It seems like the majority of people one this forum lean towards the right, and are very pro free market. I am wondering if any of you ever heard of or played a game called EVE. Basically EVE is the greatest capitalism simulator ever created. It is a massive multiplayer online game (MMO), and there is one server, where hundreds of thousands of players have been active for going on 11 years now. The way this game is set up is simple. The players have almost total control of the entire in game universe (spanning an entire galaxy). There is an in game government of sorts controlled by non playable characters, but it is extremely, extremely weak, and is for all intents and purposes is a glorified licensing and registration office. The players have the real power. When the game started, players could form their own corporate entities and stake out territorial claims. These quickly spread across most of the galaxy and grew from employing a few dozen people, to thousands, and as player corporations grew bigger, they began to compete over resources and territory. Eventually these corporations began to wage open war with each other, and form alliances and conglomerates. What began happening was corporations, in the absence of central authority, made their own, and nowadays there is only a fraction of the corporations left that originally populated the game. Most of space is ruled by several massive conglomerates, and smaller ones are either consumed, or survive on the fringes between giants and eke out an existence by playing their neighbors against each other. The biggest corporate entities rarely fight, but every few months something typically happens that escalates into a massive battle involving hundreds, or even thousands of ships, and at the end the winner generally gets a valued slice of territory for itself, and the loser potentially loses trillions in ISK (the in game currency). This is the battle of B-R, a battle that happened because a single employee forgot to pay the licensing fee on a valuable trading lane. Another massive conglomerate rushed in to claim it, and the original owners fought with them. Both sides were confident they could win, so it just kept escalating. The battle raged for over 21 hours. 100+ titans (the largest ships in the game, each taking thousands of man hours to build) were destroyed, and thousands of smaller crafts as well. In all, tens of trillions of ISK were lost, and since ISK can actually be sold for real money, about 300,000 dollars worth of ships were destroyed. [video=youtube;RCK-E5AopVI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCK-E5AopVI#aid=P9-ipXuCgto[/video] Leading these conglomerates is a hefty job. You actually have to do spreadsheets to keep up with finances and logistics in this game. Several leaders of the most powerful entities have actually revealed their real life identities, and many of them have degrees in economics and are entrepreneurs. What do you guys think? Does EVE portray an accurate picture of the outcome of free market capitalism? A few titanic companies locked in never ending power struggles, while smaller competitors are either destroyed or barely get by?
I doubt it, and if you are arguing that a video game does, you have a long, long way to go to meet your burden. What is the status of governance in Eve, are there constitutional republics, socialist democracies, what types of regulatory regimes? It sounds like Eve is a highly simplistic form of anarchy simulator moreso than a market simulator, with little flesh and blood risk or reward involved. I've heard of people making real money off it, but that doesn't come close to equating to a RL market, more of a market in our economy rather than Eve's. Progress in Eve is accomplished by manipulating a simple computer interface and joining with other people without any regard to work, skill, training, innovation. How is innovation accomplished in Eve? What dictates the form of technological progress, random computer game elements designed by graphic artists? What efforts are made to make Eve real? If a ship gets blown up, does some Eve rep show up at your door with a bill for $80 billion? or do you simply do a few mouseclicks and create another ship? If you invest in one of these corporations, do you lose real money? or some ingame specie you got by pounding imaginary rocks while you were asleep? Is there any meaningful concept of intellectual property in Eve? Do entities own and license patents? Are there consumer markets in Eve that buy lots of stuff at stores like Walmart? Are resources limited in Eve and desires unlimited? Do they turn down players to preserve economic realities, or keep letting them start up? Are bad choices in Eve, such as being lazy, alcoholic, addicted, impulsive a big part of the game? In Eve, do players have a choice to spend their money on developing innovation or a BJ device attached to their computer? In Eve, are there classes of people who demand that they shouldn't have to play the game, yet have some governing body take "Eve benefit" from players who do play it and give it to them "just because?" Just a few of many, many concerns with such a comparison. Also, not to be rude, but the video you linked is one of the worst vids I've ever seen linked on the internet. It looks like what would result if Ed Wood made a space opera. I kept watching it thinking something meaningful to a nonEve player would happen, but it did not.
I don't know why anyone would look up to the Eve Online model as one good for humanity. It shows a world in which no rights exist and you can be killed and stolen from with impunity, where corruption is not only acceptable, its institutionalized, and where your liberties and property ownership only exist so long as you have a bigger gun than the guy next to you, and you better hope you don't go to sleep before he does. Using the battle of B-R as an example, do you really want to live in a world where corporate armies fight over resources and trade routes with military hardware?
Libertarianism inevitably leads to plutocracy....history shows it. We think back to the trusts, monopolies, and the "robber barons" of the almost pure laissez-faire days of the late 19th Century in the US. And just as naturally, when those excesses are not curtailed by "rugged individualism" or the "free market".....progressivism rises. It's almost a Newtonian reaction....the more libertarian, the worse conditions for the majority of people, the more a backlash and support for progressive reforms (even among the rich....remember Teddy Roosevelt was a wealthy man). Imagine EVE...if the "trade centers" were controlled by the conglomerates and a Mafia-like "Commission" was established to prevent wars and set trade rules, etc.(i.e. elimination of competition or atleast an alliance of the powerful)....and the first-time player logs in and finds that they can't do any space trading without paying a hefty fee or commission to the conglomerate....or even they had to be employed by the conglomerate at low wages to even make a living.... how long before the game dried up from new players not signing up or even old players quiting? OR...demanding from the developers "reforms"?
Well first off a corporation in Eve is just a group of players not necessarily a business. There are some that are businesses such as the freighter guys who will haul goods for anyone if they pay, but it seems most arr just groups of people coming together to fight other groups of people. Second by playing the market I bought an Orca. The market in that game is absolutely fantastic. It would be nice to try the axtual commodities market, but I dont know where I can mine tritanium around here and I don't think the US government would look kindly on me being a mercenary. Back to programming I go...
Barring many inaccuracies in your description of B-R and why it happened, I do not believe that Eve is a good representation of Free Market Capitalism, I'd more relate it to Anarchy with a small area in the middle where four powerful cartels strike down certain things with an iron fist. Whereas in most descriptions of the free market there needs to be an apparatus that protects from fraud and coercion which doesn't really exist in Eve. The market is very in depth and the developers even employ an economist full time to consult on the markets. Also as an aside that always bothers me whenever anything is ever reported on Eve is the real money value of items. First off it is completely against the games EULA to sell in game currency for real money, flat out. It is possible to buy in game currency through a process of buying an item called PLEX from CCP (the developers) for real money then you can sell these in game for in game currency. I guarantee that none of the titans destroyed were purchased that way.
Yeah, that's the whole story there, no need to mention the electricity in our homes that resulted, fresh fruit. vegetables, other goods brought to us quickly by rail, cheap cars, steel construction, movies, phones, refrigerators, our ability to end a bloody war in Europe due to capitalist advances. None of that matters of course, it's all about "trusts, monopolies and robber barons." I have to say, I sure do like my, car, lights, refrigerator and the fresh food in it, but I really can't recall the last time a "trust, monopoly or robber baron" messed with me in my entire life. Or maybe the government would have created all those innovations for us as opposed to free markets... lawlz. You aren't biased at all, are you? Progressivism rises when the dishonest elite figure out how to buy and fool the mob into authorizing theft from the productive. It's a zero sum game, progressivism costs real progress, ironically, by retarding voluntary market innovation. Yeah, all those thousands of people starving in the streets in the U.S. like in other historical famines and instances of real privation... tragic. Oh wait, didn't happen. Never mind. Well the rest of your post is pure flight of fancy and completely imagined, why not go with gusto into full on fantasy? Seems logical to me.
No. Some of the biggest companies today were tiny not that long ago. Sears and Kmart killed by Walmart that is losing share to amazon. Microsoft, apple google, paypal, and face book started in a home etc..
Almost, except that since not letting people fight would take the fun out of the game, in EVE the government can't stop you from killing each other. So yeah, at the very least this needs the addition of anti-Trust laws and a state police/military in order for me to feel comfortable living in such a society. But then again, maybe the anti-trust laws wouldn't be necessary if these megacorps hadn't gotten so big by simply swallowing up start-ups by force. So maybe just the police is necessary.
To the game and video - that's fascinating! I love space games, and it's real interesting that something could get that big, I don't care that it was over a little thing! To your question - lol, you don't understand free market capitalism. That is not free market capitalism.
No need to mention 9 year olds working in coal mines....12 hour work days with not even bathroom breaks (mill workers in iron mills often had to urinate on the floor).....the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire....."company stores"....no zoning laws.....tainted food and drugs....and coal companies using state militias (sent by Governors they bought and paid for with no campaign finance reform) to SHOOT striking workers.... Oh, yes, the 1890s were a Paradise....it's why everybody didn't want to change it.
Compared to anything prior in human history, they surely were a paradise in the U.S., due to capitalism and freer markets, and despite the constant meddling and graft of government and its dependents, who lead us into bad decisions and policy ad infinitum, stealing and wasting year after year, those same forces keep making my computer, internet, phone, medicine, entertainment, television, transportation, etc., better and better every day, and they don't point a gun at our heads to get us to buy what they are selling.
