Welcome to the tenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles!!
This month’s banter leans a little, OK a lot, on the academic side. It comes to us from xiphos83 of A Misguided Adventurer, who asks the following:
Victor Davis Hanson argues that western culture, comprising of ideals such as freedom, debate, capitalism, and consensual government, are what make western society so successful at waging war. These ideologies create a warrior who’s direct participation in government, ability to think freely, and desire to remain free, fights harder and is willing to suffer more than his conscripted foe. Though a military must remain a structured oligarchy to fight a war effectively, why in a world where military conflict is as familiar as breathing are there so few alliances that embrace these ideologies when governing their members?
I have to say, I disagree with this conclusion. In my experience over the past three years of playing EVE, I have found that many alliances in fact embrace the concepts put forth here and this method of governing an organization’s membership is why they are successful. I personally have been a member of two different alliances in game and I will speak about those experiences.
My first alliance was Privateers when it was first formed. That alliance existed at the time for the purpose of bringing lots of war targets to it’s members in Empire space. No real governing there except for the collection of isk for the war declaration weeks each week. That was pretty much it. The corporation I was in was an alliance member for 1 month and then they left the alliance. I left that corporation around the same time.
Second and more recently, I was a member of the Neo Spartans and a member of the alliance leadership of the Laconian Syndicate. People were free to pursue what they wanted to pursue. Major objectives such as moves, major campaigns, etc were submitted, discussed and decided by the membership of the alliance. If people wanted to step up and help with the logistics of running the organization, they were encouraged to help (“Voluntold” somtimes but for the most part people would help out). In a nutshell, everyone had a vested interest in making the alliance successful as they wanted to see themselves succeed.
A successful organization will utilize all it’s assets to achieve it’s goals. Listening to your membership’s ideas and views on a situation is a valuable tool. You have litterally years of experience with your pilots. To not listen to their views on an issue is a simple recipe for failure. Fostering competition among your members helps to build people’s strengths. Keeping things open allows people to feel as if they are part of a greater whole. These are all things that all of us look for in an organization.
So no, I don’t think many alliances hinder freedom, debate and a collaborative government, they embrace those concepts to become successful.
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July 27th, 2009 at 11:23 am
LOL I cannot wait till you see what I wrote..once again your in my damned head and you published BEFORE I did GAhhhhh…get out of my head
. LOL. 
good post!
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July 27th, 2009 at 11:24 am
Nice post Galen…get out of my head…( we agree very much on this and my experiences is much like yours
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Galen Reply:
July 27th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Are your left and right brains posting again? Two comments from you, I feel special.
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Manasi Reply:
July 27th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
You SHOULD feel special! haha I had to accept some javascript and then well weird things happened and I double posted, or should I say twice blessed?
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July 27th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
I agree with you – I think most alliances/corporations practice the principles as a matter of course. Since their membership is voluntary, they need to keep in touch with them or lose them. I can't see how they could do that with a dictatorial approach.
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July 28th, 2009 at 6:24 am
I took a different approach to you and Manasi. I find the things you guys talk about aren't really a democracy but components of a democracy. Other then the fact that I disagree with you I enjoyed reading it seeing a different opinion
http://podlogs.com/thecaptainslog/2009/07/28/blog...
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July 29th, 2009 at 6:42 am
Interesting – I've still only ever been in two alliances, one the starting NPC one and the other Eve University, which is most definitely not a democracy nor is it entirely free (neither of these a particularly bad thing in terms of a teaching organisation – don't want the inmates running the asylum!). I hadn't realised that there were that many alliances that ran democratically.
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