Voluntary associations in a confederation isn't imperialism. TSP can be a metropole without being an iron fist.
The biggest hurdle to this idea isn't the organization of a con/federation, but rather what incentives there would be do join in the first place.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
If you hate me, think my opinions are useless, stupid or unneeded, and wonder why I stick around, you might want to ignore the spoiler.
I'll be completely honest. I suppose I'll burn a few bridges and lose plenty of credibility along the way, but it's not like I have much as it is.
I don't trust your intentions with any of this, or any of the ideas I've heard you propose lately for that matter, each looking more extreme than the last, and I think you are painfully misguided in trying to do whatever it is you want to do wit the South Pacific. I don't believe you have a sensible understanding of what the Coalition means, because it refers to the bond between the nations that conform the region, rather than a hypothetical union of sovereign regions.
All your idea would accomplish would be to dilute the already limited activity this forum sees and turn the South Pacific into a region whose primary goal is foreign expansion, rather than internal development. And for what? Is there an important goal to be accomplished by having protectorates? Will that improve our cultural development? You keep arguing that it will be good, but the one time his was tried, we formed an alliance with a mercenary region whose grand accomplishment was their recruitment in our RMB. Obviously that failed spectacularly.
Your gameside idea is so nebulous as to be useless to argue, but the little I've read looks like a good way to bog down the gameside community with regulations and politics that they don't need. They have a simple structure right now in the Local Council. They can make what they want of it. Why are we discussing alternative structures and increasing politics in its role, when we can just offer guidance and assistance to its members? Why do we keep dictating what they should do and how they should do it? If, after all the guidance and assistance, the gameside community still prefers a mostly unstructured government, than great! I see absolutely no problem with that, given that the goal of the Local Council should be to serve the interests of gamesiders, whatever they may be, not to brag that we have an empowered local government. If the community doesn't want that kind of glorified government, then we simply should not impose it on them.
As for your notion that the Committee is unfit to guarantee the security of the region, I remain steadfast in my belief that the Committee is an institution uniquely qualified to provide security to the region, with the only downside that this region has an annoying tendency to ignore security advice and standards when they become inconvenient. That has been seen repeatedly when people advocated for adding members with no security experience whatsoever, who disputed security decisions because the people affected were liked by influential citizens and who insist on keeping disqualified members, to name just a few of the annoying security approach we have.
You keep assuming the Committee is incompetent, but its work is ultimately one based on collaboration, greatly tempered by the political nature many abscfibe to security. If you receive information, you share it with the Committee, even provide your own views, so that they may be carefully considered and acted upon. There will be no intelligence or security agency that has eyes everywhere, and quite frankly there should not be one, not in this region at least. Even if there was such an agency though, it would suffer from many of the issues that currently plague the Committee, namely the fact that we either have little legal recourse to act upon threats or when we do have legal options and take them, we are faced with a legislature that, however legitimate, approaches issues until the perspective of friendships and how nice the affected party is, rather than what needs doing to ensure the safety of the region. We have seen that when Dalimbar was invited to join the region, when Wolf almost certainly imported votes to influence an election and when we chose to let known coupers remain in key posts in the regional government, despite showing no remorse for their actions. Because we like them. Because they are nice to us. Because it would cause drama, and Max forbid we have that. Because, despite experts telling us the ugly truth, we don't want to listen to them.
I remain opposed to the division of endorsement and security duties, except for specific cases, because I believe their union is vital to our security. We want people in our security establishment who are committed to the region, and making them support it with their endorsements is a part of that. We want endorsement leaders who will know how to act and have access to all the relevant information, should there be a crisis. If there is a need for the Committee to fight a coup or an invasion, we want the people who know how to fight one to also have the tools to do that. That becomes more difficult if you add one more layer to the bureaucracy, and remove much of the safeguards that we currently have. One of the main ones is that having access to both endorsements and intelligence make it all the more real to members. If we see concerning information, we have the power to act, and a responsibility to do so carefully and within the confines of the law. If we can act, we also know at all times what the stakes are and where the threats lie. If we luck one or the other, it becomes theoretical, and we can get sloppy.
Things might work better if, instead of trying to create an entirely useless agency, you tried to reform the Committee in good faith. That comes with things like suggesting new members with good security credentials, sharing intelligence and advice without later using it to score political points, approaching the Committee to work on simple but useful changes to its structure and security method. These things can work, are simple to implement, since they require little legislative intervention, and are even more positive than your desired intelligence agency because they promote a culture of constant change and improvement within the Committee itself, which will be good for it and the region in the long term, as it will be better equipped to adapt to changing circumstances. That cannot happen if we scrap the Committee, negating all its good work in the process, for an intelligence agency that will be mostly inactive and eventually turn into "Roavin has friends".
In short, I think you are so caught up in your desire to radically change things that you are proposing too many changes that sound cool and radical, without considering whether they are even needed, or that more subtle reforms might accomplish the desired goal even better. I have no idea in what context you have dealt with the Committee, but I believe you should give it more credit than you currently do, and stop trying to hold it to the standard of an all-seeing agency that constantly has all the information. It's not a failure when it doesn't get information the instant it comes out, because that's not its job; it relies on others to help in getting all the relevant information. Its more important job starts once it has the information, discussing its implications, deciding what the appropriate course of action should be. That kind of nuance is lost when you have an agency oblivious to how intelligence is collected and another oblivious to how it should be processed. We need our security establishment to know both.
In any case, I don't have it in me to keep arguing this. I've said my piece, explained why all the ideas you propose here, and all the radical ones you have been proposing as of late, are ill suited to address the challenges the region faces, and in some cases address issues that are not problems at all. I'll now take my leave, and let more eager legislators say their piece too.
(02-21-2017, 10:19 AM)sandaoguo Wrote: Voluntary associations in a confederation isn't imperialism. TSP can be a metropole without being an iron fist.
The biggest hurdle to this idea isn't the organization of a con/federation, but rather what incentives there would be do join in the first place.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
So, I agree with this. I think we should be spreading the ideals of TSP because I think we do a pretty effing good job on being a democratic region, even if it gets messy at times.
As Kris pointed out, we don't want to have a smaller region that simply uses us as a recruitment base. But — if we can use UCRs for a bit more activity, I think this could be a win.
In fairness, I know I've discussed at one point sharing the forums with smaller regions. (I don't know if I did that publicly or just floated that idea to the other admins — likely the later.) I still this this is a strong way for us to bulk up our activity and cultural events, as well as military forces. When our active legislator count hovers in the 20/30-range, a handful can make a difference.
-tsunamy
[forum admin]
Dear Kris,
I will read your post at length and possibly agree or disagree on some stuff but <3 you
Escade
~ Positions Held in TSP ~
Delegate | Vice Delegate
Minister of Regional Affairs, | Minister of Foreign Affairs | Minister of Military Affairs
~ The Sparkly One ~
My Pinterest
Kris,
good job. You started out (and ended with) self-pity, went into a long and emotional text that misconstrued what I was saying, and managed to completely shut down the otherwise productive discussion in this thread. I literally don't have the time to go through and dissect all the little details you constructed in those 1359 words to maximize the impression that I was trying to push towards a big-brother imperialist TSP. Details such as implying foreign expansion would be a primary goal (bullshit), that I was using it for political gain that I shared intelligence with the CRS (bullshit), that I want to overpoliticize the Local Council (bullshit), and many others.
But I do have to point this out:
(02-21-2017, 10:34 AM)Kris Kringle Wrote: I have no idea in what context you have dealt with the Committee
It's been the Council, not the Committee for close to 9 months now. But anyway, Councilman Kringalia, I have had many dealings with the Council that you are on in the past months.
(02-21-2017, 10:34 AM)Kris Kringle Wrote: You keep assuming the Committee is incompetent
I wonder why.
(This post was last modified: 02-23-2017, 07:55 PM by Roavin.)
Reply
(02-21-2017, 11:57 AM)Tsunamy Wrote: In fairness, I know I've discussed at one point sharing the forums with smaller regions. (I don't know if I did that publicly or just floated that idea to the other admins — likely the later.) I still this this is a strong way for us to bulk up our activity and cultural events, as well as military forces. When our active legislator count hovers in the 20/30-range, a handful can make a difference.
You know, this may actually be a great first step. The general idea is to get them onto the shared forum, playing spam games together, participating in our canon RP, maybe then helping in cultural events, etc.. From that point, the next step of allowing those from that region to become legislators as well isn't that great a step.
(02-23-2017, 08:04 PM)Roavin Wrote: (02-21-2017, 11:57 AM)Tsunamy Wrote: In fairness, I know I've discussed at one point sharing the forums with smaller regions. (I don't know if I did that publicly or just floated that idea to the other admins — likely the later.) I still this this is a strong way for us to bulk up our activity and cultural events, as well as military forces. When our active legislator count hovers in the 20/30-range, a handful can make a difference.
You know, this may actually be a great first step. The general idea is to get them onto the shared forum, playing spam games together, participating in our canon RP, maybe then helping in cultural events, etc.. From that point, the next step of allowing those from that region to become legislators as well isn't that great a step.
But — we don't want them having their own forums, too. Then, we just have a wide open region.
-tsunamy
[forum admin]
(02-23-2017, 10:42 PM)Tsunamy Wrote: (02-23-2017, 08:04 PM)Roavin Wrote: You know, this may actually be a great first step. The general idea is to get them onto the shared forum, playing spam games together, participating in our canon RP, maybe then helping in cultural events, etc.. From that point, the next step of allowing those from that region to become legislators as well isn't that great a step.
But — we don't want them having their own forums, too. Then, we just have a wide open region.
Agreed. But if we can get them on here first, that'd be a good start. Maybe Discord too. This is exactly what I meant, btw - we share our resources, they pay back with activity, and it's win-win.
Maybe that's actually the way to start - get them happy and participating on the forum first, then think about the rest, instead of the other way around.
-
Belschaft
Evil Emeritus
-
-
Joined:
Mar 2014
Posts:
6,189
Threads:
132
|
Credits: 0¢
Considering the ease of setting up a free forum via zetaboards or something similar, I don't see how offering "space" on our own forums is an attractive deal for any UCR region.
The only reasons I can imagine for them taking it up would be non-benign ones; to hope to associate themselves with us and gain prestige, to seek to influence us and gain power/control, or to seek to recruit from us and leach activity to their own regions.
Minister of Media, Subversion and Sandwich Making
Associate Justice of the High Court and Senior Moderator
Former Delegate (x2.5)
Former Member of the Committee for State Security
Former Chief Justice of The High Court (x3)
Former Minister of Foreign Affairs (x2)
Former Chair of the Assembly (x3)
Former Minister of Security (x2)
Former Local Councillor (x2.5)
Former Forum Administrator
Former Minister of Media
Bel, I think a lot of UCRs with forums (such as Forest) have almost dead forums with just the founder\delegate posting and so we would consolidate by adding more people to our own forums and managing them (like admin for example) for them so they don't go completely inactive or die out or not exist because they don't know anything about technical stuff.
It would also give them a place to store their maps\etc in case of being griefed.
For us the benefits would be more citizens, people who can cross RP\etc, and this role of guiding and helping newer players and UCRs who might otherwise have difficulty staying afloat.
Escade
~ Positions Held in TSP ~
Delegate | Vice Delegate
Minister of Regional Affairs, | Minister of Foreign Affairs | Minister of Military Affairs
~ The Sparkly One ~
My Pinterest
|