have any kind of professional government, even Yang only succeeds in focusing on physical application than any kind of real consolidation of administrative capacity. So I guess it shouldn't be a faction but just a consideration.
What body of law would they follow? A UN colony charter?Of course not, the U.N. is a U.S. puppet.
Wasn't Pravin Lal's faction a riff on the potential pitfalls of technocracy? The Peacekeepers were essentially a faction of the professional administrators assigned to the Unity mission.They receive a -1 efficiency for ineptitude.
What would a perfect administration look like, in your opinion?If you want to consider it in relation to real life, then the corporate and political oligarchies are obviously not constituted meritocraticly. Democratic and Bolshevist ideology ignore or sideline the question of who actually qualifies for office, while capitalist ideology tries to claim it. Any look at corporate reviews by it's employees will tell you that most of them aren't buying it though. The Capitalist-Republic idea that anyone who can muster the capital and idiots should be able to obtain political or economic office is social darwinism for opportunists, and only makes for sharper sociopaths compared with the more inefficient and more purely hereditary systems of the past.
What would a perfect administration look like, in your opinion?If you want to consider it in relation to real life, then the corporate and political oligarchies are obviously not constituted meritocraticly. Democratic and Bolshevist ideology ignore or sideline the question of who actually qualifies for office, while capitalist ideology tries to claim it. Any look at corporate reviews by it's employees will tell you that most of them aren't buying it though. The Capitalist-Republic idea that anyone who can muster the capital and idiots should be able to obtain political or economic office is social darwinism for opportunists, and only makes for sharper sociopaths compared with the more inefficient and more purely hereditary systems of the past.
A true meritocracy sounds great, but how would one go around establishing it?
A true meritocracy sounds great, but how would one go around establishing it? I eagerly await Blaneck's answer.
University faction is pretty close to a meritocracy.If they survived the first year they'd be couped by professional politicians.
The problem with the system you prescribe Blaneck, is that old hereditary systems of the past were less of meritocracies and well, more hereditary.The Chinese themselves obviously did not believe in hereditary system and progressively abolished it with every dynasty.
Old kingdoms, including China even under the most hardcore legalist rulers had vast incompotence, and it was the bloated ministry and administration of China and their arrogance that led them to discount and underestimate both peasant rebellion (such as with the Qin dynasty) or later with the Mongols or Manchu's (the latter especially.)If anything, China was under-administrated. The Qin fell for adopting simplicity where they needed complexity and superiority; abandoning variation in penalties, and abandoning any intricacies in the system of production in favour of a mass sent to build the wall. Administration was reduced where in fact it needed to be developed.
The true rise to power in ANY society is the social links people form with each other and who gets who's favour, and essentially, popularity. In Capitalism if you are suck up to your boss and use that sociopath opportunism you will rise.It's better to crush opportunism and corruption even at the cost of replacing it with a more backward system. You can always make up the losses in the conditions of order gained thereby. On the contrary one makes no profit by allowing corruption to accumulate. Even a mass of simpletons are more valuable than a kleptocrat (including those of the corporate variety) if the latter is allowed to develop.
Merit doesn't define leadership. Social skills does, and social skills isn't always about being a competent leader.However you want to define merit. But nothing is gained if the worthies in question are corrupt. Leadership is only of any value if it is applied to something profitable in any case. Simply attaining the position by way of "leadership" capability does not thereby imply that either the leadership or the position will be applied to anything publicly profitable, but may instead simply develop parasitism, in which case even peasantry are more valuable and profitable.
Yang is less of competent as he is authoritative- he has great authority behind his words, he has some charisma to bend people to his will and he ultimately is paranoid and ruthless enough to root out any objection that would otherwise weaken him. That does not mean he is a competent leader who manages his colony any better than others- it just means he has more control over it.That is a contradiction in terms. If one has more control then one is better managing and vice-versa. One can say with regards humans, that one can over-manage or over-control, but this is a misunderstanding. In decentralizing there is either the same amount of control or management is inferior. It is just "self-control", one aim of the law.
the bourgeoisie exploit the worker that's BACKED by their government, this is the very essence at what the communist ideal is to destroy.The socialist goal of socialized means of production is not necessarily linked explicitly to the means called strikes, which are usually done only for an increase in wages. If this diverts capital from a multiplication of said means, then the strike only harms said goal by diverting development from the actual means of equality.
The thing is with corruption my friend is that the MORE administration you have, the more specialized, and hence elitist it becomes, the easier it is to corrupt. The simpler, and more local the system you generally have less corruption as its people working for their own home regions, rather then just overseeing a large area they have no real connection or loyalties to.Now you're making my argument. But specialization is ultimately required in any case. A country can't keep up without it. An example of an unspecialised country would be the old agricultural China, but this was necessary at the time for manpower to fight Mongols (and partly because Chinese terrain was unsuitable for machinery). Han Fei has the amusing addage of not letting ministers talk to eachother to avoid any kind of conspiracy, but such isn't really the sort of real-world example of system that I prefer.
I may be a socialist, a communist even, but I am not in favour of over complicated government administrations and bloated bureaucracy.No one is in favour of a bloated bureacracy. Even Stalin wasn't.
The Chinese dynasties allowed feudalism because their corrupt ministry and bloated bureaucracy was corrupted enough to allow local warlords and princes to reign over their own lands and even squabble and feud- all for the sake of boasting reputation, money and power.The Han lost out to landlordism. The Tang bureaucracy was unable to sufficiently develop so as to overcome disconnection with the regions and tendency toward feudalism. The Ming were light on government. The Qing beauracracy was autonomous. Again, these aren't examples of over-centralization.
Let locals settle their own specific issues and don't impede their ability to do it with bureaucracy and specialized ministers- rather focus on nation wide issues with your ministry that local focus cannot hope to meet.Specialization reduces bureaucracy. The Qin were under-specialized.
You need bureaucracy to the point to run your offices and government, but when it gets so big as to dominate everything and impede things... then you stagnate.I wasn't arguing for bureaucracy. But in considering the lessening of government you seem to desire, corporations don't lessen the degree of administration or bureaucracy, other than for purposes of private profit at public expense. It simply "privatizes" said administration.