Dear me, Ms. Kim you spelled Gallente with a capital “G” again. That’s twice in as many years.
Perhaps a subconscious thaw in your frozen soul?
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No … actually I don’t normally feel a whole lot of warmth for the State, Mr. Syagrius. I don’t hate it or anything, and I’m even kind of grateful for its protection of Achura, but … people like me aren’t very welcome there, as a rule. Pieter’s nice enough not to hold it against me-- that’s true of most pilots I’ve met, really-- but really a mixed-blood person isn’t well-regarded as a rule.
There are a lot of events that shaped my life that might have been different if it weren’t for that truth, and some of the policies that back it up, and the circumstances those have produced. I don’t resent the State, but I think in some places it’s a little overly obsessed with trying to hold onto, or recreate, certain parts of the past, and a lot of the rest is overly tinted by the strength of Caldari efforts not to look at all remotely like Gallente even if you squint really hard. (Despite using a pile of technologies originally developed cooperatively.)
That and for certain reasons I mostly associate Caldari interior design with a feeling of being trapped.
So, no, Mr. Syagrius. I’m not really so attached to the State as all that.
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I see, well I apologize for my erroneous assumption regarding your… feelings. Those few interactions we had were mutually unimpressive as I recall. But you never seemed a bad sort. Pieter… well he knows my mind on many things.
But there is little enough for me to do now but watch my olive trees grow and ruminate on failure. One might blame bitterness, as one grows tired of watching the dog chase its tail, allegorically speaking of course. Someone wiser than I told me once that, “There will never be peace until someone is allowed to win.” There seems a good deal of truth, considering the construct of the ‘forever war’.
So, what is there to do, but with as much dignity as one can, retire to ones villa, drink wine, write poetry, and await the inevitable.
Again, apologies.
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Just a question, but… how could this have been a part of the existing Federal charter when the ‘secret colonies’ of the Caldari megacorporations predate the founding of the Federation… as you yourself point out? There would have been no existing Federal charter at the time for it to have been part of.
You further insist that the indigenous ‘member-states’ on Caldari Prime could file articles to leave the Union, but… isn’t that exactly what predicated the Federal blockade of Caldari Prime in the first place? The Caldari megas, who were not signatories to the Federal Charter, nor incorporated under it, and so in no way beholden to it, made clear their intention to be Not-Federal™… and the Federation responded by blockading and starving the planet.
How exactly does starving a civilian populace square with a mandate to protect the citizens of member-states, anyway?
Are you saying that if the Caldari put a bomb in an empty schoolyard, and then the Gallente intentionally detonate it while children are all around it… it’s not the Gallente’s fault if people get hurt? Because that’s what it seems like you’re saying. ‘Oh, it’s a terrible tragedy that we caused horrific ecological damage and loss of life and property to citizens of our member-states by choosing to drop a few million tons of debris on them, but it’s the Caldari’s fault! They gave us the debris! We bear no responsibility for our actions against our citizens.’
And yet, the State has a much higher per-capita GDP, in part due to the centralized nature of the capsuleer trade, taxes thereon, and the relative exchange rates between InterStellar Kronur and national currencies. Consider, for example, that just within the capsuleer economy, the State is responsible for four times the wealth creation that the Federation has produced, despite having only 2/3 the number of regions (and in fact, Per-Range Average Wealth Creation in the State is nearly eight times as much as in the Federation).
So, while both polities have access to the same technologies via the open market, clearly the Federation isn’t utilizing them as well. While these are only the hard numbers from the capsuleer economy, It’s been consistently shown that capsuleers go where the money is. With that in mind, the State (which, after all, has far less territory to defend) can likely afford a much higher level of military spending than the Federation.
We have a head start by three-quarters of a millennium.
Proportionate to the length of the grudge, though…
Well, it is justified. They found justifications for it. Just justifying it don’t make it just. 
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It’s not just or justice. It just is.
Seriously though. All the core empires have stations in one another’s territory. Even Republic stations in Amarrian space (which really surprised me when I first noticed it). Perhaps Caldari Prime could be jointly declared state territory, and considered to be a very, very big station for political purposes? I mean the place even needed to be geo-engineered in order to be habitable to start with so it doesn’t seem too silly to me.
I figure the major wrinkle would be working out shipping access from the State proper and orbital security arrangements. Even then having the Mordus do it under contract seems a very Caldari way of settling the matter.
That takes away one of the main conflict drivers. And so what if there are Federal enclaves on the surface? That just mirrors the situation of having a State run planet in Federal space. As long as they can come & go what does it matter?
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So stealing that bit for the future. ‘Just justifying it ain’t justice. It just is.’
The bigger problem here is the same one we have with the Amarr: the Gallente have a cultural imperative to ‘extend the benefits of liberal democracy to all of humanity’. The only problem with that is that it’s a recipe for war on numerous fronts.
Obviously, it’s an issue because the rest of us don’t want to be forced to live their way. So there’s gonna be conflict there. And giving up on that ambition is just as unlikely as giving up on the Reclaiming is for the Amarr: it’s who they are. If they abandon that, they abandon what it is to be Gallente.
But for the moment, let’s leave aside the whole issue of forcing your way of life on another group. We’ll even set aside the idea that you can force ‘liberty and egalitarianism’ on someone. What happens if they win?
Democracies disagree. See, they’re made up of people, and people disagree. People disagree constantly. So when you get two democracies, you’re guaranteed to have points of disagreement. Of conflict. Eventually, one of those conflicts will be severe enough to lead to war. It’s inevitable.
What’s even worse is, it probably won’t be the democratically chosen path, either. Instead, it’ll be a result of the fundamental failing of democracy: paralysis. Democracy exists as a conversation. It’s a committee meeting writ large and given an army. One of its virtues is that the constantly contentious internal nature of democracy is a check on the government’s tendency to wield its power over its own citizens. The theory is, members of the legislature and executive are too busy with their own internal conflicts to unify long enough to be tyrannical.
So paralysis isn’t a flaw, it’s a feature. The tendency toward grinding inertia is intentional. This also means democracies are slow to begin wars of aggression. It’s a good thing, right?
Well, except, as we’ve seen… they’re not so slow to react. A sudden external threat makes everyone suddenly set the squabbling aside to kick that guy’s butt for screwing with them. And the worst part is, there’s very little in the way of real authority to stop it, because when it comes to showing restraint and sense… all your representatives are looking at polling that tells them ‘the people are mad and want action!’
Those who do advocate a more measured response are tarred as ‘weak’ and ‘spineless’, even accused of being less patriotic. Make the initial shock big enough and outrageous enough, and the perceived instigators small enough, and there’s no stopping the response.
So some group of extremists goes and does something legitimately horrible, and runs and finds shelter with a minor power they have longstanding ties with, and denies the whole thing. They insist the big democracy is just framing them. The minor power gives them shelter… and the big democracy decides the minor power is in on it.
But what happens when those perceived instigators, that minor power has friends? What happens when they’re protesting their innocence to those friends? Those friends, especially in the case of democratic societies, will respond to aggression just like the original democracy did.
And now you have multiple democracies on a path to war that they cannot avert, because the leadership within each one is so weak… that they cannot afford to look weak.
It takes a strong personality, secure in themselves, to be willing to appear vulnerable, to acknowledge a mistake. Democracy encourages neither. If anything, it produces a kind of chaotic tribalism where preconceived biases get reinforced by echo chambers of media and political rhetoric. And those biases, not bonds of blood or toil, are what bind these tribal factions together, and set them against one another… furthering both the paralysis, and the insecurity that drives the politicians’ need for approval.
So the only way… the only way the Gallente ‘ideal’ can work… is if they don’t just spread their values and system of governance… but actually force everyone else to be part of their government. Not just ‘be democratic’ but ‘be part of the same democracy’.
Galactic Conquest, or it’s self-defeating.
But then, attempting to force people to be free is already self-defeating, now isn’t it? If they’re truly free, then they can choose to not be free. The moment you can’t make that choice, then all this talk of ‘freedom’ is a lie. You are enslaved by the state that refuses to let you exercise your natural right to self-determination.
It’s not a choice I’d make, but it has to remain a choice that’s allowed if you’re going to claim ‘liberty’ is one of your founding principles.
So good luck maintaining a democratic government based on ‘liberty’ without actually allowing horrible abuses and oppression.
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EXCEPT… that the numbers I cited are explicitly wealth creation. Market activity, regardless of which system or station, creates no wealth. It only moves it from place to place. My numbers (if you look at the other pages) specifically exclude the movement of money through trading.
As far as pure production goes: yes, Perimeter and New Caldari do have significant capsuleer-owned hubs. However, you’re tripped up by your own data: as you yourself point out, these numbers are for the capsuleer economy. The baseliner economy doesn’t make use of those facilities.
Shall we go back two, three, five years to look at the economic data? It seems a waste of time, but if you’d like to, I’m game.
Capsuleers go where the money is. We know this. It’s been demonstrated time and again. There have been, since the loss of the Yulai trade hub, no indicators of a Federal Economy that outpaces the State Economy. Current CONCORD data places the State as having the most modernized naval assets in the cluster—another indicator that you choose to overlook. Modernization means industrial activity. It means a higher rate of industry across the board, because consistent refitting and cycling of systems requires extensive support in all sectors of manufacturing and service industries. To be able to continually do so at scale is indicative of an economy that is not suffering from ill-effects. If they were, they would not have been able to keep this pace for this long.
Now, on to some of your other numbers… like Fountain.
A capsuleer alliance in Fountain does need a more reliable hub than Dodixie. Fortunately, one exists, and has already surpassed Dodixie in trade volume. (Note that as we are now not talking wealth creation, we can go ahead and look at trade volume and value). It’s also much closer than Dodixie. What’s more, neutral JF service to that trade hub does operate, and can be used to bring goods from 1DQ1-A to Fountain. Moreover, there’s a permanent Keepstar-to-Keepstar services available from 1DQ to J5A, and, if you’ll care to take a look at the map of Fountain, the only people in Fountain are the Imperium, Iron Armada, Infensus, and WISK (who are all most certainly welcome to have items shipped to Serpentis Prime if they don’t want to allow neutral JFs to dock in their citadels).
Of course, the Initiative owns half of Cloud Ring at this point, too, so the constellations not immediately adjacent to the State or Federation already have a reliable trade-hub in easy range.
And by the way, no, the vast majority of trading in the Jita area is still in Jita 4-4. All that PLEX trading in the Perimeter/New Caldari/Maurasi/farther-flung citadels is mostly wealthy individual traders putting up orders to themselves in order to create the appearance of an actively-traded volume to attract customers to an ‘active’ market.
I could introduce you to a few, if you like. Many of them are Goons.
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If you read a bit more carefully, I am talking about the production in Jita 4-4, not the market activity (even though the production is also heavily reliant on said market activity). The State provides the means for production in this station, which I also figure to be the only significant State-owned venue for production by capsuleers. That’s why I took it as a point of comparison, against nearby capsuleer owned wealth creation facilities.
You presented the production by capsuleers in Caldari regions as an evidence for a thriving Caldari baseliner economy, which you have then backed up with:
Fair enough, I guess, but I still fail to see how baseliner economies factor into this, especially when more capsule-relevant concerns such as location play heavily in favor of Jita. What capsuleers can do in Jita, they can do in Amarr, or Rens, or Dodixie without any regard for how their respective empires are doing (unless it’s an absolute catastrophe of course). Caldari must have done some pretty serious breakthroughs to handle all the production and trade within Jita 4-4, but this is the result of, rather than the reason Jita and Kimotoro are what they are today. We can say that the existing capsuleer economy feeds primarily to Caldari economy, but that alone doesn’t put it ahead of Fed or other empires.
I don’t really think the data regarding how the baseliner economies have been doing for the past few years is in a format that can be presented here. Feel free to share if you have them, but no pressure.
Yeah, I mean, I was just comparing the jump ranges regardless of who lives there and imports from where. Fountain, as far as I can see is the only claimable null space Dodixie is closest to, which is why I took it as a point of comparison. How well its current residents are currently doing is irrelevant to the topic. It could be inhabited by a less competent alliance and they could be importing from Jita (yeah yeah I know, it is not).
The Mogul market in Perimeter seems to be legit and doing well. There is simply no reason to trade neural extractors/injectors and PLEX in Jita anymore.
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The Federation isn’t a ‘democracy’ its a jewel whose many facets form our ‘Federal Union.’ There are many states, ran in many ways, systems within systems. While the ‘Senate’ does have nominal legislative supremacy, it is on a Federal level, locales vary.
Lirsautton (Mei-ha) autonomous governmental structures look very different to Intaki for example. “The original Intaki representatives asked for minimal protection at the founding of the Federation,” according to Vremaja Idama. “We have always valued our independence and self-reliance.”
So in our glorious Federation, you can have as little or as much as you please, as long as you follow a few… rules.
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Well, you’re wrong. As you can see, there are six stations in Jita that all have factory services available. Just in Jita. I’m sure you can find more in the rest of the State. You may ‘figure’ 4-4 CNA is the only significant State-owned venue for production, but it’s not.
Location led to Yulai. Location is only one of the factors that contributes to Jita. If you think the sheer amount of tax revenue we create doesn’t, in turn, draw even more baseliners, you’re nuts.
… is four people, trading 99% of their stock to themselves.
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sigh
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Which the Federation will change when you build something good in order to take it away from you.
It is true indeed that the rule of law has always illuded some. Duplicity is usually repaid in kind.
More like eluded some - especially those, who impose rule of mob instead of rule of law. For example, like the situation that happened in your Federation 200 years ago. A minority colonized rich worlds and started boosting industrial might without breaking any laws - but not advertising its successes openly. When the majority found it out, they simply voted to capture these colonies - while they had no legal power to do so.
If you prefer real rule of law and respect of independence, you shall become State citizen, because you’ll find neither in the Federation.
From my Dacha in the mountains, I share many of your feelings, James. But life is good, is it not? Once I realised that every story has a happy ending, if you know when to stop telling it, I really learned how to cope with politics.
Also, Aria, I have learned to treat people as I find them. You were never a very enthusiastic combat pilot, but you were a good comrade and I have only warm memories of your time with us. Again, the story ended happily because we knew when to stop telling it.
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Kind reflections, Pieter. My feelings about Caldari architecture don’t really relate in a very direct way to PY-RE, though. I, also, have warm memories of that time, even if I have more troubled feelings about its effects on me.
One of those effects was my enthusiasm. There was a time when I led our leaderboards, remember? It didn’t last, and was never going to, but, it was there.
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