I just realized something... Version 1.0 was Socialism in practice.

The old Fatigue system in the original version of FFXIV was a digital implementation of Socialism.

That is, it was an attempt to equalize everyone by limiting the progression of the fastest and strongest. The only difference was that the Fatigue system did it with EXP in a video game, while Socialism tries to do it with money and property in real life.

I wonder if anyone else has thought of it this way... >_>

I don't think so. Let's not bring politics into this.

Nope.
/10char

No.

To simplfy it, Socialism would take all the exp gained by all players within a week and redistribute it depending on their contribution to society.

Also, the fatigue system is the same as the rested xp system, it's just the latter is sold as a positive thing so no-one complains.

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Originally Posted by DubstepNinja

No.

To simplfy it, Socialism would take all the exp gained by all players within a week and redistribute it depending on their contribution to society.

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Hmm, I suppose that's a fair point. Though from my understanding, Socialism distributes everything equally regardless of contribution, but I guess there are different variations.

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Originally Posted by Mjollnir

Also, the fatigue system is the same as the rested xp system, it's just the latter is sold as a positive thing so no-one complains.

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Not really. Rested EXP gives you a buff for logging off, while the Fatigue system stopped you from progressing if you played for too long. It was more than just the way the systems were sold -- it was the way they worked.

This was the day GD finally ran out of topics.

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Originally Posted by Rhianu

Hmm, I suppose that's a fair point. Though from my understanding, Socialism distributes everything equally regardless of contribution, but I guess there are different variations.

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Yes what you are referencing is classic Marxism

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Originally Posted by Rhianu

Is there a specific name for the type of Socialism you are referring to?

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I am referencing socialism in its widely accepted definition, you are referencing Marxist Socialism

(two thoughts, one I hope all this talk of socialism does'nt cause me to be put on an FBI watchlist, secondly that all the editing does not cause a time paradox, if this happens I am sorry)

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Originally Posted by Cedri

This was the day GD finally ran out of topics.

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Our work is done here Cedri, Lets roll out

http://i.imgur.com/igbbGbu.gif

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Originally Posted by DubstepNinja

Well in the classic Marxist sense, yes

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Originally Posted by DubstepNinja

Yes what you are referencing is classic Marxism

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Who changed Socialist philosophy from Marx's equal distribution to distribution based on contribution? Is there a specific name for the type of Socialism you are referring to?

A thread about socialism in FFXIV.

Wow. We are so friggin BORED. lol Save us, Yoshi! Just come out with the game, already! We're not gonna last much longer!

lol ....what

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Originally Posted by Mjollnir

Also, the fatigue system is the same as the rested xp system, it's just the latter is sold as a positive thing so no-one complains.

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Let's put it differently.

They gave us a carrot in exchange for the stick.

I need to start lurking here again. that other forum is painful to read at times.

Wow lol just wow *walks away* >_>;

Then its settled! we gotta petition to bring fatigue back.

There's so much wrong information in this thread it's almost embarrassing.

lol 2.0 is a better example of socialism imo.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ma...x7h7o1_500.gif

You must be from America, because you don't know what Socialism is!

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Originally Posted by GodseijuroHiko

lol 2.0 is a better example of socialism imo.

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Explain please.

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Originally Posted by KiriA500

You must be from America, because you don't know what Socialism is!

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Care to explain it, then?

LOL XD

This thread... I seriously think it's proof that we're all going slowly insane waiting for ARR to be released. The game had better be polished, well-tested, and ready for playing by at least the end of July. Or we're all simply not going to be okay.

So much misinformation in this thread, Kira is right though, Americans have distorted the definition of socialism and many people now throw that word around without understanding what it really means, and end up mistaking it with communism.

Socialism is an ownership structure where society and it's citizens take a collective responsibility in the enterprise in question, and the benefits and services of that enterprise is then distributed fairly amongst the citizens. Your police and fire departments, are an example of a socialist organization, because they are paid for and funded by the public, and are suppose to serve each member of the public equally in it's entirety. A private police/security force on the other hand, would serve the private interests of whomever is paying for them, such as bank security guards. A private fire department would only respond to, and put out fires of homes where the owners pay a monthly protection fee.

Another example of a socialist enterprise (if you do not live in the US) is healthcare, every developed country excluding the US uses a socialized healthcare system. I'm not gonna get into any debate of which structure works better, but at the very least people should educate themselves on a topic before making false assumptions.

Some countries socialize their natural resources, meaning the profit from sales of natural resources of the land in their country are used to fund government operations, such as those mentioned in the previous paragraphs, which in turns allow the country to lower the taxes it need to collect from everyone. While other countries privatize those natural resources, allowing individuals or group to profit from sole ownership of the land, and not have to share that profit with the rest of the country.

Again, I will say I don't plan on getting into a debate on this forum, but hope I at least helped better inform some people. Using a word in the improper context or definition is akin to someone new to a country waving their middle finger everywhere because they thought it's a way of saying "hello".

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Originally Posted by Eldryan

So much misinformation in this thread, Kira is right though, Americans have distorted the definition of socialism and many people now throw that word around without understanding what it really means, and end up mistaking it with communism.

Socialism is an ownership structure where society and it's citizens take a collective responsibility in the enterprise in question, and the benefits and services of that enterprise is then distributed fairly amongst the citizens. Your police and fire departments, are an example of a socialist organization, because they are paid for and funded by the public, and are suppose to serve each member of the public equally in it's entirety. A private police/security force on the other hand, would serve the private interests of whomever is paying for them, such as bank security guards. A private fire department would only respond to, and put out fires of homes where the owners pay a monthly protection fee.

Another example of a socialist enterprise (if you do not live in the US) is healthcare, every developed country excluding the US uses a socialized healthcare system. I'm not gonna get into any debate of which structure works better, but at the very least people should educate themselves on a topic before making false assumptions.

Some countries socialize their natural resources, meaning the profit from sales of natural resources of the land in their country are used to fund government operations, such as those mentioned in the previous paragraphs, which in turns allow the country to lower the taxes it need to collect from everyone. While other countries privatize those natural resources, allowing individuals or group to profit from sole ownership of the land, and not have to share that profit with the rest of the country.

Again, I will say I don't plan on getting into a debate on this forum, but hope I at least helped better inform some people. Using a word in the improper context or definition is akin to someone new to a country waving their middle finger everywhere because they thought it's a way of saying "hello".

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tl;dr 'MURICA

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Originally Posted by Rhianu

Explain please.


Care to explain it, then?

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N~~~~~D~~~~~~A

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Originally Posted by GodseijuroHiko

N~~~~~D~~~~~~A

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You also mentioning 2.0 as if you had an insider opinion could be seen as a breach of nda too, just saaayin! /nitpick

@Eldryan; I could totally hug you for your post! I, too am sick of people being like "OMG SOCIALISM SUCKS" without knowing wtf it means haha

I always knew levequests where what Karl Marx was talking about.

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Originally Posted by Rau

I need to start lurking here again. that other forum is painful to read at times.

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I know right, nothing like good ol' GD to give you a better outlook on humanity.

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Originally Posted by Eldryan

So much misinformation in this thread, Kira is right though, Americans have distorted the definition of socialism and many people now throw that word around without understanding what it really means, and end up mistaking it with communism.

Socialism is an ownership structure where society and it's citizens take a collective responsibility in the enterprise in question, and the benefits and services of that enterprise is then distributed fairly amongst the citizens. Your police and fire departments, are an example of a socialist organization, because they are paid for and funded by the public, and are suppose to serve each member of the public equally in it's entirety. A private police/security force on the other hand, would serve the private interests of whomever is paying for them, such as bank security guards. A private fire department would only respond to, and put out fires of homes where the owners pay a monthly protection fee.

Another example of a socialist enterprise (if you do not live in the US) is healthcare, every developed country excluding the US uses a socialized healthcare system. I'm not gonna get into any debate of which structure works better, but at the very least people should educate themselves on a topic before making false assumptions.

Some countries socialize their natural resources, meaning the profit from sales of natural resources of the land in their country are used to fund government operations, such as those mentioned in the previous paragraphs, which in turns allow the country to lower the taxes it need to collect from everyone. While other countries privatize those natural resources, allowing individuals or group to profit from sole ownership of the land, and not have to share that profit with the rest of the country.

Again, I will say I don't plan on getting into a debate on this forum, but hope I at least helped better inform some people. Using a word in the improper context or definition is akin to someone new to a country waving their middle finger everywhere because they thought it's a way of saying "hello".

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^

Also your post reminds me of a fire department in ... Florida? I can't remember. They let a house burn to the ground, watching from a few hundred feet away saying that the owner's didn't pay the city/county its fire protection fee. America at it's finest haha. Also refused to take payment right there as it had to go through some sort of processing if I recall.

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Originally Posted by MartaDemireux

^

Also your post reminds me of a fire department in ... Florida? I can't remember. They let a house burn to the ground, watching from a few hundred feet away saying that the owner's didn't pay the city/county its fire protection fee. America at it's finest haha. Also refused to take payment right there as it had to go through some sort of processing if I recall.

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That was in Tennessee. It would be illegal for fire fighters to do that here in Florida.

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Originally Posted by Eldryan

Socialism is an ownership structure where society and it's citizens take a collective responsibility in the enterprise in question, and the benefits and services of that enterprise is then distributed fairly amongst the citizens.

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How do we decide what constitutes a "fair" distribution? How is such a thing determined or measured, and by whom?

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Originally Posted by Eldryan

Some countries socialize their natural resources, meaning the profit from sales of natural resources of the land in their country are used to fund government operations, such as those mentioned in the previous paragraphs, which in turns allow the country to lower the taxes it need to collect from everyone. While other countries privatize those natural resources, allowing individuals or group to profit from sole ownership of the land, and not have to share that profit with the rest of the country.

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Can you think of any example in which a privately owned company has not benefited the citizens in its local area?

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Originally Posted by Rhianu

How do we decide what constitutes a "fair" distribution? How is such a thing determined or measured, and by whom?

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For fair distribution, and easy example comes up of my home country's healthcare (England).

Everyone pays a little national insurance each month (comes off wages automatically).
Everyone gets the same healthcare.

The govt. decides how it's distributed, there's guildlines in place to help those who are less able to help themselves. While people may not get everything exactly the same (heeey communism), the idea is that if you're better off you can chip in and help those less fortunate, even have your own backside covered too in the process.

If you lost your job for example and could no longer pay national insurance, you'd get a living allowance, your rent paid for you plus a fortnightly stipend to help cover living expenses PLUS medications you may need 100% free.

When you found a new job, those stipends would be taken away but you'd still get free healthcare and your medications would cost a flat rate, when I left the country it was about 7GBP per item on the prescription (I can't make the pound sterling sign on my keyboard D:! lol).

I would like to say that even America has some strong socialist parts, such as Medicare/aid, unemployment and retirement stipend checks (I think the retirement one is called social security?). Again, it's the govt. that decides how these are distributed. It may be that you (general term) may be too well off to benefit from these at this time, but they are there incase you ever needed to fall back on them.

As for the last question, I can't think of a good example right now - Got a really foggy head and a stack of paperwork to mow through. I'll have a think on it :p

Challenging questions, I like it. :)
Incoming wall of text!

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How do we decide what constitutes a "fair" distribution? How is such a thing determined or measured, and by whom?

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I'll refer to the examples of police and fire fighters again to explain this point. Fairness in this context, is service rendered by the police and fire fighters without prejudice of any sort towards the citizens. Police and fire fighters would not be allowed to refuse to render help to someone based on their wealth, social status, ethnicity, or any other form of discrimination, that is what I meant by fairness without prejudice. Nix gave some good examples regarding how healthcare and social safety net in the UK work, which shows how more assistance and resources are given depending on how dire your situation is compared to others. I don't think I can explain it better then Nix's post, so I will leave it at that.

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Can you think of any example in which a privately owned company has not benefited the citizens in its local area?

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Right now in the field of medicine research, pharmaceutical companies are in direct competition with each other. As a result, their research and development labs most often do not share research data or analysis with one another until they have developed something that they can patent. The reason being, they do not want to give their competitor a chance to use their data and develop a new medicine for some illness or disease before they do, and get a lead on the market. Although progress are still being made, it is progressing at a slower rate than if there were more cooperation and information sharing. If they weren't in complete competition with one another, and if pharmaceutical research and development of drugs were socialized, with the sale of any development re-invested by society back into more R&D, all our best scientists would be able to work with each other and get more done.

Personally, I feel that society works best when there is a proper balance between capitalism and socialism, as going too far to the extreme on either side will result in inefficient progress. I'll give two hypothetical examples, one is a nation that is pure socialism with no free market, and another pure capitalism with no government infrastructure support.

Problem Example in pure socialism:
Lets say the government distribute out food in specific quantities to it's citizens, enough to match the daily recommended calories, vitamins, proteins, etc., so that everyone gets enough to stay healthy, but not over eat. But then some people have allergy to certain food, and would need to request a change in the type of food distributed to them. With a huge population, there will be too many food substitution request for the government to efficiently process, resulting in delays, and people end up going hungry for prolonged periods before their request are finally answered, while the food they are allergic to end up being spoiled and going to waste because it was still being delivered during that whole time and didn't get sent to someone else who could've benefited from it.

Problem example in pure capitalism:
A construction company specializes in building highways, and since the government isn't paying for the highway to be built in this pure capitalistic economy, the construction company make their profit by putting in road tolls so that anyone who need to use the highway have to pay, because after all, the roads are privately owned, not publicly owned. This isn't a major problem in of itself, but lets say Pepsi Cola decides to buy controlling shares in this construction company, and thus take ownership of all it's highways. Pepsi then decides that any vehicle transporting Coca Cola for the purpose of sale distribution isn't allowed to use their road, in an attempt to block off supplies of their competitor. Coca Cola responds by buying their own highway paving company, and proceed to buy up land and have parallel highways and inner city roads built so that they can transport their product. Aside from the obvious wastefulness of raw materials and redundant nature of having two sets of roads made, other problems occur for the economy, such as cost of houses sky rocketing because of less available land due to double road construction, and increase demand for construction labour which increase labour cost and construction cost.

These examples may seem extreme and silly, but then again, so is the idea of running society and economy based on a pure socialism or capitalism model.

As a final note, I want to further clarify all the terminologies, and their counter part.
Socialism is opposite to Capitalism/Privatization
Communism is opposite to Democracy/Republic

Hence, you can have a communist country that is using capitalism as its economic model. China is a good example as it has allowed for more privatization and moved towards more capitalism. Venezuela on the other hand is an example of a Democracy that leans towards socialism for their economic structure. The decision of what is the right balance between capitalism/socialism depends on the country and it's citizens, hence why we have elections to decide if we think our country is leaning too much to one side or the other. Although in the US, both main political parties are right-wing parties, one is just not as far right as the other.

Don't leave the American corporate media out of this discussion. Their failures to accurately report and investigate issues is downright criminal.

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Originally Posted by Eldryan

Challenging questions, I like it. :)
Incoming wall of text!



I'll refer to the examples of police and fire fighters again to explain this point. Fairness in this context, is service rendered by the police and fire fighters without prejudice of any sort towards the citizens. Police and fire fighters would not be allowed to refuse to render help to someone based on their wealth, social status, ethnicity, or any other form of discrimination, that is what I meant by fairness without prejudice. Nix gave some good examples regarding how healthcare and social safety net in the UK work, which shows how more assistance and resources are given depending on how dire your situation is compared to others. I don't think I can explain it better then Nix's post, so I will leave it at that.



Right now in the field of medicine research, pharmaceutical companies are in direct competition with each other. As a result, their research and development labs most often do not share research data or analysis with one another until they have developed something that they can patent. The reason being, they do not want to give their competitor a chance to use their data and develop a new medicine for some illness or disease before they do, and get a lead on the market. Although progress are still being made, it is progressing at a slower rate than if there were more cooperation and information sharing. If they weren't in complete competition with one another, and if pharmaceutical research and development of drugs were socialized, with the sale of any development re-invested by society back into more R&D, all our best scientists would be able to work with each other and get more done.

Personally, I feel that society works best when there is a proper balance between capitalism and socialism, as going too far to the extreme on either side will result in inefficient progress. I'll give two hypothetical examples, one is a nation that is pure socialism with no free market, and another pure capitalism with no government infrastructure support.

Problem Example in pure socialism:
Lets say the government distribute out food in specific quantities to it's citizens, enough to match the daily recommended calories, vitamins, proteins, etc., so that everyone gets enough to stay healthy, but not over eat. But then some people have allergy to certain food, and would need to request a change in the type of food distributed to them. With a huge population, there will be too many food substitution request for the government to efficiently process, resulting in delays, and people end up going hungry for prolonged periods before their request are finally answered, while the food they are allergic to end up being spoiled and going to waste because it was still being delivered during that whole time and didn't get sent to someone else who could've benefited from it.

Problem example in pure capitalism:
A construction company specializes in building highways, and since the government isn't paying for the highway to be built in this pure capitalistic economy, the construction company make their profit by putting in road tolls so that anyone who need to use the highway have to pay, because after all, the roads are privately owned, not publicly owned. This isn't a major problem in of itself, but lets say Pepsi Cola decides to buy controlling shares in this construction company, and thus take ownership of all it's highways. Pepsi then decides that any vehicle transporting Coca Cola for the purpose of sale distribution isn't allowed to use their road, in an attempt to block off supplies of their competitor. Coca Cola responds by buying their own highway paving company, and proceed to buy up land and have parallel highways and inner city roads built so that they can transport their product. Aside from the obvious wastefulness of raw materials and redundant nature of having two sets of roads made, other problems occur for the economy, such as cost of houses sky rocketing because of less available land due to double road construction, and increase demand for construction labour which increase labour cost and construction cost.

These examples may seem extreme and silly, but then again, so is the idea of running society and economy based on a pure socialism or capitalism model.

As a final note, I want to further clarify all the terminologies, and their counter part.
Socialism is opposite to Capitalism/Privatization
Communism is opposite to Democracy/Republic

Hence, you can have a communist country that is using capitalism as its economic model. China is a good example as it has allowed for more privatization and moved towards more capitalism. Venezuela on the other hand is an example of a Democracy that leans towards socialism for their economic structure. The decision of what is the right balance between capitalism/socialism depends on the country and it's citizens, hence why we have elections to decide if we think our country is leaning too much to one side or the other. Although in the US, both main political parties are right-wing parties, one is just not as far right as the other.

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Originally Posted by Eldryan

Right now in the field of medicine research, pharmaceutical companies are in direct competition with each other. As a result, their research and development labs most often do not share research data or analysis with one another until they have developed something that they can patent. The reason being, they do not want to give their competitor a chance to use their data and develop a new medicine for some illness or disease before they do, and get a lead on the market. Although progress are still being made, it is progressing at a slower rate than if there were more cooperation and information sharing.

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I dunno. Personally, I think competition can drive companies to develop more products better, faster, and more efficiently than they otherwise could. I believe progress is sped up by competition, not slowed down by it.

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Originally Posted by Eldryan

A construction company specializes in building highways, and since the government isn't paying for the highway to be built in this pure capitalistic economy, the construction company make their profit by putting in road tolls so that anyone who need to use the highway have to pay, because after all, the roads are privately owned, not publicly owned.

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The government makes you pay for the roads, too. They just call their payment taxes, rather than tolls.

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Originally Posted by Eldryan

Aside from the obvious wastefulness of raw materials and redundant nature of having two sets of roads made, other problems occur for the economy, such as cost of houses sky rocketing because of less available land due to double road construction, and increase demand for construction labour which increase labour cost and construction cost.

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More roads means means less traffic -- that's a good thing. Only about 20% of the Earth's land is populated by human beings, so there's certainly no shortage of real estate; there's plenty of room to expand. Increase in demand for manual labor would drive prices down, not up, due to the fact that employers would need to stretch their budgets further. Plus that sounds like a large amount of job creation. With all the millions of impoverished and homeless people who are out of work, that sort of large-scale economic production sounds like just the sort of thing we need.

Of course having all the roads privatized could potentially make traveling annoying because then you would have to keep track of which roads you had payed for the privilege of using and which ones you hadn't, which would be highly inconvenient. Though perhaps this issue could be solved by forming road unions for the roads of several different companies, and you just pay an annual fee to the union and get to drive on all the roads of all the companies who are members of that union.

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Originally Posted by Eldryan

Hence, you can have a communist country that is using capitalism as its economic model. China is a good example as it has allowed for more privatization and moved towards more capitalism. Venezuela on the other hand is an example of a Democracy that leans towards socialism for their economic structure. The decision of what is the right balance between capitalism/socialism depends on the country and it's citizens, hence why we have elections to decide if we think our country is leaning too much to one side or the other.

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The right balance can be determined by which system works better, regardless of what opinion the people hold. If the contest is between Venezuela and China, then China definitely wins, as they have a very real chance of surpassing the U.S. as the world's dominate super power this century. Though China will have to adjust their government to allow their people more freedom, but that's already happening at good pace.

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Originally Posted by Rau

tl;dr 'MURICA

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I miss you Rau. D: -licks-

I see you hold a firm partisan view on this subject, and that's ok. I too used to believe that capitalism was far superiour, until I studied it more and realized that there are some things that are far too important to be left to special interest control. My main point is, there is a place for everything, and you can't use one system over the other exclusively to create the best economy and living standard that can be had. An artist who is painting a realistic portrait, can't stick to one brush, because he requires different bristle sizes and strokes to create the best picture he can.

This will be my last post on this thread so as to let this thread die into the graveyard. No disrespect to the OP, but I don't believe people on a game forum is interested in a topic like this entering their leisure time. However, I will address some of your points, and if you still wish to continue debating I'll be more then happy to take it into private messages.

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I dunno. Personally, I think competition can drive companies to develop more products better, faster, and more efficiently than they otherwise could. I believe progress is sped up by competition, not slowed down by it.

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Competition doesn't always speed up progress, especially when the main resource for that progress is scientific knowledge. Scientists being able to share ideas and data allows them to not have to recreate experiments or tests that have already been conducted by someone in another lab, thus allowing more time for them to work on something to add on to the data, rather then recreating the same data. It's much like how a reading group in Universities and Colleges work, where group of students work together and each read a section of a book, then get back together and share the main points of their section with each other. It allows them to get the data from the book faster then if they all had to read the book seperately.

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The government makes you pay for the roads, too. They just call their payment taxes, rather than tolls.

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I feel you missed the forest for the tree by focusing on this point. You cut off the part where I said, "this isn't a problem in of itself" when referring to the tolls, because I already recognize that the cost of using roads come from either tolls or taxes.

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More roads means less traffic -- that's a good thing. Only about 20% of the Earth's land is populated by human beings, so there's certainly no shortage of real estate; there's plenty of room to expand.

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You're also forgetting the environmental/ecological cost of constructing double the amount of roads. Also, if you are correct and 20% of the land surface is inhabited by humans, we have a lot less living spaces left then you may think. 10% of the land is covered in ice (*1), 33% is a desert(*2), and 40% is used for food production(*3). There are some overlaps since some people do live on either ice, desert, or resides within farmland, but their numbers are relatively small compared to the the rest of the population, thus if we lose prime real estate land to roads, you'll be pushing more people into those less comfortable environment.

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Increase in demand for manual labor would drive prices down, not up, due to the fact that employers would need to stretch their budgets further.

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Maybe I'm missing something, but this line here made no sense to me. How is increase in demand within a labour field drive the cost down?

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Plus that sounds like a large amount of job creation. With all the millions of impoverished and homeless people who are out of work, that sort of large-scale economic production sounds like just the sort of thing we need.

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Indeed, large scale infrastructure work is what government often do in times of recession to stimulate the economy. However, in the paragraph I wrote, I listed the negative effects of over development of roads (or any infrastructure for that matter). One of the biggest problem is an inflation in housing cost and real estate prices. There is a domino effect in the works here since everything in economy have a connection to one another. With housing costs going up, less people will be able to afford to buy a house, and the problem is compounded with less real estate available making it even harder to own your own land. Home equity is a strong factor in consumer confidence and spending, as people tend to draw from their home equity to make purchases of goods and services. With less home owners, there will be less demands for goods, resulting in lower business activity, so even though demand for building roads have gone up, other businesses will be winding down due to lower demand for their products. As you can see, there's a lot of give and take in economy and it is an ever changing dynamic, which is why there's no consensus amongst economists on what is the best solution.

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If the contest is between Venezuela and China, then China definitely wins, as they have a very real chance of surpassing the U.S. as the world's dominate super power this century.

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Comparing economies of different nations is like comparing apples and oranges, since there is a vast difference in geography, population, natural resources, and even culture. But for the sake of argument lets make the comparison, if the contest is about consumer purchasing power and profit potential for corporations, then yes, China is the clear winner. If you're comparing standards of living for the average citizen on the other hand, Venezuela runs ahead in that category. Making money is great and all, but if you're not improving the standard of living for your citizens, then what's the point? Contrary to popular belief, the richer the country is, doesn't always equate to improved standards of living. The US for example is the richest country in the world, but the standard of living for the majority of it's citizens is below that of Canada. A lot of political, social and ecological factor must be considered to create the best living environment for people, and a purely capitalistic or socialist economy can't create that ideal environment. Again it's all about finding the best balance, and it's not always about making more money.

*Links to geographical data cited
*1 - http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/...ith-ice-288137
*2 - http://www.universetoday.com/65639/w...face-is-desert
*3 - http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...crops_map.html

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Originally Posted by Eldryan

This will be my last post on this thread so as to let this thread die into the graveyard.

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And this shall be mine.

And no, I don't think 1.0 was related to socialism, Especially since this was only a temporary measure removed early on, and it seems a pretty simplistic(or jingoistic) view of socialism. And as far as being prevented from mining 2000-3000+ items after a certain point day after day? Well, I'd rather not return to disturbing headlines of people that play for too long.

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Originally Posted by Eldryan

Indeed, large scale infrastructure work is what government often do in times of recession to stimulate the economy. However, in the paragraph I wrote, I listed the negative effects of over development of roads (or any infrastructure for that matter).

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Government doesn't have the ability to directly stimulate the economy effectivly. Only private companies can do that. Whenever government tries, they tend to make things worse, not better. The only thing government can do is cultivate an environment that is as friendly as possible to the development of private companies.

Also, I don't believe that there is any such thing as over-development. The more development you have, the better.

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Originally Posted by Eldryan

If you're comparing standards of living for the average citizen on the other hand, Venezuela runs ahead [of China] in that category.

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How do you measure standard of living?

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Originally Posted by Eldryan

The US for example is the richest country in the world, but the standard of living for the majority of it's citizens is below that of Canada.

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Again, how do you measure standard of living?

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Originally Posted by Kallera

Especially since this was only a temporary measure removed early on, and it seems a pretty simplistic(or jingoistic) view of socialism.

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It was never intended to be temporary. The Fatigue system was originally designed and intended to be a permanent part of FFXIV. It was just scrapped very quickly due to no one liking it.

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Originally Posted by Kallera

And as far as being prevented from mining 2000-3000+ items after a certain point day after day? Well, I'd rather not return to disturbing headlines of people that play for too long.

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You're not suggesting we bring the Fatigue system back, are you?