Governor Alesia Snezhnaya is many things. A war hero, a popular politician, a proud Severyanian, a pragmatic Lunarist and a dogmatic anti-communist. In the face of a nascent revolutionary movement brewing amongst the working masses of Lunar Equestria, Alesia has wasted no time in stamping it out. Yet to her annoyance, other Lunarists appear oblivious to the growing threat.
As the revolutionary movement grows, so does Alesia's frustration, given that she may be the only one who understands the encroaching threat. Unless something happened to change her perspective...
Takes place in my New Lunar Millennium alternate universe and features characters from the Equestria at War mod. More information on the AU can be found here. Names and features of the setting will likely confusing to someone unfamiliar with the mod or the AU, but this should be readable by anyone.
Proofread and edited by Izzy Incraft.
This fic has been approved by the Tobuckian Agency of Character Control.
This looks like an interesting read
Oooh, interesting
Gotta say that I love Carte Blanche's seemingly carefree attitude.
Lez go! More EAW fics on the Frontpage!
Millions dead, doesn't work. What more does on need? Understand this doesn't mean I'm cheerleading for the oligarchic orgy of rampant corporatism, but that can at least be curtailed, if not outright slain if it oversteps it bounds. But for some odd reason people think taking the so called unchecked power of capitalists (who at least have to remain profitable to continue) to politicians who will decidedly not be held accountable and are not under the same restraints utterly baffles me
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Well, speaking as one who tries to at least stay informed on both sides of this matter, it first off sort of depends on the style of system being promoted. After all, socialism is more specifically the flavor of Marxist thought people favor these days, not communism, and no matter how much those opposing it claim it to be, socialism is NOT the same as communism, as it's generally a system that tries to strike the right balance of introducing socialist practices while still ensuring democracy is upheld in full and corruption is kept as minimized as possible.
And if we can do that, then, on paper, it's a much better economic system to have than capitalism, which even when working at its best, can't really compete. But then there's the catch--no one HAS quite found that right balance yet, and without it...yeah, there is a definite political corruption concern there, potentially a very big one depending on the methodologies used.
Still...I personally like to think that elusive "right balance" is still out there somewhere, so I'll probably always support people looking for it. But until then...yeah, I have my misgivings about it too, because I know it'd just take one greedy jerk in the right position to mess it up for everybody (but then the same can be said of capitalism too, so...)
Regardless of whether or not that "right balance" is a pipe dream or not, though, there's gotta be a better system out there we can use besides capitalism, because the more I understand about how capitalism really works, the more I realize it's really not that sustainable, in terms or resources or monetary value.
But that's another topic.
11742282 There is no possible balance. Communism can only exist in a social system of creatures programmed to be equal. And even then, there always ends up being a singular mind running the show.
Communist philosophy, assuming its adherents are genuine in their belief (which I have found from many many personal experiences is not the case at all, and once I dig a bit, it ALWAYS boils down to the commie wanting either all the free stuff or all the power) makes the silly assumption that people will all do things out of a sense of altruism.... which is about as ludicrous as expecting the Sun to suddenly rise out of the West.
Humanity is SELFISH, LAZY, and GREEDY. Capitalism at least will set those elements against each other, with the requirement to PAY someone to do the work. Communism very swiftly boils down to slave labor. Every. Single. Time. As does it's ugly stepbrother, national socialism.
It's easy to make a system that APPEARS workable... ON PAPER. Just as it's easy to make a gazillion stories about pastel magical ponies. BUT NEITHER CAN EXIST IN THE REAL WORLD.
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Like I said, there's definite problems with it that have yet to be resolved...and jury's still out on whether or not they even can be. I think I made my stance on that clear already, so I won't beat the dead horse further on that.
Capitalism, however, has many of its own definite problems that make it...honestly? Not that much better in the end. As you say, it promotes and thrives on greed to work, which means it very much naturally wants to always gravitate towards having few to one to have most to all of the power over everyone else, because that's just the logical end outcome of such a system. Trying to force it to NOT do that just keeps it from working smoothly and ultimately creates further problems. Either way, you ultimately still end up with the same thing--with one small minority holding entirely too much of the power and leaving everybody else suffering and ignored because of it.
As a result, I'm not one to just shrug my shoulders and concede capitalism really is as good as it'll ever get. There has to be something better we can do instead out there somewhere. Whether or not Marxist thought of any flavor even fits into that equation, I honestly don't know, and it's why I'm unwilling to put all my eggs into that basket currently too. But I do still want to keep an open mind to ALL of the potential alternatives nonetheless, in hopes that alternative, whatever it might be, really does come to light someday.
And anyway, humanity is capable of rising above it's own tendency for greed, or at least batting it back so to keep it at arm's length--I've seen plenty of examples of this being done before. So since it's pretty universally agreed that promoting greed is bad, then I'm still all for anything that discourages greed.
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Stalliongradian agent detected; you have been reported to the Hoof. Glory to Alesia, and may the Nightmare have mercy on your soul.
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A risk I acknowledged to myself going in, such as it was!
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I don't wanna get into an argument in my own comments section but you're posting this comment on a site made by people who had no profit incentive to make it full of content created by people with no profit incentive to have made it. Specifically below a story inspired by a video game mod made by a ton of people busting their ass with zero profit incentive. This very conversation is proof that people are capable of putting in a lot of work for no explicitly selfish incentive. Any money made on this site by the administration or the users is because you need money to survive in a capitalist society.
If you're going to bust into the comments screaming about something you clearly don't understand, at least bring an original and logically consistent argument without the same old, tired cliches that anyone who knows anything is sick of listening to.
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And in this and in so much in life, I turn to the greatest mind of the 41st millenium to make matters clear on Marx
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Based writer. Humanity wants to be productive, the problsm is that we all have to work jobs we don't want to prevent starvation and/or eviction. There would be many m9re stories and arend other creative works if we had m9re t8me, but sadly this is not the case.
Good story. In terms of constructive criticism, I can give a few comments:
- I presume there are too many "bodies"
- In Slavic languages there is sometimes a difference between the feminine and masculine forms of the surname. In this case, it will be "Maksim Snezhnay"
However, these aren't really important issues. The story was really fun to read. Thanks
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Fixed.
Not sure how this works in EaW. I'll check with the devs who made the name.
Her motivation is that she's an aristocrat in a place with a lot of militant labour unrest.
Usually when writing history, the authors don't go out of their way to talk about things that didn't happen. It would be strange if a history book on 20th century America opened with "The northeast didn't secede from the USA to form the People's Republic of New England". Seeing as my doc is presented through extracts from in-universe documents, accounts, interviews, and news stories, it would be really out of place to say "Stalliongrad doesn't exist". However, I do explain it. Just not explicitly.
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Okay, fair point
11742325 Capitalism works when there is not an all-powerful central government driving it.
In the end, that central government is ALWAYS the problem. It's simply that socialism systems require such a government to ever exist in the first place as the authority enforcing the system.
Capitalism, in fact, doesn't require a central government at all. And thus, if the 'robber barons' become too brazen, the people can band together and crush them. When a GOVERNMENT is colluding with the elites, or the government is merely their puppet, then it's very hard to deal with corruption.
But, in such a case, that capitalism system has begun the transition to a fascist system, wherein the governemnt, massive corporations, banks, and media are all working as one to prevent each other from collapsing under their weight of their combined corruption, all while persecuting political/religious/ethnic enemies.
Interestingly, pure monarchies seem the easiest to deal with, and the simplest to overthrow once they become too troublesomely corrupt.
Hence, why I aim to become God-Emperor of Mankind!
11742344 And how many people are fed and clothed by fanfiction? You're making the absurd connection between a shared HOBBY and an ENTIRE SOCIO-ECONOMIC STRUCTURE.
That's as laughable as comparing a kid playing with a toy boat to a captain steering a cruise ship.
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You're not wrong about monarchies, as wrong as it feels to admit that--corrupt or not, they ARE the most efficient form of government, period. If we could guarantee a system of monarchy with a truly just and fair ruler that cannot be at least meaningfully corrupted, then it'd be the system of government we'd want above all the others every time. But you and I both know there is no way such a guarantee could ever be made with such a system. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, as the saying goes, and I can't see how anything short of divine intervention could successfully curtail that.
As for capitalism, everybody usually looks at it in terms of it either being controlled by a strong central government, or by a hands-off small government, but in reality neither is ideal. As you say, the strong central government option just results in too much micromanaging and becomes gridlocked at best, or that government becomes corrupt from the power and starts abusing it at worst. But the hands-off small government, historically speaking, just results in an economy with far too little oversight, and then it just ends with those with the most wealth getting all the power instead and the same corruption happens through there instead, to the point the government need not apply in the equation anymore. So that's not any better.
Really, the closest to ideal form of capitalism is the one managed by what I like to think of as a "medium government," one that's not as powerful as the strong central government, but also not as weak as the hands-off small government. That way it lacks the power to be able to abuse its authority in any meaningful way, but is still strong enough to stop those trying to similarly abuse it via their wealth. But not only is that "sweet spot" so ridiculously narrow and hard to find--and looking back through history I can't see any (verifiable) points in history where mankind has truly achieved it--it'd be terribly hard just to maintain, because also because capitalism, by its very nature, doesn't want to be subjected to that, as it doesn't want anything that stands in the way of its end goal of gathering as much of the wealth for itself that it can...because ultimately that IS the end goal of any capitalist system. That's how capitalism works--the ones with the strongest businesses win by getting both the most wealth and keeping the rest from getting any of it themselves. Someone will always have to loose out and suffer because of it, and that's not fair.
And so again I'm not content to just default to capitalism, because it's demonstrable as less than ideal itself. Hence my stance of keeping an open mind towards any alternatives, including any form of socialism, or at least any that could potentially avoid falling prey to its own corruption problems. I concede it could just be a pipe dream, but...you won't know until you try. And I'm not convinced all the possibilities have really been ruled out just yet.
And I guess I just get frustrated when people readily point out all of the potential corruption problems of Marxist thought while also pretending like capitalism doesn't have some of the same corruption problems just in a different skin, as it's rather arrogant and ignorant of them.
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You said "humanity", as a whole, was selfish, lazy, and greedy, which is self-evidently false owing all the humans that exist and have existed who are not those things. What you're really doing is parroting the dull cliche of "human nature", taking the unnaturally enforced interests of private property and setting them up as the natural interest. If anything it shows a deep lack of interest in the actual system itself, assuming that things are the way they are because "they just are" in passive ignorance of all the history that led up to this system existing the way it does, as well as all the social attitudes encouraged by the current system. If there's one constant to "human nature", it's change. People change as the world around them changes. Looking at how people behave now and extrapolating that to all of human history, past and future, it's extremely erroneous.
Claiming that the whole species is just a bunch of selfish, lazy, greedy bastards reads less like an argument and more like an admission, but I don't know enough about you to make that judgment. What I do know about you is that you're the sort of person to barge into a comments section to spout ill-informed ideological nonsense, which everyone else finds extremely annoying. I ask you to find a better use of your time.
If I may add my two cents to this debate. Socialism is great… in theory. In reality, it’s a horrible idea. It appeals to us because it promises what we don’t have, or what we aren’t rightfully given, due to the cutthroat nature of capitalism. I agree that robber barons and monopolies are big problems, but the solution proposed by socialism gives even more power to the government.
Often, proponents of socialism are against monarchies as well, because it removes merit from the equation and makes it a lot easier for corruption and oppression. Similarly, socialism attracts the worst and most corrupt people, because of the large amount of power that is wielded by the government. In addition to giving the government more powerful, it creates a feeding tube between the government and the people, as now the government feeds you, clothes you, and houses you; and at any moment, that can be taken away. Trust me, giving the government more power is not a good idea, and was the whole reason for the world’s switch to democracy (even though that’s been reached by corruption as well).
Technological progress also tends to slow in socialism, because a lack of capitalism means a lack of consumer competition. Like it our not, capitalism is great for facilitating leaps in technology and such, because the competition pushes companies to develop and win consumers.
I will wholeheartedly agree that capitalism has its faults, but socialism is worse.
Jeez this comment section's full of politics and people are hatin'. That's why rule 9 exists on the Discord, eh.
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when the story about politics has people discussing politics
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