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I feel like Titan is unambiguously 'the place where good people live'

Don't worry, Firewall and X-Risks caught up on that.

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ScholarBeardpig: Why, did you write that segment?

I've not written for EP, just a big fan of the idea as it appears in my head. Giving folks the wherewithal to modify themselves well outside of the normal bounds with just enough objective to focus those efforts means you've got a community that can help support other folks within that group. It seems like a good balance between the manifold efforts of the Scum, and the narrower focus of the Ultimates. Edited to include the quotes, and this line.

My in character right up owns a titanian microrp that has a strange relationship with titanian defense agencies. Especially considering their station under construction in Iapetus Orbit

Double-post, please delete

Aren't the anarchists lazy bums who play with high-explosive fireworks when they are not too busy high school clique/mob-democracy terrorizing one another? I thought the problems of the anarchists were heavily implied with their complete lack of organization outside of their habs and their petty mob democracy?

A brainprint can pick them up as something weird at least pretty easily, but beyond that you're looking at some hard kinesics checks.

Actually thats not true. The Dev said there are Anarchist X-risk, they just didnt explicitly label them as such, and I forget which it is.

Also both Scum and Anarchists both have WMD controls, they have the whole panopticon, zero privacy, volunteer militias to mob-democracy-lynch-squads to kill folks making WMDs and when those fail... bye bye anarchist habitat.

MrWigggles wrote:

Most anarch habs are tiny with less than a dozen egos.

[Citation Needed] I don't recall a lot of info on hab size, but Lot 49 is the smallest I can find info on, and it's got a population of 400. Most detailed anarchist habs have a population between 3,000-20,000 from a quick scan. I'm also mildly skeptical of cults of personality forming in that kind of society, at least, not for very long.

The Commonwealth is really ideal for Political Intrigue and Cold-War style Spy stories. Everything is nice and clean because all of the dirt and backstabbing is kept quiet by 'all' parties involved.

uwtartarus wrote:

Can AI (non-AGI) really masquerade as transhuman egos? Having the Vaettr pretending to be human is frightening.

Trappedinwikipedia wrote:

A brainprint can pick them up as something weird at least pretty easily, but beyond that you're looking at some hard kinesics checks.

I disagree. Vanilla Vaettr and AI in general can't pass as Transhumans simply because they don't have Deception or Impersonation, and don't have any special rules to the contrary. On the other hand, that's just their out-of-the-box baseline. All AIs really depend on their gear for effectiveness, even more so than normal characters. Vaettr who are actually tasked with a mission are going to have to have skillsofts and gear as necessary – an appropriate Skillsoft coupled with the Infiltration upgrade will provide a quite respectable skill of 70. That's assuming impersonation is necessary – I've been thinking of Wights more like Winter-Warrior style killers, who avoid contact where possible and use bullets when not. One thing maybe worth considering is how useful the "Interest: Current Mission 80" skill is. Depending on GM, I can easily see this as a catch-all for the mission's skill-implants, giving a blank +30 bonus on mission-specific skill rolls (Kinetics for Assassinations, Impersonation for infiltration missions...), or being able to default to this for those skills.

uwtartarus wrote:

That said, if you can "wrap" an ego with a limited ego as cover (which doesn't know it is just a construct), there is no reason you can't hide a Vaettr with the same.

There's no real advantage to using an AI here – you can achieve the same thing using pure Psychosurgical means. Amusingly this is almost exactly how I'm running Osma – the whole agency is made up of Sleepers who have been unknowingly installed with a Skills/Loyalty package.

Word of God means precisely bupkis as far as I'm concerned. I personally doubt they were intended to be anarchists until people (me) started bitching about it, and they were the only group who could possibly fit. Even if they WERE intended to be anarchists and it was a simple oversight... Well, I assume you've read the books. I don't think it's a coincidence that the one group who could possibly conceivably be an anarchist bad guy fails to be labelled as anarchist. The more I think on this topic the less I like EP, honestly. Gotta make some group to be the Other, so demonize the conservatives. But our political system is Perfect! And we're humble and deign to accept you no matter where you come from, even if you're a dirty filthy Jovian or poor, pathetic, scared capitalist lackey.

Why are the Green Death baddies in X-Risks NOT anarchists?

MAD Crab wrote:

uwtartarus it's not that they CAN'T be anarchists, it's that absolutely nothing says that they ARE anarchists. Certainly they have an explicit leader, which in theory shouldn't happen in anarchist circles (hah).

I would like to point out that there's a fallacy in that: anarchists can have leaders so long as there are no power structures that exist to provide those leaders power (e.g. a group listens to someone they respect).

I think there is a difference between hierarchies and systematic power structures, and the mere existence of leaders. The CGP Grey video explains the differences between dictators and democratic leaders, and democracy is one of the essential features of anarcho- systems, everyone votes. Anarchists shouldn't be immune to groupthink, and their flaws are baked right in: you can't just act on institutional authority, everything you do is under scrutiny and oversight by every other person in your hab/collective. The reason why anarchists don't flourish in the Inner System, too many people, anarchist habs are experimental things common in the Outer System, where you also have every other type of government and bizarro poli system. Or so I would imagine. I would love to read about anarchist x-risks, besides vanilla "one dude gets bent out of shape, takes advantage of his neighbors' tolerance, builds a WMD and kills all 200 people in his tin can hab."

MAD Crab wrote:

uwtartarus I think you're incorrect about anarchists. Democracy isn't any part of the anarchist system - you don't get to vote on whether your neighbour can build death robots or add flourine to the air recycler. At best you notice he's doing it and persuade him it's a bad idea. At worst it involves gathering some likeminded friends and shooting him. The trick is that gathering some friends almost certainly bakes in a power structure - your friends helped you out, so if they want your help later you'll probably join them, even though maybe you don't care about whatever the guy they're going after did. Enough of this horse trading and... huh, the guy who's owed the most favours can reward people who follow him, and they can reward those who follow them and we're right back to the 'dictator' power structure CGP described. Everybody voting is direct democracy, which is what Titan does. Personally it seems like a much saner system.

The thing about the anarchist system is that all power structures exist for the purpose of getting stuff done. There are anarcho-syndicalist and anarcho-capitalist movements that have pretty thoroughly talked about the fact that you can still have groups of people working to do something (in your terms, a "power structure", though I would argue that it's even a little less than that), even with a director, without having anything that violates the tenets of anarchy. Keep in mind what anarchy is truly derived from: an (not) and archy (government). This doesn't mean that you won't have groups that set out to do things. But these groups are limited in their power and scope. This means three things: • First, an anarchist "leader", if one emerges, is reliant either on collapsing the anarchy (at which point the system becomes autocratic) or accepting the full consequence for their actions (think about the IRS: nobody in an anarchy is allowed to just "take" money from people) ○ Subpoint: There may be no consequences for someone overstepping the authority they are allowed to take. If you have the biggest gun or the biggest influence, you can get what you want. This is true in other systems as well. ○ Subpoint: That people are able to do this does not correlate to them becoming governments: they have only the control that they are able to exert over others' lives, and they have no legal basis to do so. • Second, not all power takes the form of government. For instance, the argument that government exists to protect property rights doesn't mean that no property rights exist without a government, merely that these things are not codified in an anarchic society. ○ Subpoint: Being owed a favor doesn't mean a whole lot in an anarchic society, despite what the writers of EP want to say. This is my one gripe with the reputation economy. It works on a per-habitat basis (Hey, I fixed the reactor so we don't all die of radiation poisoning, guys!), but not necessarily on a affinity group scale. There might be dramatic exceptions to this rule (e.g. folk heroes and celebrities). People who take dominant power only take this power by popular assent, and unless they codify their power they have not ended the state of anarchy. ○ Subpoint: Voting is not actually an integral part of democracy. Democracy literally means "rule of the commoners": it is falsely associated with the ideals of freedom and representation provided in the form of liberal democracy, exemplified during the Enlightenment by certain thinkers. There are democratic societies that are not free. There are anarchic societies that are not free, either. Philosophical [liberal] anarchy is different from egoism, and much like liberal democracy (which is dead, but I can whine about that at a later date), requires intentional maintenance by those who hold and cede power. • Third, anarchist groups that emerge are more similar to clubs and organizations than governments. For instance, if one started the Locus Maintenance Group, that's not a form of government. Just because the Group would eventually acquire some degree of respect and influence if it did its job correctly does not mean that it has any of the protections of a state agent. It may provide a critical function, but unless the Group decides to start using coercive force it is not an exclusive provider of maintenance. ○ Subpoint: The use of force itself does not a state create. Vigilante groups are the normal means of "law enforcement" [albeit without formally codified laws] in an anarchistic faction, but they exist to deal with the aftermath or potential commission of a crime and then either cease to exist or, like Firewall (though Firewall is dubiously anarchistic) become a sort of task force against a potential sort of threat. The sort of Nachtwächterstaat that many minarchists favor can still be provided for in an anarchist system simply by removing any official protection from the night-watchmen. ○ Subpoint: Even if a group did try to take power, this does not necessarily immediately mean that it becomes a government and a state begins to exist where anarchy once did. Such an organization may be a cartel, a cabal, or even a sort of pirate or paramilitary entity, but unless they subjugate the formerly anarchist population or manage to woo them to associate with their new power structure the system has not yet become a government so much as an entity exerting force, a state-like agent, perhaps, but not a state itself.

Trappedinwikipedia wrote:

MrWigggles wrote:

Most anarch habs are tiny with less than a dozen egos.

[Citation Needed]

I went skimming through Rimward I couldnt find a written passage. Though I did find what made me lead to that thinking. Rimward only details notable habitats. For instance, it talks about brinker colonies but doesnt actually go about very many details. It does tell us about the overall sub factions of the brinkers. And it tell us we can safely assume their are subfactions among those. And there are other smaller notable faction of anarchist, which dont have a have a hab detailed. Though they probably do. And Ceres and Nyssa(sp) which is a cluster of space rocks. There are other small rocks made into habs that arent talked about. So 400 isnt the smallest, its the division between small, to notable size.

That to is why I think there are just scores of scores of tiny habs. Just trying to find the perfect room mates. The thing that bugs me the most with anarch habs, is how isnt it just a populairty contest? The most liked, or most important by the virtue of their skill set, just dont get away of being shits?

Their frequency of travel, and in spite of each habitat needing to be independent and self-sufficient is why I think they organize into the Circle-@ network, because you won't have trade or business connections to make sure people aren't shits, so you need social yelp to make sure the traveler you are crashing on your couch isn't a psycho-shit. We have gotten off-topic. How can we emphasize the figurative dark side to Titan? How do criminal organizations operate in a society with free drugs and free love / sex-positivism? Aside: I missed the "dramatic" in the title and I thought this thread was literally about how little illumination there is on Titan.

MAD Crab wrote:

You're playing with semantics, Ned. Sure, it's "collapsing the anarchy" when a leader takes over, but I'm pointing out that that is inevitable and quick. The moment somebody forms a militia or defensive pact or a thousand other group agreements the anarchy has collapsed. To go with your IRS point, habitat needs come first and take a percentage off the top of the hab intake of raw materials, right? What is that but a tax on the resources that are distributed to the population?

But the anarchic faction *has* no IRS. Likewise, the group agreements that can be founded only threaten the concept of anarchy if there are parties to them that are not individually willing to participate in them by artificial confederation. If a thousand individuals agree to sign a document saying that they will protect each other, there is still no government ruling over them, and anarchy is preserved. That joint protection agreement, even if it creates something akin to standing army via voluntary contributions to professional soldiers, is still not a form of government until it begins to exist outside its original purpose and impose martial law on others. Keep in mind that the use of force is not against most sane anarchists' principles, nor does it immediately result in the creation of a state.

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If the biggest gun gets what they want, people start forming self defence blocs. Which are organized and form group identity. Hup, we've got a government again. A labour union is a form of government, no two ways about it. We just don't call it 'government' because 99% of the authority is with the bigger stronger authority we live under, aka the federal government. If on the hab your only protecting group is your union or 'hobby' group, that's going to turn into your government.

A union is a type of government, yes. I do not advocate for them being an acceptable part of a truly anarchic system. A hobby group is different: unions impose rules and dues upon their members, creating a legal code regarding membership (e.g. a "carpenter" has to have a certain educational background and kowtow to the union to get their title and license). However, me and twenty other writers getting together to discuss writing and how or why we write is not a form of government. I have to watch my tongue a little, because I can tick off a lot of people when I talk about unions, but the notion that unions are a voluntary association of workers is absurd: they are a continuation of the medieval guild system masquerading as a populist movement. The notion that protectors automatically become rulers is somewhat fallacious. Have you ever read Coriolanus? Are you familiar with Cincinnatus? George Washington? There have been many cases in history where those who wield violence refuse to coerce those who support them and take power, even power which is voluntarily offered, over their charges.

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Your 'task force against threats' idea is again problematic. Groups don't break up easily, and it always becomes us-vs-them. Why do you think police stand for each other even when an individual is corrupt and incompetent? Because they're part of the group. And groups tend to spawn leaders, even when everybody should be equal. Linus Torvalds is the Linux Dictator for Life, even though it's an open source kernel. If he decides you're not part of the inner circle of the project, you're out. Sure, he has the position because of the respect he's built up, but he's still the guy in charge. If you gave the project guns and the expectation that they had to use them on a regular basis (you'd have the geekiest army in the universe) I'm reasonably sure they'd listen to him when he told them who the enemy was.

But again, I remain unconvinced by the argument that a group automatically becomes a government. You keep arguing that communities will always become us-versus-them, but none of that actually predicates a government in and of itself. Anarchists don't necessarily believe in becoming part of some grand community of all humankind. Look no further than anarcho-nationalists to find examples of anarchists who happily assent to the creation of arbitrary groupings in which no codified hierarchy exists. Linux and Unix are not examples of anarchist movements. The open source community is not an anarchist movement. These things should not be used as counter-examples, because many of these things are ego projects from their inception. Likewise, having followers does not create a government. Anarchy is not the lack of influence. That would require annihilation. To wax philosophical, everything in the universe manipulates everything else, if only through the force of gravitation. Anarchist groups have leaders and inspirational figures, but the fact that people listen to them, rather than receiving orders from them, defines the basis of anarchism.

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I mean heck. You talk about a maintenance group not being the sole source of maintenance. If it was your job to fix the machines that kept you alive, would you let joe average touch them? Chances are the group would set up their own standards for who could touch what. Regulations! AKA government. If people ignored those regulations, what can you do? Let people who may or may not be qualified to fix a kitchen sink work on it, or chase them off? Hey, enforcement of government laws!

This is also not an appropriate example of anarchism. Anarchism takes many forms: if we assume an anarchism that has certain standards for community property or private property, there can still be expectations that revolve around certain behaviors. There is simply no designated agent to enforce them, and there is the tacit implication that the standards for behavior are imposed by the community's assent but are not laws so much as guidelines. Another thing to remember is that control of private property is a protected right in certain anarchist groups. For instance, if I enforced certain rules within my dwelling (for instance, leaving shoes at the door), that does not mean that I am running a government. So long as one's jurisdiction is limited to what would be their own private property, they are operating in a different function than as a government. In theory, if there were an actor or trust who owned the habitat, one could enforce rules without becoming a government: the two key components that make a government would not be met, namely involuntary corporation and legal protection for state actors. This would continue to extend to any number of group agents: you could have an anarchist habitat with 10,000 people and a very codified "legal" system so long as everyone present had voluntarily consented to the system and none received legal protection from their actions.

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Semantics, it's all semantics.

Perhaps. The problem, I believe, comes from the modern day society in which government has taken over too much control of society. I'm a liberal democrat [in the Enlightenment sense] myself, and one of the things that has become an issue is that an increasing percentage of the things people do in life have been touched or provided by the government, to the extent that the distinction between public and private property has broken down. In an anarchist system, there is no public property nor any agent of public policy. Everyone operates under the rules they assent to without taking for granted legal protections or public provision.

I did enjoy Psycho-Pass (first and second seasons, haven't seen the movie yet). Mostly it seemed more fixated on mental health issues rather than criminals, until the big bads showed up, but they were tied up into the government. I need to rewatch it and include some Ghost in the Shell while I am at it. See if I can percolate some ideas.

After voting this weekend and reading all about the for and against for some simple initiatives, I almost threw up in disgust at the thought of local government bullsh*t on a grander scale. Nauseating. So criminals don't provide illegal goods as much as they provide illegal means to otherwise legal goods. Why wait out the three plus weeks for licensed and approved blueprints for potent psychoactive-stimulants from the public CM facilities that you need for your artistic research project when you can chat up some shady fellows and get it tomorrow morning.

Titan does have some restrictions. They mention, for instance, poison glands are "illegal" (possibly not street legal but allowed in certain uses - but yeah there's very little purpose a citizen needs one) but the St. Catherine Tong can hook you up with one, and probably some other combat focused mods which aren't allowed either straight up or without serious licensing ("Mr. No, your employment is listed as 'barista', for what purpose do you require a hand laser?") that organized crime can get around. But yeah, I expect a lot of un-tagged or otherwise "privatized" goods are probably traded on black and gray markets. Sure, you could go down to a smoke shop, buy a couple boxes of cancer sticks and give the owner a pat on the back and a couple kroner so he can show he's part of the community - but you smoke a lot people are probably gonna look at you sideways "Look at this guy, chipping away at his health and the health of others, this does not promote the wellbeing of our society". But you go around to the back in the blind spot in the alley, trade some kroner or some favors (or god forbid, some Inner System Credit you have on you), you get some boxes which fell of a truck somewhere, and you can engage in your vices without the prying eyes of the Panopticon. Oh man, I need to write some of this stuff down.