Given dwarven average morals, I doubt a dwarven civ would ever work like this.
Not normally, but values are intended to change over time; meaning that such an arrangment could happen (but would be vanishingly rare).
Why "invent" religion in the first place then? You speak as if only the state had the power to introduce or manipulate popular culture
Invent religion? As opposed to inventing what, Goblin Atheism or Elf Pantheism? It is possible for the officials in charge of the system to themselves believe in religious ideas is it not?
Yes, without private property it is pretty much only the State that has the ability to noticably introduce or manipulate popular culture. The ability of an individual to independantly of the State make a substantial contribution to popular culture is not there unless the individual has private property, otherwise the medium he is using to do so is going to have to be controlled *by* the State, so the State can simply dissallow him from propogating his views. If he tries to influence things simply on his own powers, the contribution of the DF Capitalist is simply cancelled out by the extremist DF Communist who thinks that the Status Quo is not Communist enough because the family still exists and people still own the clothes on their backs.
This creates a huge problem for the topic of the discussion. The individual not only cannot directly create private property without the backing of the State but he also cannot create a mass movement to demand it without the backing of the State. The end result is that no private property is invented unless it suits the ends of the State for it to exist.
Of course hereditary leadership is the norm. What I'm questioning here is that if dwarf fortress really is such a perfect collective society, why would it "invent" a hierarquical monarchy in the first place?
Because they are not social insects. This means that their social groups have a heirachy, because they do not have a Hive Mind by which they all have the same information and all automatically form a consensus.
If dwarf values for the
[FAMILY] fall low enough, it makes sense for them to 'suspend' the hereditery nature of all positions.
They also presently enjoy the privilege of condemning commoners to be physically punished for not making the useless things they ordered. I guess "it makes sense", as dwarves usually just nod and go on with their lives after some random carpenter is beaten to death by a guard for not making a table in time, even though the people in charged forgot to make the order in the first place. *winky face*
Making up arbitery production targets and punishing people seemingly at random. Reminds me of
someone in particular.All you need is for the site to have more than a single administrator (like the manager). He could pretty much do the same job as the baron. You could also train diplomats when necessary. There's no point to a nobility in this collective utopia that you imagine df as being right now. What I'm telling you is that DF right now is a dysfunctional society, clearly intended to be vaguely feudal but couldn't because it was too complicated to design a proper feudal economy. All I'm trying to say is that maybe, in the future, we'll see one, as Toady seems to be attempting to go into that direction.
The game makes no distinction between nobles and administrators. The manager however is not the same job as the baron because the job of the baron is to represent the fortress at the central government level, the manager however is preoccupied with running the economy at a site level.
It would not be complicated for Toady One to have initially created a Feudal economy. All he would have to do is divide the generated map into abstract territories with abstracted peasant populations, carve the territories up among a number of sites and have the sites collect resources/manpower from the territories that it rules.
It's not hard to understand what the term surplus value means. According to Marx's theory, surplus value is equal to the new value created by workers in excess of their own labour-cost, which is appropriated by the capitalist as profit when products are sold. It is very much a term used in marxian economics, and for someone to believe it to be detached from it is strange to me. If you're using marxist jargon in a discussion about economy, expect people to call you out on it.
Also, you have completely ignored my main argument: while "normal fortresses" are intended to be frontier settlements or outposts, there's nothing that prevents them from being more military minded if you can organize them sucesfully to be that way. They could also be like small towns with little to no defenses if you wanted them to. So, in the future, even "normal fortresses" could be able to sustain themselves through taxes and not by being "self-sustained", whether you think such situation would bee anachronistic or not.
Marx did not himself invent the term, the developed the concept.
Surplus value means just what it says on the tin, value that is surplus. There is no viable society where the worker does not produce more value than the worker personally consumes. This applies equally to Animals, Hunter-Gatherers, Feudalism, Capitalism, Marx's ideal Communist society etc. It is however the crucial difference between the Feudal Castle of History and the Dwarf Fortress in Yr 0; the latter produces surplus value while the former does not.
Since you do not like the concept of surplus value let us put it like this: A Feudal Castle has to mantain the 'value' of it's commodity in order to survive (taxation). Any self-government and organisation among the peasants results in them needing those in the Castle less and thus the value of the government (the amount of taxes they are willing to pay) goes down. If it goes down too much then the Castle will not be able to pay for itself.
This means that private property among the peasantry is a no-brainer because it reduces the amount of government that there is locally. As with any commodity the less of it there is the more valuable it becomes. If the government however does not have to sell it's government commodity (collect taxes) then it will conclude that having the peasants have lots of government will mean they need to 'make' less government themselves, resulting in them creating something along the lines of a DF Hillocks, with their own governments and armies.
Again, if in the future a fortress will be able to become more similar to a medieval fortress, it'll be a viable comparison
No it will not. As a mine the dwarf fortress produces value in it's construction, even if the dwarves do not do anything but construct it.
Oh, I thought we were attempting to make polite conversation here, gobbman. I see how quickly you go back to your winky self. I could go that rout too so, how fast do you want this thread locked?
Anyway, marxist nonsense aside, I have nothing against public property in dwarf fortress, even some that are geared towards production. If it makes sense, who cares? Having dwarves possess their own individal workshops, however, also sounds appealing to me but it could be a nightmareto make it work given the game's limitations. Once we see what replaces VPL, it will become a bit clearer if such a thing is possible. To be fair, you can kind of arrange that in a way right now by giving each workshop you have to an individual dwarf when you have a manager.
There is no rule in the forum against Marxism, so I can actually be as Marxist as I damn well like. If you want to escalate things into a full on flame-war that gets the thread banned, that is entirely your perogative but remember that is is your own thread that gets locked.
I have my reverse engineered quasi-Marxism and you have in response only what I can only politely call Confusion. The constant inability to distinguish between Cause and Effect, DF and Middle Ages, DF Present and DF Distant future, Question and Answer; since that is all you have been able to so far muster so far, I am not surprised at your desire to ban Marxism.
It is inefficiant to have private workshops in DF because the craftsmen is not always working, a public workshop on the other hand can be used 100% of the time since as one dwarf exits the workshop another can take over. There is no private workshops yet because the fortress has not invented them, so give me a reason why they would invent them?
If they are more efficient at producing what they want, they are better at meeting the needs of everybody because, well, they are everybody. You could argue that letting them use certain strategical resourses that are very limited (like steel for instance) would be bad for the fortress, so maybe it would be better to control the circulation of those particular resourses. You can also help those who can't find work by allowing them to use public dormitories and by giving them access to food. Or even better, they would probably go willingly accept joining the army or other appointed sevice for the realm. There's a middle ground for these things, you know? I assume we'll see a few options for these probems once the economy is up and running again.
No they are not everybody, they are always somebody in particular with particular skills and needs. If you have a master dwarf craftsmen, your fortress benefits if he labours to produce dwarf crafts for the whole fortress, not simply for himself. The fortress also does not want to have unemployed people that exist at it's expense, it wants everybody to work because even if their labour does not manage to produce surplus value it mitigates some of their cost.
Scarce resources (like steel) can be distributed by tradable rationing cards with a use-by date. No sensible fortress would attempt to ration goods using money, since they would never be able to set the prices correctly without knowing how much money people both have and are willing to part with.
A lot of these are redundant or confusing, like "Military Property: [MARTIAL_PROWESS+]: To what extent do items from defeated enemies belong to the slayer." Why would military prowess influence this at all? If anything, the sense of pride and respect for the law would influence this the most. A very proud dwarf (or dwarven civ), amost religious about his respect for the law would maybe consider using equipment from a defeated foe theft and therefore a dishonorable act.
A lot of them are potentially redundant simply because they are all intended to potentially exist/not exist quite independantly of eachother and when combined a lot of them form a larger whole that is greater than what they alone make. Your answer here is an example of what I earlier referred as the confusion between
Cause and Effect or
Question and Answer.
In a society that has high levels of
Military Property, the religiously law-abiding dwarf is quite happy to take things from his defeated enemies; that is because legally speaking, their property
belongs to him! By contrast at low levels of
Military Property, the property of the defeated enemies is considered
Foreign Property so it's new owner is decided by the laws of the civilization the defeated comes from. At medium levels of
Military Property the defeated enemies items end up belonging to the site as a whole and hence are treated according to it's
Goverment Property laws.
As for why
[MARTIAL_PROWESS] would decide anything, that is pretty easy. If you were an adventurer and you saved a village from goblins, you would not want said village to operate under laws that said that the items of the defeated goblins did not belong to you? Societies that want to encourage becoming a professional warrior then introduce laws that reward the victorious warrior with the spoils of war while societies who want to discourage that kind of thing deprive the warrior of the spoils of war in order to reduce the profitability of his lifestyle.
The way to go about this kinda ties in with my zones thread...
But other than that, I am all for a bit more autonomy in the fortress as long as it is meaningful and makes itself notable.
EDIT:... nonsense...
My God... The Toad walks among us...
Indeed, the Toad actually reads our lengthy economics threads.