Intergalactic Summit

This is a worthwhile discussion to be had. Thanks for starting this, Pilot Villeneuve.

I run my ships as a business. My business is violence for profit, for an ideal, or for research purposes in the case of Drifters and Seekers.

Employees, or crew members, are hired for a specific job. If they have an idea, or a complaint, they speak to the team leader. Team leaders report to section leaders (I.E team leader for those responsible for warp drives reports to the Engine section leader, who covers all engine and other propulsion affairs.)

If the idea or complaint requires further action beyond this, it goes to my Crew Chief for that particular vessel, who is effectively my second in command. I hold daily meetings every morning with all of my ship's Crew Chiefs who report issues, ideas or anything else they feel they need to report.

I am not blind, ignorant or uncaring for issues of my crew members, and I do delegate areas of responsibility, but I do so in a structured, tiered level of competency since I can't keep up with thousands of individual voices with their own problems and their own bright ideas. I have, however, held votes with my crew when I have felt it appropriate, usually in terms of treating them as stakeholders in a major decision like changing corporation. Outside of that, everyone does the job they're employed to do or they can find employment elsewhere.

I run my ships as a business. My business is violence for profit, not a charity or a pseudo government.

In answer to your respectful questions, Mr. Onzo, I expect that not much will change in the day to day flying of the ships. This document is intended to return a measure of control to the workers, but I imagine what will happen is that lunches will continue to be served in the cafeterias with the option to go elsewhere when possible, with perhaps the major change being that the workers will elect managers within themselves to determine what to stock.

There are experts in their fields on board my ships, from engineers to janitors. With the election of Worker-Managers I expect these positions to be filled with those experts AND on top of that the management will have a measure of empathy for the rest of the workers.

Routes to go, what fittings to fit, these things will be determined by the usual methods. Ideally, I'd love it if my own leadership could be up for review but the reality of the situation is that the ships don't fly without me in it, and hence my own position will be the one thing not up for review. I actually regret that I have to bow this much to the reality of the situation.

I reckon a better solution is to endeavour to use as few crew members as possible. Why use gunnery crew to load the artillery when you have perfectly fine auto-loaders to do the job? Why have the gunnery crew perform the trajectory calculations when the inbuilt targeting computers do a perfectly fine job at it? Why risk technicians on reactor machinery repairs when drones do the work just fine? Why use repairmen to mend hairline cracks in hull plating when the nanites and the nanite delivery system would suffice?

No drama, minimised crew fatalities, efficient automated starship operations. Are these not the ideal?

So the short answer is you're not entirely certain yourself? That's alarming to say the least, I asked you what matters would be voted on and you seemed to provide one example in an otherwise non-answer.

With regards to said managers, I echo concerns Arrendis has pointed out. Perhaps there should be a minimum time to serve to prevent someone making a hard, unpopular but necessary call from getting immediatly ousted, but with a clause for removing incompetant or otherwise disruptive individuals from position?

It seems to me you're going to need a bigger document.

This goes hand-in-glove with one of the questions I haven't been able to get an answer to: who determines what can and can't be voted on? If it's the capsuleer, then isn't the rest of it just a sham that can be shut down at any time by saying 'we're not voting now, because I have the authority to suspend democracy'? If it's not, then once again: who is it? Will there need to be a vote, say, by a review board, to determine if something can be voted on? Do both sides present their case to this panel?

How well is that going to work in the 'fire in a cargo-hold stuffed with missiles' scenario?



And not for nothing, but that's hardly true, now is it? Your function as a piece of equipment on the ship—being the brain in the goo—isn't up for review, but your position as 'captain' certainly is. There's absolutely nothing stopping you from putting someone else in charge and having them tell you what to do. Then you do it. Baseliners demonstrate all the time that (gasp) verbal commands to a ship's command crew work just fine. Whoever the new captain is can just as easily give you verbal commands, which you then execute.

Oh god, please, don't let Ali get people calling me that... herding cats may be my job, but I don't want it to be my public persona.

My apologies. Though I have had the privilege of your acquaintance across the battlefield, I do not recall us having met in person, so my naturally conservative manner tends to take over.

I shall make sure to respect your wishes in future correspondence.

I think 'Madam Director' or 'Directrix' would be the technically correct forms... I dunno. I generally prefer 'hey, dumbass'...

Also:



I just want to point out that I keep coming back to this situation for a couple of reasons. First, because as soon as you have people voting on whether or not their boss is their boss—by means other than looking for new employment, obviously—then those people will inevitably begin to look at 'Why am I following your orders? Who are you to be making the hard calls in a crisis?'

Second, Wren directly opened herself up to this with:


Nobody, not even Ayallah, suggested doing this 'on a whim'. She suggested retaining the option in case of open mutiny. I suggested retaining the option in case of having to perform triage on the crew. In both cases, the bigger picture there is: chaos and disorder on-ship costs lives, and while Wren's insisting that '[t]his document does not cover the individual operation of individual ships at individual times', that would appear to have been the direct thrust of her condescending opinion of Ayallah's position (at the very least).

She hasn't presented a clear template for which decisions get votes. She can't even say who gets to make that call. But she's simultaneously sure that nobody would insist on 'hold it, don't we get a say in this?' before you vent the cargo hold they're in, and derisive about the possibility that there might be a legitimate need to do something like that in order to save the ship.

You don't get to faf around and not have contingencies for unexpected disasters, in-space. You get lost in hostile space, or hells, j-space, or even just lose power and life support in the wrong parts of supposedly 'safe' high-sec, and your very mortal crew are all dead before help gets there. This was (and still is) true of planetary ocean-going vessels, and it's true of spacefaring vessels. When things go bad, you do not want people to be inclined toward individuality. You want them trained and used to working together as a unit. You want them to know, without hesitation, without 'hey, wait, let's vote...' just exactly who to listen to.

When I was growing up on Huggar Station, we had regular emergency training drills. Even kids were expected to know how to respond, and that was in a (then) parliamentary democracy (and thank goodness we got rid of that bickering, ineffectual nonsense). Granted, kids' preparedness was mostly 'here are the shelter locations, make sure the younger children get there', but we had to know what to do. And I can still remember my mother discussing the drills the adults had to go through. You have to know exactly who to listen to, because one jackass who shouldn't be giving orders can start shouting out the wrong things, and suddenly everything's gone completely off the rails.

Now imagine if 'wait, listen to me! my opinion matters' was encouraged. en masse.

How many lives would it cost before you realize, Wren, that there's a reason thousands of years of trial-and-error, of constantly looking for the best and most effective way to run an organization, keeps coming back to a clear chain of command at all times?

Direct democracy's a lovely idea. Maybe at some point, the Federation can even make it work. So far, though, human history's shown it pretty much collapses under any pressure worth noticing. Don't get me wrong, I applaud your motives... but much like the thread on 'let's stop CODE by shooting at them!', I have to view your methodology as ineffectual, probably even counterproductive to your goals, and repeatedly and consistently shown by mountains and mountains of 'people tried this'-style data to be a Bad Idea™.

Take your time Ms Villeneuve. The truth of the matter is that being an employer of people is hard, especially when death of those employees is a very real and common occurrence among Capsuleers. No system or method is perfect, but it's important to find one that works for you while maintaining the high level of efficiency our career demands.