aceshooter11
Portal
- Joined
- Jan 26, 2011
- Location
- Amherst, Nova Scotia
The Communist Collective
Каждый сам король
Every Man a King
Mission Statement
As a collective, we will seek to achieve three primary tenants: equality, progress, and efficiency. Our occupation shall be to build a new world for we are not only good at destroying the old world; we are also good at building the new. We have watched and waited; we have seen that with enormous wealth and power comes a great fall from the heavens, accompanied by the swift bane of sloth. Thus, it has been concluded that our existence shall be one of peace, one of prosperity, and one of achievement. Each constituent of this great collective will seek not to transcend his terrestrial chains only to have his wax melt, but instead to plant a seed that shall grow into the heavens, branching out and extending over the world. The Three Tenants
Equality
The goal of equality shall be accomplished through gathered resources being allotted towards the state and thereafter be distributed and utilized by the state, at the state’s will. Progress
The primary rationale being the Communist Collective will be in order to advance the city in a forward direction. Forces that prioritize progress shall not be hindered for any other objective, as progress is the primary objective.
Efficiency
As equality and progress are achieved, the inherent occupancy of a nation that contains constituents that are equal should be to engage further those constituents in productive means. Therefore, efficiency is our third and final tenant of which the Communist Collective will embody.Structure of the Collective
Growth
After achieving the status of city, the Collective will grow our initial birthplace to the level of capital. Thereafter, a new city will be founded when all cities have reached maximum size. Thus, the Collective shall never be spread thin, but instead create strongholds of prosperity within our territory.Location
The Collective shall conquer an area on the outer reaches of the map and develop said area to its full ability while also isolating the Collective’s strongholds and constituents from the outside world.Housing
Each member of the Collective will be assigned a roommate to live with him or her. They will live together in a premade state house; each house will contain a glass roof so that any members can be observed, a double redstone door lock with redstone torches as well as a way in which the city can automatically lock down the entirety of every house in the city. The Collective strives to provide safety to its members, as death is not efficient.Resources
Members will be required to submit the majority of their resources to the state or face expulsion if found to be hoarding. Greed is a deadly sin, and the state will punish it as such. While others fall because of trivial strife related to goods, the Collective will take in the resources and distribute them to better the town. In addition, any member is able to request materials that would be more desirable for greedy people, and less desirable items will be open free of charge. Remember, with great wealth, comes death.Building within the Collective
All building within the Collective’s territory is inherently a state function due to the utilization of state owned land, thus the Collective has deemed it necessary to regulate building within Collective territory to only projects that have statewide approval. The original city of the Collective will have areas beneath the city that will allow for constituent built structures; however, even these buildings will need statewide approval before being allowed. A member who wishes to build something within the Collective’s confines is expected to bring a well-constructed plan as well as a resource list, expected labor time list, and finally a minimum of a paragraph stating how the structure would contribute to the Collective’s goals.“Power” Structure
All members of the collective will have an equal vote in any matter of the town. The Collective will utilize balloting in order to determine any large issues, but a smaller council will inherently handle smaller issues. The simple reason as to why the Collective is unable to be completely equal in regards to power is because of the saddening fact that the township system has a wayward requirement that a mayor and second-in-command must exist. However, the Collective seeks to ignore these trivial titles except on the most primeval level. The “Council”
As some of the more astute observers of the Collective’s previous statement may note, a council of sorts was mentioned that would accomplish handling the smaller tasks, thus the Collective has deemed it of importance to first explain what and who composes the council, and thereafter explain the actual extent of the council’s power. The council will be composed of five members who would be closely comparable to elders. Each member of the council will be able to be voted out by a simple popular vote. The council will have the power to enforce ordinances that were determined at the founding of the Collective, and thus draw the totality of its power from the founding document. The council will be a state duty, but not a job, and thus any expectations placed upon the constituents will also be expected to be fulfilled by the council. The council will allow for the Collective’s structure of government to operate cleanly and without problem, but will not utilize the inherent power given to them for anything other than the fulfillment of the Collective’s primary goals. Outlook on Player versus Player Battles
Our goals do not involve destruction of others by normal means of life loss; the Collective believes that achieving Peace, Bread, and Land will allow the Collective to succeed. Therefore, the Collective has no intentions of actively supporting armed conflict unless the conflict is necessary in order to continue achieving the previously proposed goals. Diplomatic Relations
We are our own masters.
Rules
1. If found hoarding materials, you will be expelled.2. If found aiding and abetting outside forces, you will be expelled.
3. If found failing to strive for the goals of the Collective, you will be expelled.
4. If found to be inhibiting other members of the Collective from aiding the Collective, you will be expelled.
Closing Statements
The communist system will replace the capitalist system; this is an objective law independent of man's will. However much the reactionaries try to hold back the wheel of history, eventually revolution will take place and will inevitably triumph. The Collective is the revolution, the Collective is the future, the Collective will succeed. The infidel dissenters will be hanged indiscriminately, and they will remain hanging. They will hang there as long as it is efficient for them to permit to hang. As soon as they have been untied, the next batch will be strung up, and so on down the line, until the last dissenter has been exterminated. Other cities will follow suit, precisely in this fashion, until the entirety of the server has been completely cleansed of dissenters against our ideals. The Collective is a seed and the people are like the soil. Wherever we go, we must unite the people, take root and blossom among them. Our blossomed flowers shall reach out and fill the land with peace and harmony, and the Collective shall succeed. Nevertheless, even if the Collective achieves gigantic successes, there is no reason whatsoever to feel conceited and arrogant. Modesty helps on to go forward, whereas conceit makes one lag behind. We must always bear this truth our in mind. Workers of the world, unite.Questions/Points Noted by Posters Below
Point 1: People like to build
The Collective agrees! However, it should be noted that people necessarily don't enjoy building housing. Would you rather build a large, community scale project that is useful to everyone AND it is seen as someone walks into the city, or make a house on your given 10x10 plot. Additionally, it should be noted that The Collective only accepts members of the community who have been around for a while or have strong recommendations, thus The Collective seeks to build trust by having a playerbase who have been devoted to Herocraft for a long period of time and also have gotten over the "Must build cool house" phase and have graduated to "I want the entire server to salivate at what I helped build." Second, we are creating a town that has 2 layers, one public housing and building layer, as well as a secondary layer where on approval people are allowed to build what they want. The Collective sees this as a way in which we can allow players to express themselves, but we force them to flesh out their ideas and truly think about what they are building. A situation in which a player must gain approval from his community and then build the structure that was proposed and still lives up to the community's expectations is one that we see as inextricably important. It creates a sense of general approval around the community, camaraderie, and of course beauty.
Point 2: People need to feel like equals
The Collective feels that this point was somewhat addressed above, but we will try to further explain how we will make people like equals. First, we actually see the two person housing as a way in which we will be able to get people to feel like equals. No one lives alone or at the top of the hill, everyone lives in houses with another partner who he or she will become friends with and work with to better the community. The sense of togetherness because of the interdependence of the community we feel will make it so that everyone in the community feels like a person in the community. The Collective feels that if people are working towards a common goal, have to put in the same amount of work to get something [Free-build spot, resources, etc.], and actively talk and communicate to each other.
Point 3: Would you ally with us?
Simply said, the Collective is not looking for alliances. When the Collective starts to build up its town, we may seek or accept alliances if the membership of the Collective votes to do so or if the circumstances dictate that it would be in our best long-term benefit to ally. We are perfectly capable of achieving our goals without an alliance; therefore, we do not expect to need to form any alliances. Also, alliances tend to just pitter patter away when convenience dictates, and thus even alliances that may seem to benefit us will be looked at from the perspective of a short-run alliance failing scenario as well; therefore, it is tremendously unlikely that the Collective will at any point in time mitigate its current resource or structural advantage in order to afford an alliance. Such examples would be tributing, region rights, access to documentation, access to technology, or breaking other (While highly unlikely to happen, but worthy of noting) alliances in order to form an alliance with a secondary group.
Point 4: Are you against any other towns?
No! Not at all. The Collective sees warfare and trivial strife as an inherent waste of resources. The Collective seeks to be a neutral entity that exists on the fringes of the map, expanding our influence outward along with our community wide wealth. While the Collective may not have people going door to door trying to recruit members, we will be known. Thus, our actual goal is to influence the server in a way that shows communism works and is far more efficient than any other past, contemporary, or future methods of organization. As most of our members of the Collective will be dedicated Herocraft players, many of the members understand the inefficient faced on a day to day basis as well as the mockery of a system that is currently in place. So, the question has lead to a two-faced answer, and we will provide a summation of what the answer is: We do not militarily oppose any towns, but we do oppose the general ideology that many towns on Herocraft have come to embody, and thus we oppose their way of thinking and hope to change that through nonviolent means that simply show them the Garden of Eden that they are missing. However, we currently do not plan to actively recruit members from towns or instigate anything aside from simple jealousy among other towns.
Point 5: How do you plan to keep resources constantly distributed?
An excellent question, the basis behind our resource distribution plans are two-fold. First, any resources that are needed for defense, basic gameplay [Redstone for recall, food for living, etc.], and many basic materials will all be available in our locked [Locked as in nonmembers are unable to get in, but everyone in the Collective can, for members to utilize. Precrafted armor and weapon sets will encourage players to lessen their reliance on basic resources, thus allowing us to not give people the "raw" materials that are usually sold on open markets. We also are allowing people to keep chests in their houses - with materials that further the Collective's goals. Many of the said items above such as food and armor will be the primary things that are allowed in houses. Each member will be subject to random checks for hoarding and thus will be unable to hide items. Secondly, more valuable raw materials will only be available on a by request and approval basis. Iron blocks, diamond blocks, gold blocks, records, other rare items that are not used in daily use will be stored in a hyper-secure vault within the Collective's township grounds. So, our plan is to not keep all resources constantly distributed, but instead to keep our members supplied with all the items that they may need to use while also growing the wealth of the Collective, therefore growing the wealth of the constituents of the Collective.
Point 6: You claim prosperity and efficiency, but how can such be achieved under such rigid constraints?
The inherent fact that we are not claiming anarchy allows for the rigid constraints to exist; we are not promising a Garden of Eden without sin nor are we promising the final circle of hell. Instead, we are claiming that under the conditions that we explore the idea of a community that unites in both resources and ideas we will be able to succeed. An interesting mental exercise to do is to try to understand something from another person's point of view, it is commonly done in sociology in order to try to achieve an impartial view that is closer to "the truth".
Therefore, are our constraints really ever so rigid, or are they simply different than the social norm of our society thus making them appear to be rigid due to our cultural socialization? The freedoms that we offer are as follows: resource distribution to allow competitive advantage to shine within our community, the freedom to vote as an equal and not be dictated over by a leader, and the ability to contribute to any community project in an easy, efficient way. The disadvantages we face are: lack of freedom to build anything at any time, lack of the ability to hoard and retain resources for future consumption, and the inability for us to deviate in an expedited fashion in times of emergency. Thus, I would like to address the trio of disadvantages in a way that is comparable to other towns. First, no town that I have knowledge of offers infinite building, anywhere at anytime; it is simply not a reasonable thing to offer. The only notion that we are different in this manner is that we do not allow house building, but we do offer city-wide building and also an entire underground area that will be devoted towards creative expression. Secondly, the ability to hoard resources is vastly inefficient and pursuing competitive advantage, wherein a good can be produced more efficiently, is something that should be the goal of each township. If a member is able to mine 50 minerals an hour and another member is able to collect 50 wheat an hour, but individually they can only collect 20 of each, why would you ever want both members collecting both items? Wherein the Collective would garner 100 total units, another town would gather a splintered 80. Finally, and most importantly in my humble view, the problem of slow deviation becomes apparent. There is a reason why the United States is not a pure democracy, forcing everyone to vote before a decision could be made is insane when dealing with hundreds of millions of individual entities; however, we are the Collective, and thus we will set up the council, just as the United States, to deal with any "alarming and urgent" issues that are presented. The Collective's constituents have given them a tidbit of power in order to compromise for the inherent disadvantages of a direct democracy. However, any non-pressing issue will be dealt with on a macro scale, engaging the entire citizen base in a vote. Also, if a problem arises with the council or any of its members, the people have the choice to change the council. The people never abdicate power in this exchange, they simply allow for the government to act in a more pure form that allows for decisions that an unconnected hive-mind cannot instantaneously handle.
I'd like to close by leaving this tidbit here, I feel as though it truly resembles what we are trying to do. We are not insane, nor are we naive. We are the Collective.
Point 7: With players working hours just to fulfill the resource requests of their "masters" how will you retain these players that are not having fun?
Simply said, there are not masters and players will retain themselves by enjoying the experience of being part of something new and exciting. We understand that people do not enjoy spending hours of gameplay gathering resources, thus we hope to alleviate the problem by allowing people to distrubute resources in a way that benefits the community, while also doing what people actually have fun doing: building and being a community of hardworking, dedicated players who make beautiful things.
Point 8: Doesn't forcing people to live in houses built by you and only you create tension?
The houses are built for use, general looks, and efficiency. We understand some people love to build houses, but that is not inherent to the fact that people love to build houses. People enjoy building houses because in many towns, houses are the only way of expression that is allowed and thus they are socialized to like building houses as a form of expression or leave the town. Instead, we seek to allow members to design and build epic structures that supersede the simply role of housing. The key to a happy, functioning town is not house building, but instead is actively engaging members in community projects that both surpass housing design and single-player like construction. Why build alone when an entire community can build together?
Point 9: If you force your members to give up their resources and then locking them up, how are your members supposed to function with such a basic tool set?
The only items that will be locked in our "vault" are ones such as gold, a surplus of iron, diamonds, lapis, and other decorative and expensive type blocks. We have plans for an open (To our town members, security for such a thing is similar to housing), public storage that contains everything from logs to cobble to iron. We are not limiting our members tool set in any way, shape, or form. Well, except if you are sheddi and want to run around in full gold armor.Point 10: In moments a player IS allowed to build, they have to fill in a huge ass long list, planning their house and showing it to you first for approval. In this case it sounds as if they can't even use their own resources. Why must a player have to go through all that just to make somewhere safe for themselves?
First, I would like to note that it does not go to me for approval. Any large building project would go to the community for approval. Now that I have mitigated it to a community wide issue, it is important to note that players not building things to stay safe, nor are they building with their own resources, nor are they building for themselves. Buildings are for practical city use, with the use of community wide resources that the Collective has collected through its existence. Therefore, a member of the Collective must go through the steps of filling out a "huge ass long list" because each building is a representation of the community as a whole, and thus the community should have the deepest insight into what someone is building. If someone says they want to build a bar, that's not very descriptive. However, if someone submits a rough sketch, items needed, and the other items listed above, the community understands what is going on and how to best decide if a specific item would be in the Collective's best interest.
Point 11: Mayor and SIC have more power, how can you possible be equal? Same with the council.
We are unable to abdicate the role of Mayor and SIC and thereafter distribute their former power to each member of the Collective, but we are able to limit the Mayor and SIC in our town charter. A Mayor and SIC shall be limited within the bounds of the community, not the community being limited within the bounds of the Mayor and SIC. The council piece of this question was answered above.
Point 12: "Every man a king" - How could this be done under such strict conditions?
Inklings of my answer to point 6 are apparent here, but I will explain what the phrase "Every man a king" actually means to us. It means we have equal political power to vote. It means we have equal power to propose buildings and an equal chance to get our buildings approved by the community. It means that all our resources are given to the Community, not just a class of peons existing for the bourgeoisie to exploit. The proleteriat and the bourgeoisie are one, each person is his own master and worker. Strict conditions does not abdicate the chance of equality; instead, it allows for equality to be achieved. Honestly, a limited number of our conditions involve the limitation of rights, but more limit the power of the "powerful". Instead of allowing people to hoard resources for themselves, we give everyone a fair shake of resources. Instead of allowing a Mayor to dictate over a town, we give everyone his power. He is simply the listener, we are all speakers. A Mayor is a figure head that is inherent to the server on which we play, and thus we will utilize the title of Mayor to be more of a ceremonial title that indicates he should be the vessel for the community, speaking its thoughts. Once again, making a house does not make a person more powerful, especially if that 10x10 plot is all a person can claim as his or hers. We offer a piece in the community, a member can claim the entire city as his canvas as much as the next.
Point 13: Seriously, am I the only one that thinks this whole idea is just stupid?
Join the crowd as we fly into the sky at Kitty Hawk. It is an adventure that forces people to break their socialized chains. Honestly, many people have spent their entire lives being told communism is a failure, yet why does it seem that it is the people who fail at communism instead of the actual system itself?
Point 14: How will you manage so many things with only 7 players (mayor, SIC and the council)
The community will manage itself. Honestly, with dedicated players who understand the game, including myself who ran one of the first few kingdoms on Herocraft, a collage of proctors and guides, and a sampling of the most devoted players on the server, anything is possible. Importantly, however, is that the community will vote on any large project, thus making it so that it is nearly impossible for 7 players to "run things". We are a community, not a dictatorship. We are the Collective.
Point 15: Why do you have so many * on your application?
If it has an asterik, we see it as important that a player at least attempts to answer the question. Also, we did not put superfluous data on our application, thus a large quantity of asterisks.
Point 16: Why did you answer all these questions without regarding my original post that stated "Not some propoganda rubbish with long texts about how everyone has freedom and success, when, as far as I can see, they won't get that opportunity."
While propoganda spreads lies, we are just attempting to communicate the ideas of equality, propserity, and efficiency in a form that completely allows our ideas to be noted. Instead of simply giving one word answers, we see value in answering questions to their breaking point. Just because I did not include a Tl;dr so I could summarize each of the points in Spark Note form does not mean that it is "propaganda rubbish". Information is power, knowledge is power, we seek to distribute each inkling of knowledge so as to not have a different amount of power.
Becoming a Member of the Collective
Apply here. If you are unknown to us, expect to join another, infidel town.
>>Application<<
Formality Positions:
Mayor : Aceshooter11
SIC:
Banker:
Council Members as of 1/13/2012
Aceshooter11
AlexDaParrot
KanJam49
Purenrgiii
Howdanrocks
Record Keeping Information
- Sertuin
- Taylor004
- billbox360
- aceshooter11
