Gentlesophonts:
Steve Bonneville [email removed] writes:
> Hans Ranke [email removed] writes:
>
> >It sound like the *kieritsu* is merely capitalism without anti-trust laws.
>
> No, not really. The Japanese *do* have anti-trust laws -- the US
> helped write some of them in the late forties. They're run by that
> boogeyman of the US, MITI (Ministry of Int'l Trade and Industry),
> I believe.
This is a key difference between the feudal technocracy model and
contemporary free-market economies. In a feudal technocracy there is
no governmental entity outside of the economic system to intervene with
anti-trust or any other sort of regulation.
Thanks again for all this material about the *keiretsu* and *zaibatsu*,
Steve. It's been very helpful *and* interesting.
(BTW, I have a great picture of me in front of the MITI building in Tokyo.
There's a `homeless' man sitting in the background right in front of
the headquarters of this US `boogeyman'.)
> Members of a keiretsu
> aren't tied together in the way the zaibatsu were. The part that makes
> either of these look "feudal" to Westerners has a lot to do with, among
> other things, the associated lifetime employment traditional in Japan.
What makes it look feudal to me is the `inter-relatedness' of the
various corporate entities - something that is quite uncommon here in
the US. There is clearly a system of agreements (explicit or implicit)
that define the roles and responsibilities of all participants. It's
*quite* different from the autocractic corporate model.
I never meant to suggest that the *keiretsu* (I'd never heard of the
*zaibatsu* before you mentioned it, Steve) fit my idea of a feudal
technocracy perfectly. Rather, the *keiretsu* merely served to
introduce the economic and industrial aspects of a feudal technocracy.
I felt this was needed since many of us are already familiar with the
aristocractic aspects of medieval feudalism but have little or no
familiarity with the industrial and economic basis of a technocracy.
> "Feudal Technocracy. Government by specific individuals for those
> who agree to be ruled. Relationships are based on the performance
> of technical activities which are mutually beneficial."
I refuse to live with this miserably vague definition. The first
sentence describes *any* representative democracy. If we look at
`technical' in the second sentence as meaning `any specialized branch of
knowledge' then this entire definition might be used to describe a
popular theocracy in which clerical specialists perform various
religious rites for the `governed'. Thus, this canonical definition
is virtually useless.
> This
> whole thing is a lot like the freemen --> vassal process worked in
> the middle ages.
The relationships between freedmen and serfs and the nobles in medieval
society was not feudalism at all. Feudalism concerned the relationship
between members of the aristocracy, the ruling class. Hence, a feudal
technocracy gives a system in which the relationships between the
members of the ruling class (the technocracy) are governed by feudal
principles.
> "The Chartered Zarathustra Company" which is
> in charge of the resources and colonization of Zarathustra.
Ah, still another Piper fan. James, might it be possible to get another
list started: PTML - Piper Traveller Mailing List? :-)
> That's the beauty of Traveller government types; they are flexible.
One person's beauty is another's bugbear! :-)
> A lot of the codes in the UWP are like this. The idea of the UWP is
> to have a system in which you can generate a sample world in ten
> minutes and then be able to take it and develop it massively in many
> different possible directions. Without a system in the game like
> the UWP, we'd never be able to develop entire sectors in a way that
> was at all realistic in a reasonable amount of time.
Good point. I hadn't thought of it this way. I still think the government
codes could be improved though by focusing on the nature of authority (who
rules) and the source of authority (who consents).
Good work here.
Happy Travelling,
David Johnson
Houston, Texas, USA