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I am pretty bummed about the change in the Corregidor background

Discussion in 'Nomads' started by prophet of doom, Oct 13, 2020.

  1. AmPm

    AmPm Well-Known Member

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    Except that the RPG sourcebooks point out that that is not true. Prospectors, contractors for other companies, Bounty Hunters, work crews, etc. all exist, they go out, find jobs, get paid as individuals working for other factions, then IF they go home they have to pay "tithes" for air, etc. Individuals can own property, just not room on the ship because it's very limited (not sure why, since these are space construction experts, can only assume so the system can perpetuate, meaning it serves someone's goals). 60% of the population doesn't live on the ship.

    We clearly have private ownership of property, private ownership, private incomes. Hell, there are teams that go out ahead of time to negotiate contracts and then sell those contracts to crews that arrive with the ship.

    We know there are socioeconomic strata, "Regardless of their upbringing, social class, or economic status," and "Thus, most Corregidorans make their living as independent contractors." from the RPG supplement.

    Here's an excerpt that is, while obviously biased, based in the facts in the Corregidor chapter,
     
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  2. prophet of doom

    prophet of doom Well-Known Member

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    That report is from "FamilyFirst" a clear dig at an ultraconservative party. I won t take that as conclusive element.

    What you describe above does not mean that Corregidor is necessarily capitalist. I think it just explains that work contracts are found on a more individual basis. That makes sense given that there are millions of people on Corregidor. Infinity background tries to show a realistic, complicated world, void of the simplicity of most fantasy and scifi entertainment.

    Pay for Breath is just a brutal way of saying that everybody has to pull their weight.

    Yes, there are taxes and money on Corregidor. It is not an anarchist paradise. But it can still be governed by anarchist ideas, maybe a little bit akin to how pirate crews ruled themselves in the carribean.
     
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  3. Lampyridae

    Lampyridae Well-Known Member

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    AmPm does say that it is obviously biased.

    I wouldn't try to understand something written about South American / African politics written through a Spanish viewpoint. "Conservative" and "family" have very different connotations in Africa, for example. There is no clear left-right axis as understood in American politics.

    Some fluff: Nomads, and especially Corregidor, get their theme from the Pacific theater of WWII. Corregidor (aka "The Rock") is the name of an island that was the site of a major battle. Hellcats are Wildcats are WWII planes. Intruders were carrier-based bombers, Bandits are another aviation term. Sombra probably refers to the Sombra Negra, a vigilante death squad in El Salvador.
     
  4. prophet of doom

    prophet of doom Well-Known Member

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    cool, I have never thought about this. I don't really see the connection between the pacific theater of WWII and this Nomad faction, but I think you must be on the right path with that idea.

    What I am saying is that there are plenty of conservative groups in Europe and USA that use the term Family First. It is something of a catchphrase. The way the text is written seems to be from such a conservative point of view. I'd never take anything seriously coming from such a view and read that shit just for entertainment, just like Trump's antics.

    Family First is a PanO think according as mentioned in the fluff part we are talking about.

    So no, I don't think Corregidor is the way it is based on that fluff piece.
    But I learned that the economy is more complex than the simple assumption that Corregidor is an anarchist community that makes joint decisions and sells their labor for the sake of survival with strong union ties.

    So AMPM has definitely broadened my horizon here.
     
  5. kanluwen

    kanluwen Well-Known Member

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    Or it's best to think of Corregidor as a rental property. You can move in and bring your stuff with you but any meaningful changes have to be done a specific way.

    Building more room on the ship will have an effect on everyone else. It would mean fundamentally altering life support, hydroponics, etc etc etc. Wouldn't be shocked as well if it's to prevent things from getting too much like Earth either, with a fundamental class divide going even more than it does.
     
  6. Solar

    Solar Well-Known Member

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    I would say that personally I don't really take the RPG sourcebooks as a good source of actual canon, but fair
     
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  7. toadchild

    toadchild Premeasure

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    I just read the bit in the core book mentioned in the first post. It does state that the workers are being put in a compromising position, but it also sounded like the EVA workers were getting unnecessarily rowdy within Corregidor itself. That led to the Alguacils being called in, which led to a violent confrontation. I’m not saying any of that was particularly justified, but I think the progression is clear and doesn’t inherently violate previous definitions of how Corregidor operates.
     
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  8. prophet of doom

    prophet of doom Well-Known Member

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    I just got the RPG source book on Nomads and I am a bit disappointed that it does not describe the corregidor political and economic system at all. The section on economy tells us what kind of jobs people have.

    Therefore, I can't declare beyond doubt that it is meant to be anarcho-syndicalist. What you quote there does not clearly contradict this idea but you are right that it can be seen as indicators to Corregidor being capitalist after all. Mikhail Bakunin wrote that an anarchist society may still require a police, and the idea about anarchy that could exist in Corregidor is definitely on the realistic, rather than utopian side of fiction.

    Individual contractors, etc with their own equipment could exist in an anarcho-syndicalist system as well. If we want to be precise, I have to admit, Corregidor can't be socialist because it mentions social classes. Socialism at least requires a classless society. But then egalitarianism is mentioned a lot when it comes to Corregidor. The text is unclear.

    I just wonder what, from the storywriting point of view the idea behind Corregidor is then if it does not offfer an alternative system of society. Why is there so much slogans being used to describe the Nomads as anarchists, anti-establishment, solidartity, freedom-loving, unionism, etc. if one ship stands for extreme artistic freedom, the second stands for criminal bankers and the third one stands for ... an exploited workforce?

    Ok, even the sourcebook does not solve this issue. We have to leave it at that, we don't know whether Corregidor is socialist or capitalist. (again, the private property that some indivdiual contractors may own does not necessarily mean that Corregidor cannot be socialist imho.Crime and money also exist in socialist, and could even exist in anarchist societies.)

    However, what I do not see at all is any reference to Corregidor being a dictatorship. Where on earth does that idea come from? There is nothing about this in the background at all. There is notion of egalitarianism, solidarity, unions, votes, etc. Nothing about a dictatorship.
     
    #108 prophet of doom, Oct 19, 2020
    Last edited: Oct 19, 2020
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  9. Armihaul

    Armihaul Well-Known Member

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    because a lot of people haven read the lore, and some of the people that did, are somewhat narrow minded to understand that this is way too complex to sumarize it in one or two words
     
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  10. Kiwi Steve

    Kiwi Steve Well-Known Member

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    I admit I haven't read much lore beyond the N2 and N3 rulebooks, but I never got an anarchist view of Nomads (outside of parts of bakunin). I've always understood corregidor as just societies forgotten outcasts fighting for survival. That was the reason I made all mine have red hair.
     
  11. Savnock

    Savnock Nerfherder

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    This. Also, a lot of people aren't able to understand that most advanced societies have a balance of capitalist and socialist economies, as well as authoritarian vs. liberal control systems, all at once.

    You're not operating under one or the other system, you inhabit hybrids using some ideas here and there, and sometimes espousing certain ideas in propaganda while doing something quite different.

    As an American I found many of these topics particularly difficult to understand at first because most of us are pretty poorly-educated concerning socioeconomics and political economy. While corporate lobbying is the most powerful influence in our government, our education system doesn't even mention it in the minimal civics classes that we get. It takes either university education or some pretty rare self-education for us to learn that other systems are possible, and generally much more effective than our own. And even then, the opacity of the US corporate governance and lobbying laws make it virtually impossible for us to understand who actually runs our country.

    It's also -hilarious- to see Scandinavians and other northern Europeans on here ranting about how socialism doesn't work. You can have my student and medical debt from living in the US before I got out, friends, I'd be very happy to trade them to you for whatever gripes you have with your home country. I moved to a socialist nation (France) as soon as I could, and am quite happy here while friends die of untreated cancer and have no jobs in my home country. The Masters degree and healthcare I got here in France would have put me a further $100,000 in debt -minimum-.
     
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  12. prophet of doom

    prophet of doom Well-Known Member

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    Sorry, I don t mean to be rude, but you are proving your point. France is certainly not a socialist country, it is capitalist. Just because they have some social democrat elements in the system does not make a country socialist.
     
  13. prophet of doom

    prophet of doom Well-Known Member

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    You are funny. What does having red hair have to do with being outcasts fighting for survival?
     
  14. prophet of doom

    prophet of doom Well-Known Member

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    The more I think about it, the more I have to admit that AmPm is probably right. There is not enough to suggest Corregidor is an anarcho-syndicalist society. They have social classes, some form of private property, crime gangs and they work with the Tunguska mafia bankers. Its just not a dictatorship, but if its capitalist it may as well be, no big difference.

    The red and black is just for fashion and all this anti establishment talk is just bla bla. I give up.
     
  15. Savnock

    Savnock Nerfherder

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    It's not rude, you're debating well. However, you are wrong. France is one of the world's most prominent states to keep a controlling interest in our major corporations. France is a fascinating example of socialist ownership and goals with some freedom for liberal corporate management.

    And we're talking big companies: Airbus, Air France, Renault, oil and gas companies, telecoms, defense companies, rail: The French state owns a good portion of most of them. In Airbus for example the French state is the largest holder with 11%, then the German government with 10.9%, Spain with 4.1%, all through government-controlled holding societies.

    It's a really interesting socialist-corporate hybrid, and it works fairly well. They basically semi-privatised to get more capital and connections, but kept the largest single group of shares in the firms they "privatised," and retain regulatory control over most of them as well. It's socialism with more flexibility in/to a market, because at the end of the day the main owners are still governments.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Government-owned_companies_of_France

    This is not well-known outside France because most national and corporate interests with a global voice promote complete privatisation aggressively as a path to short-term profit, and they really hate it when governments regulate firms or markets at all, let alone retain ownership of major firms while also regulating the market.

    Also it's really complicated, so it's not as flashy or easy as labeling a country with one extreme or the other.

    Anyways, to tie that back into Infinity: When describing a real or fictional economy or political system, it's better to describe how it is and is not any one quality (socialist/capitalist, authoritarian/liberal, etc.), than to say it meets some threshold and is then "officially" one sort of thing or the other.
     
    #115 Savnock, Oct 19, 2020
    Last edited: Oct 19, 2020
  16. Cervantes3773

    Cervantes3773 Rogue AI
    Warcor

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    It was years ago, but I went through the origins of Nomad trooper names, and the following are named after planes/jets:
    Hellcat, Tomcat, Wildcat, Prowler, Intruder, and Zero

    Aviation adjacent: Zonds, Lunokhod/Tsyklon/Vostok Sputniks, Salyut, Spektr (space station module).

    Probably unrelated, but "Spectre" was the original name of the F-110A, later the F-4 Phantom II.
     
  17. Nuada Airgetlam

    Nuada Airgetlam Nazis sod off ///

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    Also, AC-130 Spectre gunship. Howitzer says hi.
    [​IMG]
     
  18. Cervantes3773

    Cervantes3773 Rogue AI
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    Hi, Howitzer! I'm dad! ;)
     
  19. Brother Smoke

    Brother Smoke Bureau Trimurti Representative

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    From the outset Bakunin was always the one with the whole anarchist bent. Tunguska was always a commission of corporatized crime families and I always took Corregidor's "pay to breathe" to be quite literal.

    I believe people believe the ship to be a dictatorship because wherever you look you clearly see the hand of Sarmiento, and the lore makes the guy out to be like any number of Latin American autocrats who dispose of the people as they see fit. In his time I have little doubt the ship could have been described as a dictatorship. Is is still one? no way of knowing without further details but if there is one thing that "El Generalissimo" types like to do is create dynasties.
     
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  20. AmPm

    AmPm Well-Known Member

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    This has been a really good discussion about Corregidor and I much appreciate everyone keeping things civil.

    The reason I suggest it as a dictatorship, even if it's relatively benign, is due to the level of control the Warden seems to possess, as well as their complete military authority within the ship as well as controlling all life sustaining resources, add in the Black Hand as an internal and external intelligence agency, and with the general themes of the fluff, it seems to me that the Warden is basically a warlord based on the legacy of the Mexican General. A mostly benevolent dictatorship perhaps. I could be wrong.

    I found this one on their economy kind of interesting, I feel it pretty much makes the point on the economic end.

     
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