The Nexerus

Game of Thrones Inspired NRP (Accepting one more!)

@DeadBeatWalkingWesteros during the days of the Targaryen Kings had nine traditional Great Houses: Stark, Greyjoy, Tully, Arryn, Lannister, Tyrell, Baratheon, Martell, and the Targaryens themselves. The Riverlands of House Tully wasn't included as a historical 'kingdom' of its own (because it was subject to the Iron Islands at the time of Aegon's Conquest), and neither was the Crownlands, as at the time of the Conquest it was simply a border region between other kingdoms. That is why it's called the Seven Kingdoms even though it usually had nine Great Houses with their associated lands. If we were mimicking ASOIAF's political scene very closely, we'd have eight kingdoms of Great Houses staffed by eight players. Plus you, as OP and the royal house, as our ninth.

By the current way you have the structure of this written, your House, the royal demesne, is considered its own kingdom. That will leave us with five subordinate Great Houses—an odd number—if we decided to call ourselves the "six kingdoms" to avoid being the same as Westeros' traditional Seven Kingdoms.

You should make things utterly clear and decide two things definitively: how many players are there going to be, and is the royal demesne going to count as a kingdom?

Game of Thrones Inspired NRP (Accepting one more!)

I'm interested.

If I do join it will likely be as something relatively small.

@Pepperm1nts

I would assume that the six nations are all led by great houses. You can be a small great house of a small nation, but a great house nonetheless.

Am I the only one who thinks Overwatch is Overhyp?

From metacritic it's doing worse than battleborn...

So i suppose not...

@SleepingSilence

Metacritic scores, at least the ones from random people and not critics, are steaming horseshit. Read through the comments of a few. You'll find that most of those that aren't obviously written by trolls are infantile and contrarian, if they're even legible.

Have you ever changed your mind about one of those big issues?

@Vilageidiotx Keynesian economics is academically dominant because it is the school of thought most often teached. It is the school of thought most often teached because of its history of political dominance.

I wouldn't say that Keynesianism is 'impure'. Like any other economic school of thought, it presents a course of action to be taken that an honest government espousing it will follow. Keynesianism does however allow for a great deal more discretionary action to be undertaken than in its counterparts, which is ultimately why governments are attracted to it.

Have you ever changed your mind about one of those big issues?

Why is it that varieties of Keynesian economics have dominated since the depression?

@Vilageidiotx

Because Keynesians were elected.

Why were Keynesians elected?

Vilageidiotx

The fiscal and monetary practices espoused by Keynes allow for a wide range of different policies from across the political spectrum to be conducted, whereas maximizing or minimizing state involvement in the economy presents a more definitive tone and allows for a less diverse policy range. In other words, pretending to be Keynesian allows you to act more dishonestly and stick with the political whims of the day, rather than having a spine.

Have you ever changed your mind about one of those big issues?

If this is true then why does nobody ever take it into practice?

@Vilageidiotx

Government policy is almost never determined purely ideologically. The reasons for this are as numerous as they are well-known and for that reason you probably don't need me to list them, but just for presentation's sake I'll name drop special interests.

Have you ever changed your mind about one of those big issues?

Whereas the an-cap world would collapse and revert to right of conquest, a lawful economy that has no government involvement in the economy would see bubbles rising up all the time, popping, and descending into depressions. Capitalism is something like hitching you carriage to tigers I suppose; the less you try to control them the more they'll run amok, because you might want them to drive your economy carriage, but they don't care about that, they want to run around making quick money from mauling people. Takes some control by the driver to keep them mauling the least amount of people possible while still moving forward.

@Vilageidiotx

This paragraph's telling of events represents the polar opposite of observable reality and is written in complete disregard for every historical example and mathematical model of market activity ever studied, created or interpreted by every single economic school of thought within and without orthodoxy; alternatively, it may depict the economic forces involved in a parallel universe.

Business cycles become more turbulent when market forces are intervened upon, not less. To continue with your colourful analogy: poking a tiger with a stick doesn't calm it down. Even socialists of all stripes accept this, they merely contend that what is good for the long-term growth of the economy is not the same as what is good for people.

Have you ever changed your mind about one of those big issues?

irony

@Halo

My willingness to understand the perspectives of others doesn't extend very far into the extremes.

Have you ever changed your mind about one of those big issues?

One thing I have changed my mind about relatively recently is my attitude towards people with different viewpoints than mine. I used to assume that everyone who had an opinion on a substantive issue that differed from my own held it because of a combination of ignorance and stupidity. I've recently entertained the idea that some people just have different priorities than others.

I fantasize about seizing the means of production and the fact that capitalism exists keeps me up at night.

@Keyguyperson

I'm picturing an overweight man with a poorly kept beard, listening to The Internationale on his iPod while wearing nothing but a Che Guvera shirt (manufactured in Bangladesh).

got me right in the feels

@mdk Apparently GRRM planned this all out from the beginning, meaning that he's been sitting on it for twenty-five years.

So really, he knew his whole life how it would end.

@Taaj

I'm not sure he did, or at least not convinced that he was capable of understanding that knowledge or acting on it in any significant way. We'll probably know for sure when it's revealed in the books (in however many months or years that takes).