This reminds me of an observation I've made about political and economic systems in general: everything just kinda wants to become feudalism. You have to wrangle the all the movers and shakers if you want to prevent that from happening. Of course I've seen all the memes about this or that system being the natural state of humanity. Maybe it's actually feudalism. Not that it makes feudalism the best system, mind you, as we've certainly made better ones, and good things often require more work than bad or okay things.
Makes a lot sense. In times of turmoil and uncertainty, power decentralizes and local warlords and landed nobility naturally get more power, and even with a central government, without a highly effective system of communications and control, which is hard to maintain, delegating power to local leaders is desirable on both ends.
Yeah I’ve come to start calling this the “Carcinization of Political Systems.” Just like how in nature, biological creatures want to evolve into crabs, all political models want to evolve into Feudalism.
What you just described in the blended Central Planning/Feudalism economy, is exactly what BOS did in Fallout Tactics, and Fallout 3. In both cases, they were forced to do so out of necessity, that being a simple manpower shortage.
Exactly; the USA literally built China, they gave them everything! Money, & the tech, & the resources to mass produce & out preform all American competitors. The USA grew weaker & China grew stronger eventually leading to China wishing to destroy the USA & become the new global powerhouse... all bc of greed...
These videos have been great for me since I've been making a Fallout mod revolving around economics and industrialized nations forming in the wasteland.
@@d.o.a7552 What does post-nuclear trade look like? Twilight 2000 was a very anti-gonzo WW III RPG. It mostly focused on small-unit tactics and exploring a region as NATO soldiers but parts of it touched economy. Shipping breaks down. It became increasingly hard to move a local surplus. Most of the world of 1995 was not on the frontline, but everyone felt how Maersk stopped showing up. Large piles of stuff are still around. The war is five years old, the world is not picked clean. Same with facilities, who might be there but lack materials, power or technical staff.
That is certainly the weakness we're seeing in our system now. Investment bankers setting social policy via who gets the loans; loans needed to be competitive in a market that is regulated in such a way as to not interfere with large profits but just enough that it's hard to start up new competition without a big bag of money.
@@EmonWBKstudios It's really not though; none of the major corporations which exist today would exist solely on capitalistic merit. They all get government handouts, government contracts, and other benefits which are more to do with politics than economics.
@@niyanlan8928 There is also no motivation to do anything. In a socialist economy everyone does just enough to not get noticed. It can sort of work at the village level with small groups of people but once you go past that it falls apart.
The idea of a Soviet Industrial system naturally transforming into a Feudal system is really funny to me, and probably the most Fallout-thing that could happen. And I could swear I felt a tremor in the earth from the buried Commies twisting and turning in their graves all at once at the sheer hint of it. I spent all my Fallout energy on BoS Kapital volume 2. So for now, I can't think of anything else to add. I'll save my energy for volume 4. Great video. I don't know what's best for the algorithm, but a 20 minute video is really nice.
That kinda happend in real life. After the massive failures of "War Communism" bolshevik russia was transform the economy into state-capitalism in the early 1920s. Then in the late 20th century Marxist-Leninist countries devolved from state-capitalism into capitalism.
That kinda happend in real life. After the massive failures of "War Communism" bolshevik russia was transform the economy into state-capitalism in the early 1920s. Then in the late 20th century Marxist-Leninist countries devolved from state-capitalism into capitalism.
@@CynBartek The Minuteman in fo4 already employ central planning. Substitue the player for a state/party and let them conquer land instead of asking nicely and you have soviet spawned fedalism.
I think one of the things that will majorly shape the socio-economics of whatever area you begin to civilize is the area itself. The available resources, the environmental challenges, and of course the security situation. Pristine areas such as Zion national park with its pristine water sources and available lands but no industry would develop differently than say the Pitt with its pollution, raider gangs, but lots of abandoned industrial capacity.
As a fallout super fan i'm loving the BoS Kapital series! I've been chatting to a friend about the obvious NCR/California vs BOS/East Coast disparity but it only recently occurred to me the really massive lore question is what happens to Vault 76? It's the only other control Vault (that we know of) besides Vaults 8 and 13 (which are part of NCR) so i suppose the question of is there a another Vault City in Appalachia or did the denizens of Vault 76 just go outside and nuke themselves. Love your Channel!!
One thing in Fallout that seriously aids central planning is that there's sapient (and non-sapient) supercomputers that are actually capable of calculating all this stuff, instead of just doing it by brain. They still generally require human interpretation/actors though, so are still vulnerable to idiots.
They're also prone to deciding that spiking the water supply with genetically engineered genocide viruses is a good idea. So, basically a slightly more intelligent version of your average Stalinist.
@@mojrimibnharb4584 I think any society could continue growth with literal sentient supercomputer AI, unless youre the fucking khmer rogue or something
@@mojrimibnharb4584the ogas system right? as far as command economies go that seems to be the best way to do it but even then I’m skeptical of it saving the ussr from collapse
@@accountname9506 One of my friends argued that Chinese central planners operated on reported numbers that slanted towards what local party heads thought they wanted to hear. Asimov had a fun short story about computerized wartime planning. The space war is done and the dude who worked with the super computer is being interviewed. And he lists how the fog of war, unreliable reports and incomplete information made a mess.
I think the best way to deal with the border/expansion problem would be to broker deals with surrounding communities, expiring small portions of productive capacity in exchange for building their own collective and exchanging labor with the host state. You can provide protection in exchange for defense, if you land the raiders on some good land with tractors and seed, they'll likely want to defend their Territory from the less settled regions. You help them help you and aim them toward, building their own collective and exchange with the host
If I remember correctly, this is how the Iroquois Confederacy operated for the most part. There were numerous smaller tribes that paid tribute for protection, either through trade preference or military cooperation.
Ive quite enjoyed this series. very informative and gets the mind thinking. One thing that's strike me is the presence of some of the more wonderful technologies in Fallout that may make these easier or more difficult such as the Sierra Madre vending machines given some much needed flexibility to the end goods. Allowing you to transmute one good into another almost instantly.
2:15 The merchant class is easily duped throughout history because for them everything is for sale. Even their long term interests. Another example of them being duped was in Feudal Japan when Tokugawa used them to build the infrastructure for a new stratified class system in the new centralized and peaceful japan. Only to find themselves at the bottom of a stagnant and stratified class system with no mobility compared to the Sengoku civil war period. One that previously rewarded competition and entrepreneurship. But they didn't see the walls rising around them when the money was pouring in. Walls they built.
@@feralhistorian Obviously, the og game is of "questionable canonicity" though in the other games, it's left just vague enough...of course, saying "that game is not canon" and calling it a day wouldn't be much fun! Still, I have been binge-watching all your videos lately, and I'm confident I will continue to enjoy all your content in the future, whatever you're topic!
Fun fact the reasons why the Koch brothers were such hardline libertarians is their father was one of those American advisors to the USSR in the 1930's. He described as a nightmare.
If you compare the sheer wealth of the US with the number of people either under or barely above water, I'm not sure the US is a good model for a society either. The basic question is basically a twist on the golden rule: What type of society would you live prefer to live in if there was a good chance you were born poor, sickly or with below average intelligence?
False. They started pushing libertarianism AFTER losing in court to Oklahoma tribes over oil rights. They saw it as a mechanism to undercut legal protections that stopped them from making more money.
Something marx fellated himself over while failing to describe basic reality and crowned himself as a genius for writing essentially a compendium of hollow rhetoric and circular logic*
Great video as always. I was rewatching some of your earlier work on the Draka and since you're the only channel that approaches it with some seriousness, I was wondering if you're planning a return to it at some point.
Definitely. There's a Draka video that's been sitting here for the last 6 months, mostly waiting for more illustrations. And of course Drakon introduces some ideas worth exploring.
Passes the 17 min mark *squints* Oh hey, you're kinda reinventing succession war late Renaissance Battletech style neofeudalism. "we just invented steam punk feudalism" Close enough.
@@feralhistorian this is true but I do think the way you present really interesting philosophical, social and economic content is less niche than you think. I’ve seen many producers with about the same subscribers as you but a lot more views and frankly less satisfying videos. Anyhow - love the content, just hope that you love what you’re doing and it’s viable for you to keep going. Best wishes from the UK
Nah, bigger numbers of viewers means bigger numbers of commies in the comment section And I LIKE having a comment section that actually functions properly
Interesting point during the end of video, during the beginning stages of the Russian revolution, there were independent farmers who were feeding the country. Before Stalin decided on collectivization.
Wonder what your take on a Left-wing Anarchist approach would be. Minuteman playthroughs usually have that feel to them, if you go really far into it. You're essentially building up a series of interconnected Communes that share resources to survive and thrive. The shops you can set up muddy that a bit, especially when you have no idea where they source their items and caps from.
My first playthrough was with the Minutemen and a decentralized sort of mutualist approach was my head-canon for it. I was always a little wary of them being so dependent on the General as a unifying element, but that's mostly a game mechanic thing I suppose.
@@feralhistorian Yeah, that and it's just Bethesda writing, you really have to make your own head-canon for it to make sense. Otherwise you're in a world where on the west side of the country, 2 large societies have formed and are now duking it out in another war, while at the same time people on the east coast are living like the world ended 20 years ago.
Your hypothetical Fallout: Willamette apparently has been written about in a form by SM Stirling in his Emberverse series. This dude is quickly expanding my eternal reading list.
I'd love to hear your take on the Pitt area of fallout and the choice between a slave system that is trying to build an industrial on the back of slavery vs a slave revolution lead by an ex raider that failed to take over the boss so is now promising the slaves freedom if they follow him.
Agree that central planning has limits, but if we go by the Chinese model the BOS will eventually start private companies but owned by the BOS to fix the market demand issues and make them more efficient like weapon companies. Those companies will eventually compete with each other.
Until they forget that the companies aren't magic money pinatas or decide that turning them back into arms of the state is necessary to secure an official's personal position.
I think the meiji restoration is a better example of a succesful, rapid, industrialisation model. Similar rapid industrial growth from existing knowledge with heavy centralisation. But much better outcomes for the people, and much more dynamic post industrial-boom.
I was going to say something about out-of-control militarization, but then I remembered the Winter War and saw something of a wash. Neither society was what you'd call healthy without (more) outside interference.
6:54 - Wouldn't the BoS use Fusion Core powered electric boilers for their trains? And surely a construction squad with retrofitted Power Armor and a squad of Mr.Handy's would make fabricating/recycling and laying down new railroad lines a relatively trivial endeavor?
I'm sure power armor would be used in the construction to some extent, but there's still a lot of work to be done and only so many suits. And only so many fusion cores to power them. Honestly I hadn't thought about fusion core trains. it could be a solution short term, but the catch would be building the trains reliant on a power source you can't replicate. If it were me, I'd want to keep the cores reserved for military uses. Even if we take the game mechanic of recharging them at face value, the cores themselves are still finite.
@@Victini0510 Just because Ferrari's exist doesn't automatically mean I own one. I don't think the larger BoS have any Excavator PA in their possession, so they would have to design & manufacture Construction PA in house.
@@feralhistorian If you can deploy & maintain a standing airforce you could probably spare a Fusion Core or two for a rainway project that will also more than likely be use for future military ops. I'd be far more efficient that using Vertibirds to transport key cargo in the long term. If the auto-manufacturing ICBM silos in Appalachia are cannon, then in theory the BoS practically have an infinite quantity of Nuclear Material to fabricate new Fusion Cores to replace the ones they've been using for 2 centuries using Contraptions Manufactories. The NCR had a working industrial base manufacturing everything in Fallout 2.
Great series, love the channel! I would love to hear more about your thoughts on the viability of a post-apocalyptic feudal system. The basic idea of skilled warriors securing arable land for peasants to work in exchange for the surplus crops and loyalty seems like it could crop up on its own. In the vanilla Fo4 settlement system, this is essentially what the player is doing when they clear out a raider camp or mirelurk infestation to gain control of a settlement. This is even more true if you complete the game as the minutemen; you muster a peasant army to overwhelm technologically superior foes (and you have a castle!). The BoS has a chance at even more complex feudalism, the knights fulfill their elite warrior role, the scribes act as a sort of church of technology that could have a lot of sway over the culture of the settlements, and the common people work the land. There are of course many questions as to power structure, how the brotherhood distinguishes its own members and if it allows new members, how the people will react, etc.
Honestly, feudalism is the model most likely in any post-apocalypse scenario. That the world of Fallout has to get there via religious-communism-something is an artifact of the game lore.
6:40 Comrade Elder Scribe, I would suggest that it would be a little bit easier to repair already existing railroads and establish new branch lines where we need them. This way we can save steel for the more important things, such as armaments production.
I 'd suggest we begin with a survey of existing lines. If they can be made serviceable and they go where we need them, let's make use of what's there. And if, as is sometimes the case, it's less complicated to simply build something new than to try to repair the damage, we'll have an inventory of what materials can be stripped.
@@feralhistorian I very much agree, Comrade Elder. My suggestion is that we concentrate our major construction efforts during the agricultural off-season. While going through the archives I managed to stumble across a book detailing the story of a fantastical group of people called the Egyptians. Apparently this ancient people managed to construct fantastical structures using the local population during the times between harvest and the first plantings. Such a system will allow us to build our communication and transportation networks without affecting our food supplies.
Plenty of independent economic systems exist on the west coast, the gun runners have a fully functional modern firearms operation, the crimson caravan as previously mentioned have their own logistical system. Even the faults are occasionally pockets of pre war civilization, tech and skill. I think these videos focus heavily on an independant and isolations brotherhood governing body which in previous games was discussed as the main reason for their downfall in the west coast
Considering the brotherhood initially emerged from an american military structure i dont really think saying "its a top down command economy" makes it "communist" given that a key tenent of communism is worker control over the means of production. It feels like they are missing that element of it
One aspect, agriculture surplus is heavily dependent on the type of crop and the surrounding geography and climate. American crops and cultivars are some of the most productive, sweet potatoes grow on marginal land that is not suitable for grain crops. Corn or maize is extremely productive per hectare, provided there is enough water. Regular potatoes are great for climates with frosty or cold seasonal winters, and are highly productive and require little care. Before the potato plight, the Irish rural population was able to get enough calories by growing their own potatoes that they didn't need to buy grains. And as such could pay their exploitative landlords. By choosing the right set of crops a pre-industrial can have enough food surplus, the problem is what kind of conditions enable that surplus and how to control the pest population. There are ways to do this, although there is a hard limit without fertilizers and pesticides and herbicides. Unless there's a clan of expert agriculture engineers and biologists that can create something like the milpa at large scale.
Here's a thought. Wouldn't it make sense to get more agricultural machinery out there, to increase the efficiency of those dirt farmers? The more crops they can produce with less effort, the further they get from starving, and possibly become more willing to give up their surplus to the Brotherhood. Not that this would be the only necessary thing, but it's just a thought.
The true value of labor is in the fact that the goods produced by that labor wouldn't exist without the laborer, but the inverse isn't necessarily true of the capitalist. The things that really matter like food and arms and medicine are necessities that societies and individuals need in order to exist and so would still be produced in capitalism's absence. Fifty different brands of the same toothpaste in holographic boxes meant to trick consumers out of yet more of their labor, however... Capitalism has labor as taxation too, just with extra steps and a lot more waste. Speaking of fancy mud pies, have you *seen* the price of pottery on Antiques Roadshow lately!?
I'm convinved that greed is an undiagnosed mental illness. Imagine an ape hoarding most of the bananas, more than he can eat, while the rest of the "tribe" is starving. Greed. Greed never changes.
Idk, man... expecting a _clearly_ greedy af ape to give out _more_ bananas with _less_ pressure _to_ give them out is _a little_ too much of a hol' up for a healthy mind, imo...
I know this man is smart because I have no idea what to make of half the words! Something about BoS protecting people while the people feed the BoS, and somewhere along the way. . . trade routes?
I was worried this might get political, the series I mean. I'm walking away with what was essentially a gourmet of World Building. What was devised here was just... Outstanding. I can tell some bias here or there, but if approached form a position of just watching and hearing your ideas pour out, this was something that could spawn its own universe.
IDK if my previous comment got moved to spam or what, but I'm a subscriber and have watched and appreciated many of your videos. This particular one mentions the technology transfer of US knowhow to the USSR--which may have well helped them win WWII--and I have done research and a podcast discussing the specific way Albert Kahn and his firm participated in this. I linked to the RUclips video version for anyone who was interested. Maybe that's what triggered the deletion. Anyhow, let me know if you're interested and I can either send over or post the link. It's very interesting history.
By which I mean for you to check it out first [edit: search for "albert kahn cold star", title is The Unknown Impact of Albert Kahn On Industrial Architecture - The Cold Star Project]. YT isn't letting me post replies which is fascinating since I'm not a spammer.
I'm definitely interested in checking out that podcast. I know the broad strokes of Kahn's work with the Soviets but always up for a deeper dive. I'm a Detroit native, so I got some of it through osmosis even before doing any real research. As for why RUclips blocked the comment, it's a mystery to me. There's nothing in "held for review" so who knows what the 'tube is doing . . .
@@feralhistorian YT won't let me link a YT link on its own platform... sheesh. If you search for "albert kahn cold star" you should find it. Title is The Unknown Impact of Albert Kahn On Industrial Architecture - The Cold Star Project. Thanks! (I get excited...this topic doesn't come up often!)
OMG my comments keep getting deleted...with the link, without it... The Unknown Impact of Albert Kahn On Industrial Architecture - The Cold Star Project is the title. If you search for "albert kahn cold star" it should come up.
As always your careful neutrality is so refreshing. you expose, not endorse. and yet so gently reveal meaningful ideas , like "we can change that World by engaging with it instead of trying to force it to conform to a plan because ultimately the core problem with centrally planned economies isn't the conceit of being able to predict future demand of everything or the hubris of believing that the entire material sphere of human interaction can be managed but that a planned economy treats human lives as a commodity to be indexed assigned and expended and human beings don't want to live that way this is not only the central fault of soviet style communism, if is also the trickle down of modern Industrial capitalist Feudalism. like the politburo, mega moneyy power is not interested in what happens down stream.. i know it would be too much of a dare to ask you this one thing,, a thing i really want to know do you think there IS a more optimal way for human civilization with uniform progress? what might that look like thanks for all your clear thinking
I think there is a way, and I think distributing industry and political authority instead of concentrating it is a big part of it. As for what it looks like, I give that a great deal of thought . . . One day, I hope to be able to map it out as a suggestion for others to work with. Today is not that day.
@@feralhistorian that you choose distributed producti0on and authority makes me feel,,, vindicated. my own education and research have pointed to distribution foir a long time. smaller distributed autonomous systems are smaller, thus more adaptive to local conditions. The larger a system? the more likely is that is own usages and rules will sabotage this. (I better finish that Paper) now, if there were some way to "simulate" this
@@LouAlvis And distributed systems are more resilient to shock. They're less "efficient" in terms of resource allocation when everything works perfectly, but by having more slack in the system they're much less prone to catastrophic failure. That seems like an obvious choice to me.
Marx says that value is subjective himself as he says its defined by use value, exchange value and personal value. (value being derived from labor comes from Lasselle) As a Marxist i disagree with the labor theory of value because of this distinction he made himself as the surplus value is only generated through the purchase of labor which can produce more value than used to compensate the worker, profit isn't theft its just exploitative because of external conditions of capitalism. I really liked this video good stuff.
Ya no one who's read Marx's believes the amount of labor is what created value. Marx is refering to medium to long term economic stability where labor and capital are commodified to the point that wage prices, capital expenses, and average rates of profit determine cost in markets of surplus production. Not wild swings in price caused by unpredicted shortage and an inability to deploy labour and capital to to increase production in the short term.
I'm just recently starting to work on some Elder Scrolls stuff and the Thalmor are high on the list for a starting point. There's a lot to cover there.
Have you read, Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle? They seem to think recovery was a challenge but not as much as one would think. Which of the two gets it more right, or wrong? Being two optimistic or pessimistic. Are they both somewhat off?
It's been a long time since I read Lucifer's Hammer. I recall thinking they were a bit too optimistic about getting that nuclear power plant up and running. In either case though I think you could rebuild a robust industrial society within two generations, but at a lower level of technology and much less centralized than what we currently have. Something less efficient, but with more slack.
@@feralhistorian As memory serves, they didn't _get_ the nuclear station running; they _kept_ it running. With the understanding that it was a temporary solution that they could use to build a lower-tech replacement, since they only had the lifespan of the fuel rods before it was useless to them. Mind, the protagonists' group also had manuals and textbooks to explain how to build modernity, and included a fair number of people who could have made a decent go of it without the books....
could dig up a few old turbine engines and get them running off grain and corn based Bio-fuels. That'd make for a great engine for a train to run off of. Call it the Turbo Liner.
Relatively independent local managers and councils was a feature of some communist economies I think. A possibility is a hybrid, like parts of the economy are run on capitalist principles while some are managed. Or an informal grey market barter economy or home-run cottage industry. Trade with other political entities would not be a free world market but a BoS manager appointed to trade state resources. No advanced stuff of course but possibly lumber or foodstuffs or simple manufactured goods.
Hold on ? Why would the BOS make use of steam trains when they can build fusion cores, they are going to use Fusion power trains which is plenty on them around.
I don't think this scenario ends up with a Labour Theory of Value guiding anything but rather an Inca or ancient Middle East style "labour as taxation" style of economic central planning. An economy with some kind of accumulable token of value would only be worth implementing if there was some kind of surplus and value placed on trade goods. The Brotherhood would more likely just function like an army unit gradually growing until it got to the size of a whole WW2 army group, with imposed rationing and "you'll do what we want when we want" order on whatever wastelanders they agree to assimilate. At least if it's a version of the Brotherhood not written for convenience by Bethesda or Amazon writers who just need either generic good guys or a "complex" faction that's actually just stupid and evil if you think critically about their behavior.
If your entire understanding of either cops or soldiers is 'guys with guns' they somehow end up _real_ easy to conflate. It's not helped by paramilitary groups like SWAT, although you'd think that the existence of military police would be something of a clue.
There are nations who have that in Europe. French gendarmerie, Soviet/Russian OMON and internal troops, carabinieri etc. And cops with a military grade are not an army either.
"nobody is going to argue against that except these guys.." and everyone acknowledging the fact that Marx doesn't factor in all the work going into an enterprise.
11:57 "we have to predict the future" you know in Fallout that is very possible with the use of Psykers, sure it's not really reliable for gameplay reasons but Psykers do exist in Fallout and we've at least met two that have futuresight
brotherhood would mass conscript wastelanders and give them food and water rations along with protection from the wildlife and raiders the 5 year plan will be completed on time
I see no reason why we can't maintain an artisan economy alongside the planned one. Men are better suited for hard labor anyway. Just centrally plan the male labor, and allow female labor to stay artisanal as it most likely already is. They can fill in the gaps in things like clothes, tending the sick, trade, etc. You can pay the workers you involuntarily drafted so their wives can buy materials to make products with, and trade them between each other. All we need to do is control the goods that are nessisary for industry and war. There's no reason to curtail trade of consumer goods. Granted this won't produce new materials out of thin air, so calories still need to be produced at above starvation. But having an insulated jacket helps to prevent you needing to burn as many in the first place. And I'm sure that some amount of food stuffs can be imported from outside. There must be tribes that value food less than bullets. And we'd be able to make an awful lot of bullets.
I hope the fallout show can reach this kind of politcal depth with things but its probably just going to do brotherhood is militarism, thats bad. And maybe capitlaism bad and leave it at that.
The build up of industrial capacity by the Soviet Union is not a matter of planned choice. I mean technically - it is - but practically the reason why this didn't happen in the tsarist russian empire was due to the disenfranchisement of the lower classes. Buying power (money, wealth) was concentrated at the top so heavily that the rich could simply import all the western luxury products they wanted while retaining a slave (serf) underclass. Why would a country like that have an automotive industry? The market would be just a couple of thousands of rich landowners. Roads and road-infrastructure only work at scale (needs demand and taxes) and russia is a large place. Even assuming that there was demand for cars, you'd need all sorts of different industries before you can start manufacturing the finished product. A rich landowner would hardly find it worthwhile to set something like that up, but a state which is willing to raise taxes? - absolutely. This isn't even socialism, marxism or really even central planning. It's wealth redistribution and geopolitical constraints and threats creating demand for industry. The soviets mistook their limited success as victory of socialist central planning thinking and that's why it consistently kept having shortages of various things. It redistributed wealth but didn't bother let it grow and create natural markets. It effectively leveraged a hostile geopolitical position into millitary strength but never bothered to change their geopolitical position into something sustainable and humane. P.S. If this seems like a new idea, that's mostly because as an american you probably have no idea how poor europeans are and have always been. We're talking cost of living perhaps ~2x cheaper, but wages ~4-5x lower. Imagine what your disposable income would look like in that situation and what kind of economic growth would exist.
All good points. What I find most interesting about the Soviet auto industry is that it was only secondarily about producing vehicles. It was also about shifting populations from rural areas into factory cities and creating a proletarian class. When you get on the fringes of the policy planning, like Aleksei Gastev applying scientific management to sociology, the peculiarities of the regime really start to become visible across the entire range of policy.
Nice conceit for a story. Copying successful human behavior and successful models we can see operating/succeeding is exactly how the species out-compete instinct-driven critters.
If you gonna make a series about a Communist BOS, AT LEAST read Marxist theory, instead of repeating anti-communist propaganda, like the part of Labor Theory of Labor. Marx talk about "Socially needed time", the time needed to make a commodity, and talks about Use Valour, so isn't some "arbitrary value". The idea of this series sound good, but if you only repeat anti-communist propaganda, this is gonna be shit
I dont thinkbthe brotherhood has any interest in making consumer goods only things that will further their military goals very much like the soviet union
@@carlborg8023 The difference is huge, Fascists don't threaten the Capitalist system, in fact the state often works much closer with Capitalists and privatizes as many formerly state functions as possible. Also Fascism usually relies on an outgroup to blame all of society's ills on. That said the BOS doesn't perfectly fit that mold, but they're definitely human supremacists. Socialists and Communists on the other hand, want to create a system that works for the workers, not for the Capitalists. Also there is no outgroup to be oppressed (unless of course you count the Capitalists losing their factories, plantations, and wage slaves as oppression). Now you can argue about the implementation and outcomes, but the goals are wildly different.
@@SuperGman117 Yeah, generally they're supported by Capitalists as a reaction to Leftist movements. For this reason you see a lot of state functions privatized under Fascist regimes. For this reason you might hear some Marxists call Fascism "Capitalism in decay," because when shit goes bad, people either go hard left or hard right.
Maybe it’s because Communists in reality don’t share, and are really just spiteful envious little mutants who will take what someone has worked for at gun point for the good of the “collective.”
@@carlborg8023 The BoS in Fallout 3 were divided between Lyons and Casdin. Lyons BoS wasn't giving technology out they were paying people with it. It's capitism. Then after the events of Fallout 3 under Elder Mason gave the order to confiscate any and all advanced technology, so they later retrieved it all.
well at least someone is trying to make a profit off this amazon fiasco. Aren't you writing a book? Quit doing this shit and write me some literature so I can give you actual dollars.
Book 1 is out there while I try to get a real publisher lined up for the 2nd one. www.amazon.com/Nintis-Gate-Matthias-Pierce-ebook/dp/B0CYXH9BWD/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2XPV3LJROW84W&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Lv_7Nf69HevHFs4INXuneA.qMQ49-6-M-kK390gj9DyULEw030YgWAtYc6Hz4ZSJW0&dib_tag=se&keywords=Ninti%27s+Gate&qid=1716655196&sprefix=ninti%27s+gate%2Caps%2C106&sr=8-1 or overpriced paperback at www.barnesandnoble.com/w/nintis-gate-matthias-pierce/1145141248?ean=2940185774984
This man gave us the Fallout Brotherhood story and the history of 1920s Soviet Union at the same time!
"The grass really is greener over shallow graves." What a masterclass of a line
Steampunk feudalism the best combinations of words I've ever heard
This reminds me of an observation I've made about political and economic systems in general: everything just kinda wants to become feudalism. You have to wrangle the all the movers and shakers if you want to prevent that from happening. Of course I've seen all the memes about this or that system being the natural state of humanity. Maybe it's actually feudalism. Not that it makes feudalism the best system, mind you, as we've certainly made better ones, and good things often require more work than bad or okay things.
"Everything wants to become feudalism" is perhaps the most concise broad take on socio-economic systems I've seen.
Reject modernity. Return to crab.
Makes a lot sense. In times of turmoil and uncertainty, power decentralizes and local warlords and landed nobility naturally get more power, and even with a central government, without a highly effective system of communications and control, which is hard to maintain, delegating power to local leaders is desirable on both ends.
Yeah I’ve come to start calling this the “Carcinization of Political Systems.”
Just like how in nature, biological creatures want to evolve into crabs, all political models want to evolve into Feudalism.
What you just described in the blended Central Planning/Feudalism economy, is exactly what BOS did in Fallout Tactics, and Fallout 3. In both cases, they were forced to do so out of necessity, that being a simple manpower shortage.
"But we have the power armor and the big guns, so what are they gonna do about it?"
Meet an old man in a vault suit.
"Greed makes you stupid." Quote for the win.
Of course, he is right lack of integrity is worse than lack of intelligence.
Exactly; the USA literally built China, they gave them everything! Money, & the tech, & the resources to mass produce & out preform all American competitors. The USA grew weaker & China grew stronger eventually leading to China wishing to destroy the USA & become the new global powerhouse... all bc of greed...
Exactly, the greed of the USA, not only created its biggest enemy CHINA, but also simultaneously destroyed its own economy all bc of greed....
It also makes the idea of a Brotherhood-instituted currency backed in purified water in a recovering (albeit glacially) biosphere that much stupider.
These videos have been great for me since I've been making a Fallout mod revolving around economics and industrialized nations forming in the wasteland.
@@d.o.a7552 What does post-nuclear trade look like?
Twilight 2000 was a very anti-gonzo WW III RPG. It mostly focused on small-unit tactics and exploring a region as NATO soldiers but parts of it touched economy.
Shipping breaks down. It became increasingly hard to move a local surplus. Most of the world of 1995 was not on the frontline, but everyone felt how Maersk stopped showing up.
Large piles of stuff are still around. The war is five years old, the world is not picked clean. Same with facilities, who might be there but lack materials, power or technical staff.
I can’t remember who said it, but it’s a good quote: “Capitalism is good, but it’s biggest problem are the Capitalists.”
That is certainly the weakness we're seeing in our system now.
Investment bankers setting social policy via who gets the loans; loans needed to be competitive in a market that is regulated in such a way as to not interfere with large profits but just enough that it's hard to start up new competition without a big bag of money.
That's stupid because that's not true. Those aren't bugs in the system, that's the system working exactly as intended and it's WHY it's bad.
@@EmonWBKstudios
It's really not though; none of the major corporations which exist today would exist solely on capitalistic merit. They all get government handouts, government contracts, and other benefits which are more to do with politics than economics.
But the problem of socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.
@@niyanlan8928 There is also no motivation to do anything. In a socialist economy everyone does just enough to not get noticed. It can sort of work at the village level with small groups of people but once you go past that it falls apart.
The idea of a Soviet Industrial system naturally transforming into a Feudal system is really funny to me, and probably the most Fallout-thing that could happen.
And I could swear I felt a tremor in the earth from the buried Commies twisting and turning in their graves all at once at the sheer hint of it.
I spent all my Fallout energy on BoS Kapital volume 2.
So for now, I can't think of anything else to add. I'll save my energy for volume 4.
Great video. I don't know what's best for the algorithm, but a 20 minute video is really nice.
Soviet-spawned feudalism brought a devious grin to my face. Definitely prime-Fallout.
That kinda happend in real life. After the massive failures of "War Communism" bolshevik russia was transform the economy into state-capitalism in the early 1920s. Then in the late 20th century Marxist-Leninist countries devolved from state-capitalism into capitalism.
That kinda happend in real life. After the massive failures of "War Communism" bolshevik russia was transform the economy into state-capitalism in the early 1920s. Then in the late 20th century Marxist-Leninist countries devolved from state-capitalism into capitalism.
I have no idea what Soviet-spawned feudalism would look like...and I'm glad.
@@CynBartek The Minuteman in fo4 already employ central planning. Substitue the player for a state/party and let them conquer land instead of asking nicely and you have soviet spawned fedalism.
I think one of the things that will majorly shape the socio-economics of whatever area you begin to civilize is the area itself.
The available resources, the environmental challenges, and of course the security situation.
Pristine areas such as Zion national park with its pristine water sources and available lands but no industry would develop differently than say the Pitt with its pollution, raider gangs, but lots of abandoned industrial capacity.
As a fallout super fan i'm loving the BoS Kapital series! I've been chatting to a friend about the obvious NCR/California vs BOS/East Coast disparity but it only recently occurred to me the really massive lore question is what happens to Vault 76? It's the only other control Vault (that we know of) besides Vaults 8 and 13 (which are part of NCR) so i suppose the question of is there a another Vault City in Appalachia or did the denizens of Vault 76 just go outside and nuke themselves.
Love your Channel!!
One thing in Fallout that seriously aids central planning is that there's sapient (and non-sapient) supercomputers that are actually capable of calculating all this stuff, instead of just doing it by brain. They still generally require human interpretation/actors though, so are still vulnerable to idiots.
They're also prone to deciding that spiking the water supply with genetically engineered genocide viruses is a good idea. So, basically a slightly more intelligent version of your average Stalinist.
This has been argued about as the missing piece that would have kept the USSR on the growth curve after 1950/60.
@@mojrimibnharb4584 I think any society could continue growth with literal sentient supercomputer AI, unless youre the fucking khmer rogue or something
@@mojrimibnharb4584the ogas system right? as far as command economies go that seems to be the best way to do it but even then I’m skeptical of it saving the ussr from collapse
@@accountname9506 One of my friends argued that Chinese central planners operated on reported numbers that slanted towards what local party heads thought they wanted to hear.
Asimov had a fun short story about computerized wartime planning. The space war is done and the dude who worked with the super computer is being interviewed. And he lists how the fog of war, unreliable reports and incomplete information made a mess.
I think the best way to deal with the border/expansion problem would be to broker deals with surrounding communities, expiring small portions of productive capacity in exchange for building their own collective and exchanging labor with the host state. You can provide protection in exchange for defense, if you land the raiders on some good land with tractors and seed, they'll likely want to defend their Territory from the less settled regions. You help them help you and aim them toward, building their own collective and exchange with the host
This is the same logic settled societies used with nomads and raiders such as the Vikings.
If I remember correctly, this is how the Iroquois Confederacy operated for the most part. There were numerous smaller tribes that paid tribute for protection, either through trade preference or military cooperation.
Ive quite enjoyed this series. very informative and gets the mind thinking.
One thing that's strike me is the presence of some of the more wonderful technologies in Fallout that may make these easier or more difficult such as the Sierra Madre vending machines given some much needed flexibility to the end goods. Allowing you to transmute one good into another almost instantly.
2:15 The merchant class is easily duped throughout history because for them everything is for sale. Even their long term interests. Another example of them being duped was in Feudal Japan when Tokugawa used them to build the infrastructure for a new stratified class system in the new centralized and peaceful japan. Only to find themselves at the bottom of a stagnant and stratified class system with no mobility compared to the Sengoku civil war period. One that previously rewarded competition and entrepreneurship. But they didn't see the walls rising around them when the money was pouring in. Walls they built.
Lmao, I did not expect to see you in this Comment section!
dangit man! I so wish you could give an analysis of the Midwest brotherhood of fallout tactics! All your videos are awesome!
There's an idea I have to look in to . . .
@@feralhistorian Obviously, the og game is of "questionable canonicity" though in the other games, it's left just vague enough...of course, saying "that game is not canon" and calling it a day wouldn't be much fun!
Still, I have been binge-watching all your videos lately, and I'm confident I will continue to enjoy all your content in the future, whatever you're topic!
Fun fact the reasons why the Koch brothers were such hardline libertarians is their father was one of those American advisors to the USSR in the 1930's. He described as a nightmare.
If you compare the sheer wealth of the US with the number of people either under or barely above water, I'm not sure the US is a good model for a society either.
The basic question is basically a twist on the golden rule:
What type of society would you live prefer to live in if there was a good chance you were born poor, sickly or with below average intelligence?
False. They started pushing libertarianism AFTER losing in court to Oklahoma tribes over oil rights. They saw it as a mechanism to undercut legal protections that stopped them from making more money.
@@Emanon... Yeah that's due to other things. Besides social issues with prejudice America was doing insanely well even up into the 90s
They and others like them sound like the sort of libertarians who think a centrally managed company town with them on top is peak freedom.
He also worked with the Nazis. But didn't seem that offended by them.
15:00 unironically the meme where "marx never considered [something marx wrote 500 pages about]"
Where?
@@Helis431 Wage Labour and Capital / Value, Price, and Profit
but the original video is just a misunderstanding of what snlt is
@@fuwe "misunderstanding"
lol; lmao even
@@victorkreig6089 what else would it be gangtan
Something marx fellated himself over while failing to describe basic reality and crowned himself as a genius for writing essentially a compendium of hollow rhetoric and circular logic*
Great video as always. I was rewatching some of your earlier work on the Draka and since you're the only channel that approaches it with some seriousness, I was wondering if you're planning a return to it at some point.
Definitely. There's a Draka video that's been sitting here for the last 6 months, mostly waiting for more illustrations. And of course Drakon introduces some ideas worth exploring.
@@feralhistorian Excellent, looking forward to it!!
Passes the 17 min mark
*squints*
Oh hey, you're kinda reinventing succession war late Renaissance Battletech style neofeudalism.
"we just invented steam punk feudalism"
Close enough.
Halfway through the video and yet another excellent video production! I do wonder though if the titles really help get views.
Possibly, but it is niche content so I wonder if higher views but lower average view duration would actually hurt. The algorithm is a fickle beast.
@@feralhistorian this is true but I do think the way you present really interesting philosophical, social and economic content is less niche than you think. I’ve seen many producers with about the same subscribers as you but a lot more views and frankly less satisfying videos. Anyhow - love the content, just hope that you love what you’re doing and it’s viable for you to keep going. Best wishes from the UK
Dude it's criminal how under-subbed this channel is . I can't stop watching .
Nah, bigger numbers of viewers means bigger numbers of commies in the comment section
And I LIKE having a comment section that actually functions properly
Interesting point during the end of video, during the beginning stages of the Russian revolution, there were independent farmers who were feeding the country. Before Stalin decided on collectivization.
Wonder what your take on a Left-wing Anarchist approach would be. Minuteman playthroughs usually have that feel to them, if you go really far into it. You're essentially building up a series of interconnected Communes that share resources to survive and thrive. The shops you can set up muddy that a bit, especially when you have no idea where they source their items and caps from.
My first playthrough was with the Minutemen and a decentralized sort of mutualist approach was my head-canon for it. I was always a little wary of them being so dependent on the General as a unifying element, but that's mostly a game mechanic thing I suppose.
@@feralhistorian Yeah, that and it's just Bethesda writing, you really have to make your own head-canon for it to make sense. Otherwise you're in a world where on the west side of the country, 2 large societies have formed and are now duking it out in another war, while at the same time people on the east coast are living like the world ended 20 years ago.
The minute man approached can’t work because it is stop dependent on the general and a ‘democratic discussion’ as in arguing on a policy.
Your hypothetical Fallout: Willamette apparently has been written about in a form by SM Stirling in his Emberverse series. This dude is quickly expanding my eternal reading list.
Very good analysis.
I'd love to hear your take on the Pitt area of fallout and the choice between a slave system that is trying to build an industrial on the back of slavery vs a slave revolution lead by an ex raider that failed to take over the boss so is now promising the slaves freedom if they follow him.
Also the leader of the pit is an ex brotherhood knight
That would be interesting. I'm going to have to install Fallout3 again as a refresher.
I think you should do an NCR video next, particularly how it’s set up and what are ways that it can go about to change it
Agree that central planning has limits, but if we go by the Chinese model the BOS will eventually start private companies but owned by the BOS to fix the market demand issues and make them more efficient like weapon companies. Those companies will eventually compete with each other.
Until they forget that the companies aren't magic money pinatas or decide that turning them back into arms of the state is necessary to secure an official's personal position.
I think the meiji restoration is a better example of a succesful, rapid, industrialisation model.
Similar rapid industrial growth from existing knowledge with heavy centralisation. But much better outcomes for the people, and much more dynamic post industrial-boom.
I was going to say something about out-of-control militarization, but then I remembered the Winter War and saw something of a wash. Neither society was what you'd call healthy without (more) outside interference.
6:54 - Wouldn't the BoS use Fusion Core powered electric boilers for their trains? And surely a construction squad with retrofitted Power Armor and a squad of Mr.Handy's would make fabricating/recycling and laying down new railroad lines a relatively trivial endeavor?
There is actual construction and excavation power armor, so it wouldn't even need retrofitting ideally
I'm sure power armor would be used in the construction to some extent, but there's still a lot of work to be done and only so many suits. And only so many fusion cores to power them.
Honestly I hadn't thought about fusion core trains. it could be a solution short term, but the catch would be building the trains reliant on a power source you can't replicate. If it were me, I'd want to keep the cores reserved for military uses. Even if we take the game mechanic of recharging them at face value, the cores themselves are still finite.
@@Victini0510 Just because Ferrari's exist doesn't automatically mean I own one. I don't think the larger BoS have any Excavator PA in their possession, so they would have to design & manufacture Construction PA in house.
@@feralhistorian If you can deploy & maintain a standing airforce you could probably spare a Fusion Core or two for a rainway project that will also more than likely be use for future military ops. I'd be far more efficient that using Vertibirds to transport key cargo in the long term. If the auto-manufacturing ICBM silos in Appalachia are cannon, then in theory the BoS practically have an infinite quantity of Nuclear Material to fabricate new Fusion Cores to replace the ones they've been using for 2 centuries using Contraptions Manufactories. The NCR had a working industrial base manufacturing everything in Fallout 2.
@@maxrandelle5774Back then the BOS is a state within the NCR.
Great series, love the channel! I would love to hear more about your thoughts on the viability of a post-apocalyptic feudal system. The basic idea of skilled warriors securing arable land for peasants to work in exchange for the surplus crops and loyalty seems like it could crop up on its own. In the vanilla Fo4 settlement system, this is essentially what the player is doing when they clear out a raider camp or mirelurk infestation to gain control of a settlement. This is even more true if you complete the game as the minutemen; you muster a peasant army to overwhelm technologically superior foes (and you have a castle!).
The BoS has a chance at even more complex feudalism, the knights fulfill their elite warrior role, the scribes act as a sort of church of technology that could have a lot of sway over the culture of the settlements, and the common people work the land. There are of course many questions as to power structure, how the brotherhood distinguishes its own members and if it allows new members, how the people will react, etc.
Oh, maybe do a path on an Anarcho Syndicalist Brotherhood?
That's an interesting scenario to consider.
I love how your videos make me see real and fake economies in a new way
Honestly, feudalism is the model most likely in any post-apocalypse scenario. That the world of Fallout has to get there via religious-communism-something is an artifact of the game lore.
6:40 Comrade Elder Scribe, I would suggest that it would be a little bit easier to repair already existing railroads and establish new branch lines where we need them. This way we can save steel for the more important things, such as armaments production.
I 'd suggest we begin with a survey of existing lines. If they can be made serviceable and they go where we need them, let's make use of what's there.
And if, as is sometimes the case, it's less complicated to simply build something new than to try to repair the damage, we'll have an inventory of what materials can be stripped.
@@feralhistorian I very much agree, Comrade Elder. My suggestion is that we concentrate our major construction efforts during the agricultural off-season.
While going through the archives I managed to stumble across a book detailing the story of a fantastical group of people called the Egyptians. Apparently this ancient people managed to construct fantastical structures using the local population during the times between harvest and the first plantings. Such a system will allow us to build our communication and transportation networks without affecting our food supplies.
9:08 counter point. The NCR exists and could give out loans??? (Not likely tho)
By 2296 the NCR is gone, they can borrow from the hub or other towns.
Plenty of independent economic systems exist on the west coast, the gun runners have a fully functional modern firearms operation, the crimson caravan as previously mentioned have their own logistical system. Even the faults are occasionally pockets of pre war civilization, tech and skill. I think these videos focus heavily on an independant and isolations brotherhood governing body which in previous games was discussed as the main reason for their downfall in the west coast
Great video, I really enjoy your critques.
Well thought out.
Considering the brotherhood initially emerged from an american military structure i dont really think saying "its a top down command economy" makes it "communist" given that a key tenent of communism is worker control over the means of production. It feels like they are missing that element of it
Maxson still wants to help the wastelands so he will probably follow what this video says they do.
One aspect, agriculture surplus is heavily dependent on the type of crop and the surrounding geography and climate. American crops and cultivars are some of the most productive, sweet potatoes grow on marginal land that is not suitable for grain crops. Corn or maize is extremely productive per hectare, provided there is enough water. Regular potatoes are great for climates with frosty or cold seasonal winters, and are highly productive and require little care. Before the potato plight, the Irish rural population was able to get enough calories by growing their own potatoes that they didn't need to buy grains. And as such could pay their exploitative landlords.
By choosing the right set of crops a pre-industrial can have enough food surplus, the problem is what kind of conditions enable that surplus and how to control the pest population. There are ways to do this, although there is a hard limit without fertilizers and pesticides and herbicides. Unless there's a clan of expert agriculture engineers and biologists that can create something like the milpa at large scale.
Here's a thought. Wouldn't it make sense to get more agricultural machinery out there, to increase the efficiency of those dirt farmers? The more crops they can produce with less effort, the further they get from starving, and possibly become more willing to give up their surplus to the Brotherhood. Not that this would be the only necessary thing, but it's just a thought.
The true value of labor is in the fact that the goods produced by that labor wouldn't exist without the laborer, but the inverse isn't necessarily true of the capitalist. The things that really matter like food and arms and medicine are necessities that societies and individuals need in order to exist and so would still be produced in capitalism's absence. Fifty different brands of the same toothpaste in holographic boxes meant to trick consumers out of yet more of their labor, however...
Capitalism has labor as taxation too, just with extra steps and a lot more waste.
Speaking of fancy mud pies, have you *seen* the price of pottery on Antiques Roadshow lately!?
People only care about the boxes because they can't tell the difference between the toothpastes otherwise.
I'm convinved that greed is an undiagnosed mental illness.
Imagine an ape hoarding most of the bananas, more than he can eat, while the rest of the "tribe" is starving.
Greed. Greed never changes.
Idk, man... expecting a _clearly_ greedy af ape to give out _more_ bananas with _less_ pressure _to_ give them out is _a little_ too much of a hol' up for a healthy mind, imo...
I know this man is smart because I have no idea what to make of half the words! Something about BoS protecting people while the people feed the BoS, and somewhere along the way. . . trade routes?
I was worried this might get political, the series I mean.
I'm walking away with what was essentially a gourmet of World Building. What was devised here was just... Outstanding. I can tell some bias here or there, but if approached form a position of just watching and hearing your ideas pour out, this was something that could spawn its own universe.
IDK if my previous comment got moved to spam or what, but I'm a subscriber and have watched and appreciated many of your videos. This particular one mentions the technology transfer of US knowhow to the USSR--which may have well helped them win WWII--and I have done research and a podcast discussing the specific way Albert Kahn and his firm participated in this. I linked to the RUclips video version for anyone who was interested. Maybe that's what triggered the deletion. Anyhow, let me know if you're interested and I can either send over or post the link. It's very interesting history.
By which I mean for you to check it out first [edit: search for "albert kahn cold star", title is The Unknown Impact of Albert Kahn On Industrial Architecture - The Cold Star Project]. YT isn't letting me post replies which is fascinating since I'm not a spammer.
I'm definitely interested in checking out that podcast. I know the broad strokes of Kahn's work with the Soviets but always up for a deeper dive. I'm a Detroit native, so I got some of it through osmosis even before doing any real research.
As for why RUclips blocked the comment, it's a mystery to me. There's nothing in "held for review" so who knows what the 'tube is doing . . .
@@feralhistorian YT won't let me link a YT link on its own platform... sheesh. If you search for "albert kahn cold star" you should find it. Title is The Unknown Impact of Albert Kahn On Industrial Architecture - The Cold Star Project. Thanks! (I get excited...this topic doesn't come up often!)
OMG my comments keep getting deleted...with the link, without it... The Unknown Impact of Albert Kahn On Industrial Architecture - The Cold Star Project is the title. If you search for "albert kahn cold star" it should come up.
As always your careful neutrality is so refreshing. you expose, not endorse. and yet so gently reveal meaningful ideas , like
"we can change that World by engaging with it instead of trying to force it to conform to a plan because ultimately the core problem with centrally planned economies isn't the conceit of being able to predict future demand of everything or the hubris of believing that the entire material sphere of human interaction can be managed but that a planned economy treats human lives as a commodity to be indexed assigned and expended and human beings don't want to live that way
this is not only the central fault of soviet style communism, if is also the trickle down of modern Industrial capitalist Feudalism.
like the politburo, mega moneyy power is not interested in what happens down stream..
i know it would be too much of a dare to ask you this one thing,, a thing i really want to know
do you think there IS a more optimal way for human civilization with uniform progress?
what might that look like
thanks for all your clear thinking
I think there is a way, and I think distributing industry and political authority instead of concentrating it is a big part of it. As for what it looks like, I give that a great deal of thought . . . One day, I hope to be able to map it out as a suggestion for others to work with. Today is not that day.
@@feralhistorian that you choose distributed producti0on and authority makes me feel,,, vindicated. my own education and research have pointed to distribution foir a long time. smaller distributed autonomous systems are smaller, thus more adaptive to local conditions. The larger a system? the more likely is that is own usages and rules will sabotage this. (I better finish that Paper)
now, if there were some way to "simulate" this
@@LouAlvis And distributed systems are more resilient to shock. They're less "efficient" in terms of resource allocation when everything works perfectly, but by having more slack in the system they're much less prone to catastrophic failure. That seems like an obvious choice to me.
Marx says that value is subjective himself as he says its defined by use value, exchange value and personal value. (value being derived from labor comes from Lasselle) As a Marxist i disagree with the labor theory of value because of this distinction he made himself as the surplus value is only generated through the purchase of labor which can produce more value than used to compensate the worker, profit isn't theft its just exploitative because of external conditions of capitalism. I really liked this video good stuff.
Ya no one who's read Marx's believes the amount of labor is what created value. Marx is refering to medium to long term economic stability where labor and capital are commodified to the point that wage prices, capital expenses, and average rates of profit determine cost in markets of surplus production. Not wild swings in price caused by unpredicted shortage and an inability to deploy labour and capital to to increase production in the short term.
Finally, a form of socialism I can get behind
Great channel ! What do you think about Aldmeri Dominion?
I'm just recently starting to work on some Elder Scrolls stuff and the Thalmor are high on the list for a starting point. There's a lot to cover there.
Speaking of the wilamette, can you do a video or series about the Emberverse series by S.M. Stirling
I have my notes on Dies the Fire sitting on my desktop at this very moment.
@@feralhistorianLooking forward to that one!
Have you read, Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle? They seem to think recovery was a challenge but not as much as one would think. Which of the two gets it more right, or wrong? Being two optimistic or pessimistic. Are they both somewhat off?
It's been a long time since I read Lucifer's Hammer. I recall thinking they were a bit too optimistic about getting that nuclear power plant up and running. In either case though I think you could rebuild a robust industrial society within two generations, but at a lower level of technology and much less centralized than what we currently have. Something less efficient, but with more slack.
@@feralhistorian As memory serves, they didn't _get_ the nuclear station running; they _kept_ it running. With the understanding that it was a temporary solution that they could use to build a lower-tech replacement, since they only had the lifespan of the fuel rods before it was useless to them.
Mind, the protagonists' group also had manuals and textbooks to explain how to build modernity, and included a fair number of people who could have made a decent go of it without the books....
could dig up a few old turbine engines and get them running off grain and corn based Bio-fuels. That'd make for a great engine for a train to run off of. Call it the Turbo Liner.
Fictional economics is so interesting. I wish that this was taken into account when building the world of Fallout
Damn, it was a total mistake to make a fallout mod in hoi4 it should have been a vic 2 or 3 mod all along!
Relatively independent local managers and councils was a feature of some communist economies I think.
A possibility is a hybrid, like parts of the economy are run on capitalist principles while some are managed. Or an informal grey market barter economy or home-run cottage industry.
Trade with other political entities would not be a free world market but a BoS manager appointed to trade state resources. No advanced stuff of course but possibly lumber or foodstuffs or simple manufactured goods.
Is what companies like Walmart do considered a centralized planmed economy?
Hold on ? Why would the BOS make use of steam trains when they can build fusion cores, they are going to use Fusion power trains which is plenty on them around.
I just skimmed some of the details, and the way the US pretty much backed the USSR is too obvious to call unintentional.
I don't think this scenario ends up with a Labour Theory of Value guiding anything but rather an Inca or ancient Middle East style "labour as taxation" style of economic central planning. An economy with some kind of accumulable token of value would only be worth implementing if there was some kind of surplus and value placed on trade goods.
The Brotherhood would more likely just function like an army unit gradually growing until it got to the size of a whole WW2 army group, with imposed rationing and "you'll do what we want when we want" order on whatever wastelanders they agree to assimilate.
At least if it's a version of the Brotherhood not written for convenience by Bethesda or Amazon writers who just need either generic good guys or a "complex" faction that's actually just stupid and evil if you think critically about their behavior.
A post-apocalyptic empire centered in the Willamette Valley? Nah, that’ll never work ;)
"Solders make bad cops." Why is that so hard to understand?
If your entire understanding of either cops or soldiers is 'guys with guns' they somehow end up _real_ easy to conflate.
It's not helped by paramilitary groups like SWAT, although you'd think that the existence of military police would be something of a clue.
There are nations who have that in Europe. French gendarmerie, Soviet/Russian OMON and internal troops, carabinieri etc. And cops with a military grade are not an army either.
@@SusCalvin those have been trained in police duties. regular troops have not. I stand by my statement.
State of Jefferson forever
Hey! What would you think if I called the westward expansion of the US the largest money printing scheme in history?
I can see a case for that.
You should check out the Old World Blues mod for HOI4. It'd be interesting to hear your thoughts on it
"nobody is going to argue against that except these guys.." and everyone acknowledging the fact that Marx doesn't factor in all the work going into an enterprise.
11:57 "we have to predict the future" you know in Fallout that is very possible with the use of Psykers, sure it's not really reliable for gameplay reasons but Psykers do exist in Fallout and we've at least met two that have futuresight
Is that a Viking/pagan shirt you’re wearing? See at the Viking festival in Buffalo?
Now what about Market Socialism?
brotherhood would mass conscript wastelanders and give them food and water rations along with protection from the wildlife and raiders
the 5 year plan will be completed on time
You gave yourself away as a secret Westerner by pronouncing Willamette correctly.
New subscriber and keep them coming your doing an amazing job also if I may can I ask you something
Ask away.
@@feralhistoriancan I do r e a c t to your videos?
Soviet economic history. Why do I get the impression that your vectors of study have been almost exactly the same of mine?
I suspect a lot of overlap.
Kimono or Yukata?
Jinbei.
I see no reason why we can't maintain an artisan economy alongside the planned one. Men are better suited for hard labor anyway. Just centrally plan the male labor, and allow female labor to stay artisanal as it most likely already is. They can fill in the gaps in things like clothes, tending the sick, trade, etc. You can pay the workers you involuntarily drafted so their wives can buy materials to make products with, and trade them between each other.
All we need to do is control the goods that are nessisary for industry and war. There's no reason to curtail trade of consumer goods. Granted this won't produce new materials out of thin air, so calories still need to be produced at above starvation. But having an insulated jacket helps to prevent you needing to burn as many in the first place. And I'm sure that some amount of food stuffs can be imported from outside. There must be tribes that value food less than bullets. And we'd be able to make an awful lot of bullets.
I hope the fallout show can reach this kind of politcal depth with things but its probably just going to do brotherhood is militarism, thats bad. And maybe capitlaism bad and leave it at that.
YT has deleted my other comments. Emailed you.
Focusing so much on the Soviet Union and A Marxist-Leninist framework limits this analysis
The build up of industrial capacity by the Soviet Union is not a matter of planned choice. I mean technically - it is - but practically the reason why this didn't happen in the tsarist russian empire was due to the disenfranchisement of the lower classes. Buying power (money, wealth) was concentrated at the top so heavily that the rich could simply import all the western luxury products they wanted while retaining a slave (serf) underclass.
Why would a country like that have an automotive industry? The market would be just a couple of thousands of rich landowners. Roads and road-infrastructure only work at scale (needs demand and taxes) and russia is a large place. Even assuming that there was demand for cars, you'd need all sorts of different industries before you can start manufacturing the finished product. A rich landowner would hardly find it worthwhile to set something like that up, but a state which is willing to raise taxes? - absolutely.
This isn't even socialism, marxism or really even central planning. It's wealth redistribution and geopolitical constraints and threats creating demand for industry. The soviets mistook their limited success as victory of socialist central planning thinking and that's why it consistently kept having shortages of various things. It redistributed wealth but didn't bother let it grow and create natural markets. It effectively leveraged a hostile geopolitical position into millitary strength but never bothered to change their geopolitical position into something sustainable and humane.
P.S. If this seems like a new idea, that's mostly because as an american you probably have no idea how poor europeans are and have always been. We're talking cost of living perhaps ~2x cheaper, but wages ~4-5x lower. Imagine what your disposable income would look like in that situation and what kind of economic growth would exist.
All good points. What I find most interesting about the Soviet auto industry is that it was only secondarily about producing vehicles. It was also about shifting populations from rural areas into factory cities and creating a proletarian class. When you get on the fringes of the policy planning, like Aleksei Gastev applying scientific management to sociology, the peculiarities of the regime really start to become visible across the entire range of policy.
Nice conceit for a story.
Copying successful human behavior and successful models we can see operating/succeeding is exactly how the species out-compete instinct-driven critters.
Lagniappe!
I grew up in Corvallis, Monmouth, Canby, Albany, Hubbard, Aurora… and writing this from pre-destruction Portlandia
I lived in Salem and Dallas for a few years, had some good times there. I never did get used to gas station attendants though.
One modern economy come capitalism and socialism= project cybersyn but killed CIA.i hope we get vedio channel
"The problem with planned economies is that they treat human lives as commodities."
Wait... were you talking about capitalism, just now? Interesting.
If you gonna make a series about a Communist BOS, AT LEAST read Marxist theory, instead of repeating anti-communist propaganda, like the part of Labor Theory of Labor. Marx talk about "Socially needed time", the time needed to make a commodity, and talks about Use Valour, so isn't some "arbitrary value". The idea of this series sound good, but if you only repeat anti-communist propaganda, this is gonna be shit
I dont thinkbthe brotherhood has any interest in making consumer goods only things that will further their military goals
very much like the soviet union
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Does he not understand that the BOS is fascists?
And the fundamental difference is?..
@@carlborg8023
The difference is huge, Fascists don't threaten the Capitalist system, in fact the state often works much closer with Capitalists and privatizes as many formerly state functions as possible. Also Fascism usually relies on an outgroup to blame all of society's ills on. That said the BOS doesn't perfectly fit that mold, but they're definitely human supremacists.
Socialists and Communists on the other hand, want to create a system that works for the workers, not for the Capitalists. Also there is no outgroup to be oppressed (unless of course you count the Capitalists losing their factories, plantations, and wage slaves as oppression). Now you can argue about the implementation and outcomes, but the goals are wildly different.
End goals, methods, motivating ideology, and organizational structures
I think there's more to fascism than being militarist and wanting to kill off certain demographics, to be honest.
@@SuperGman117 Yeah, generally they're supported by Capitalists as a reaction to Leftist movements. For this reason you see a lot of state functions privatized under Fascist regimes. For this reason you might hear some Marxists call Fascism "Capitalism in decay," because when shit goes bad, people either go hard left or hard right.
You could have p o.w work on the railroad
I love how this guy thinks the BoS is socialist/communist despite the fact that the BoS don't share Jack shirt.🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Maybe it’s because Communists in reality don’t share, and are really just spiteful envious little mutants who will take what someone has worked for at gun point for the good of the “collective.”
Well, he's a pro communist who thinks all previous attempts at full-blown communism was not "real communism"
& he thinks communism docent always lead toward full blown totalitarian governments lol he clearly docent believe in historical FACTS
Never played fallout 3?
@@carlborg8023 The BoS in Fallout 3 were divided between Lyons and Casdin.
Lyons BoS wasn't giving technology out they were paying people with it. It's capitism. Then after the events of Fallout 3 under Elder Mason gave the order to confiscate any and all advanced technology, so they later retrieved it all.
well at least someone is trying to make a profit off this amazon fiasco. Aren't you writing a book? Quit doing this shit and write me some literature so I can give you actual dollars.
Book 1 is out there while I try to get a real publisher lined up for the 2nd one.
www.amazon.com/Nintis-Gate-Matthias-Pierce-ebook/dp/B0CYXH9BWD/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2XPV3LJROW84W&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Lv_7Nf69HevHFs4INXuneA.qMQ49-6-M-kK390gj9DyULEw030YgWAtYc6Hz4ZSJW0&dib_tag=se&keywords=Ninti%27s+Gate&qid=1716655196&sprefix=ninti%27s+gate%2Caps%2C106&sr=8-1
or overpriced paperback at www.barnesandnoble.com/w/nintis-gate-matthias-pierce/1145141248?ean=2940185774984
Communisim sucks.
This is just a salad of buzzword nonsense
This is EXACTLY what I wanted after a hard day of blue collar work!