As someone who was involved in some of those flamewars on TML years ago let me add a bit of explanation for my reasoning back in those days. H. Beam Piper's novel Space Viking was obviously an influence on the early developers of Traveller, as evidenced most prominently by the Sword Worlds subsector in the Spinward Marches. (The Sword Worlds are where the Space Vikings came from in Piper's novel.) Feudal technocracy was the "government" of Piper's Sword Worlds and this is the basis for my views on what the feudal technocracy Government type meant.Originally posted by Malenfant:
I never understood Feudal Technocracies (I know, there's been a zillion flamewars about them in the past. I don't want to start one here).
In Piper's Sword Worlds the means of industrial production--from farming and ranching to steel production and starship construction--were held as noble fiefs embedded in an interlocking system of feudal relationships based upon inheritance, marriage, and other forms of (more traditionally business/corporate) contract.Originally posted by Malenfant:
Only if Feudal Technocracy is necessary... (what does it even mean anyway? Is it the sort of thing where the people that run life-support run the society?!)
If you weren't a (real or industrial) property-holding noble you had no formal role in "government" (although nobles had to rely to some degree upon "assent" from their people to keep from being violently deposed). In Piper's Sworld Worlds there were few of the government-provided services to which we in post-welfare state society have become accustomed: schools, emergency services, hospitals, etc. were all provided by the private sector (either through charity or as for-profit enterprises). Government services pretty much amounted solely to military forces held at each level of Sword Worlds feudal society.
I'm not tring to restart any sort of debate here; I simply wanted to provide a bit of historical/inspirational context for the "feudal technocracy" Government type in Traveller. I agree that the Government codes could use a lot of rework and will post some of my rethinking on the matter in a subsequent post.