Methods that have been used to ensure a Lawful Good government exists in your games?

>>states
>>good
Found the Anarchist scum.
The existence and support of a state is a moral imperative.
Freedom is a privilege.

The primary cause for democracy's rarity after Pericles lead Athens to starting the Peloponnesian war between Sparta and themselves with their satellite states. And it's disastrous outcome for all involved, though Sparta did have a technical victory. Without Athens setting the bad example there is no reason not to believe that one or two democracies could have sprung up.

Democracy has a long history and could exist in a lot of different forms that wouldn't put it out of place in a fantasy world. Revolts analogous to The German peasent's war could easily lead to the rise of a democractic or at least semi-egalitarian state. If that's a good thing or not for the setting in question is up to the DM though.

My issues with democracy in fantasy have more to do with storytelling than plausibility. See again: It is much easier to interact with a state through leaders and factions as intermediaries.

Late contemporary states come back around to improving quality of life. But if you read enough history you'll see that village life usually worked just fine before later nobility was installed. Sometimes going back as far as the damn bronze age. So the influence of a larger state was (charitably) unnecessary, and frequently a detriment to the quality of life for most members of the community. Read some books.

>Freedom is a privilege.
>States.
>Freedom.
Found the guy who doesn't really know what states do well.

>So the influence of a larger state was (charitably) unnecessary, and frequently a detriment to the quality of life for most members of the community. Read some books.
Quality of life is not the more important concern, greater social unification and authority is.

>Found the guy who doesn't really know what states do well.
Where did I say that states do freedom well? Go jerk off to Friedman and Mises, won't you.

>But if you read enough history you'll see that village life usually worked just fine before later nobility was installed
Something working fine and having a decent quality of life does not make it good; an unhappy modern city is more desirable than a happy ancient village.

>greater social unification and authority is.
To what end if not quality of life?

>Where did I say that states do freedom well?

>The existence and support of a state is a moral imperative.
>Freedom is a privilege.

In any case, I'm no anarcho-anything. Freedom is as much a lie as the rest of it, but your greentext could be read as saying that it's something that could be earned by service to the state. Which is absurd on the face of it.

>Argument by assertion
You're not really supporting your arguments with anything. Also it's making for tedious conversation. I might abandon this line of discussion in a bit if it continues this way.

If this turns into some hundred page /pol/fest, know that it was a third party that took the bait.

I make a nation I like and say that they're the good guys.

You seem to implicitly assume that people will want or care about freedom to do literally everything (including to act against the state) or otherwise they won't care about any freedom whatsoever.

But people care about a specific subset of things; the things that are important to them. They DEFINITELY want to be able to do those things.

The rest, well, that depends how much of an interest they have in philoso- ideological grandstanding, which is gonna value from population to population based on historical/cultural factors.

The individual doesn't really need an a priori enmity with the state. As long as there are taxes, a draft, corvee labor, even the rule of law -states functioning as states- there will be conflict between the state and the individual. Not in an abstract or universal sense, but in the sense that individual conflicts will arise from these circumstances. I mostly don't buy into rhetoric about freedom because there are material limitations against freedom even before authoritarian influences cut in, but when people talk about freedom they're usually talking about freedom from exactly the sorts of obligations that a state imposes.

Again though, we're only really going to talk past each other on this point because you don't really value freedom of that sort and I don't think freedom is something that exists even in some imagined zero-intervention world.

And I'm definitely with you on the point that people will put up with a lot as long as they can manage subsistence and stability. My argument never really was that they wouldn't though.

>The only two options are populist democracy and absolute monarchy
>Implying kings run everything directly
>Implying the aristocracy don't hold most of the actual power in any political system (including modern democracies)
>Implying most medieval states were large and centralized
>What is Feudalism
>What is Elective monarchy
>What is a Republic
>What are tribes
>What are city states

Money is banned, influence is meaningless, people have to barter with other people for their services and products which makes unproductive people worthless. Crime is immediately punished with exile or death.

>Clinton
>lawful good

More like self-serving neutral, amirite?

>More like self-serving neutral, amirite?

that would be the definition of neutral evil. and I used that picture since it's a politician that really should be under a zone of truth for debates and speeches. because she is obviously a Kobold or direct relative, since she's obviously reptilian.

>Money is banned, influence is meaningless

How would you enforce either of these?

Enjoy being a backwater agrarian tumor with no industry whatsoever.

You want to trade my crabs for pieces of shitty metal with the mug of a no-name politician or just take them because of your fancy last name? Off the cliff with you.
Because New York is the happiest place on earth while rural south-east is hell on earth for everyone living there.
It sure isn't the other way around.

>Because New York is the happiest place on earth while rural south-east is hell on earth for everyone living there.
>It sure isn't the other way around.
I said nothing about happiness; backwater agrarian shitholes can be exceedingly happy, while civilized, industrious, and relevant cities can be pretty sad.

>2016
>basing your utility function for success and goodness off of happiness

>Industry is more important than happiness
If you own the bank behind the industry and your happiness is the only thing that matters, maybe.

It really is, tbqh. Your entire outlook is childish naivete focused around abstract concepts of "happiness" that give no thought to measurable, important parts of life.
You're the kind of guy who would think that Utopia is good.

Or you're just an angsty teenager/communist/anarchist/primitivist

>happiness is bad

am I still on Veeky Forums, or did I somehow end up in /v/

>implying anyone has said that happiness is bad
It's just not the paramount good; there are things more important than happiness.

yeh like killing da joos amirite xD KKK

Nice >implications, goy.
>implying the KKK isn't full of poorfags and plebes

KKK did the bank job

Utopia is a wet dream but industrialization for industrialization's sake causes suffering and nothing more.
If people can produce what they need, are healthy and have the means to entertain themselves, they don't need to force an increase in production and consumption just because a faggot in his ivory tower thinks they look uncivilized.

There really isn't. The only reason people dance the banker's dance is because of promises that someday they'll be happy if they just keep on buying shit that they don't need or even really want.

Stagnation is death, progress is life. That "faggot in an ivory tower" is the only thing keeping those plebes from blowing away like dust in the wind.

>muh happiness
>muh bankers
Happiness is a means to greater industry, to greater knowledge, to greater civilization, rather than ends unto itself.
Consumerism may be cancer, but it is the cancer that keeps these great wheels tuning until we can finally be rid of it, without having to revert to uncivilized savages.

The worth of men is not the satisfaction of their lives, but what they leave behind.

am i speaking to some coked up british imperialist cunt from the 19th century

what is this

>implying imperialism was bad
>implying those damnable savages should be grovelling at our feet for dragging them out of the mud, building mines and roads and ports and railways and farms and schools and hospitals in their land

Tally ho and what for, ruffian!

So people being happy is wrong, them suffering so that you can be pleased to call yourself "civilized" is right.

These are the words of someone who has nothing to leave behind. Never invented anything, never educated anyone, a cog in a machine of false promises with no discernible goals and which has been recycling technology from 1985 and calling it "progress" for sale with the power of marketing.

Millions of people live nowadays in self-sustaining communities free from the miserable sense of quenchless want that makes life in places like New York and Los Angeles as insufferable and ail-inflicting as it is. Billions more are trampling each other for an iphone 7, a notorious percentage of these don't kow how to poo in the loo.

Small scale self-sustainability is a reality. Benign industrialization isn't. Wether it is because the people promoting it would murder everyone in Africa for one more dime on their accounts or because of sincere mistakes in the way it is managed, the reaching of a superior civilizations is an excuse for the pursuit of coin and there is zero effort put towards changing that.

Yes, it's clear the narrative is "people aren't civilized unless they're dying to sate my unquenchable greed".

>So people being happy is wrong
If you want to put words in my mouth, you should take the cocks out of yours first. Happiness is not "bad" or "wrong", it is, however, not the ultimate good, nor particularly high up their on the hierarchy of goods.

>These ... marketing.
These are the words of something who can leave nothing behind, who is so concerned with their happiness and "sticking it to the man" that they see the glorious machine of civilization as a torture device, rather than the greatest work of art ever built.

>Millions ... loo.
And those self-sustaining communities are antithetical to civilization itself; little more than high-tech villages that will slowly be snuffed out, one by one. Civilization is not mere technology, it is the unification of ever greater numbers of people.

>Small... that.
And where is the problem with that? If it takes coin as fuel and blood as lubricant to keep the machine turning, then so be it. There will be a day when the growing pains of civilization are over, but people like you would give up because you are concerned solely with yourself. You are greedy and vain, masquerading under the guise of "happiness and prosperity".

You assume that I am a captain of industry, or someone relatively close to one. And yes, you're right; people living for themselves and their happiness, fearing and acting out against progress and industry, is savagery.

You can be happy as you want in a backwater agrarian tumor. Doesn't help when the productive states bring a thousends of spearman, flanked by heavily armored cavalry and backed by longbowmen to roll over your shit.

>Off the cliff with you.
Soldiers and lawman don't produce anything to barter with. Except violence. Off the cliff with transgressors ends up with the people that are better at throwing others over the cliff dictating the rules. And now you have a dictatorship. This is why liberatarians and anarchists are all retards.

Vetinari.

A dictator that does actually want what is best for the country instead of wanting to get richer and live confortably. Also puts people in places of power that want what is best for the country and can act as counterbalances to each other AND TO HIMSELF, so noones vision of "what's better for the country" goes rampant and becomes distorted (Vimes, DeWorde, Moist, even Mustrum and Hughnun are particularly sane leaders for their groups).

You have the false paradigm where civilization is a process rather than a state of being.
Civilization is achieved when a population unifies, centralizes and has control over it's natural habitat. Industry and capitalism can be a part of this. Overproduction and consumerism don't need to be and are detrimental as they generate dissatisfaction, disenfranchisement and asocial behavior in proportion.

Your definition of "civilization" is a journey to nowhere, a progressist utopia (ironically) and cannot be considered lawful good under any system.

>You can be happy as you want in a backwater agrarian tumor. Doesn't help when the productive states bring a thousends of spearman, flanked by heavily armored cavalry and backed by longbowmen to roll over your shit.
>implying industrialization will actually prevent this once the industrialists start discovering the diseconomy of scale inherent in using actual good materials for large amounts of equipment
An effective and long-lasting weapon is notably more expensive and time-consuming to produce than a shitty one, and not as many good spears will be bought as trash ones because they will need replacing less. Good military hardware is counterproductive to profit, especially once contracts are brought into the picture.
But why let something like that stop you from pretending we're "progressing" rather than backsliding like motherfuckers in the name of profit and an illusion of progress?

>Zones of Truth wouldn't have stopped Hitler
you say this as if it is a bad thing.

>Soldiers and lawman don't produce anything to barter with. Except violence. Off the cliff with transgressors ends up with the people that are better at throwing others over the cliff dictating the rules. And now you have a dictatorship. This is why liberatarians and anarchists are all retards.
There is no need for specialized combatants in a self-sufficient community where the people are the law.

Nobody in this thread has ever lived outside of a metropoli and it's very apparent. Otherwise you wouldn't be unable to differentiate want from need and understand how little suffering and crime societies that are satisfied with themselves generate.

Civilization is both a process and a state of being; it is not finished until ALL peoples are unified, when absolute dominion is established over nature, and to where nothing can threaten their position. Overproduction and consumerism are unfortunate effects of this current stage of civilization, ones that I sincerely hope that we can survive and discard.

Thankfully, this ideal civilization is perfection, and perfection cannot be achieved. We will never want for a goal.

>Your definition of "civilization" is a journey to nowhere, a progressist utopia (ironically) and cannot be considered lawful good under any system.
How not? It is the pursuit of perfection and ever greater heights and power; stagnation and the attitude of "this is good enough, this is where we shall stay" is the death of people.

The only possible way for this civilization to thrive and progress is if it were lawful good.

>There is no need for specialized combatants in a self-sufficient community where the people are the law.
Sounds like anarchist wishful thinking to me, one that ignores and tramples upon human nature.

>Otherwise you wouldn't be unable to differentiate want from need and understand how little suffering and crime societies that are satisfied with themselves generate.
You think that your small needs and small wants are a virtue? Your society generate as little good as you generate suffering a crime. You can't export happiness and contentment; you can't use it to build bridges; you can't use it to gain insight into the nature of the universe.
If happiness is all that your society produces, your society is utterly worthless.

how many crabs does it take to pay for a suit of armor
why the fuck would the blacksmith ever want that many crabs
what if the blacksmith doesn't need anything right now that's worth a whole suit of armor and won't accept several hundred crabs because he can't possibly store them
now you're fucked out of a suit of armor because there's no simple way to convert your service into other people's services

money is an easy intermediary that says simply "this is worth services from others at a later date"

>An effective and long-lasting weapon is notably more expensive and time-consuming to produce than a shitty one,
And that's why hippie commune doesn't have good weapons. But a money using state has.

>and not as many good spears will be bought as trash ones because they will need replacing less.
Cost saving is a point in my favor.

>Good military hardware is counterproductive to profit, especially once contracts are brought into the picture.
It pays itself with diminishing criminal activity and problems with neighbouring nations.
Also the nation doesn't need profits. It gets that from taxes. The population is the one who works for profits and they profit from selling arms to the government, making weapons, providing food for soldiers, providing entertainment, etc.

>But why let something like that stop you from pretending we're "progressing" rather than backsliding like motherfuckers in the name of profit and an illusion of progress?
First, I'm not the guy discussing progress.
Second, capitalism breeds competition, which creates evolution. Capitalism is the reason we have technology, live to an average of 80 years old, have relatively safe environments and have time for laisure.
Agrarian barter economy is the type of shit that leads to living in huts with goats, dying at 50 years, working all day everyday without pause or vacation, and depending on a feudal lord for protection.

That's not civilization, that's colonialism lying itself to sleep. Or a false promise to keep making more money off the engines of war.

To be sincere, I'd rather follow someone who wants to kill those guys over there and take their shit, then force their kids to buy our shit if it was sold to me "in the name of god", than your civilization. At least then I'd know my military leader is a fanatic and not just infinitely greedy.

Does you name end in "stein", by any chance?

epic response my white islamic syrian kurdish storm power KKKlan legion /b/rother

>That's not civilization, that's colonialism lying itself to sleep. Or a false promise to keep making more money off the engines of war.
Do you imply that colonialism is bad, or that it isn't the purest, most good form of civilization? I can think of no greater good than raising The Other out of the mud and assimilating him.

>To be sincere, I'd rather follow someone who wants to kill those guys over there and take their shit, then force their kids to buy our shit if it was sold to me "in the name of god", than your civilization.
That only shows that you're a plebe who is amused by words of spirits and angels, rather than seeing the core of what makes civilization good.

>At least then I'd know my military leader is a fanatic and not just infinitely greedy.
Why do you presume that I act out of greed? I have already said that I dislike consumerism and mindless industry, only that it is a necessary stepping stone.

>Does you name end in "stein", by any chance?
Oy vey, you've caught me, goy. Oy gevalt, it's annudah shoah!
It's doesn't, no.

You're a cog, you're thinking like a cog because you've been educated like a cog and place all of your value on what you can produce for your betters, who literally own your mind at this point.

You'll never understand why small communities are almost unanimously more successful than metropoli when it comes to hapiness, satisfaction and quality of life markers because you're incapable of fathoming the possibility that you could have any value beyond what you can export for someone else to buy.

In my society people are people, in yours they're numbers. That may be lawful but cannot be good because morality is confered by and for individuals, not mechanical refactions.

murder the entire continent of africa for one more dime in my pocket

all in a day's work, plebes :^)

>There is no need for specialized combatants in a self-sufficient community where the people are the law.
Ha! No, man, no. Bad people exist. This is a fact of human nature. If you do not have specialized combatants, the bad people BECOME specialized combatants, because ruthlesness and a desire to harm others can trump raw strenght, and fear can counter numbers. You need specialized cobatants because it takes training to overcome ruthleness, and discipline and comradery to combat fear.
Without specialized combatants all it takes is one rotten fruit with enough cunning and meanness, other people with shaky morals will flock to him and BAM! Your little happy hamlet is now a dictatorship, you're all slaves and anyone that doesn't suck his dick gets thrown off the cliff.

>Otherwise you wouldn't be unable to differentiate want from need and understand how little suffering and crime societies that are satisfied with themselves generate.
It's human nature. No, it's nature, full stop. To want more than you need. It's biological. Only the leader of the pack gets the best girls, and only the best girls get the leader of the pack. Only the weak get satisfied with just what he needs, with the same that everybody gets.
We want success, fame, money, glory, anything to show everybody else that we are worthy of leading the pack. Even if we aren't we still wish it for our children.
Believing that any group of beings will be satisfied in a society without ladders of influence, be they based on money, strenght or anything else, is believing that humans were created from scratch two minutes ago, in your village, without the effects of evolution, and with completely inhuman personalities.

Are you retarded or do you really don't understand the concept of trade? Money isn't some magic shit unlike anything else that ever was and credit is actually much closer to bartering than cash.

You don't even need to go to the fucking Amazon, there's bartering everywhere in the USA and you have to be sheltered as fuck to never have conducted a trade in your life to have such a false idea of how it works.

That or you're bankster internet defense force.

>You're a cog, you're thinking like a cog because you've been educated like a cog and place all of your value on what you can produce for your betters, who literally own your mind at this point.
That's a whole lot of implications for a country rube, user.
Is an individual being truly selfless, giving themselves over fully and totally to civilization, something you can't comprehend? Or is it something that you have to explain away with brainwashing?

>You'll never understand why small communities are almost unanimously more successful than metropoli when it comes to hapiness, satisfaction and quality of life markers because you're incapable of fathoming the possibility that you could have any value beyond what you can export for someone else to buy.
And that are the ONLY things that small communities are successful at, because they have nothing else. They are populated by shallow, dull, worthless people who have found contentment in themselves and their meaningless lives.
A man's worth is not defined by himself, but instead by what he lives behinds and gives to the world.

>In my society people are people, in yours they're numbers. That may be lawful but cannot be good because morality is confered by and for individuals, not mechanical refactions.
In your society people are ONLY people, they are talking apes who are content with their brief flick of existence until they return to the dirt forever.
People are still people in civilization, but they are more than that; they are resources, they are wealth, they are power and authority and progress. They are movers and shakers and part of a whole so much greater than their totality.
Your society just exists in its trite happiness, nothing more, nothing less.

Oy vey, more strawmen.

>It pays itself with diminishing criminal activity and problems with neighbouring nations.
There's more crime and enemy combatant attacks on local interests now than any other time where total war hadn't been declared.

Anyone can do a heist. The trouble comes when you need to escape.

Government power and police respectability have decayed a lot in the last decade. In most weatern countires at the same time.
Twenty years ago a riot was a riot, not a protest, and was met with shield walls, tear gas and water cannons. Ten years ago if a politician said terrorism is something you have to live with, he would be booed off the politic stage. Twenty years ago, if a cop shot an innocent he would be hounded by the media, but if he shot an armed criminal, noone would be bothered much. Ten years ago a bombing in New york would be a terrorist attack, not just a 'bombing'.

You said so yourself, your goal is unattainable and human happiness is a non-factor.
Therefore you grind people dead in the name of "civilization" for either money or ego.

And colonialism is hipocritical. It's bad for the colonies, it's good for the colonizer. Calling it "progress" is entirely dependant on where you stand.

>You said so yourself, your goal is unattainable and human happiness is a non-factor.
That does not equate to a perpetual capitalistic meat grinder, which you seem unable to get through your thick fucking head.

>Therefore you grind people dead in the name of "civilization" for either money or ego.
Again with the money? You must be a Jew if you think about it this much. And ego? Come on, I'm not the wanting insisting on wasting human potential for the sake of simple happiness.

>And colonialism is hipocritical. It's bad for the colonies, it's good for the colonizer. Calling it "progress" is entirely dependant on where you stand.
It is extraordinarily good for colonies, so long as they don't throw a fit and shake off their masters before they're properly civilized. At any point before that, you now have a nation of apes with guns.

i wonder how this guy feels about black people...

There wouldn't be millions of people living in self-suficient communities nowadays all around the world from Siberia to America if that quenchless thirst for "success" was a human factor and not just your personal lack of self esteem craving to "prove" shit to people who don't give a shit about you.

It's not nature that makes humans worse pack animals than apes or wolves, it's the word "BUY!" being hammered against your face every day until you cannot value yourself for anything else than what you can buy.

Again, nobody here has set foot outside of the metropolitan marketplace and seen how satisfied with life rural people can be.

If you're so certain that people value hierarchy and success because of brainwashing, then why is it such a stretch that your own "self sufficient" hippy dippy communes aren't also a result of people believing too hard in idiocy.

>Again, nobody here has set foot outside of the metropolitan marketplace and seen how satisfied with life rural people can be.
Again, no one is denying that rural people can be (and are) satisfied. They're just worthless, meaningless, utterly irrelevant, and a parody of human civilization.

>It pays itself with diminishing criminal activity and problems with neighbouring nations.
>he thinks actual members of the economy are willing to be the ones to make the high quality things and earn less profit, instead of making bottom-of-the-barrel shit and hoping someone else will do the heavy lifting
Nigger, I am ex military and our contractors were bottom-line-squeezing filth more interested in charging vast sums of money for Home-Depot-grade screwdrivers than actually making the quality materials that would theoretically emerge in a world where competition wasn't undermined by information disparity. They get away with it, too - but here, don't take my word for it.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyman_G._Rickover#Forced_retirement
Yes, that is a major military contractor failing hilariously to produce quality materials and CHARGING THE GOVERNMENT FOR THEIR OWN FUCKUPS WHEN THEY GOT CAUGHT. But go on telling me how the modern industrialist doesn't aim for the lowest quality they think they can get away with.
I'm not actually an agrarianfag, I'm just generally sick of people pretending capitalism actually works as advertised without significant controls.

>I'm not actually an agrarianfag, I'm just generally sick of people pretending capitalism actually works as advertised without significant controls.
"muh civilization and progress"fag here, I agree with you for what it's worth.

The worst think about this hypothetical agrarian barter society? It's not even the loss of science, technology and progress.
It's the loss of art. Agriculture is a 24 hour/day, 7 days/week 365 days/year job. It considers leisure time an hour of drink in the bar at night, a couple of hours in the market every week and the occasional solstice holiday.
Without leisure, there is no art. There is no time for writing, acting, composing, painting, sculpting, or anything else. There is certainly not enough time to master any of these skills. And none of those skills are easy to barter with, a dedicated artist would need to be sustained by his family, or depend on goodwill and busking.

There is a good reason why the classic tale is about a talented artist moving out of Nowheresville to the Big City to find fame, and not the other way around.

And if you believe humans can be truly happy without art, then you have my pity.

They have to be selfless so your definition of civilization thrives, off of their suffering of course.

You promote a bunch of immaterial promises and yet make fun of religion a couple posts back. It doesn't matter that people remember you after you're dead, you're dead. Whoever you are doesn't matter for someone will take your place, whatever you moved will move again and not necessarily for the better as shown by real life where technology keeps side-stepping instead of advancing because elites dictate curing aids, solving the infrastructure challenges that promote world hunger or at least making affordable male chemical contraceptives to solve overpopulation are just not economically favorable pursiuts for them to make right now despite being all possible for 40 years now. It's as much of an exercise in futility as meaningless as the guy who did nothing but fish crabs for 50 years.

Your civilization is a sacrificial altar for the attention-craving, self-depreciating and depressed. And all you have to show for it are a couple more coins and hipster architecture that would not last a blink of an eye compared to ancient civilizations' work if the people living in the cities were to abandon them today.

>I'm just generally sick of people pretending capitalism actually works as advertised without significant controls.
True. My message is getting garbled by the need to answer agrarianfags stupid points.
Capitalism only works if there is a government capable of keeping control, and lawmen and military are necessary for that control.
Capitalism without a strong government ends in cyberpunk. Government without capitalism ends up in dictatorship, like all the attempts at communism and socialism prove.

>You promote a bunch of immaterial promises and yet make fun of religion a couple posts back.
Oh no, I didn't make fun of religion; I made fun of inhuman Gods and spirits. Religion is a wonderfully important thing for a civilization.

>It doesn't matter that people remember you after you're dead, you're dead.
That's a terrible way to think, and leads only to selfishness and hedonism.

>Whoever you are doesn't matter for someone will take your place
And? That's good! No man should ever be irreplaceable.

>whatever you ... 40 years now.
That is a failure of capitalism and your mindset of selfishness and happiness. Hipster architecture and coins can at least bring a little bit of happiness, however temporary, and people like you will optimize for that. Don't even pretend that your agrarian shithole could solve world hunger for the current population or cure AIDS.

>Your civilization is a sacrificial altar for the attention-craving, self-depreciating and depressed.
And your community is funeral home for the meaningless and worthless, biding their time in simple contentment until they turn to dust, caring only for themselves in their brief blink of existence.

>that would not last a blink of an eye compared to ancient civilizations' work if the people living in the cities were to abandon them today.
And you think that your little society would either? Those ancient civilizations are the definition of civilization; they built great monuments for the sake of awe and gravitas, they expanded and conquered and progressed for the sake of their kingdom, of their empire. The fact that our cities would crumble is not a fact of lost knowledge or technology, but it is because we are so incredibly knowledgeable that we can build structures on the knife-edge margin of endurance and cost. If we put our minds and will to it, the civilizations of today could likely build a monument that would last until the very ground it was standing on sunk into the mantle.

The zones of truth only enforce the Lawful half of the alignment, something else needs to be present to enforce the Good half. I like the "order of paladins" idea because you can position them as a kind of extragovernmental organization that keeps the government on the level, like a combination of commissars and jedi, where the answer to "who watches the watchers" is a literal deity who strips them of their powers (and therefore mandate) if they fail their responsibility.

More like 15 years ago, but this societal change is relevant to the argument.
30 years ago America was a self-sustaining capitalist that gave people what they needed and offered those who craved more all the more they could afford with their productivity.
Nowadays America is reaping what it sowed after 20-something years of rampanth consummerism and having to deal with the fact that convincing the population that "get rich or die trying" was a sensible life motto forced the industry to open the borders under the table so that they'd have someone actually willing to work for the wages they're willing to pay.

Progress!

>There wouldn't be millions of people living in self-suficient communities nowadays all around the world from Siberia to America if that quenchless thirst for "success" was a human factor and not just your personal lack of self esteem craving to "prove" shit to people who don't give a shit about you.
There are millions of people living in islamic countries. there are millions of people living under cruel dictatorships. There are millions of people living in slums. There are millions of people living in eternal tribal war in Africa. There are millions of scientologists.
Humans are crazy, you can get millions of us to do any bumfuck retarded thing if you try hard enough.
But the only form of society tried and tested and proved best with enough regularity to become majority across the world is democracy and capitalism.

Why would the capitalist ever stop the grinder?
Real life shows it just doesn't happen. Your society is an utopia.

And even America, the only successful colony ever, didn't become successful thanks to it's colonizer. America was very lucky to become the promised land of immigrants and accumulate talented human capital from all over the world until it just could't fail to become the most powerful nation in the world.

>But the only form of society tried and tested and proved best with enough regularity to become majority across the world is democracy and capitalism.
Not him, but to be fair, you could say the same thing about monarchy and mercantilism as well.
Pure democracy is also a bad idea as well, which is why pretty much every successful nation is a representative/parliamentary republic.

Not all fantasy is conan/middle earth/arthurian britain
It's only in the realm of B schlock that that one flavor drowns out all else.

Until you said 5e, I was going to call you out as my DM, because my group literally did the exact same thing.

>Why would the capitalist ever stop the grinder?
Because capitalism, by it's very nature, cannot continue on forever. It works on an infinite growth model, and sooner or later it's either going to progress enough to make capitalism itself obsolete and unnecessary, or it's going to die under its own bloat.
I'm betting on the former.

>And even America, the only successful colony ever, didn't become successful thanks to it's colonizer.
Except it did; America was an extremely mature colony when the revolution occurred.
> America was very lucky
There was no "luck" about it; America was a wild and untamed land full of resources and hapless natives; it was inevitable that it would draw immigrants and gloryseekers.

Those rural people will die of old age surrounded by their families after living long lives knowing the value of community and self-sufficience.
Meanwhile metropolitans are dying of cancer and stress never knowing anything but their shitty cubicle, way too many don't even have meaningful romantic partnerships anymore.

In both settings one or two extraordinary individuals will come upon a breakthrough that advances society and have it be adopted into normalcy by the state or academia. It doesn't take much reading to notice inventors and social movers aren't exclusive to metropolitan areas.

But you're not rural so you cannot fathom the possibility that someone other than you and your "team city" would be as usefull to actual societal advancement while prefering to live their lives in the calmness of a small town and away from the corporate meat grinder.

>More like 15 years ago, but this societal change is relevant to the argument.
True
>30 years ago America was a self-sustaining capitalist that gave people what they needed and offered those who craved more all the more they could afford with their productivity.
Also true.
>Nowadays America is reaping what it sowed after 20-something years of rampanth consummerism and having to deal with the fact that convincing the population that "get rich or die trying" was a sensible life motto forced the industry to open the borders under the table so that they'd have someone actually willing to work for the wages they're willing to pay.
Wrong!
First, "rampanth consummerism" is nearing at least 70 years, it can be traced, at least, to the fifties. At least.
Second what has screwed America is not "open(ning) the borders under the table so that they'd have someone actually willing to work for the wages they're willing to pay". That exists since America was born. Even ignoring slavery, there were the chinese, the irish, and more recently the latinos.
The problem is 20-something years of telling children they're special, no matter what they do, that it's the spirit that counts and you don't need to win, that your feelings matter and not your accomplisments, that you should never offend others. THAT is what created a society where black people feel entitled to reparations, where you can't call a suicide bomber a terrorist so you won't offend his religion, where the fact that someone was shot is more important than the fact that they were a criminal, where wearing a t-shirt is enough to get a man fired, where women and niggers are expected to be given well paying high placed jobs even if they don't deserve them.

And yet most of the world's most enduring works of art come from a time where people lived in small cities, towns or serfdoms.
>There is a good reason why the classic tale is about a talented artist moving out of Nowheresville to the Big City to find fame, and not the other way around.
So that fools can be exploited is the reason. Take a stroll through Hollywood and count the number of people living in their cars while trying to "break through". Those people would be infinitely more successful pursuing their arts in small communities but the narrative dictates that you must put "talent" and "luck" over effort and experience because desperate people sign more abusive contracts.

Industrialization just straight up exists to increase the quality of life. That's how capitalism works, it can only exist if it produces value.
I don't know what the other guy is on about with some strange imperative to be big and relevant on the world stage, maybe he's roleplaying a high elf or something. But industry is very much not just a prestige project, it serves a purpose. Without mass production your life would be a whole lor worse.
CEOs being cackling villains trying to suck the world dry and exploiting everyone from grannies to starving children only exists as an image because you need someone to blame for all the bad in the world.

>Those rural people will die of old age surrounded by their families after living long lives knowing the value of community and self-sufficience.
And they will have lived long lives of utter irreverence. Only their little, tiny island will have no whatever meaningless work they did.

>Meanwhile metropolitans are dying of cancer and stress never knowing anything but their shitty cubicle, way too many don't even have meaningful romantic partnerships anymore.
And they have the tools and medicine to counteract it, and are part of a grand and glorious machine, adding even an iota to the wonder of human civilization.

>In both settings one or two extraordinary individuals will come upon a breakthrough that advances society and have it be adopted into normalcy by the state or academia. It doesn't take much reading to notice inventors and social movers aren't exclusive to metropolitan areas.
And yet, nearly every inventor and social mover goes to city to actually effect change. They don't stay in the shitty little podunk farm town, because there is nothing but mediocrity for them their.

>But you're ... meat grinder.
Because anyone and everyone that is useful to progress works and does their thing in urban centers; whether their home is or is not in "slightly-past-suburbia"ville is irrelevant.

Honestly, all you are is just some corn-husking luddite mad about his way of life slowly disappearing to corporate agriculture and automation technology. Entire fields can be worked by a single man with a few machines now, and your beloved communities are dieing.
The only option you have for your silly little societies is too go off the grid entirely, to purposely gimp yourself and to separate yourself from the rest of humanity for the sake of "self-sufficiency"
I would pity you, but I can't find a reason to.

>Not him, but to be fair, you could say the same thing about monarchy and mercantilism as well.
Both got beaten by (representative/parliamentary) democracy in the end. I do think a monarchy/dictatorship COULD work, if you had in charge one of those rare few who actually put the good of his country over his own. I proposed Vetinari as an example of how a LG country can exist in an RPG setting.

I thought the (representative/parliamentary) was implicit when talking about modern democracy.

>And yet most of the world's most enduring works of art come from a time where people lived in small cities, towns or serfdoms.
Those "small cities" were effectively the metropoli of the day.

>I don't know what the other guy is on about with some strange imperative to be big and relevant on the world stage, maybe he's roleplaying a high elf or something. But industry is very much not just a prestige project, it serves a purpose.
Of course it serves a purpose (and a very useful purpose), but I find it beautiful and wonderful in its own right. I see it as functional art, like architecture.

>Both got beaten by (representative/parliamentary) democracy in the end.
I wouldn't be so sure, user; it's dangerous to think of today as the end of history.

>I thought the (representative/parliamentary) was implicit when talking about modern democracy.
Fair enough, but I too often see people toting around pure democracy like it's a good example.

Considering where most medicine and medical procedures were developed, yes, an rural community could cure aids if it was among their primary concerns. You don't need to move to New York to become a doctor or install a medical laboratory. In fact a growing number of investigative laboratories are leaving cities because of concerns both for what they might develop and for the quality of the enviroment they test in.

Democracy worked out pretty bad where we tried to forcefully insert it.
Honestly, I get the feeling it's just cultural tradition upholding ours. Look at Russia, the people would make Putin their king if they could, the voting thing is just a hassle to them.

And where did all those medical laboratories come from? Where did all the doctors and scholars come from? Where does all the funding come from?
Do not mistake your shitty little town for supporting and playing host to those institutions, they are merely using your land.

>And yet most of the world's most enduring works of art come from a time where people lived in small cities, towns or serfdoms.
And were either made by nobles or people of high birth, or paid by nobles or people of high birth. History motherfucker, do you speak it?

>So that fools can be exploited is the reason. Take a stroll through Hollywood and count the number of people living in their cars while trying to "break through". Those people would be infinitely more successful pursuing their arts in small communities but the narrative dictates that you must put "talent" and "luck" over effort and experience because desperate people sign more abusive contracts.
>Those people would be infinitely more successful pursuing their arts in small communities
You're either trolling, a retard, or a liar. It's been a fun couple of hour but I had enough of your nonsense. Out.

You're losing that bet.
I have lost track of how many companies have gone on mergers because capitalism's "anything for one more dolar, now!" bullshit ended up bankrupting them.

Capitalism as it is today will lead to monopoly and revolution and the ball is way too big already for regulation to make it work as intended.

>CEOs being cackling villains trying to suck the world dry and exploiting everyone from grannies to starving children only exists as an image because you need someone to blame for all the bad in the world.
Quick pop quiz, faggot, who am I quoting below? Feel free to Google the passage, or just save yourself some time and read the spoiler tags under the quote.
"In raising the price of commodities the rise of wages operates in the same manner as simple interest does in the accumulation of debt. The rise of profits operates like compound interest. Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people."
-Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, final sentences of book 1 chapter 9, "Of The Profits Of Stock". Yes, the father of capitalism himself thought managements was scraping too much off the top.

50's-60's consummerism was a natural response to overproduction and underpopulation and fueled by the nuclear scare, too little people had too much money and were afraid they would be brought back to 40's level scarcity any second. It stalled a lot during the 70's and 80's until companies started targeting teens with underhanded marketing in the 90's which caused the second boom of now rampanth consummerism.

It's always funny when people are looking for answers in tiny tiny details of societal norms ignoring the big ones.
America changed due to growing inequalities. You can bitch all you want about "millenials", but it just makes you sound like a bitter grandpa. And all the things you bitch about can be found on goddamn clay tablets from XX century BC.

Your American dream was not real since at least 100 years ago, but you still blindly believe in it.

>methods that have been used to ensure a Lawful Good government exists in your games?
Well, it being unquestionably Lawful Good might be a stretch, because it doesn't maintain 100% control over everything, and there is a bit of a triggerhappy knightly order encompassing about 40-50% of the nobles in the realm that are closer to Lawful Neutral, but here is how my Lawful Good empire do:

It's ruler is literally Bahamut, and the Imperial regent is advised by Metallic Dragons

If it sounds bullshit, here's why:
>Long ago, in a Distant Land there was a great wizard named Not Aku
>Great wizard basically enacted the War of the Ring upon the entire continent, and the Humans/Dwarves/Elves/Gnomes/Halflings lost, and they lost hard
>In closing decade or so of the War, a single soldier, by divine intervention or sheer luck, managed to do the unthinkable, and kill a dragon that laid waste to his entire platoon He actually just got swallowed whole, still barely alive in a pile of his fallen comrades and used his last bit of strength to cut through the dragon's throat
>Said knight gets hailed as a champion and the last, greatest hope of the realm
>Leads the final defence of the remaining peoples, while they build a great feet to escape the continent
>For his great cause in fighting against the impregnable hordes, his valor as a knight and the fact that he's an all around stand-up guy, Bahamut decides he can't let this go on, divine contracts of non-interference be damned, pronounces him his first and only mortal Vassal in the setting, and comes swooping in with his dragons to help humans escape
>They do, since the remaining peoples are of like 5-6 different kingdoms, they form a new realm upon reaching land, and him being the one constant everyone can respect, he's crowned Emperor
>Dies, no heir of proper age to inherit, so by law, the crown goes to either a voted vassal, or his liege if he has one
>Oh wait, he does