Originally posted by Hemdian:
Okay, for the moment lets take the position that the Gov code is an objective description of how a world is run. Now lets compare the US of today with the US of 1940. Both would be a representative democracy.
To an extent, that highlights the limitations of the current giv digit system - not wanting to start a political flame war, the current US government is a Representative Democracy in the sense of that being how they're elected, but they actually run the place as if they were an Impersonal Bureaucracy (you could even argue that it's becoming so that Bush is a Charismatic Dictator. Or a Non-Charismatic Leader, depending on who you talk to). If you're really cynical (or perhaps realistic) you could argue that the US government is a Self-Perpetuating Oligarchy given that decisions are made according to what powerful lobbyists (eg the gun lobby, oil industry, christians, etc) say than what the people on the ground doing the voting actually want.
The point is that the gov digit seems to only indicate how a new government is created, not how it actually runs the place. That, I think, is reflected more in the Law Level (though bizarrely, Traveller seems to judge a world's law level largely by the restrictions it has on carrying and using
weaponry). So while it may be a Representative Democracy in terms of how people are elected (and given the last election, even that is arguable), I'd say that the Law Level post-9/11 is probably above A.
Apart from the difference in TL would living in the US in 1940 feel the same as living in the US today? Can these differences be explained away by a change in law level?
Probably, yes.
The fact is that unless you are running a high powered campaign with nobles and megacorp representatives, or want to perform some macroeconomic analysis, then from a role player's perspective the Gov code is just some minor background trivia. But if you use the Gov code in the way outlined by Marc in his High Passage article (*) then the difference between 1940 US and today's US can be descibed, in part, by a Gov code change.
You'll note that in Book 6 it does say that the LAW level is "the general throw to avoid harrassment by police or other law enforcement agencies".
Thing is, some of the other UWPs are "background trivia" too. Why does world size indicate the size of the planet when in practical terms it'd be more useful to use it to say what the surface gravity is? Why is the hydrographic percentage important for players?
Which ever way you slice it, if you want to properly define a world's government you going to have to have multiple codes.
That's true for all the other UWP digits too. Why have world size when you could have density and gravity digits too? Why have a single atmosphere digit when you could separate it into density, composition, and breathability? Why have a single hydrosphere digit when you could split it into percentage, depth, and composition? And so on.
Whether you accept the current code as being the overall description and introduce additional codes to cover social substructure, militaryism, etc ... or accept the current code as being indicative of the lower-order interaction and introduce additional codes to define the higher structures, the result's the same: more codes. In fact without extra codes then either viewpoint gives us a Gov code that leaves more unsaid than is said about a world's government.
True, but I don't see how this is particularly relevant. The UWP was never supposed to explain EVERYTHING about a planet.
Another problem with the "objective description" view is the missing government types. I've actually seen someone argue that since there was no Gov code for a communist state that communism was obveously a freak anomaly that wouldn't be repeated anywhere in the OTU.
Communism could be classed as a Self-Perpetuating Oligarchy (or a Charismatic Oligarchy, if the populace love it) with a high law level. I'm not seeing a problem here.
I don't believe you can describe the running of a world using the government digit alone any more than you could describe the physical characteristic using just the atmosphere digit on its own. But when used with the population and law digits, you get a better idea of how it works.
Basically, I see the UWP as something that the Scouts themselves would use to classify worlds. It's a very elegant system. In eight digits you have enough information to get the basic characteristics of a planet and its society. Sure, you can add more, but as it stands it works very well for what it does. But if you start saying "ah, it's all subjective and based on interactions" it becomes utterly useless as such.
