Intergalactic Summit

If you reject the concept that they are slaves, then you reject the reality of trauma and psychological damage that has been inflicted upon them. You would leave them shackled by their inability to adjust to the changes in their immediate condition. You are, in effect, saying 'Our ancestors were born cancer-free, so we cannot accept that anyone has cancer'. Ignoring the problem through the semantics of denial doesn't fix it. It's a cop-out. It's weak, and cowardly.

I fight for those who would - and have - fought for me. I fight to provide for my Clan. You fight for nothing but yourself. Look at your own policies.

Your 'war on taxes'? Do you even understand what taxes are? Taxes are the way an aggregate body pools its resources in a manner that shares the burden across all members and all those who benefit from that body's activities. If a corporation, alliance, Clan, or Tribe, establishes a tax for the use of its infrastructure, that is you paying them back for having spent their money to build that infrastructure in the first place. And taxes are how the aggregate body gets the funds to make quality-of-life improvements for its members.

As an example: if my Clan wants to upgrade facilities on one of the space stations where we live, that takes money. So we need to collect the money to spend it. How do we do that? We could itemize everything - every single expenditure every time, including things like 'the work crew did really well today, we'd like to buy them lunch tomorrow in appreciation' - and get every member of the Clan to sign off on it. That, for the record, is a massive waste of everyone's time. I already have plenty of paperwork to do, I don't need to be looking through every spending plan for different areas on thirty or more stations throughout the Republic (granted, most of us are concentrated on... I think three? four? but there's thirty or so where we have some Clan facilities at least), which doesn't even take into account the branch of the Clan in the State (yes, I said the State, not the Federation. People move around on business, and settle down in unpredictable places).

Some of those are going to be time-critical. They aren't going to have the luxury of sitting around waiting for everyone to get done bickering over 'No, buy this other thing instead, it's cheaper!' vs 'Of course it's cheaper, it'll wear out in a month and we'll need to buy this original thing anyway!'.

That means that the incredibly inefficient process of getting everyone to sign off on every request for funds is simply unworkable - and that hasn't even gotten to 'ok, everyone's approved it, so how do you collect the money?'

The other option is establishing a standing account of collective resources, to be spent under the discretion of the representatives of the Clan. So how do you collect them? Donations? That's going to be impossible to manage. Not everyone will be able to contribute an equal amount. Not everyone will be willing to contribute, either. Let's face it, try as we might, some of us are still pretty selfish when it comes to 'I earned this, it's MINE'. Example: your whole 'war on taxes'.

So if voluntary donations aren't an effective way to collect the money, there needs to be an involuntary method for doing so. That's a tax.

Now, we could increase the fees we charge, but fees are actually just taxes by another name. For example: POCO 'taxes' - they're nothing of the sort. They're fees, established as a percentage of the product's value, just like broker fees in Jita. Not taxes. They're not limited to members of a specific organization, or specific geographical area, but rather anyone who makes use of the infrastructure provided, no matter whose territory it's in. Not a tax.

What does all this economic crap have to do with anything? Like I said: I fight to provide for my Clan. My money goes back to them. I acknowledge my debt to those who provide the infrastructure I use. You reject the very idea of aggregate funds with your 'war on taxes'. You reject the idea of true cooperative effort beyond 'hey guys, let's go blow something up'. Does your alliance provide the means to pursue alliance goals, either initially or as part of a ship replacement program? Because that's part of cooperative effort. No modern military tells its servicemen and women they have to provide their own equipment, it is issued to them, both to ensure that everyone has the equipment, and to ensure that the equipment - and thus the equipment's performance - is standardized and well-understood.

If Chao3 Alliance does provide that kind of basic, minimal military function, where does it get the money? I mean, I know it doesn't, because there's only four of you (membership has increased by 33% in the last six months!), so the very idea of actual cooperative expense eludes you.

Taxes are how our Clans collect the aggregate resources to enforce our combined interests. They are how, in this universe where those resources are abstracted into money, rather than everyone pitching in by hunting together, or making blankets and clothing for whoever needs them, the members of the Clan help to look after one another.

And that is the entire foundation of the 'ways of our ancestors' you would accuse every Matari in the Republic of losing, by not embracing your 'minarchist' nonsense. I work to provide for my Clan. I sincerely doubt you can even name yours.

They can't.

There are 4 of them, in 2 corporations. During the 'war', after LAWN withdrew from Vale of the Silent to restage all assets in and around Saranen, the four of them managed to take a pair of systems without contest while nobody cared. Less than a month later, they were brushed aside by Infinity Space.

It doesn't even look like they tried contesting the entosis timers on their sole station, 'Matar's Oasis', which fell in the minimal 4-day window. So for all their talk about 'revolution' and accusing others of being weak... they're nothing. They're beyond nothing. And they and all their impotent rantings will amount to nothing.

I think Anslo got his start, such as it was, based on people saying such things?

Based on which....

Hm. You kind of like labyrinthine plots (or at least tricky stuff), so....

Are you trying to provoke them into amounting to something?

If I am, it'd be quite counterproductive to say so, wouldn't it?

I venture a bet more laughs are coming towards the fallen arrogance of the little bees than will ever be directed at a small alliance that makes no claim to be otherwise.

How was the fall from the top?

Of course little bees like you are not involved in planning or strategy, they're just like dumb bullets fired from the barrel of a machine gun, not intended to be accurate, just numerous.

What is it you think you set me up for? Admting to leading a small alliance? lol that was the at the beginning of the conversation!
But I understand you little bees are hungry for victory these days, so good job you beat it out of me!

Does that make you feel better? Perhaps you'll go Burn Jita again, oops sorry you don't have the logistical support to do that anymore do you? My bad did not mean to be insensitive.

Good advice.

You are correct, I offer my apology.

I've missed so much!



Well, you definitely have an impressive resume, that's for sure. And I'm genuinely glad that you employ people. Good on you. It sounds like a small fleet to be proud of. However, it really doesn't contradict my earlier point. Employing people doesn't equate to caring about them. It's a contract, you need stuff done, they're willing to do it for dough and you've got dough. Voila. An economic relationship. I don't really think you can use that as proof of anything more, certainly not that the 'citizens of the Republic are at the top of your mind.

Also, I didn't say you didn't know anything about logistics. Anyone who's held a dinner party of organized a traditional wedding dance understands logistics. You don't need to be a CEO or anything. What I said is that your responses led me to believe that you had very little respect for the 'logistics, effort, and sacrifice that it takes to support those efforts,' particularly those that happen outside of your alliiance/POS/Citadel sphere.

Okay, look maybe there's a way that I can make this a bit easier for both of us to understand if I break it down this way. You're original message led me to two conclusions about you that I take issue with:

a) That I think you care more about killing people than you do about the Republic. In a forum concerning the present and future of the Matari, the thing that you thought was so important, so vital to the Republic that you had to put it above all else was about the Amarrians, how much you hate them, and how you're gonna kill 'em. Not about the changes with the Tribal Council, or improving life for our brethren in low sec, or anything related to improving life for Matari anywhere, not until the last paragraph, where you're only reference to all of that was to talk vaguely about 'best practices.' In my experience, people talk a lot about what they care about and not very much about topics that don't rate.

Which brings me to my second point, b) that you were engaged in a willfully ineffective strategy that expends human and economic resources without actually achieving your goal. In your original message, you spoke of 'the long struggle' which, given what you've said about your activities so far, I can only imagine means the regular sacrifice of Matari resources.

All this for how many slaves freed? I'm betting if we count the number of crew members who've died in this endeavor versus the number of slaves that have tasted freedom, it would be a ratio that your 'slavery cultist' would be quite happy with. Even if the ratio weren't out of whack, I haven't seen the popularity of slaery waning in the Empire because of some lost slaves and ships. I think they're happy for us to continue this strategy.

My point is that you're playing a numbers game with an enemy that has more numbers and it hasn't resulted in no real emancipation. I'm saying that the end result of your tactics is a net loss in the population of free Matari and resources that could be better used to fight emancipation elsewhere while not getting closer to emancipation. That you've managed to do this while mitigating your losses through good strategy doesn't change the fact that the overwhelming strategy is flawed. Like this quote:



What this says to me is that you're willing to dehumanize and traumatize (for a long time!) fellow Matari in order to fight the dehumanization of Matari elsewhere--and without actually ending the dehumanization that you were aiming for. I've done my share of slave trade disruption, rescued a lot of trafficked people and blown up a lot of raiders, and it's pretty obvious that that's not the strategy that will lead to emancipation. It's wasteful on the whole and I strong reaction to the expenditure of resources in a way that doesn't achieve the goal, particularly when they're my people.

Maybe I've misjudged you and I'm sure that's not how you see your work, but as someone whose job is balancing the books, I see it as a net loss and I don't think I'm wrong.



I don't know, man. There are some really heavy books out there, they'll blow you're mind. Have you ever read 'Non-Traditional Approaches to Gallentean Excise Taxes, Vol. 7?' It's a lifechanger.

And what's wrong with Daddies? I would think that if you're going to learn lessons, Daddies might be a better source than say a sofa or a fungus. Then again, I'm a traditionalist, probably one with Daddy issues.

She's been doing alright for the last three months. She also hasn't been particularly guilty of parroting 'popular anti-Republic memes'.

And she's spot on in her analysis of the priority you give to war, while treating non-violent efforts to improve life within the Republic dismissively. You might consider actually addressing your priorities, and some of the questions she raises, rather than attempting to dismiss her out of hand the way you tried to dismiss me.

Ahh, the SCC, so ever-present that it's almost invisible, so invisible in fact that I wrote that as I was making a large trade. Isn't that something? I stand corrected.

I do still think that a lot of established, big merchants are reluctant to trade, even in the smoke and mirrors of the SCC. Say if Core Complexion traders started pushing through some substantial a substantial back and forth with Lai Dai, I'm sure someone would notice, leaves too big of a wake, and that their would be blowback from hardliners in the Republic, bad press, that kind of thing. At least the higher ups think so, I hear. Luckily, our clan exclusively run single-proprietor businesses, no one worries about anyone spreading rumors about who we trade with. Shoot, some of my kin have shops on Jita. No one pays attention at that level.