Beatrix

I don't value the "loss" of freedom to have consensual sex with family members. Most laws have some sort of limitation on your freedom - laws outlawing making loud noises late at night are there to protect people while limiting the freedom of people to make noises at night. The offset is that your "right" to quiet ends at daytime. In this instance, both of the parties are losing "rights" in exchange for a protection of other rights, which is the cost vs benefit I was talking about - the benefit of outlawing loud noises at night is to protect the people who sleep and ought not be disturbed. In a similar fashion, outlawing incest has an insignificant "loss" of rights, but the benefit serves to protect the family unit. Adultery is a bad example, as adultery is a product of a bad family unit in the first place. Not to mention, adultery isn't a harmful substance to family units given that adultery doesn't require a family in the first place. It could, potentially, in some instances, damage the family unit temporarely or cause a divorce, but that's about it. I think you missed my point, though, I'll reiterate it; the laws don't have to be consistent in their logical application, the lines drawn between "legal" and "illegal" is drawn arbitrarily, in a similar fashion where we decided that 18 years old is able to consent whereas a 17 year old with 364 days of age is unable to. You could quiet easily conjure up all the valid reasons that an 18 year old is an adult regarding his biological and mental development, but these could also apply when you're a day younger, or two days younger, or three and then argue that the principals behind consent are inconsistent & arbitrary, thus making those who support them hypocrites. The point being, we decided on a number that has no consistent logical reasoning which is why you see different nations have different definitions of adulthood - some ranging from 15 to 21. Imagine the possibility of having a family unit destroyed as a point system where more points -> greater chance. As long as I can argue that incest has an inherently greater chance of causing harm, I can argue for the illegality of of incest and the legality of adultery. The expand on that, when considering the loss of freedom, you ought to consider who these laws affect most and how often. Laws that mainly affect small groups cannot always be defended, as long as they positively affect the majority. When Britain voted to exit, it was against the needs and desires of 48% of the population, but the majority in this case have decided in favor of it. The smaller the group is, the less important it becomes and that's completely alright. To add that on top, adultery is actually a result of a healthy behaviour in an unhealthy enviornment whereas incest is an unhealthy behaviour caused by an unhealthy enviornment. So unless you have an example where something is practically comparable to incest that is legal, I fail to see where there is inconsistency.

1900->2000 is a tad over 3 months, not less than 2 months as I derped and thought about different numbers. Assuming a decent* build without taking projects into account and current market prices - with Open Markets policy, on an aged city. City 1(1900 infra): City 2: *Decent build is subject to change through market prices. I found that often not building anything was more profitable than building factories as they increased pollution that costed more than their income.

Did NPO not lose over 1b worth of potential income already?

This can be argued in both ways. If you're not even willing to ban incest, what else won't you ban? Would you allow underage incest? To that, your answer might be that "Well, no. underage incest is harmful and causes massive psychological damage in most, but not all cases." The argument you provided proceeds - "If we follow the idea of banning things based on the harm that [most instances of] a behavior, then that opens the door for other legislation" and thus we should keep underage incest legal. Let me give you another example: The age of consent is 18, but we do not view, in society, someone that is 18 having sex with someone 17 and 364 days old as statutory rape. If so, what about 363 days? 362 days? 361? And so on. The argument against criminalizing incest follows the same logical trajectory. The line drawn is arbitrary and inconsistent, but it serves as a general guideline for a healthy society. Incest is arguably the same, the line is drawn when there is a real possibility of irreparably damaging family units by introducing, as the article states " a notoriously incendiary dynamic - sexual tension - into the mix". When introducing legislation, there is a cost vs benefit analysis which we ought to do. What do we get by banning and delegitimizing incest? Firstly, we get rid of the risks above, obviously. Secondly, we prevent the misapplications of incest - duress, child abuse and statutory rape. Third, we define laws based on moral guidelines, in order to reduce suffering through minimizing loss of freedom. What do we lose by banning it? The main concern is actually one of "slippery slopes" & the role of government- the slippery slope being that through banning incest we might find ourselves banning other similar behaviours that ought not be banned, and the government one being that its role in societal health has changed. You don't really lose any freedom, because as we've established, incest isn't inherently different from normal sex, it's not a sexual orientation. Banning homosexuality, for example, bans you from indulging in your sexual orientation, whereas you don't quite lose anything from not practicing incest. The things we're "losing" aren't practical to individual health, and they deal with greater issues beyond the scope of incest. They're arguments that don't stem from the moral or immoral behaviour but through an ideological world view. Which is why I don't accept the argument that this opens to "other legislation" - as other legislation usually involves losing essential freedoms, whereas providing minimal benefits if any. (For comparison, banning homosexuality doesn't add any benefits, and removes essential freedom) Does incest need to be banned in practice? I don't know. All I know is that incest is a very harmful behaviour even when practiced between consenting adults, and banning its practice is mostly beneficial. There's a lot of leeway here as well, since "banning incest" doesn't mean /r/incest becomes illegal, or that fantasies become illegal, or that even incest practiced in discrepency should be illegal - but the support of incestious relationships through public funding, not recognizing marriages, etc. It could also mean banning everything, which is why legislation is a problematic issue in this case, whereas the amorality is quite clear.

I will give you that consent is arguably maintained within consenting adults(most of the time), however, this is especially destructive for family relations. Here is a good article that specifically deals with this issue and I tend to agree with it;(quoting most of the article) http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_nature/2010/12/incest_is_cancer.2.html

I feel as though the quality of life is at an all time high, and is only going to improve in the future given we won't sparkle international/wordwide wars , nuclear fallouts or face dire climate change reprecussions. Even if it "could be better", which is true, rejecting "globalism" as it is defined here is nonsense.

The thing about incest, as opposed to homosexuality, is that one characterizes a behaviour and the latter characterizes a sexual orientation. There is nothing inherently different about having sex with your cousin than with a stranger aside from the larger shared genes, but there is a difference in having sex with the orientation you're attracted to. While both homosexuality & incest could be harmless and a "choice" comparing the two is a false equivalence . The point being is that you can't grow into or out of homosexuality through choice as it is an in built function of your genetic codes, while incest is mainly something you could be grown into or out of. This leads to a fuzzy, and arguable, problem of consent. When you say "adults and adult children" you are implying that the 'adult children' are making a choice through their own volition, which is something impossible to judge. Parents' parenting skills, culture and behaviour(etc) are the most influential part of determining the behaviour of their children, even as adults, which means for incest to happen, there needs to be a behavioural reinforcement of sexual practice between children & their parents or a culture built around it. Once such a reinforcement is established, consent is impossible to maintain as children are heavily influenced into adulthood. Incest isn't an inherently immoral action, but the circumstances surrounding and causing it are, infact, abusive and thus immoral. The problem of legality is a different one and it involves many different aspects aside from the moral qualms about incest, for example - should government be involved? Is outlawing it going to be effective? How do we determine case by case if there has been abuse prior to adulthood? etc. I guess this argument is less relevant to brothers/sisters even if they are grown through abusive parenthood.

1900->2000 breaks even in less than 2 months unless you're building a warchest, in which case it'll probably take 4.5 months.

God damn globalist propaganda right there.

Ehm, incest between parents and their children should be illegal given the fact that children cannot consent, and are heavily influenced by their upbringing, which may lead to them accepting incest in legal age. Brothers/sisters? I guess that's fine as long as they're both in legal age. It's none of our business.

So, you basically want an isolationist, N.Korea style economy? Could you name one instance where this has worked? I think the global trade market is actually the main reason the first world looks like the first world.

Well, they're losing 100m+ theoretical income every day, so from a pure economic perspective, yeah, they're losing more.

Assuming NPO members will build to 800 infra on average in a few days of peace, it's really cheap infra. total_cities = 820 total_infra = 656000 average_infra = 800 city_income = 123,794 total_income = city_income * total_cities => 820*123,794 = 101511080 or ~101.5m tax_rate = 50%, income_tax = ~50m It costs 477,067 to upgrade from 800->900 50,000,000/477,067 = ~104, which means you can get 104 cities to 900 infra on day 1. In about a week you could get all your members to 900 infra, in which your tax will be about ~60m instead of ~50m. Repeat the process for one more week, and you can get 1k infra within a total of two weeks. /me shrug It's 4am and I haven't slept in 30hrs, so maybe I missed something, but it should take about a month or so for NPO to completely rebuild itself(yes, up to 1500 infra) if they do it right.

Well, not every war has to domino down all the alliances and protectorates of the game. Maybe it's time to have a few small scale wars without it erupting into a world war.

I actually don't disagree with any of your points. I just think that NPO is already at a cost vs benefit loss from this, and any day longer just makes it worse. Sure, maybe you can argue that at this point, after refusing to pay reps, it's not worth it anymore but I'm not quite sure that's the case once you take into account the potential income their over 800 cities could've had a day after the war. Why is not paying reps a respectable thing, though, if it hurts your alliance as a whole more than otherwise? I'm also fairly certain that the Syndisphere will get bored with the whole situation and give up on reps or settle for a small amount. It's all a matter of convenience. NPO is out of range for everyone with an army, so they can't keep punishing them. Their average infra is ~550 last I checked and they have no members above 1k TS, so even if you do hit their infra, it's not really beneficial. As evident by the ingame stat tracker, NPO is doing more damage than they receive for that reason alone. How long can I keep kicking? As long as it's worth the kick.

Perhaps because you were directly involved in the planning of this war, which was flawed and caused your loss? Not sure how this is relevant to the point. I asked what there is to respect about NPO when almost a third of it is inactive, its leadership has been responsible to a losing war and now it doesn't even take responsibility to the detriment of their players. Your response is that these people are inactive anyways - not helping you. I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but I have no reason to respect you, and I don't expect you to 'eat whatever you throw at them'. Perhaps you're unaware, but I'm not in a position of negotiating with you, and I certainly don't want to 'get' anything from you nor do I care what happens to NPO at this point.

So what is the definition of this "globalism" you're rejecting?

What is there to respect about you anyways? Failed leadership in a failed war failing to take responsibility. You started a massive war against opponents who weren't built at all(tS) and opponents who were half built(BK) and somehow managed to get outplayed so hard. Now you refuse to surrender to the detriment of your own players - 31 of which haven't been active in the last 4 days.(Last time it was 29). I'm genuinely curious, I'm not trying to talk shit - what is there to respect about NPO?

Mmm. I haven't made the calculations, but I bet that if I truly wanted I could get NPO to about ~1k infra per city in all cities in 2-3 weeks tops. Isn't that what Prefontaine and you have both been doing, though?

Did anyone of you consider the possibility that you might be wrong? I'm just curious, do you ever self reflect?

I disagree, GK. I was a member of UPN at the time this happened and I quite distinctively remember Saru and Hans saying they don't trust tS - we had multiple forum and IRC discussions where they've shown a consistent attitude against signing with tS. I'm not sure how long the NPO treaty was discussed as I was a new member in UPN back then and had no valued opinion/word on it. Actually, I remember that Saru asked what I thought and I didn't quite know what to say. I can only speak for myself here, but back then I remember thinking that signing with NPO was the last nail in the coffin - meaning that we would surely be struck first and quickly by the opposing sphere. I don't think Hans (or Saru) were wrong, or incorrect in their actions, but I definitely think that signing NPO and moving away from the tS ODP was very heavily influenced by them.

You're an alliance that has come from another browser game, actively recruits & has become one of the biggest alliances in the game very quickly and you're telling me you have "activity issues" that significantly supersede any issues other alliances have? I don't think so. Your alliance has 1 member above 1k TS, 1/4th of your alliance hasn't been active in days, you've led your alliance through slaughter in a failed war and now you refuse to surrender to the detriment of your own members. It's no wonder tS keeps winning with incompetent people like yourself at the helm.

I was a bit curious to see how NPOs & UPNs activity levels compared to BK & VE, and Rose. Since VE and Rose left the war, and BK is comparable to NPO in sheer numbers; NPO: 29/113 members have not been active in the last 4 days or above 25% of your alliance. BK: 11/126 members have not been active in te last 4 days or about 8.7%. UPN: 13/64 members have not been active in the last 4 days or a tad over 20% VE: 11/72 members have not been active in the last 4 days or a tad over 15% Rose: 6/60 members have not been active in the last 4 days or exactly 10%. I'm not sure what your activity levels were pre-war, but I'm almost certain that you're going to kill your alliance this way. Alliances that have "your" activity level out of the war are more active, and if you ask me, these numbers are going to just get worse.

I'm telling you that NPO will suffer most from the decision of your government & your first response is "So?" ?

NPOs members will suffer the most, being unable to rebuild and having no income.