That sounds even worse than the first game, which at least had its space trots splitting over whether to do revolutionary direct action or focus on their newspaper (which was a funny bit, and tipping the balance of power towards revolution did end up obviously good), for all that it was deeply lib too with its cynicism about revolutionary leaders and the vapid elitist lib conclusion that all the system really needed was for the bad business guys to be replaced with smart science guys and they could fix everything.
God, Trots really never do change. You could drop these people into literally any time and place and they’d still waste resources on a newspaper and have a zillion party splits and fail to accomplish any revolutionary action.
the bad business guys to be replaced with smart science guys and they could fix everything.
i think it was more like that they needed them to fix the environment because everybody was starving from biological incompatibility with the native ecosystem, if everything has the wrong chirality and you eat meat and die of protein deficiency anyway you kinda need some science up in there
That part of the problem was definitely “yes you need trained experts to solve this ecology/chemical engineering problem”, it’s the broader elite liberal assumption that all the smart academic types will then just naturally make a better and humane society than those vulgar, short-sighted business school types instead of just immediately becoming the latter or putting the latter back into power once they’ve gotten materially entrenched in the ruling class themselves.
Like there were fundamentally two crises going on in the game: the chemical incompatibility of the local environment to long-term human habitation, and the brutal rule of a capitalist society that was additionally incapable of addressing the looming catastrophe because of its lack of relevantly skilled personnel. The narrative kind of pulls a bait and switch of making you think the problem is just that the corpo-state sucks and is brutal and dysfunctional, but then revealing there was actually a more fundamental ecological problem at work exacerbating it. The game’s ultimate solution is then just this wide-eyed idealism of “well once the smart science guys fix this problem that requires their relevant training and knowledge, surely they will then also create a more human and equitable world instead of falling back on the systems they know and were raised under and which would materially benefit them personally once they’re in power” that also doesn’t grapple with how the business school cultists are also regarded as “trained experts” in their given field and that this sort of technocratic ideology largely exists to launder rule by businessmen.
That sounds even worse than the first game, which at least had its space trots splitting over whether to do revolutionary direct action or focus on their newspaper (which was a funny bit, and tipping the balance of power towards revolution did end up obviously good), for all that it was deeply lib too with its cynicism about revolutionary leaders and the vapid elitist lib conclusion that all the system really needed was for the bad business guys to be replaced with smart science guys and they could fix everything.
God, Trots really never do change. You could drop these people into literally any time and place and they’d still waste resources on a newspaper and have a zillion party splits and fail to accomplish any revolutionary action.
i think it was more like that they needed them to fix the environment because everybody was starving from biological incompatibility with the native ecosystem, if everything has the wrong chirality and you eat meat and die of protein deficiency anyway you kinda need some science up in there
That part of the problem was definitely “yes you need trained experts to solve this ecology/chemical engineering problem”, it’s the broader elite liberal assumption that all the smart academic types will then just naturally make a better and humane society than those vulgar, short-sighted business school types instead of just immediately becoming the latter or putting the latter back into power once they’ve gotten materially entrenched in the ruling class themselves.
Like there were fundamentally two crises going on in the game: the chemical incompatibility of the local environment to long-term human habitation, and the brutal rule of a capitalist society that was additionally incapable of addressing the looming catastrophe because of its lack of relevantly skilled personnel. The narrative kind of pulls a bait and switch of making you think the problem is just that the corpo-state sucks and is brutal and dysfunctional, but then revealing there was actually a more fundamental ecological problem at work exacerbating it. The game’s ultimate solution is then just this wide-eyed idealism of “well once the smart science guys fix this problem that requires their relevant training and knowledge, surely they will then also create a more human and equitable world instead of falling back on the systems they know and were raised under and which would materially benefit them personally once they’re in power” that also doesn’t grapple with how the business school cultists are also regarded as “trained experts” in their given field and that this sort of technocratic ideology largely exists to launder rule by businessmen.
I think for my 2nd playthrough, i’m going to kill everyone who isn’t just a worker bee for Auntie’s Choice and see where that takes me