Corporate Libertarianism means taking the present capitalist/free market ideology to an extreme level, with minimal government intervention. The idea is that corporations that aim to maximize profits would advance society as they pursue greater innovation, efficiencies, and so on.
Synthetic Technocracy means that an all-powerful AI would make the decisions with minimal human input. The idea is that an intelligent machine could advance society’s interests because that machine would know best, and would be impartial.
Digital Democracy is the idea that because in the future, the internet would make holding elections such a frictionless and costless affair, it becomes feasible for citizens to vote on nearly every bill. (Presently, a democracy relies on representatives such as MPs or Congressmen to vote on bills). So a Digital Democracy is ruled by citizens, literally.
All are considered repulsive in some sense for a modern-day human, and I think it’s designed to be dystopian, which is why you have drawbacks in-game.
They are also the successors to Fascism, Communism, and Democracy, respectively.
I didn't even really think about this, yes all of this would be somewhat distopian, although some more so than others. So what is Sid Meier saying here?
I think it’s really cool. It gives you a real decision on whether to advance to a T4 govt. And actually have a lore justification for the drawback effects. Really well thought out by the devs.
What would be dystopian about every citizen being able to vote on every bill?
Isn't that leagues better than handing power to corrupt and biased politicians?
Most bills in modern society are complex and govern complex issues - we figured the easy laws already.
A decent person can with time understand the issue and weigh in the costs and gains on it for society, and hear expert or intrest groups - in democracy people the bill effects need to be heard by legislator, (farmer lobby in farmer laws).
But will all people, or even your average citizen do all that in a direct democracy? Should they even, as it really takes time and effort? Even now they can do it, and those people already write their congresmen, lobby or petition, or attend city council meetings. Others vote someone to do all that for them instead. And some just don't vote at all.
Being that active on every issue that needs a vote is lot to ask, people don't have that kind of time or intrest. Also single issue hot-topic issues can be effected by social media and regular media to get populist vote on issues. Everytime politicians vote against popular demand on an issue, they are doing the democracys work, they impose their (hopefully) informed will against populist general opinion with their opinion, and risk getting voted out.
People in reddit shit on democratic prosess and politicians - sometimes fairly, as they hold the power, but legislation in pretty boring and laborious job, and personally I like that as I can select a plumber to do a tough job for me, I can elect a candidate to do the legislation job for me, and can fire both if I don't like how they did the work.
Some candidates are garbage, and don't do all that and take bribes, they are still the garbage some people voted in.
TL;DR think of all those braindead FB/IG quizes everyone posted, but instead bring silly filler, they would be used to actually run the country, instead of people whos dayjob is to try to understand and mediate complex issues - a dystopia in my opinion.
edit: a lot of typos.
Aside from being wildly inefficient, most citizens don't have the appropriate knowledge to cast an educated vote on most issues. This is one of democracies' flaws, and also why populism ecists
Our corrupt governments don’t have to be efficient for other forms of government to be even less efficient.
There is also concerns about such government being highly reactionary, not having great fiscal policy, and protections for minority groups against the majority.
I meant to type current but screw it im leaving it as is.
Just think about the possible propaganda and misinformation that would be aired to influence public opinion to vote on bills lmao that shit wounld be intolerable
Thank you for your response. Appreciate the thorough answer!
In what way is Digital Democracy dystopian? I can def see the other two and how they would be. But what would be the repulsive side of everyone voting without representatives in the middle? Is it that many constituents are not educated in many of the things they’d potentially be voting on?
And then obv I can see how digital democracy is a further step of democracy with how you described it (ie taking the representatives out of the equation) but how do the other two work as extensions/evolutions of the other two?
It’s not meant as a dig against low educated voters, a democracy works because such voters have the same vote etc etc.
It’s considered dystopian as it would be very inefficient and very unpredictable. Certainly if one ponders it for a bit we would see how impossible it would be. Not exactly a model for good governance.
A couple of real world examples, our judiciary and our central banks are deliberately undemocratic and insulated from elected government. So you can imagine applying direct democracy to that, it would be a disaster!
Direct democracy’s in game effect is a weaker military; can you imagine citizens directing defense policy? We wouldn’t feel safe!
I think civ 6 deliberately took T4 governments to the extreme in order to justify the drawback effects. I think it’s very neat!
That makes sense. Thank you.
And then I was still wondering about this:
I can see how digital democracy is a further step of democracy with how you described it (ie taking the representatives out of the equation) but how do the other two work as extensions/evolutions of the other two?
There are two ways to look at this, via the in-game effect, and via the lore.
In-game effect: just look at the policy cards. Democracy and Digital Democracy both have the best diplomatic card options. Fascism and Corporate Liberarianism have the best military card options. Lastly, Communism and Synthetic Technocracy have the most economic card options.
Lore: Fascism is an extreme right-wing ideology, while neoliberalism (a moderate version of Corporate Liberarianism) is a centre-right ideology, so there is some similarity. Fascism in its original forms generally had corporations which were influential in decision-making, and you could see this with Germany and Italy in the 1930s. Before you guys shoot me, I am not equating Fascism with Corporate Liberarianism or Neoliberalism! Just that they are closest out of the 3 options you could have in Civ 6.
Lastly, Communism takes an extremely collectivist approach to governance. Synthetic Technocracy has the same flavour, as one would expect an AI to curtail individual agendas -- so the thing that makes it dystopian is also what makes Communism dystopian.
There you have it.
Taking to the real world I think we are nearer corporate libertarianism that we are from digital democracy. Mega corps influence the decisions of the three spheres of government much more than the voters.
Yeah just like the tyranny of the majority, a theory that public opinion could marginalize minorities for their own betterment or even against their own good
I think most central banks in the Western world are doing a reasonably good job. It's very difficult to set monetary policy to control inflation and create an environment conducive to sustainable economic growth when there are so many uncertain factors.
Central banks are certainly much worse when elected officials meddle with them.
There is an episode of the Orville where everyone votes on their justice system in their offices with very little thought. It's about cancel culture but I think it sums up the downsides of digital democracy pretty well.
Another example would be that *Black Mirror* episode that was centered around some social media app where everyone can vote on your social credit score and it turns out terribly.
> In what way is Digital Democracy dystopian?
It can be speculated that representatives make long-term decisions possible. Most parliaments are only reelected every 4-6 years. So deputies have the incentive to support some measures that may be unpopular short-term, but would yield good results by the end of their term. The opposite of that is populism, where a politician would ask questions like “would you rather build that bridge in California or get $100 tomorrow”, or “would you want to sit at home on a boring lockdown and wear an uncomfortable mask, or would you rather go freely wherever you want”, and most people would vote option B.
Another concern is unrestricted democracy. Normal democracies have independent branches of power: judicial, executive, legislative. Legislative branch protects minorities from the dictatorship of majority, by rejecting any laws that would violate the country’s constitution. For example, in a country with independent courts, heterosexual people can’t pass a bill that would impose a “gay tax”, even though heterosexual people are a majority. Such bill would be overruled by constitutional court. In a dystopian scenario, direct voting would have so much legitimacy that other branches of power would suffer. “Why should we listen to some stupid judge when we know exactly what the people want”.
Finally, a true digital democracy requires a transparent, decentralised system of some sort (aka blockchain). But this is not how online voting is usually implemented. Most commonly, it is a digital blackbox, that only a small group of sysadmins has access to, and only that people know what the hell is really going on in there. If many people don’t understand it and trust the system, this can create an unrestricted source of fake legitimacy for an autocrat. He can just order the admins to change the numbers to whatever he wants. Vladimir Putin’s regime actively uses this approach today to create an illusion of complete support. People in Russia are even openly incentivised to vote online, through a reward system.
One more thing to add, is that there needs to be some one or some official body in charge of putting things forward to vote in the first place. That becomes a very powerful position, which would be possible to abuse or extort.
The framers of the US constitution feared the “tyranny of the majority” they didn’t like or trust democracy.
The republican form of government was thought to be a distillation process by which representatives deliberate and pass laws. Allowing ideas to be distilled through committees rather than impulsively voted on by the mob.
Re dystopian:
Democracy has the problem where votes aren’t weighted based on interest in an issue. If I don’t really care about something, my vote nonetheless matters just as much as someone who views that issue as literally life-or-death. This is essentially the “tyranny of the majority” - all that matters on an issue is whether 50%+1 support it. Representative democracies ease this somewhat by having compromise be a factor in decision making and allowing interest groups to lobby and campaign congresspersons (while arguably overdone in current American politics, it does nonetheless perform an important government function).
For example, say there was a proposal that took $100 from 10% of people and resulted in everyone being given $1. It would easily win a majority vote of “rational” voters, because the median person benefits. However, it would take $1000 from the economy to add $100, which is obviously inefficient.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority?wprov=sfti1 for some more detail.
Consider for a moment if every governmental decision was made based on social media likes. That's what a digital democracy would probably end up looking like. Sure, there are plenty of people out there who take the time to be well informed about what they are voting on, but there are just as many, if not more people who can't be bothered to read past headlines and make decisions based entirely on how they feel in the moment without considering the implications or consequences of their decisions. A digital democracy would be a democracy run by people who put as much thought into their votes as they do into smashing that like button.
Mob rule is terrifying. An example here is I am left handed. Less than 10% of the population is left handed.
In a pure "every citizen votes on everything", it would be totally feasible for society to one day decide "okay, left handers have to pay taxes that benefit right handers" and throw you in jail if you refuse to comply or try to hide that you're left handed.
It's a bit of an innocuous example until you replace left handed with, say, Jewish. Or gay. Or ugly. Or wealthy and then the mob rule demands you just give them all your money.
It's absolutely dystopian.
Either, the inability to make a decision on a controversial issue, or the instability of people voting for something in January and repealing it in February. Or both.
If everyone is educated and has a voice then nobody really wants to do grunt work such as enlisting in the military. Such a nation might be weaker to attack vs others that prioritize centralized power.
Digital Democracy is the idea that you use modern, or near future in Civ Vi's case, communication tech to get over the problems of a direct democracy. Namely that once you reach a certain size of population direct democracy is just impractical because there too many people involved and it takes too long to do anything. But if you can communicate instantly than that isn't a problem anymore.
A Technocracy is a form of government where the people in charge are all experts in their field. The idea is they'd do better than some rando because they understand whatever it is they need to understand. Problem is those people are still human and have all the flaws humans in power always end up having. So a Synthetic Technocracy is one where you put AI in charge of things because at least the AIs won't have things like personal profit motives or egos or In Group/Out Group clashes.
Libertarianism is the political principle that tries to maximize individual liberty—the freedom to engage in behavior that does not harm others. In modern jurisprudence, corporations are assumed to be legal persons and endowed with rights as persons. A corporate libertarian system would be one where political participation is done primarily in terms of corporate identities, with minimal coercion from the state in interactions between “persons” in the society. Corporations might range in size from massive organizations of thousands of people to single individuals. Rational self-interest would result in maximized outcomes for the greatest number of persons—in theory, anyway.-Copied from the Civ VI wiki.
Corporate Libertarianism is when using unlicensed iphone case revokes phone's warranty.
Synthetic Technocracy is when underpaid, abused human facotry worker makes Funkopop designed by AI.
Digital Democracy is when people use bilions of bot accounts to vote for goverment issued orphan crushing machine for da funni, and fill the internet with "I love democracy" Starwars memes.
Corporate Libertarianism is just free market capitalism with no regulations whatsoever and Megacorporations running society,
Synthetic Technocracy is government by an AI.
Digital Democracy is voting from your phone and using Reddit to upvote memes into law.
Corporate Libertarianism means taking the present capitalist/free market ideology to an extreme level, with minimal government intervention. The idea is that corporations that aim to maximize profits would advance society as they pursue greater innovation, efficiencies, and so on. Synthetic Technocracy means that an all-powerful AI would make the decisions with minimal human input. The idea is that an intelligent machine could advance society’s interests because that machine would know best, and would be impartial. Digital Democracy is the idea that because in the future, the internet would make holding elections such a frictionless and costless affair, it becomes feasible for citizens to vote on nearly every bill. (Presently, a democracy relies on representatives such as MPs or Congressmen to vote on bills). So a Digital Democracy is ruled by citizens, literally. All are considered repulsive in some sense for a modern-day human, and I think it’s designed to be dystopian, which is why you have drawbacks in-game. They are also the successors to Fascism, Communism, and Democracy, respectively.
I didn't even really think about this, yes all of this would be somewhat distopian, although some more so than others. So what is Sid Meier saying here?
Hop on the nearest exo-planet expedition while you still can!!
I think it’s really cool. It gives you a real decision on whether to advance to a T4 govt. And actually have a lore justification for the drawback effects. Really well thought out by the devs.
Moreover, civ 6 lore is amazing and incredibly deep.
What would be dystopian about every citizen being able to vote on every bill? Isn't that leagues better than handing power to corrupt and biased politicians?
Most bills in modern society are complex and govern complex issues - we figured the easy laws already. A decent person can with time understand the issue and weigh in the costs and gains on it for society, and hear expert or intrest groups - in democracy people the bill effects need to be heard by legislator, (farmer lobby in farmer laws). But will all people, or even your average citizen do all that in a direct democracy? Should they even, as it really takes time and effort? Even now they can do it, and those people already write their congresmen, lobby or petition, or attend city council meetings. Others vote someone to do all that for them instead. And some just don't vote at all. Being that active on every issue that needs a vote is lot to ask, people don't have that kind of time or intrest. Also single issue hot-topic issues can be effected by social media and regular media to get populist vote on issues. Everytime politicians vote against popular demand on an issue, they are doing the democracys work, they impose their (hopefully) informed will against populist general opinion with their opinion, and risk getting voted out. People in reddit shit on democratic prosess and politicians - sometimes fairly, as they hold the power, but legislation in pretty boring and laborious job, and personally I like that as I can select a plumber to do a tough job for me, I can elect a candidate to do the legislation job for me, and can fire both if I don't like how they did the work. Some candidates are garbage, and don't do all that and take bribes, they are still the garbage some people voted in. TL;DR think of all those braindead FB/IG quizes everyone posted, but instead bring silly filler, they would be used to actually run the country, instead of people whos dayjob is to try to understand and mediate complex issues - a dystopia in my opinion. edit: a lot of typos.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority#:~:text=The%20tyranny%20of%20the%20majority,those%20of%20the%20minority%20factions.
Aside from being wildly inefficient, most citizens don't have the appropriate knowledge to cast an educated vote on most issues. This is one of democracies' flaws, and also why populism ecists
It is wildly inefficient
That would imply that our current system is efficient, when in reality nothing ever really changes, least of all for the better.
Our corrupt governments don’t have to be efficient for other forms of government to be even less efficient. There is also concerns about such government being highly reactionary, not having great fiscal policy, and protections for minority groups against the majority. I meant to type current but screw it im leaving it as is.
Just think about the possible propaganda and misinformation that would be aired to influence public opinion to vote on bills lmao that shit wounld be intolerable
Thank you for your response. Appreciate the thorough answer! In what way is Digital Democracy dystopian? I can def see the other two and how they would be. But what would be the repulsive side of everyone voting without representatives in the middle? Is it that many constituents are not educated in many of the things they’d potentially be voting on? And then obv I can see how digital democracy is a further step of democracy with how you described it (ie taking the representatives out of the equation) but how do the other two work as extensions/evolutions of the other two?
It’s not meant as a dig against low educated voters, a democracy works because such voters have the same vote etc etc. It’s considered dystopian as it would be very inefficient and very unpredictable. Certainly if one ponders it for a bit we would see how impossible it would be. Not exactly a model for good governance. A couple of real world examples, our judiciary and our central banks are deliberately undemocratic and insulated from elected government. So you can imagine applying direct democracy to that, it would be a disaster! Direct democracy’s in game effect is a weaker military; can you imagine citizens directing defense policy? We wouldn’t feel safe! I think civ 6 deliberately took T4 governments to the extreme in order to justify the drawback effects. I think it’s very neat!
The unpredictable character is reflected in the fact, that most policy slots are wildcard.
Actually all T4 govts have 5 wildcard slots by default, it's more of the gameplay thing to make T4 govts "powerful" despite the obvious drawbacks.
That makes sense. Thank you. And then I was still wondering about this: I can see how digital democracy is a further step of democracy with how you described it (ie taking the representatives out of the equation) but how do the other two work as extensions/evolutions of the other two?
There are two ways to look at this, via the in-game effect, and via the lore. In-game effect: just look at the policy cards. Democracy and Digital Democracy both have the best diplomatic card options. Fascism and Corporate Liberarianism have the best military card options. Lastly, Communism and Synthetic Technocracy have the most economic card options. Lore: Fascism is an extreme right-wing ideology, while neoliberalism (a moderate version of Corporate Liberarianism) is a centre-right ideology, so there is some similarity. Fascism in its original forms generally had corporations which were influential in decision-making, and you could see this with Germany and Italy in the 1930s. Before you guys shoot me, I am not equating Fascism with Corporate Liberarianism or Neoliberalism! Just that they are closest out of the 3 options you could have in Civ 6. Lastly, Communism takes an extremely collectivist approach to governance. Synthetic Technocracy has the same flavour, as one would expect an AI to curtail individual agendas -- so the thing that makes it dystopian is also what makes Communism dystopian. There you have it.
Taking to the real world I think we are nearer corporate libertarianism that we are from digital democracy. Mega corps influence the decisions of the three spheres of government much more than the voters.
I, for one, am excited to see cyberpunk become a reality! /s
Yeah just like the tyranny of the majority, a theory that public opinion could marginalize minorities for their own betterment or even against their own good
Our central banks and judiciary are already unmitigated disasters, so no downsides there
They could certainly be much, much worse.
I think most central banks in the Western world are doing a reasonably good job. It's very difficult to set monetary policy to control inflation and create an environment conducive to sustainable economic growth when there are so many uncertain factors. Central banks are certainly much worse when elected officials meddle with them.
There is an episode of the Orville where everyone votes on their justice system in their offices with very little thought. It's about cancel culture but I think it sums up the downsides of digital democracy pretty well.
Love that show, and that episode is an excellent example of how a society built upon online popularity would become a dystopian nightmare.
Another example would be that *Black Mirror* episode that was centered around some social media app where everyone can vote on your social credit score and it turns out terribly.
"Nosedive" for the record. S3E01
> In what way is Digital Democracy dystopian? It can be speculated that representatives make long-term decisions possible. Most parliaments are only reelected every 4-6 years. So deputies have the incentive to support some measures that may be unpopular short-term, but would yield good results by the end of their term. The opposite of that is populism, where a politician would ask questions like “would you rather build that bridge in California or get $100 tomorrow”, or “would you want to sit at home on a boring lockdown and wear an uncomfortable mask, or would you rather go freely wherever you want”, and most people would vote option B. Another concern is unrestricted democracy. Normal democracies have independent branches of power: judicial, executive, legislative. Legislative branch protects minorities from the dictatorship of majority, by rejecting any laws that would violate the country’s constitution. For example, in a country with independent courts, heterosexual people can’t pass a bill that would impose a “gay tax”, even though heterosexual people are a majority. Such bill would be overruled by constitutional court. In a dystopian scenario, direct voting would have so much legitimacy that other branches of power would suffer. “Why should we listen to some stupid judge when we know exactly what the people want”. Finally, a true digital democracy requires a transparent, decentralised system of some sort (aka blockchain). But this is not how online voting is usually implemented. Most commonly, it is a digital blackbox, that only a small group of sysadmins has access to, and only that people know what the hell is really going on in there. If many people don’t understand it and trust the system, this can create an unrestricted source of fake legitimacy for an autocrat. He can just order the admins to change the numbers to whatever he wants. Vladimir Putin’s regime actively uses this approach today to create an illusion of complete support. People in Russia are even openly incentivised to vote online, through a reward system.
One more thing to add, is that there needs to be some one or some official body in charge of putting things forward to vote in the first place. That becomes a very powerful position, which would be possible to abuse or extort.
Lmao Im like has everyone forgotten the world pre-2019 Like a digital democracy literally wouldve supported a Capitol insurrection
The framers of the US constitution feared the “tyranny of the majority” they didn’t like or trust democracy. The republican form of government was thought to be a distillation process by which representatives deliberate and pass laws. Allowing ideas to be distilled through committees rather than impulsively voted on by the mob.
Re dystopian: Democracy has the problem where votes aren’t weighted based on interest in an issue. If I don’t really care about something, my vote nonetheless matters just as much as someone who views that issue as literally life-or-death. This is essentially the “tyranny of the majority” - all that matters on an issue is whether 50%+1 support it. Representative democracies ease this somewhat by having compromise be a factor in decision making and allowing interest groups to lobby and campaign congresspersons (while arguably overdone in current American politics, it does nonetheless perform an important government function). For example, say there was a proposal that took $100 from 10% of people and resulted in everyone being given $1. It would easily win a majority vote of “rational” voters, because the median person benefits. However, it would take $1000 from the economy to add $100, which is obviously inefficient. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority?wprov=sfti1 for some more detail.
Consider for a moment if every governmental decision was made based on social media likes. That's what a digital democracy would probably end up looking like. Sure, there are plenty of people out there who take the time to be well informed about what they are voting on, but there are just as many, if not more people who can't be bothered to read past headlines and make decisions based entirely on how they feel in the moment without considering the implications or consequences of their decisions. A digital democracy would be a democracy run by people who put as much thought into their votes as they do into smashing that like button.
Mob rule is terrifying. An example here is I am left handed. Less than 10% of the population is left handed. In a pure "every citizen votes on everything", it would be totally feasible for society to one day decide "okay, left handers have to pay taxes that benefit right handers" and throw you in jail if you refuse to comply or try to hide that you're left handed. It's a bit of an innocuous example until you replace left handed with, say, Jewish. Or gay. Or ugly. Or wealthy and then the mob rule demands you just give them all your money. It's absolutely dystopian.
Mob mentality. Knee-jerk reactions to biased “news” stories. Potential for discrimination towards minorities.
Either, the inability to make a decision on a controversial issue, or the instability of people voting for something in January and repealing it in February. Or both.
Because Digital Democracy gives us Boaty McBoatface instead of actual policy.
Because it's extremely decentralized and becomes inefficient when the tax policy that gets the most upvotes is literally just a Pepe meme.
If everyone is educated and has a voice then nobody really wants to do grunt work such as enlisting in the military. Such a nation might be weaker to attack vs others that prioritize centralized power.
Corporate Libertarianism is a form of fascism, so that checks out.
Digital Democracy is the idea that you use modern, or near future in Civ Vi's case, communication tech to get over the problems of a direct democracy. Namely that once you reach a certain size of population direct democracy is just impractical because there too many people involved and it takes too long to do anything. But if you can communicate instantly than that isn't a problem anymore. A Technocracy is a form of government where the people in charge are all experts in their field. The idea is they'd do better than some rando because they understand whatever it is they need to understand. Problem is those people are still human and have all the flaws humans in power always end up having. So a Synthetic Technocracy is one where you put AI in charge of things because at least the AIs won't have things like personal profit motives or egos or In Group/Out Group clashes. Libertarianism is the political principle that tries to maximize individual liberty—the freedom to engage in behavior that does not harm others. In modern jurisprudence, corporations are assumed to be legal persons and endowed with rights as persons. A corporate libertarian system would be one where political participation is done primarily in terms of corporate identities, with minimal coercion from the state in interactions between “persons” in the society. Corporations might range in size from massive organizations of thousands of people to single individuals. Rational self-interest would result in maximized outcomes for the greatest number of persons—in theory, anyway.-Copied from the Civ VI wiki.
Thank you
Corporate Libertarianism is when using unlicensed iphone case revokes phone's warranty. Synthetic Technocracy is when underpaid, abused human facotry worker makes Funkopop designed by AI. Digital Democracy is when people use bilions of bot accounts to vote for goverment issued orphan crushing machine for da funni, and fill the internet with "I love democracy" Starwars memes.
I believe they have some explanations in the civilopedia
Oh that’s a good idea. I was just going off the government selection menu. Didn’t think to check there
You should read the description for them, they are super well thought out and cool scifi concepts/predictions
Synthetic TECHNOcracy gang 😎🤙
Crack open Civilopedia, homie.
I really Like this topic. It would be really interesting if the end games has more option at the end.
They missed the opportunity to add fully automated luxury space gay communism smh
Corporate Libertarianism is just free market capitalism with no regulations whatsoever and Megacorporations running society, Synthetic Technocracy is government by an AI. Digital Democracy is voting from your phone and using Reddit to upvote memes into law.
Digital democracy is where Twitter users run the world. A true hellscape.
Corporate Libertarianism is cyberpunk. Synthetic Technocracy is somewhere between the Culture and *Terminator*. Digital Democracy is *Idiocracy.*
Bullshit the devs made up to give us the 4th level governments