Fixing the Government UWP?

[piperfan]

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).

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:
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?!)

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.

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.

 

[piperfan]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
I'm not even sure we need 15 government types. Maybe we could whittle it down to 11 to fit a 2d6 range. Ditch the Feudal Technocracy (sounds like it might be more a subset of Company/Corporation anyway) and the Religious governments (those are subsets of Self-Perpetuating or Charismatic Oligarchies). That brings us down to 12...

Here is a variant I developed for my non-Traveller Earth Colonies campaign several years ago ("Socal Authority" is akin to Traveller Government code; "PM" is equivalent to Traveller Population code):

SA: Social Authority (Throw 2d6, consult table)

PM | 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 (throw)
___|__________________________________
0 | 4 3 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1 | 5 4 3 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
2 | 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 0 0 0 0
3 | 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 0 0 0
4 | 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 0 0
5 | 8 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 0
6 | 8 8 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0
7 | 8 8 8 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
8 | 8 8 8 8 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
9 | 8 8 8 8 8 8 7 6 5 4 3
A | 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 7 6 5 4

Code Nature of Authority
0 none
1 autocratic autarchy
2 autocratic oligarchy
3 consensual demarchy
4 (democratic) demarchy
5 consensual autarchy
6 democratic autarchy
7 consensual oligarchy
8 democratic oligarchy
----------

There are three basic types of social authority based upon who holds the authority to rule: a single person (autarchy), some subset of the population (oligarchy), or the populace as a whole (demarchy). In general, the larger the populace the less likely demarchy will be and the even more larger the populace the less likely autarchy will be. (It's tough for a single person to rule millions of people solely by his/herself.)

These three authority types are modified by the nature of consent of the governed populace: autocractic (no consent, the rulers impose their rule through force, rhetoric, or other means), democratic (the rulers enjoy some degree of majoritarian consent), and consensual (the rulers enjoy the consent of the entire populace). Genuinely autocractic rule gets more difficult with larger populations and genuine consensus gets more difficult to achieve with larger populations as well.

(In this scheme both the former Soviet Union and the current United States government would be classified as "democratic oligarchies." The former evidenced by its sudden collapse once some degree of majoritarian consent evaporated. The Third Imperium would be a "democratic oligarchy" as well.)

My basic effort here was to move away from the particularistic descriptions of the Traveller Government codes to a system that focused on the nature of the rulers, the nature of consent from the populace, and the manner in which population affected both of these factors.

 

[Spiderfish]

Well Malenfant "Better educated" is a loose term.

I'll admit compared to you I probably have only a rudimentary knowledge about science and astronomy but on the other hand you probably don't know as much about the application of brute force to defuse volatile situations (hitting people.

We all have our skills.

 

[Elliot]

Posted by Piperfan

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.

So what you are saying is Feudal Technocracy is feudalism in a technological society (which is, of course, not feudal technocracy strictly speaking as there is no technocracy). So why not just call it feudalism and rely on the TL code to determine the technological element to the feudal system?

Again, I don't want a flame war, i'm just interested in what FT actually is in terms of Traveller.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Spiderfish:
Well Malenfant "Better educated" is a loose term.

I'll admit compared to you I probably have only a rudimentary knowledge about science and astronomy but on the other hand you probably don't know as much about the application of brute force to defuse volatile situations (hitting people.

We all have our skills.

Sure, but in a Technocracy I think what matters is the level of formal education you have had. I'm envisaging it as taking the current educational hierarchy and making it determine your status in society.

So Professors would not only be the most important scientists, they'd also be the ones at the top running the society. Then you'd have Scientists, then Postdocs, then PhDs, then Masters, then BScs, then the school-educated making up the masses (and the ones who left school or never went being the dregs of society). Though really, I can't see that setup working in practise.

Maybe it would be better to ditch it and lump it as a subset of Company/Corp. It would work for a small research base (where the Professors *would* run the show), but it just can't work for a large society.


Oh, Piperfan - that's an interesting little system you have there...

 

[piperfan]

Originally posted by Elliot:
So what you are saying is Feudal Technocracy is feudalism in a technological society (which is, of course, not feudal technocracy strictly speaking as there is no technocracy). So why not just call it feudalism and rely on the TL code to determine the technological element to the feudal system?

Again, I don't want a flame war, i'm just interested in what FT actually is in terms of Traveller.

All I mean to suggest is that it's likely Marc et al had the government of Piper's Sword Worlds in mind when they came up with the Government type "feudal technocracy" (seeing as many worlds in the Sword Worlds Confederation were originally listed as having this Government type). Whether that was actually case, and if it was, why they called it what they did is something I don't know.

 

[Hemdian]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
I'm a bit perplexed by the logic of defining the government UWP (2d-7+population)...

There seems to be a general bias toward "hi pop = more likely to have totalitarian government". I'm not sure that this is remotely the case.

Why should hi-pop worlds be the only ones that have Religious Dictatorships (D), or Religious Autocracies (E) or Totalitarian Oligarchies (F)? There's no particular reason why these should only be found on worlds that more than hundreds of millions of people on them.

Be very careful about what is actually meant by the "Gov" digit. Marc Miller wrote an article long ago in High Passage magazine that I wish would have been reprinted in JTAS (or somewhere else more high profile). In it he stated that the Gov digit did not define the overall government structure, but instead attempted to define the nature of dealings that travellers (ie. PCs) would have when interacting with a local government. In other words, its less that high population worlds tend to be authoritarian, so much as high population worlds tend to have larger beuracracies that PCs have to contend with.

Marc also gave real world examples of each government type ... even though communism isn't listed explicitly there was one code for the USSR under Stalin and another for the USSR under Lenin. The US also got listed multiple times under different circumstances.

I think I summarised the article on the TML so it should be in the TML archives somewhere.

An example of what you can do with this would be the Yori landgrab. There you have a highly educated religious caste ruling the planet and the Gov code describes a feudal technocracy (not a religious whatever).

Regards PLST

 

[Malenfant]

Be very careful about what is actually meant by the "Gov" digit. Marc Miller wrote an article long ago in High Passage magazine that I wish would have been reprinted in JTAS (or somewhere else more high profile). In it he stated that the Gov digit did not define the overall government structure, but instead attempted to define the nature of dealings that travellers (ie. PCs) would have when interacting with a local government.

If that's the case, then that muddies the water considerably (oddly enough, from what I've seen, whenever Marc tries to clarify something things just tend to get more confused ). For it to be any use as a classification, it has to denote what the government type actually is - it's useless to use it as some subjective indication of how PCs might interact with it.

In other words, its less that high population worlds tend to be authoritarian, so much as high population worlds tend to have larger beuracracies that PCs have to contend with.

That doesn't tally with the table in the books though. The Really Nasty Government Types are only associated with governments D, E, and F. Because of the way gov type is rolled, only high populations worlds will have those types of government.

That said, on average a pop 8 world will have a gov type of (7-7+8 =) 8 (Civil Service Bureaucracy), a pop 9 world will have a gov type of 9 (Impersonal Bureaucracy), and a pop A world will be gov A (Charismatic Dictator). Quite why these types would be typical for worlds with hundreds of millions or billion of people on is anyone's guess. Why would a world with tens of billions of people on be statistically more likely to have a charismatic dictator in charge?

That's why I'd like to ditch the pop bonus to the roll that determines the government.

 

[RainOfSteel]

Originally posted by Malenfant: </font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />
Be very careful about what is actually meant by the "Gov" digit. Marc Miller wrote an article long ago in High Passage magazine that I wish would have been reprinted in JTAS (or somewhere else more high profile). In it he stated that the Gov digit did not define the overall government structure, but instead attempted to define the nature of dealings that travellers (ie. PCs) would have when interacting with a local government.

If that's the case, then that muddies the water considerably (oddly enough, from what I've seen, whenever Marc tries to clarify something things just tend to get more confused ). For it to be any use as a classification, it has to denote what the government type actually is - it's useless to use it as some subjective indication of how PCs might interact with it.
</font>[/QUOTE]I'd have to agree. Subjective ratings are useless. If the Gov rating is only an indicator (an indeterminate word) of what the players are likely to encounter in their "dealings" (whatever those are), then the question must be posed, what is the real Gov-type of all those many thousands of worlds out there? I guess that would mean another round of stat-generation.

Not to mention that virtually all written game material elsewhere seems to treat the Gov rating as exactly what it say it is, the government-type of the planet.

Originally posted by Malenfant: </font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />

In other words, its less that high population worlds tend to be authoritarian, so much as high population worlds tend to have larger beuracracies that PCs have to contend with.

That doesn't tally with the table in the books though. The Really Nasty Government Types are only associated with governments D, E, and F. Because of the way gov type is rolled, only high populations worlds will have those types of government.

That said, on average a pop 8 world will have a gov type of (7-7+8 =) 8 (Civil Service Bureaucracy), a pop 9 world will have a gov type of 9 (Impersonal Bureaucracy), and a pop A world will be gov A (Charismatic Dictator). Quite why these types would be typical for worlds with hundreds of millions or billion of people on is anyone's guess. Why would a world with tens of billions of people on be statistically more likely to have a charismatic dictator in charge?

That's why I'd like to ditch the pop bonus to the roll that determines the government. </font>

<and there was much rejoicing!>

 

[Hemdian]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
That said, on average a pop 8 world will have a gov type of (7-7+8 =) 8 (Civil Service Bureaucracy), a pop 9 world will have a gov type of 9 (Impersonal Bureaucracy), and a pop A world will be gov A (Charismatic Dictator). Quite why these types would be typical for worlds with hundreds of millions or billion of people on is anyone's guess. Why would a world with tens of billions of people on be statistically more likely to have a charismatic dictator in charge?

I don't totally disagree with your position, however try looking at it this way:

All those Gov type "A" worlds aren't actually all charismatic dictatorships, but are a broad band of governments (of all sorts) whose lower rungs tend to respond to visitors in similar ways ... and a typical example government of this band might be a charismatic dictatorship.

(Marc Miller's historical examples of Gov type "A" included the obveous Germany under Hitler, Italy under Mussolini, China under Mao, the USSR under Lenin, but also the United States (to some extent) under FDR.)

If law level represents the frequency of government intrusion, gov 'level' represents the breadth of government interest. In other words, a civil service beuracracy might have a lot of red tape covering economic activity (you need permits for everything), a Gov type "A" government might also legislate more personal beliefs ("are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the communist party?") ... increasing to an extreme in the "religious dictatorships" (Thought crime).

Remember the intended audience of the UPP string is the traveller. (Supplement 3 was a sort of tourist guide, not something you can readily use to extrapolate serious socio-economic data, nor use for serious astrogation purposes.)

Put it another way. The Gov digit in the UPP is not Gov Type, but Gov Level. The descriptions list typical examples of government types that might occur at those levels (but not actual government types). To find actual government type we need a separate table for each Gov Level.

Originally posted by RainOfSteel:
If the Gov rating is only an indicator (an indeterminate word) of what the players are likely to encounter in their "dealings" (whatever those are), then the question must be posed, what is the real Gov-type of all those many thousands of worlds out there? I guess that would mean another round of stat-generation.

Exactly my conclusion.

Originally posted by RainOfSteel:
Not to mention that virtually all written game material elsewhere seems to treat the Gov rating as exactly what it say it is, the government-type of the planet.

Successive generations building upon a false premis. Note that the budget model presented in TCS has been knocked back for use ouside the context of TCS and yet people still insist on using it when trying to define the wider Imperial military budget.


Regards PLST

"Questions are illegal on this planet?"

"Yes. Questions lead to answers. Answers lead to knowledge. Knowledge leads to dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction leads to unhappiness. The state loves you, it wants you to be happy. Happiness through acceptance, productivity through happiness. And your question about questions is a 'Word Crime' ... summon the authorities, a word crime has been committed here!"

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by Hemdian:
"Questions are illegal on this planet?"

"Yes. Questions lead to answers. Answers lead to knowledge. Knowledge leads to dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction leads to unhappiness. The state loves you, it wants you to be happy. Happiness through acceptance, productivity through happiness. And your question about questions is a 'Word Crime' ... summon the authorities, a word crime has been committed here!"

"Yes a 'Word Crime' has been committed, we shall await the authorities. You interpreted my statement 'Questions are illegal on this planet' as a question and answered it as such rather than accepting it. Therefore you are guilty of a 'Word Crime' by association."

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Hemdian:
Put it another way. The Gov digit in the UPP is not Gov Type, but Gov Level. The descriptions list typical examples of government types that might occur at those levels (but not actual government types). To find actual government type we need a separate table for each Gov Level.

This, I feel, is an utterly needless complication - plus it renders the gov digit largely useless when it comes to figuring out the government of the planet. We really don't need to roll on two tables to get the same info. As I see it, the Gov digit gives you an solid, objective classification of the world government, and the Law digit tells you how they treat their society. Every interpretation that I've ever seen (including in the CT books) supports this, and I've never seen anything to contradict this.

The "interaction" side of it is pretty much entirely within the law level - that tells travellers how oppressive or liberal the world is. The gov digit as it stands provides enough information to tell them how the place is run (e.g. bureaucracies will probably have lots of red tape, etc). I'm not seeing where there's any need for anything else here.

Successive generations building upon a false premis.

Sorry, but I'm just not seeing how it's a "false premise" or seeing any need to change this. What has been said so far in every other version of Traveller about the government types has been pretty unambiguous - that it's an objective classification of the type of government found on that world. The only dissenting voice comes from this article you pointed out, which to cap it all is: (a) in some obscure magazine that few people have access to, (b) is long out of print, (c) probably isn't officially part of Traveller canon anyway, and (d) contrary to everything said in every version of Traveller written since then.

Hence I am not seeing a strong argument to suddenly shift the manner in which everyone defines the government digit...

 

[daryen]

Originally posted by Hemdian:
Successive generations building upon a false premis. Note that the budget model presented in TCS has been knocked back for use ouside the context of TCS and yet people still insist on using it when trying to define the wider Imperial military budget.

Incorrect statement and example.

Every version of Traveller defines the goverment code as the type of government on the world, and does so in a pretty unambiguous fashion.

And considering that the article you mentioned from MM came out before every single edition of Traveller but one, we can easily conclude that, if the article was not simply a thought exercise, he, at the very least, changed his mind. At this point that article is completely irrelevant, other than as an example of how MM's thoughts about Traveller have evolved over time.

And the example doesn't work, either. The TCS economics was found in a single source, and never claimed to work for the Imperium at large. That example doesn't apply to the government code situation, where it has repeatedly been defined as the world's literal government over and over in every version of Traveller out there.

 

[robject]

OK, it does seem to me that a "Feudal Technocracy" is a kind of meritocracy, where people are promoted, enfoeffed, empowered, whatever, based on the schools they graduate from, how well they do on the Official Certification Tests, how they scored on the Psychological Profile tests, what-have-you.

Something that's always bothered me is how hard it is to remember what the government codes are. I know a 7 is a multi-part government, a 6 is a captive or colony government, and a 0 is clan-based or anarchy.

Piperfan's system is interesting. Why aren't the government codes ranked? Why are they seemingly arbitrary? Can't they be ranked as the power balance shifts from the many to the few? Or is that Law Level in a nutshell?

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">0 - anarchy
(stuff in between)
10 - non-charismatic dictatorship</pre>[/QUOTE]

 

[piperfan]

Originally posted by robject:
OK, it does seem to me that a "Feudal Technocracy" is a kind of meritocracy, where people are promoted, enfoeffed, empowered, whatever, based on the schools they graduate from, how well they do on the Official Certification Tests, how they scored on the Psychological Profile tests, what-have-you.

I have to agree with the TML FAQ summary that "feudal technocracy" is ambiguous enough to mean pretty much anything you want it to mean that is vaguely "feudal" and "technocratic." Anything other than that begins to add (perhaps subtle) elements of "IMTU-ness" to the mix.

 

[piperfan]

Originally posted by robject:
Piperfan's system is interesting. Why aren't the government codes ranked? Why are they seemingly arbitrary? Can't they be ranked as the power balance shifts from the many to the few? Or is that Law Level in a nutshell?

I'm not sure why they are the way they are but it seems clear the existing Government types were not arrived at in a very systematic manner. That's something I tried to rectify in the variant I developed. I leave it to others to decide whether or not I had any success in that regard.

I focused on two elements: the nature of the ruling power (single individual, some group of folks, or the populace as a whole), and the nature of their ruling authority or legitimacy (imposed without consent, based in majoritarian consent, or based on a full social consensus). It seems to me these two factors are separate from what Law Level is meant to indicate: the degree to which the Government, whatever the nature of the rulers and the source of their authority, intrudes into the affairs of its people (and Travelling visitors).

I can imagine both a very intrusive (high Law Level) "consensual oligarchy" or "demarchy" (think about a local church group or neighborhood association) and a rather "hands-off" (low Law Level) "democratic oligarchy" (think about any large, "liberal" denomination church). So it makes sense to me to include Law Level as a separate UWP/UPP social characteristic.

 

[Malenfant]

Personally, I'd put all the more dictatorial/authoritative/non-charismatic governments at the high end of the scale (inlcuding self-perpetuating oligarchies and captive governments), and the more democratic/charismatic ones at the lower end. And then not add the entire population digit to the roll.

At least that way you have high law level coinciding more with the more unpleasant governments.

 

[piperfan]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
Personally, I'd put all the more dictatorial/authoritative/non-charismatic governments at the high end of the scale (inlcuding self-perpetuating oligarchies and captive governments), and the more democratic/charismatic ones at the lower end. And then not add the entire population digit to the roll.

At least that way you have high law level coinciding more with the more unpleasant governments.

I believe you'll have a hard time sorting out just which of the existing government types are "unpleasant." For example, most universities are governed by "self-perpetuating oligarchies" but I don't believe you have the average college campus in mind when you're thinking about "unpleasantness." Similarly, National Science Foundation rule in Antarctica is pretty much "captive government" but not all that "unpleasant" either. (Or perhaps the NSF isn't the government but rather Raytheon Polar Services which does everything from managing the airfields to cutting hair and cooking meals, making it a Type 2 "company/corporate" Government!) And you won't find too many of the world's Catholics who find their "non-charismatic leader" all that "unpleasant."

Furthermore, if there is tight linkage between Government type and Law Level (assuming you're ever able to reconcile the government types in terms of widely-accepted agreement on "unpleasantness") why have two separate codes? You could then simply use the Government type as the de facto Law Level. (Indeed, you can do this now if you ignore the Government code and focus on the Law Level to give you some sense of the "unpleasantness"--I would prefer "intrusiveness"--of the government.)

 

[jatay3]

Well: (from dictionary.com)

Feudalism: 1. A political and economic system of Europe from the 9th to about the 15th century, based on the holding of all land in fief or fee and the resulting relation of lord to vassal and characterized by homage, legal and military service of tenants, and forfeiture.
-----------------------------------------
Actually feudalism is a variation of one of the most common systems of government. It was well known in Ancient and non-european medieval.
The difference in the European "knights-in-shining-armor" model, is from the incredible complexity of the system, which as time went on caused such anomalies as the King of England being a (none too respectful) vassal to the King of France, for his territories in France and being independant in England.
The tangle in Europe was caused by there being in fact several "top dogs" rather than the elegant pyrmidal structure in textbooks(some say that was a good thing because it forced competition).
It was also caused by the complicated inheiratance structure caused by dynastic intermarriage, early death, etc.
The Imperium would have some of these things. However the source of the complexity would be primarily the number of substates in the Imperium rather than the lack of a strong central government.

 

[robject]

Changing the government digit while doing as little harm as possible to it may be impossible. However, I can see some useful codes. But, like atmosphere codes, the values are multiplexed, based on popularity, perhaps. Here are some semi-random assignments, using the same slots as the atmosphere taint codes for unpopular governments (2,4,7,9,11). I don't really like the placement, but it's nice having the unpopular governments in the same positions as the tainted atmospheres. Easier to remember that way.

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">0 - Balkanized
1 - Participating Democracy
2 - Representative Democracy (unpopular)
3 - Civil Service Bureaucracy
4 - Impersonal Bureaucracy (unpopular)
5 - Charismatic Oligarchy
6 - Self-perpetuating Oligarchy
7 - Corporate State (unpopular)
8 - Charismatic Dictator
9 - Non-charismatic Dictator (unpopular)
A - ?
B - Colonial Government (unpopular)
C - ?</pre>[/QUOTE]