Well, Arrendis covered most of this better than I could have…
Summary executions of people accused of treason is politically motivated, namely, there was a huge push to overturn the Gallentean style democracy and adopt a Tribal leadership. Conveniently anyone who might’ve objected were labelled traitors and shot on the spot with no chance of due process. Just kind of rings like a violent coup to me.
Yes thanks, almost forgot.
Show me someone fool enough to come forward, and I’ll show you a brain with an RSS bullethole in it.
The judgment of those in power. And no, that is not oppression. But it might seem like it to those under quarantine, I’m sure. Ask Aria if she felt ‘oppressed’ when she was exposed to Kyonoke, and quarantined under a ‘leave them to die if the cure don’t work’ sentence.
A. If that is the only reason they are instituting a temporarily draconian measure, then I don’t know that I’d call that a ‘tyrant’. Again: It’s temporary, and it’s not about targeting a specific group because they’re that group, it’s about responding to a necessity. It’s not ‘oppression’.
B. We determine what is and is not necessary by determining what options we have, and which of them will work. And we hope to hell that among them is one that isn’t cruel or vicious.
And again, I refer you to (A) above. If you’re responding to necessity, I don’t think you can call it ‘oppression’. Unless that necessity is an open-ended thing, your response to it will, by its nature, only be temporary. It’s a hardship. It’s not oppression. In the case of a quarantine, are you willfully causing pain or suffering? Or are you simply unable to alleviate the pain and suffering that is already there?
and just to nail it down:
Well, that’s politics. Gets itself caught up in everything.
Personally, I’d take the risk of killing 10x the number of innocents for every spy I killed if at the end of it, it meant that you spared a nation of billions of people from having to deal with a heavily weakened defense against a larger empire at the exact same time that a large fleet of ships that look just like yours (We didn’t do it, honest guvnah) just invaded that Empire, providing them with more than enough of a reason to invade you. Given that such a war, especially if you start out compromised by spies, will likely lead to the death of hundreds of millions and probably your government’s complete collapse followed by no doubt the re-enslavement of millions more of your people.
Yeah I’d kill 100 innocents to prevent that. I’d kill 10,000 innocents to prevent that.
Tyranny is a mechanism, a method of governance, it doesn’t mean “being really mean for no reason while also wearing a wizard hat that says you’re in charge”
As I look through different definitions of tyranny, I realize this might be a cultural difference regarding the usage of the term. When I use the term tyranny, I am referring to “a ruler who seized power unconstitutionally or inherited such power.” or an otherwise unaccountable/undemocratic/unpopular ruler. Some definitions have the term tyranny itself frontloaded in the definition with negative moralistic language, such as “a cruel and oppressive ruler” which is really vague and is liable to just get the word ‘tyrant’ thrown around about any leader a particular person doesn’t like. I prefer the more legalistic definition and when I refer to tyranny that is what I am referring to, a despot, a single ruler, a monarch, a Leviathan. Take your pick.
But, since we seemed to be operating on different definitions, let’s see if we actually disagree at the heart of the matter. There’s a word somewhat similar to my usage of tyrant, that is ‘autocrat’. Do you think you cannot have a ‘good’ autocrat, rather than tyrant?
No, I think autocrat simply describes the nature of the position. ‘Tyrant’ is specifically a cruel and oppressive one.
Mind you, it was, in fact, the ‘cruel and oppressive’ bit you questioned being ‘bad’. So saying now that it’s about how ‘tyrant’ is defined when what you objected to was the substance of the definition…
Then I don’t think we fundamentally disagree.
I think I’ll close this out by reiterating the heart of my argument.
An autocrat, de facto or de jure, will in times of crisis make certain decisions which may be seen as unnecessarily cruel or oppressive but which, sometimes though not often, end up being necessary. If, in these instances, these actions prevented a greater disaster from befalling a larger number of people than those affected and the scale to which they were effected by the cruel decision, then he can be considered to be a roughly ‘good’ autocrat, albeit in a bad situation to start with.
TL;DR: It’s consequentialism but not really because complete consequentialism has some problems.
And yeah, I do object to the substance of the definition, I don’t like that definition, I think it’s stupid to be honest. But I suppose we need words to throw around at leaders we don’t like.
If it’s necessary, and it’s seen as unnecessarily cruel or oppressive, then someone isn’t doing a very good job of explaining the situation. And really, I may consider such a person a capable autocrat… I wouldn’t consider anyone who can’t make clear what the necessity is to be a ‘good’ autocrat.
You can make a clear argument to a dumb, scared, panicked, half-starved crowd looking for a head to mount on a spike and the eloquence of your arguments might still fall on deaf ears.
A person can only control what they say, they can’t control what the other person interprets or I wouldn’t have had to nip at Else.
What is this thread
Welcome to the madness, I guess we’re all bored.
It’s off-topic. Which means your post, seeking a topic, is off-topic.
Which means it’s in the right place!
Arrendis, level with me here.
You, a Goon director, seem completely convinced that in a crisis, people can be reasoned with, always, and that a lack of ability to convince others of the necessity of a specific drastic action during a panic means that they’re simply not a good enough communicator.
A Goon director is telling me this. A Goon director seems less concerned about the volatility of angry mobs.
I’ve got to say, you either have super-human levels of patience and faith in humanity, or you’re not very observant of your surroundings.
No. I, a Goon director, am completely convinced that a good autocrat can explain the necessity of his or her actions to people, and make them understand that yes, his actions were necessary. And he can absolutely get them all to agree with this.
And the easiest way to do this is to allow one or two to question the necessity in a public way, and then let everyone else weigh the merits of their position vs the lovely pattern their brains made when they exploded across the opposite wall.
Made. Past tense. Not ‘could make’.
Folly.
I was going to make the ‘make them understand’ joke but then you beat me to it. Damnit Arrendis…
But yeah I think we understand each other.
I mean to be honest this entire conversation has been a meme because you choose to work directly under the biggest space autocrat that capsuleerdom has ever seen, so you obviously already agreed with me in spirit 
And I find most of his actions to be utterly amoral—neither good, nor bad, because of the limited scope of them. The rest… fall into the same range and distribution as anyone else, capsuleer or baseliner. He’s just this guy, you know?
You only say that because you don’t get to sit in on meetings that literally include him uttering the lines ‘What? Oh, ■■■■… right. I’m a dumbass.’
Which was… three days ago.
Actually now that I think of it…
The autocrat may make decisions which seem cruel at first
Or even oppressive
But it is ultimately necessary for the greater good
I win.
