tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4025264318423694875.post3982547315473767302..comments2024-02-05T10:41:31.777-05:00Comments on I Saw Lightning Fall: Tired Tropes: The Fascist Corporation (Borderlands 2)Loren Eatonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12488412683340389286noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4025264318423694875.post-74761642777493910012014-02-26T14:24:01.129-05:002014-02-26T14:24:01.129-05:00Postscript about Bioshock: Infinite. It seems a bi...Postscript about Bioshock: Infinite. It seems a bit smarter than what I played of Bioshock, especially once you get to the ending and have to re-think your understanding of a lot of the game. More to the point, unlike Bioshock....it has colors in it. And characters (including a beautifully dynamic and complex central relationship). In a way it's less about American misuse of military and religious power (though you get a lot of amusing--and sometimes disturbingly accurate--caricatures) and more about the nature of guilt, violence, justice, and morality. It brings the central theme of Bioshock (powerful people and structures tend to corrupt humanity) home in a much more intimate way than the original.<br /><br />And, as I said above, it's colorful. You don't get eyestrain from staring at green-black shadows all the time.<br /><br />(Also, it has religious people praying devoutly to Ben Franklin, which would be the funniest joke I could imagine if it weren't so close to the truth of American Civil Religion.)Chestertonian Ramblerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01550643992523840950noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4025264318423694875.post-68715060615684333952014-02-26T09:38:20.224-05:002014-02-26T09:38:20.224-05:00That should be "pure" as the driven snow...That should be "pure" as the driven snow. Ah, fatigue, and the typos it causes.Loren Eatonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12488412683340389286noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4025264318423694875.post-65806899199045865802014-02-26T09:34:53.272-05:002014-02-26T09:34:53.272-05:00Todd,
I think you're right in general. Of cou...Todd,<br /><br />I think you're right in general. Of course, there's a great difference between Adam Smith and your run-of-the-mill anarcho-capitalist. Most serious economic thinkers agree that markets of any stripe require at least property rights and courts in which to enforce them.<br /><br />Also, the prime goal of this post wasn't to defend free markets <i>per se</i>, even though I like them. Neither was it to defend corporations or to say they're white as the driven snow. (They aren't.) The point is that the SF trope of the fascist corporation is silly from an economic point of view and needs to be reevaluated.Loren Eatonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12488412683340389286noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4025264318423694875.post-51647109915188096882014-02-26T08:53:24.065-05:002014-02-26T08:53:24.065-05:00Well, free markets are a goal that is never reache...Well, free markets are a goal that is never reached, precisely because pure capitalism is/would be too dynamic (for good and ill). It's rather similar to pure socialism, which would be too fair...and both would require that governments would be gone and would require (to last indefinitely) both responsibility and utmost ethical behavior, so neither ever exist more than very temporarily.<br /><br />Meanwhile, Lorin, however much you might desire it otherwise, the evils visited upon our world society by various corporations not behaving ethically are collectively vast, when they are in cahoots with government actively or able to control or cow or work around governments, which of course have as bad a record. The ultimate point of a corporation almost invariably becomes, as you almost get at, to survive, and keep its most powerful persons in positions of power, at whatever cost that isn't actually fatal to the decision-makers...welcome to humanity.Todd Masonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01815516018079824802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4025264318423694875.post-88837377120620441132014-02-25T16:43:09.172-05:002014-02-25T16:43:09.172-05:00Two responses!
1) Absolutely, at least as far as ...Two responses!<br /><br />1) Absolutely, at least as far as I can tell. It seems a pretty silly series. <i>But</i> it's far from the only SF title to indulge in the convention. It just happens to be the one that caught my eye.<br /><br />2) Agreed. In fact, one of the reasons that monopolies occur is because of government intervention in business. Big business will often <i>seek</i> government regulation in order to decrease competition. Your libertarian friends are right about that: Big business is typically against free markets because free markets put them at risk. This highlights the point that it's ridiculous to see so many SF stories with the giant, all-powerful, all-controlling corporation as the antagonist -- at least without being buttressed by some government power.<br /><br />Post Script: Yeah, <i>Bioshock</i> is interesting. Very well-written. I've only played the first one, though. And it was unique enough that it wouldn't fit in a Tired Tropes series!<br /><br />Post Post Script: No one should view this as me being pro-corporation (whatever that means). Corporations are made of people, and people are full of dark desires. I do like free markets, though, precisely because they blunt the impact of those desires.Loren Eatonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12488412683340389286noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4025264318423694875.post-72389445501245265942014-02-25T16:32:35.290-05:002014-02-25T16:32:35.290-05:00I suppose there are two points to be made here.
1...I suppose there are two points to be made here.<br /><br />1) Isn't the whole point of the Borderlands series to create over-the-top caricatures of tropes, stripped of any reasonable justification? I mean, the one female playable character is the "Siren" class, for crying out loud. (This isn't necessarily a criticism, just an observation about the game's genre.)<br /><br />2) Still, I think that a lot of the history of worst government excesses involves them working hand-in-glove with corporations. It's really hard to imagine the Opium Wars if the East India Trading Company didn't exist, for instance. (And of course, the fact that the EITC no longer exists doesn't erase the results of their exertion of power.) Moreover, in our current world, corporations are increasingly able to dictate terms to governments, because they are increasingly international. If America closes corporate tax loopholes in order to even the playing field between the big boys and the up-and-comers, the big boys can just relocate to a nation with a lower tax rate. Most of my libertarian friends are themselves increasingly skeptical of big business's ability to use campaign contributions to control governments--a complaint that G.K. Chesterton made a century ago, but one in which businesses are seen as quite capable of making a profit through "cheating," rather than simply playing fair, being honest, and providing the best product at the best price.<br /><br />Of course, if you really want to talk about video game treatments of libertarian economic theories, you'd have to look at the Bioshock series--which includes Bioshock Infinite, where authoritarian religious patriotism takes the place of Randian neo-Nietzchian ideology as the role of the prime villain.Chestertonian Ramblerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01550643992523840950noreply@blogger.com