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Warning: This is a very long thread; this might be you during reading.
This is an idea, and ideas can't just stand up to no scrutiny. I will apply this abstraction to game sales down the OP although that's not the main reason for the idea, you're going to see it be linked to my true ending route thread.
By the way, this is not the first time anyone has abstracted theory from a game, a recommended watch would be this video titled "What Game Theory Reveals About Life, The Universe, and Everything", in that video, the theory they're abstracting from is the Prisoner's Dilemma:
GNOSIA
The video game Gnosia is described as a social deduction game, it first released on PlayStation Vita in June 2019, then Nintendo Switch in December 2020, PC in January 2022 and then PS4/PS5/Xbox One/Xbox Series in December 2023.
I played Gnosia when it first launched on Switch, and I just played it again recently. If you look at gameplay footage, the first thing you're going to think of is "this is sus". Good observation, Among Us first released on iOS and Android on June 15, 2018.
MAFIA
What you probably don't know is that the original social deduction game was called Mafia. No, not the Mafia video game series. Mafia was a party game invented in 1986 by Dimitry Davidoff, he played the first game in Spring 1987 at the Moscow State University. The Wikipedia article says, "He developed the game to combine psychology research with his duties teaching high school students."
Similar to Tetris (a video game created in Russia during the Soviet era), it spread far and wide globally and was just as popular. Here is a long Wired article about Mafia: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/werewolf
"This is sus, the headline says werewolf, not mafia". Yes, when you read the article, it will mention how when the game spread to the US, the person Andrew Plotkin made a variant of Mafia called Werewolf "arguing that mafia had less cultural resonance, and that the werewolf concept fit the idea of a hidden enemy who looked normal during the daytime". There are other variants of Mafia and according to the Wired article, Werewolf and its variants are popular at tech companies and conventions.
What are the game rules of Mafia? According to the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_(party_game)
That sounds sus doesn't it? In variants there would be stuff like extra roles, so for example there would be a detective role who can check if someone is a villager or not.
Anyway, you've been looking through the Wikipedia article just five seconds ago and you went, "Hey, there's already a game theory section for this game, you're an impostor!": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_(party_game)#Game_theory
I didn't say I was going to abstract game theory (which is statistical), nor was I going to abstract psychological theory which is also mentioned in that Wikipedia. I'm abstracting a different theory from the video game Gnosia.
GNOSIA SETTING AND RULES
Gnosia is a story-driven single-player social deduction game in a Visual Novel style. It is in a sci-fi setting (sounds sus), the story begins with you ending up on a spaceship (very sus), and you are notified that Gnosia have been detected on the ship (sussy).
The game rules are, there are a group of Gnosia (who are described as the enemies of humans) and the Crew (Humanoids who are not Gnosia). What's that? Humanoids? Yes, there are characters that are not of the human species. Similar to werewolf, there is a day phase where the Gnosia and Humanoids gather into a room. They discuss who they think is Gnosia and vote to put the person into cold sleep. Then at the night phase, the Gnosia will decide which Crew member to eliminate (Gnosia cannot eliminate Gnosia). This day/night phase will repeat until the either all Gnosia have been eliminated (Crew wins), or the ratio of Gnosia to Crew is 1:1 or greater (Gnosia wins).
In Gnosia you can set a maximum of 15 crew but no more than 6 Gnosia (very sus) because it can finish pretty quickly by the second day if you eliminate three people who were all crew (two by cold sleep, one by Gnosia) or even faster by the end of the first day if the Engineer works in your favor. Your character has RPG stats so the in-game hints will tell you how to level up faster such as winning in difficult conditions such as 15 crew members and you are the sole Gnosia. You have to keep playing over and over and over in different roles to progress through the story.
Initially the roles are Gnosia and Crew. Referencing the Mafia Wikipedia article, the Gnosia are the informed minority and the Crew are the uninformed majority. The Gnosia know who other Gnosia are on the ship. The Crew don't know who another person's role is. As you get through the tutorial section of the game, it will unlock new roles. First is, the Engineer role.
The Engineer's role is to identify who is Gnosia or Humanoid, if someone is an Engineer, they are not required to state their role however! Gnosia have the ability to lie, if someone asks, "Who is the Engineer?" and someone lies by stating that they are the engineer, then the game recommends that you state your role as well. Why the game would recommend you state role is because there's a particular rare condition that can be triggered called, "The Blood Clam who leapt through time". Basically, the game crashes if that occurs and it will not save any records of that game ever occurring.
There is a downside to revealing that you're the Engineer, you're essentially signaling to the Gnosia, "Hello! I am the threat, eliminate me first before I find out that you're Gnosia!" During the night phase, the Engineer can select one person to scan. Then the following day (assuming you survived the night), you then report during the day phase what the results of the scan were, "This person is Gnosia/not Gnosia" (very sus). Any liars that stated that they are Engineers will also report their scan (but their scan results are not real).
Next role that occurs is the Doctor, someone can lie and state that they are the doctor meaning that similar to the Engineer the real doctor would need to step up. The doctor isn't as big as a threat as the Engineer, when a person is voted to be put into cold sleep. The doctor will examine the person at night, if they survive to the next day the doctor will report whether the person in cold sleep is a humanoid or Gnosia, the liars are better off not contradicting the real doctor because they are examining the same person while the Engineer can examine anyone.
Next role is Guardian Angel, they're a humanoid whose role stays hidden the whole game. During the night phase, they can select one person to protect, if they have selected the correct person to protect then the Gnosia will have failed to eliminate someone for the night. The Guardian Angel can't protect themselves, if you don't know who to protect, there's a priority of roles to protect such as the Engineer or Doctor.
Next role is Guard Duty but they're not as important to talk about, similar in threat level to the Engineer. The Guard Duty are two Crew members who are verified to be actual Crew and not Gnosia. This reduces the chance of Gnosia winning because it reduces uncertainty from two players, no one is able to lie and pretend that they are Guard Duty.
Next role is the AC Follower, the AC Follower is a humanoid whose job is to help the Gnosia win. Unlike the Crew, the AC Follower can lie by doing things such as faking the role of Doctor or Engineer. The Gnosia won't know who an AC Follower is, but you may be able to tell from who is lying.
Lastly, the final role is the Bug. It is basically in reference to a computer bug, something that isn't supposed to be there. If the Bug isn't eliminated and the win condition occurs where Gnosia are at a 1:1 ratio to the Crew or the Crew has eliminated all Gnosia, then everyone else loses because the Bug wins. The bug is a Crew member who can lie, you do not know who the bug is, to eliminate the bug you can either put the bug into cold sleep or if you have an engineer, the engineer can scan someone and if that person is the bug, they are eliminated. The Bug cannot be eliminated by Gnosia. If there is a Guardian Angel in the game, then you won't know if the person you didn't eliminate was a Bug or just a Crew member saved by a Guardian Angel.
I had to go through explaining all the rules for Gnosia (except RPG stats and skills) to set up getting to abstracting theory from the game.
SETTING UP THE ABSTRACTION FROM GNOSIA
As mentioned before from the Wired article regarding Mafia: "Davidoff explains it succinctly as "the uninformed majority versus the informed minority". I have tried to look up why Davidoff created the game since it is said somewhere that it was for a psychology research paper, and I can't find the research paper.
Using the idea of "the uninformed majority versus the informed minority", we can apply it to real-life examples like... Video game sales. The informed minority are companies like NPD and Sony where they know the details of hardware and software sales like... How much did the PS Vita sell during its lifetime? We will never know, unless they announce it, or someone leaks it.
The worst kind of Werewolf game to play would be where the Uninformed Majority are the "video game companies" and the Informed Minority are the "Insiders". You play the game, the video game companies yell "There is a leaker among us!", the insiders don't know who the real leaker is because 99% of the leakers are just people trying to farm attention on social media with fake leaks even though they are supposed to be the informed minority!
Anyway, that's not what I want to talk about. I want to focus on Gnosia for a moment. There are many roles to choose from in Gnosia and they are grouped into two classes.
Classes:
- Gnosia (role: Gnosia)
- Crew (roles: Crew, Engineer, Doctor, Guard Duty, AC Follower, Bug)
Actually, it could be split into three classes:
- Gnosia
- Crew
- Bug
We're getting ahead of ourselves here, let's just focus on Gnosia and Crew as classes. One of the things I had thought about Mafia is the idea of "the informed minority and the uninformed majority" which forms the basis of the game's rules. There are people that have tried to abstract the game Mafia to explain about things in the real world.
When I think about the game rules when they're applied to the real world, I think there's a flaw. When you are playing the game, you assume the role of the uninformed majority and the game's rules tell you there is an informed minority. The flaw I am pointing out is how the uninformed majority are being informed of their class according by the game's rules.
Let's apply this to Gnosia, let's pretend that I am playing a game of Gnosia. I set the crew number to 15, and let's pretend... that I set the number of Gnosia to zero... (VERY SUSSY). You're probably thinking that I set the game so that there are no Gnosia which results in an automatic win, that isn't what I am intending. Zero isn't what is known, it's unknown. There are 15 crew members on a spaceship, there are no alerts of Gnosia because it would inform the uninformed majority. No voting game occurs, no cold sleep occurs, day by day passes and for some reason the crew members are being eliminated and they don't even know why.
You point out, "They're being eliminated by Gnosia!". They could be, but as I said, the number of Gnosia is unknown. We don't know what they're being eliminated by because there's no rules telling them who the enemy is. That's one aspect of the game I wanted to look at, the other aspect are the win conditions in Mafia. Why is it that the condition to win is to eliminate the other group? This is why I was curious about the research paper. When you hear, "The informed minority versus the uninformed majority" you think about control, and the win conditions done through voting require manipulation.
In the video game Gnosia, if you are Gnosia during the voting game, you have to convince others to vote for someone that isn't Gnosia to put into cold sleep. If one of your other teammates that is Gnosia is confirmed to be Gnosia, you may have to vote them out to avoid drawing suspicion to yourself. Actually, funny thing. If you are Gnosia and you accuse someone of being Gnosia and they are not put into cold sleep and, if you decide to eliminate them during the night phase. The Crew members will immediately suspect you the following day.
Anyway, the point is about control and manipulation. The conditions for winning in the real world don't have to involve eliminating someone. There are other reasons that an informed minority would want an uninformed majority and it's not to eliminate them, mainly it's either financial gain or political gain.
There has to be an exchange where one side gains something and the other side loses something. In the game Mafia, they gain by wiping out all the villagers. The villager's loss is their life, and vice versa. An equal exchange occurs.
Now to make an example regarding financial gain, the informed minority are scammers, and the uninformed majority are the victims. They mislead and manipulate the person for the end result of obtaining a financial gain. The scammer gets money, the victim loses money. There is not a vice versa though, the victim has to avoid losing money and the scammer gets away with the crime if they can't get caught. The exchange isn't equal, and it shows the powerlessness of the victim seeing as they can't do anything to stop the scammer.
Now let's go back and apply the other idea I mentioned which is regarding the flaw of the game's rules. The instance above is assuming that the victims (uninformed majority) are even aware of the scams in the first place i.e. the game rules. Whenever a new scam appears, there has to be victims first before others can be warned about (and hence, the game rules appear) what the scam is so they can avoid being manipulated.
This is still not even what I want to talk about as I was setting up things.
ABSTRACTING THE THEORY FROM GNOSIA TO CREATE NEW MODELS
I mentioned how there were two classes: Gnosia and Crew. Let's create a theoretical model to apply it into the real-world, let's change the class names. Let's try: Rulers and Workers. Let's set a period of time, I don't know... how about 1950 to 1970? The informed minority are the rulers, the uninformed majority are the workers. What's being exchanged is power and the balance of power has been shifting over to the workers during this time.
The rulers didn't like this, so a period of time passes and then the rulers thought, "What if we changed the rules?" A ruler appears, let's call her... Baroness Thatcher. She gives a speech (source) saying how there are those that cast their problems onto the government such as "I am homeless, the Government must house me!" and so on, she claims, "They're casting their problems onto society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first."
There is now no such thing as society, only individuals. The government isn't supposed to do this and that for all of your problems, you are now responsible for your own problems. The rulers won the voting games and eliminated the threats to their power.
Anyway, let's look at those classes again, wait what happened to the classes?
Class: Individuals.
Hmm... Ok, so is that an informed minority or an uninformed majority? Oh well, I don't foresee any problems here.
Some decades pass, a new game appears. What are the classes?
Classes: Individuals.
Ok, what are the game rules? Unknown. What's being exchanged? Unknown.
Of the individuals in this game, 1% of them seem to have all the wealth. The majority of the individuals are facing hardships, why? They don't know. They don't discuss with other individuals their hardships because they believe the cause of their hardships is their own fault, their own responsibility. If no discussion occurs then there is no co-operation, no voting game, there is no action to take to address these hardships, there is no realization of what the game rules are and what is being exchanged.
So, the problem that has occurred in this game is that there is no class-consciousness. Can you see why in the video game Gnosia that there are two classes, and they are conscious of the "game rules", the classes understand what their objective is and how they are going to solve it.
Let's try creating a new theoretical model that restores this class-consciousness and, we'll create a new scenario that gives rise to a new objective.
Let's call this, the Freedom from Private Housing model.
There was a problem I was trying to solve, remember in my thread about the $1 bajillion dollar global derivatives market that I talked about how the owners of Commercial Real Estate, especially those that own office space couldn't pay back the banks their loans? So, the banks were extending the maturity date of the loan to give time for the borrowers to pay off their loans but what's happening is that delinquency rates are rising above 6% for offices in the US currently.
Now, you are probably looking at COVID and how that caused offices to be abandoned and led to remote work. That is not the cause of the issue, the problem happened years before COVID. There was a global financial crisis, governments around the world bailed out their banks, then they needed to use "quantitative easing" by printing money and lowering interest rates to almost 0.0%. They had to lower interest rates to almost zero to convince investors to borrow money and invest it in assets. What did those investors borrow the money for? Commercial Real Estate. New commercial real estate was being built, especially office space. They thought, "the economy will recover and that will mean more workers in the office." There's just one problem, the economy didn't recover, interest rates were at 0% for many years. The idea is that the economy will recover, business will boom because now there will be more workers, and those workers will need an office to work from, and I will get economic rent from the businesses that are renting my commercial real estate. That never happened, there's a reason that WeWork failed so hard even without COVID. COVID only exacerbated the problem for a period of time, even if you returned every worker to the office right now, there will still be commercial real estate that is vacant. You know why? Because the economy is still shit, parts of the economy are more shit than the other, but you only get the news that "the economy is going good" because you are given a number to look at and are comparing that number to last year.
Anyway, the remote worker isn't the cause of the problems of commercial real estate. But it was a good model to look at, the landlord of the commercial real estate is suffering because no businesses want to occupy his land.
Let's now set up the game.
Classes: Landlords, Tenants.
Let's start the game... "There is a werewolf among us!"
In this model, we have the informed minority that are the landlords. The uninformed majority are the tenants of residential housing. As I said before, I have been trying to solve this problem that occurs. The landlords extract wealth from the tenants, the tenants cannot build wealth to afford their own housing, the solution isn't "Just get a job with a six-figure salary" because guess what? There's not enough of those to go around. No amount of side hustles and sigma grind sets will get you to that goal.
I needed to figure out a way to get those tenants that were being exploited to be able to live remotely, away from the landlords just like the remote workers that are away from the commercial landlords.
The only solution I could come up with was, flying houses. There is a lack of land, we can't just move people further and further away into remote areas where there is a lack of infrastructure such as, hospitals. If we can't move them further away, how can we move them closer? Flying houses. You the reader are reacting like this, "This is sus...", the flying house isn't real. It's a concept to arrive to the solution of this problem. Did you not play the first Ace Attorney game and get to that pivotal scene where you are told in-game that you needed to think of something crazy to solve the problem you were having? Now you're thinking, "Why don't we just build higher density housing?", you can do that, it's not going to solve the central problem that is economic rent. You still have no wealth to accumulate, higher density housing gets built, who's going to outbid you to buy that housing? The rentier. Now you just have a different landlord to serve and, you hope that your rent isn't as high.
So, while I am thinking about literal flying houses such as airships fueled with hydrogen. A YouTube channel I watched before when they interviewed Yanis Varoufakis had a new interview up with a person named Grace Blakeley. She brought up good points and, to save time from me having to write it out, just listen to the video whenever you have an hour of free time, especially if you were born in any year after 1980:
Let's go back to the game with the Landlords vs Tenants. What is a crucial problem we overlooked? This scenario is after the model that produced the Individual class. The tenants are individuals, they are not discussing with each other their problems. They are not coming to the conclusion that the system is failing them because there is an unequal exchange where they give money to the landlord for shelter, but the landlord just uses that money to acquire more housing and raise the price of rent, they are not struggling to accumulate wealth, the tenant struggles to accumulate wealth. They have to realize that this is not their own fault, they have to realize, to put it crudely: the system was always rigged against them.
Once they realize that, a change occurs with the classes.
Classes: Landlords, Collective of Tenants
The tenants now realize their struggle and they have to come up with solutions, I've got one: flying houses.
Let's step aside to talk about something from the video game Gnosia. If you were the Gnosia, and the Crew knew you were the threat. How would you defeat them? I probably already talked about using methods of control and manipulation, but how would that work against the Crew who are united in stopping the Gnosia?
Remember the concept of the informed minority and the uninformed majority? If the majority are uninformed, there is a simple strategy to essentially destroy the Crew and win. It's called Divide and Conquer, a phrase you may have heard that is used in many different ways. Let's say there are 3 Gnosia and 12 Crew with a Doctor, Engineer and Guard Duty among them. How do you deal with the threats that are those special roles? Slowly, but surely, you control and manipulate the crew and make them ally with you to turn against the Engineer and put him into cold sleep. Failed to do that? That's fine, just don't eliminate him in the night phase on any day because the Crew will immediately suspect you. Who do you target then in the night phase? The Guard Duty, because they are already confirmed to not be Gnosia, you will not be able to convince the Crew to put the Guard Duty into cold sleep.
As you DIVIDE AND CONQUER by removing these threats slowly but surely through control and manipulation, all that remains are regular Crew who do not know who the Gnosia are and cannot rely on the Doctor and Engineer to tell them because they were eliminated or in cold sleep.
What threats do you think Baroness Thatcher crushed to Divide and Conquer the Workers which resulted in the class known as Individuals?
Anyway, back to the game of Landlord vs Collective of Tenants. I had just said the solution to the problem is flying houses (very sus). Let's pretend there was a solution similar to the one where the commercial landlords can't pay off their loans. While I am sure you would love your landlord to be unable to pay off their loans, that isn't going to solve your objective. The banks will just take ownership of the house, vacate the premises and either rent it out or wait for the value to go up to sell it.
You want something that stops the cycle of exploitation, the wealth that gets extracted from you. You need to research the politicians in power that very often have ownership of many properties and are renting them out. You need to find out where those properties are and get in contact with the tenants who live there. You need to convince them to join your cause and that you will try to help them out with their living conditions. What you are trying to achieve here is that after you get the tenant to vacate the premises, you have to use collective action such as protests at the location of those properties to deter potential renters from signing a lease.
You are putting the squeeze on that politician you targeted by having him lose his source of rent, he could be earning more than $500k per year from rent in all the properties he holds. If you get the tenants out of those houses, and stop anyone from renting them, then you will hurt the wallet of that politician and that politician will have to come to the table to listen to your demands.
This sounds all well and good, but you have already asked, "What happens to those tenants?". It depends on the circumstances, either they were able to move out and find a different property not owned by that politician, if they are struggling to live elsewhere then... help by putting whatever things they don't need into temporary storage and have them live with you.
You react, "Are you crazy? Having someone I don't know living with me!?" and I just respond... "flying houses". What else are you going to do? What communities do you have? Do you have like a religious building you can house them in? I'd love to say, "build a flying house for them" but you know that isn't going to work. You're also a tenant so even if you lived in a home, you can't suddenly build a second home on the land, can you? There are no flying houses here, if you can't co-operate with the people who are having the same struggles as you then you will not solve the objective. The government won't save you because look at what Baroness Thatcher did to it when in control of it!
Speaking of the objective. By making that politician get squeezed out of the wealth he his extracting, what is the exchange here? You are trying to make the politician lose financially in exchange for power. What are you using that power for? To stop having the system be rigged against you. You get into negotiations with the politician to help you else you will continue to squeeze him financially.
I'm not an economist and I'm glad I'm not a neoclassical economist. But the crazy idea I had for helping with this issue of not being able to accumulate wealth is, to make the wages you use to pay for rent to the landlord 100% tax-deductible. If your income tax already reached zero but you still have rent paid from wages to deduct from your tax, then it becomes a tax-refund. The government refunds that money to you, the wealth the landlord extracted from you goes back to you and now you have a chance to accumulate wealth and may one day afford a home. That doesn't solve every problem though because there's the issue of asset price inflation which is fueled by borrowed money (creating debt) and you'd have to go back to my true ending route thread to read about and/or read the book from Michael Hudson, Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy.
This sounds all well and good, but you ask, "The income taxes received by the government would go down, how would we even pay for this?". If you do not understand how the system is rigged against you, especially if you are a worker and not a rentier, then you're going to overlook all the tax benefits the rentier gets. You have to make the politician pass laws to increase taxes for the rentier along with that tax-deduction idea for the tenants.
Again, this is not the only solution to this game. I need to remind you; this is a theoretical model. Because this hasn't been applied to the real-world, we don't even know if this would be successful. Maybe the politician is so massively wealthy that you can't squeeze him financially. Maybe the politician passes laws saying you can't protest outside of properties owned by politicians to prevent prospective tenants. The harder the politicians create this fight, then, you have to find even more people to join your cause, to do what? To target even more politicians, not all of them can be the 1% in wealth. Make them buckle under the weight of your cause.
Remember from the video game Gnosia, they are the informed minority, you are the uninformed majority. The above tactics that the Gnosia would use against you to win would be to DIVIDE AND CONQUER. How do you, the Crew, stop the Gnosia from trying to DIVIDE AND CONQUER you? You find others to join your cause, you scale-up your operations and target more of the Gnosia, you put the squeeze on them. What will happen eventually? The Gnosia can no longer DIVIDE AND CONQUER you, why? Remember how, if the ratio of Gnosia is 1:1 or higher than the Crew, the Gnosia win. Remember when the ruling class changed the game rules? You can change the game rules too, let's pretend that we're no longer capped with a max of 15 Crew and a max of 6 Gnosia. What do you do to give you a better chance of winning against 6 Gnosia? You increase the number of Crew while keeping the Gnosia at the same number. Let's pretend it's now 1000 Crew and only 6 Gnosia.
The ratio of Crew to Gnosia is so high that it becomes statistically unlikely for the Gnosia to win, why? Because they can no longer rely on their tactics to divide and conquer. They are no longer dealing with a ragtag crew; they are now having to take on a SWARM. Like those Japanese Bees, they will SWARM on a Japanese Hornet and use the physics of vibrations to produce heat which ends up eliminating the hornet. When the ratio of Crew is so high, they can take on more than one Gnosia at a time. How does the informed minority counter such a SWARM without creating any unintended consequences? Maybe the Gnosia passes martial law, now they counter your SWARM with an ARMY, and that army has guns. Does the Gnosia really end up crushing the SWARM using an escalating tactic such as that without dooming their own class? But let's say they do, and they escalate things. Now the SWARM has to get guns to defend themselves from the Army. What happens if the Gnosia realize that the Army is losing which will end in the destruction of their own class? That's when they call out the Imperialist Space Empire, "Help Space Empire, our ruling class is going to be lost forever." and then the Imperialist Space Empire announces, "We will crush Evil in the name of Democracy", and then the Imperialist Space Empire crushes the SWARM, saving the ruling class from losing their power.
Again, this is a theoretical model. I cannot predict what would happen in the real-world. Understandably, your first reaction is going to be, "You created a model to explain how to free people from economic rent in private housing, how the hell did that end up with an Imperialist Space Empire invading!?"
And my response is, "flying houses". Did you not hear me the first time when I said that in the first Ace Attorney game, there is a pivotal scene where you are told in-game that you have to think up something crazy to solve the problem that was occurring. As I said, this is a theoretical model, you can't come up with a plan to be successful and think, "Surely nothing will go wrong when we do this in real-life."
So as extreme as the scenario of an Imperialist Space Empire is, we can take a few steps back to before deciding to overwhelm the Gnosia with a SWARM. This would be a good time to point out that I came up with that idea from looking at the game theory of Mafia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_(party_game)#Mathematical_study
Let's look at what it says:
That is a statistics formula, I've forgotten how you would use a Scientific Calculator to calculate this formula to know how big your SWARM needs to be to overwhelm a hornet. It became obvious that you are statistically more likely to win if you just overwhelm the mafia with a massive number of villagers. If you're concerned about the SWARM method because of the Imperialist Space Empire invading, we can go back a few steps and see how else we can divide and conquer.
We'll go with the scenario that the politician you were trying to squeeze financially is so wealthy, it won't hurt him. Then if we can't divide and conquer him financially, we'll do it politically. We find someone in his region that is willing to take up your cause and fight to beat him in an election, if the election is years away then don't just stop with him. There is a whole hierarchical structure of power, let's pretend his power is at the state level, then you need to also divide and conquer at the local level and the federal level, not just the state level (in this theoretical model that doesn't assume anything else). You cannot end up in a scenario where, "Yay, we voted him out!" and then nothing changed because the informed minority realized what you were doing and were just going to group up and make sure that you can't even enact change. So unfortunately, you are going to end up with many years of struggle where you don't even know if it's going to result in change.
The point is though, what was it you were exchanging? Power. If you do not take back power, even slowly, then the ruling class will continue to sit back and laugh as you struggle.
You the reader react, "Well, I'm glad I have finished reading this long thread."
No, we're not even done. That was just one model.
"Oh."
Let call this next model, the Freedom from Owners/CEOs model.
Let's pretend you're a video game developer at a video game publisher. What are the classes?
Classes: Owners, Workers.
Informed Minority: Owners.
Uninformed Majority: Workers.
Let's start the game, "There is a werewolf among us!"
The workers are exchanging their time and labor for wages (very sus). You're wondering who the owners are, it's not just the CEO of the company, but also the shareholders. You do work to create this value which results in a profit, who benefits from the profit? The Owners of the company, not just the CEO but also the shareholders. Do you get a share of the profits as a worker? Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha... no.
One day, the CEO of the company announces, "Economic conditions are looking bad, interest rates are going up, also our competitor just laid off a huge portion of their workforce. To appease our shareholders, we're going to follow that idea. You're all fired."
Of course, you didn't even know the CEO said that because he announced it on social media. That explains why you couldn't access the office that day. You meet up with your now laid off co-workers and one of them has a crazy idea, "Let's start a worker co-op!"
I'll reuse a very quick summary of what a worker co-op is:
You know what business model follows a workplace democracy? The Worker Cooperative, or worker co-op for short. It's a flat hierarchy where there is no CEO, every worker in the worker co-op has ownership of the business. Business policies are decided democratically, not by a single figure.
Go to this thread if you want a longer explanation of what a worker co-op is: https://www.installbaseforum.com/fo...-ceo-owner-employer-workplace-democracy.2183/
Let's continue the scenario. Your laid off co-worker said, "Let's start a worker co-op! We'll be both the owners and the workers of the business!" You being the pessimist responds, "I don't know, it sounds risky. How are we even going to compete against our former boss?" The co-worker explains, "We're not going to be a company that produces video games, we're going to become a company that can produce anything!" You respond, "Now you've really lost me."
I'll take over and speak here instead of relying on imaginary dialogue. There's another flaw I haven't talked about in the game rules for the video game Gnosia. In Gnosia, there are a list of roles: Crew, Gnosia, Engineer, Doctor, etc. When you work at your job, you have a role, with a fancy title, and low wages. In your role you have to report to someone else (above you in hierarchy) that will tell you what to do, they "lead" you and order you to perform whatever the monotonous task is.
In your job, you are expected to be docile, like a sheep and follow orders. The uninformed majority are like sheep, and the informed minority are like "shepherds". This is where I'll quote a bit from that earlier video with Grace Blakely mentioned:
I bet you're having your mind blown by that quote from Hayek. I didn't know that quote until this video and yet I said earlier in this post that it was annoying that I can't find that research paper from Davidoff to explain why he came up with the terms "informed minority" and "uninformed majority" for the social game Mafia.
See that description of what a worker is? As an architect? That they yearn to create things? Probably now you can see why kids love Minecraft. Also on that point, do you remember now in other threads why I kept putting emphasis on that companies value IP more than their workers? Even though it was the workers that created those IP in the first place. But because "We need to appease shareholders", those workers get laid off instead of selling the IP to keep the workers around.
Back to what I was talking about, the flaw of the roles in the video game Gnosia is how you only have one role to choose in a game. That doesn't work in the real-world. Let me explain.
You're working your crappy low-wage job and suddenly someone from another department is sick. The boss comes to you and says for you to do that job, and you reply, "That is not within the scope of my role". I will point out quickly, if you are doing a role that you weren't given the proper safety training for, then don't risk your health for something you aren't sure of.
What I am wanting to point out and let's say it's not a dangerous job. It's just tedious for you that you are now having to do someone else's work besides the stuff you need to get done. You're probably thinking, "They should be paying me extra for this." yes, you should be getting the proper compensation. There's something else I wanted to point out that you probably don't think about.
Do you not realize what you are doing? You are doing different roles; you are doing those roles for your boss who orders you around. Why do you even need a boss to tell you what to do? Why are you restricting yourself to what you are being told from people above you in hierarchy? Do you not realize how this middleman between you and producing something isn't needed?
So that was the flaw I was trying to point out from how static roles are in the video game Gnosia.
Let's get back to the scenario I was talking about. We have this imaginary group of laid off workers and one of them said, "We're going to create a company where we can produce anything!" and then if you've already read my Workplace Democracy thread then you are familiar with the flat hierarchy and how they'll vote to choose what the business policies are, they're both the workers and owners of the business.
I don't want to waste time creating more fiction here for the sake of the theoretical model. I want to use a real-life example of a company where the workers can produce anything. IMPORTANT NOTE: I do not know the business model of the business I am going to talk about, there is a good chance they have never even heard of a worker co-op. Me talking about them is to point out how there is nothing stopping you from creating anything, you don't need a boss to be telling you what your role is.
The three people I am going to talk about are Prosumers. A reminder to read my thread about Prosumers if you don't know what a Prosumer is: https://www.installbaseforum.com/fo...e-industry-part-4-rise-of-the-prosumers.2393/
The three people I am talking about are Connor, Joey and Garnt from the Trash Taste Podcast. They all got big being Prosumers on the internet. Joey and Garnt got big talking about anime on YouTube from their respective channels and I think Connor got big from streaming on Twitch, I am aware that Connor started out creating content by doing voice acting which you may realize is similar to Prozd on YouTube.
They all have their own channels, they weren't following the orders of some boss, they just made content they wanted to create and uploaded it to YouTube/Twitch. They got payouts from YouTube/Twitch because reminder, they are not employees, they do not receive wages from YouTube/Twitch, they're more like contractors, they get paid as long as their videos get views.
Then one of them got the idea of making a podcast with his friends, that resulted in the creation of the Trash Taste Podcast. You're probably thinking, "So they made a podcast to talk about anime?". No, they made a podcast to talk about anything (within YouTube's Terms of Service). Their podcast was way more successful than they ever imagined, and all they do is just talk about anything for an average of 2 hours per episode.
Do you realize that? You, you get paid to follow the orders of someone. These guys make one episode per week where they get together to talk about anything and people want to listen to them and, because enough people listen to them, they get a payout from YouTube.
You react, "Well, I may have to follow the orders of someone. But at least I get wages, and my job is secure." well, it's secure until the CEO has to appease the shareholders.
Even Connor, Joey and Garnt are aware of how risky it is to be a content creator, because they know that eventually your view count will drop, and continue to drop each year, until you can no longer sustain yourself as a Prosumer.
Speaking of the static roles I mentioned before, Joey has mentioned on the podcast how he regrets calling his YouTube channel "TheAnimeMan" because he restricted the content he could produce to just anime. So, he ended up making a second channel using his real name so that he could create any content he wanted, and people can watch it if they want.
That doesn't stop there, since they are aware of the risks of their roles. They looked at opportunities where they weren't dependent on YouTube. Joey has said on the podcast that he knew nothing about fashion, but what did he do with the money made from his YouTube channel? He started up a clothing brand. He knew nothing about fashion, but that didn't stop him from learning about fashion and making a company that produces clothing.
The Trash Taste Podcast themselves sells clothes too, but it's more like what every other content creator does, as merchandise. What did the Trash Taste Podcast as a company do recently to standout? They partnered with a brewer in Australia to sell Trash Taste Podcast branded beer: https://www.mobrewing.com.au/trash-taste-pale-ale/
They said the reason the beer is only in Australia is because of alcohol laws. So, they have difficulties with trying to expand to other regions. They're just a podcast and they're selling beer. Think about what would happen if they didn't own their own company, if their brand "Trash Taste" was owned by some publisher? The publisher would be telling them what they can and can't do. The publisher would most likely be milking their content for views on YouTube, instead of being a one episode per week content, the publisher would have them create a "content mill" where they have to create content constantly every day for YouTube. What would happen then? They would get burned out and retire from YouTube, but the publisher still owns the brand and made money off of them (ignoring the money that YouTube is also making off of them as Prosumers).
So, while they still have a boss they have to work for: YouTube/Twitch. The money they're making will allow them to create businesses that they own after they retire from YouTube/Twitch. Again, this is not an example of a worker co-op since I don't know how they run their business models. The point was that they can make anything, and they don't have a boss telling them what to do and that work made them successful.
You react, "That's a nice story. How does this fit into the theoretical model you're talking about?"
If you've already read my workplace democracy thread, then you would already know. The previous model was about freedom from private housing. This model is freedom from owners/CEOs. Don't worry, I don't think any Imperialist Space Empires will be invading you in this model.
You react, "Well, that was a long thread but finally..."
We're still not done.
"No!"
Let's call this next model, Freedom from Privatized Infrastructure/Utilities.
Classes: Rulers, Workers.
Informed Minority: Rulers.
Uninformed Majority: Workers.
Let's start the game, "There is a werewolf among us!"
We're back where we started. Before Baroness Thatcher declared, "There is no such thing as society!". Before all those utilities and infrastructure were privatized for the benefit of the informed minority to make economic rent from.
This is going to be similar to the model for the freedom from private housing. Use Divide and Conquer strategies to gain power, political power. What is the objective?
While it's been nice to think, "If only the State owned the utilities/infrastructure, then things would be produced at cost, which would lower cost-of-living standards." The problem is, there is always the scenario that the Rulers will use their power to just privatize the utilities/infrastructure again, repeating this endless cycle.
So, what's the idea then? Similar to freedom from the Owner/CEOs. Instead of letting the State hold ownership over the utilities/infrastructure. The Workers take ownership of those utilities/infrastructure and operate a workplace democracy, that is, a worker co-op.
Let's imagine a scenario where the utility and infrastructure are the water and sewerage systems. Instead of letting the State hand over ownership to the corporations and 1% which are among the Rulers. You gain political power to hand it over to the workers.
No more risk of cost-of-living standards going out of control, the workers actually use what they're paid to maintain and invest in infrastructure, whereas in comparison when it's privatized by the 1%, they look for profit in the short-term, "I don't want the money to go to repairing pipes, I want the money." So, with the workers owning the utilities/infrastructure, the business policies get decided democratically by the workers, they listen to the communities that rely on their services and act appropriately.
What about the Healthcare System? You're probably familiar with this strategy that the Neoliberals always do to State-owned Public Infrastructure/Utilities. They want to sell the public healthcare system to the 1% but they know that if they do that, it will cost them politically. So, what do they do? Divide and Conquer. Slowly but surely, they will underfund the healthcare system, the workers in the healthcare system will tell them they need more funds so you assume the State would increase the budget, right? WRONG.
Their plan is to keep doing "cost-cutting" on the healthcare system so that it runs so poorly that they can use propaganda to claim, "See? The healthcare system is in shambles. It would be running so much better if it was operating in the free market." Then they go and sell the public healthcare system to the corporations and the 1% and unsurprisingly, cost-of-living standards go up. Did the services at least improve? Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha... no.
If the workers using a worker co-op own the healthcare system, then they can democratically vote on policies that will improve the healthcare system, they can invest in IP that they will own and make money from, and then they can use those profits to benefit society.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Three models; freedom from the landlord, freedom from the owner/CEO, freedom from privatization. These ideas are very dangerous to the Ruling class because, instead of being stuck in some power struggle for all eternity, we decide that we no longer want to maintain this relationship where we are dependent on Rulers in almost every aspect of our lives.
Thinking about the informed minority and the uninformed majority again, in the video game Gnosia there is this subtext to how you are supposed to win in the game and finally complete it. You know what that subtext is? The accumulation of knowledge is what will create answers to solve your problems.
There is a line that I will say from the game that is out of context that you will think it's not subtext:
"Don't doubt. Don't be afraid. And know. Knowledge will save all."
That is all.
Extras
This looks like it's my longest post for a thread yet. This took way longer than you think, I had to keep cutting and pasting the text when I was making other threads in the week since you can't draft multiple threads to make.
When I was making this thread, I originally ran into issues when I was doing the section on "abstracting theory from Gnosia". I was like, "So we call the informed minority the oil company, and then when you call your Engineer to scan the climate and claim climate change is real and manmade, the oil company will use their "Engineer" to claim it's not real and not manmade. And then the Bug is in this game except we rename it from Bug to Side Effect to mean an unintended consequence. So, the side effect is climate change, and if the informed minority and the uninformed majority don't take care of the side effect, then the side effect wins the game and everyone else loses."
And then I'm thinking about it, and I'm like, "This isn't as impactful as I thought it was in my head when I wrote it out."
So that's when I thought about, instead of just abstracting theory from Gnosia, why don't we create new models from it? And that's how the thread ended up the way it is.
What I imagine is most likely going to be the takeaway from this thread is the following:
"Hello this is developer studio Petit Depotto."
"Yes hi, it's your publisher. Do you have any idea why sales of Gnosia increased by 10,000% this week?"
Also, what I will imagine will happen:
Nintendo: "Why did sales of Pikmin 4 increase by 1,000% this week and what is this thing called swarming that social media is talking about?"
Last statistic, the word count for this post is over 9000.
This is an idea, and ideas can't just stand up to no scrutiny. I will apply this abstraction to game sales down the OP although that's not the main reason for the idea, you're going to see it be linked to my true ending route thread.
By the way, this is not the first time anyone has abstracted theory from a game, a recommended watch would be this video titled "What Game Theory Reveals About Life, The Universe, and Everything", in that video, the theory they're abstracting from is the Prisoner's Dilemma:
GNOSIA
The video game Gnosia is described as a social deduction game, it first released on PlayStation Vita in June 2019, then Nintendo Switch in December 2020, PC in January 2022 and then PS4/PS5/Xbox One/Xbox Series in December 2023.
I played Gnosia when it first launched on Switch, and I just played it again recently. If you look at gameplay footage, the first thing you're going to think of is "this is sus". Good observation, Among Us first released on iOS and Android on June 15, 2018.
MAFIA
What you probably don't know is that the original social deduction game was called Mafia. No, not the Mafia video game series. Mafia was a party game invented in 1986 by Dimitry Davidoff, he played the first game in Spring 1987 at the Moscow State University. The Wikipedia article says, "He developed the game to combine psychology research with his duties teaching high school students."
Similar to Tetris (a video game created in Russia during the Soviet era), it spread far and wide globally and was just as popular. Here is a long Wired article about Mafia: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/werewolf
"This is sus, the headline says werewolf, not mafia". Yes, when you read the article, it will mention how when the game spread to the US, the person Andrew Plotkin made a variant of Mafia called Werewolf "arguing that mafia had less cultural resonance, and that the werewolf concept fit the idea of a hidden enemy who looked normal during the daytime". There are other variants of Mafia and according to the Wired article, Werewolf and its variants are popular at tech companies and conventions.
What are the game rules of Mafia? According to the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_(party_game)
That sounds sus doesn't it? In variants there would be stuff like extra roles, so for example there would be a detective role who can check if someone is a villager or not.
Anyway, you've been looking through the Wikipedia article just five seconds ago and you went, "Hey, there's already a game theory section for this game, you're an impostor!": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_(party_game)#Game_theory
I didn't say I was going to abstract game theory (which is statistical), nor was I going to abstract psychological theory which is also mentioned in that Wikipedia. I'm abstracting a different theory from the video game Gnosia.
GNOSIA SETTING AND RULES
Gnosia is a story-driven single-player social deduction game in a Visual Novel style. It is in a sci-fi setting (sounds sus), the story begins with you ending up on a spaceship (very sus), and you are notified that Gnosia have been detected on the ship (sussy).
The game rules are, there are a group of Gnosia (who are described as the enemies of humans) and the Crew (Humanoids who are not Gnosia). What's that? Humanoids? Yes, there are characters that are not of the human species. Similar to werewolf, there is a day phase where the Gnosia and Humanoids gather into a room. They discuss who they think is Gnosia and vote to put the person into cold sleep. Then at the night phase, the Gnosia will decide which Crew member to eliminate (Gnosia cannot eliminate Gnosia). This day/night phase will repeat until the either all Gnosia have been eliminated (Crew wins), or the ratio of Gnosia to Crew is 1:1 or greater (Gnosia wins).
In Gnosia you can set a maximum of 15 crew but no more than 6 Gnosia (very sus) because it can finish pretty quickly by the second day if you eliminate three people who were all crew (two by cold sleep, one by Gnosia) or even faster by the end of the first day if the Engineer works in your favor. Your character has RPG stats so the in-game hints will tell you how to level up faster such as winning in difficult conditions such as 15 crew members and you are the sole Gnosia. You have to keep playing over and over and over in different roles to progress through the story.
Initially the roles are Gnosia and Crew. Referencing the Mafia Wikipedia article, the Gnosia are the informed minority and the Crew are the uninformed majority. The Gnosia know who other Gnosia are on the ship. The Crew don't know who another person's role is. As you get through the tutorial section of the game, it will unlock new roles. First is, the Engineer role.
The Engineer's role is to identify who is Gnosia or Humanoid, if someone is an Engineer, they are not required to state their role however! Gnosia have the ability to lie, if someone asks, "Who is the Engineer?" and someone lies by stating that they are the engineer, then the game recommends that you state your role as well. Why the game would recommend you state role is because there's a particular rare condition that can be triggered called, "The Blood Clam who leapt through time". Basically, the game crashes if that occurs and it will not save any records of that game ever occurring.
There is a downside to revealing that you're the Engineer, you're essentially signaling to the Gnosia, "Hello! I am the threat, eliminate me first before I find out that you're Gnosia!" During the night phase, the Engineer can select one person to scan. Then the following day (assuming you survived the night), you then report during the day phase what the results of the scan were, "This person is Gnosia/not Gnosia" (very sus). Any liars that stated that they are Engineers will also report their scan (but their scan results are not real).
Next role that occurs is the Doctor, someone can lie and state that they are the doctor meaning that similar to the Engineer the real doctor would need to step up. The doctor isn't as big as a threat as the Engineer, when a person is voted to be put into cold sleep. The doctor will examine the person at night, if they survive to the next day the doctor will report whether the person in cold sleep is a humanoid or Gnosia, the liars are better off not contradicting the real doctor because they are examining the same person while the Engineer can examine anyone.
Next role is Guardian Angel, they're a humanoid whose role stays hidden the whole game. During the night phase, they can select one person to protect, if they have selected the correct person to protect then the Gnosia will have failed to eliminate someone for the night. The Guardian Angel can't protect themselves, if you don't know who to protect, there's a priority of roles to protect such as the Engineer or Doctor.
Next role is Guard Duty but they're not as important to talk about, similar in threat level to the Engineer. The Guard Duty are two Crew members who are verified to be actual Crew and not Gnosia. This reduces the chance of Gnosia winning because it reduces uncertainty from two players, no one is able to lie and pretend that they are Guard Duty.
Next role is the AC Follower, the AC Follower is a humanoid whose job is to help the Gnosia win. Unlike the Crew, the AC Follower can lie by doing things such as faking the role of Doctor or Engineer. The Gnosia won't know who an AC Follower is, but you may be able to tell from who is lying.
Lastly, the final role is the Bug. It is basically in reference to a computer bug, something that isn't supposed to be there. If the Bug isn't eliminated and the win condition occurs where Gnosia are at a 1:1 ratio to the Crew or the Crew has eliminated all Gnosia, then everyone else loses because the Bug wins. The bug is a Crew member who can lie, you do not know who the bug is, to eliminate the bug you can either put the bug into cold sleep or if you have an engineer, the engineer can scan someone and if that person is the bug, they are eliminated. The Bug cannot be eliminated by Gnosia. If there is a Guardian Angel in the game, then you won't know if the person you didn't eliminate was a Bug or just a Crew member saved by a Guardian Angel.
I had to go through explaining all the rules for Gnosia (except RPG stats and skills) to set up getting to abstracting theory from the game.
SETTING UP THE ABSTRACTION FROM GNOSIA
As mentioned before from the Wired article regarding Mafia: "Davidoff explains it succinctly as "the uninformed majority versus the informed minority". I have tried to look up why Davidoff created the game since it is said somewhere that it was for a psychology research paper, and I can't find the research paper.
Using the idea of "the uninformed majority versus the informed minority", we can apply it to real-life examples like... Video game sales. The informed minority are companies like NPD and Sony where they know the details of hardware and software sales like... How much did the PS Vita sell during its lifetime? We will never know, unless they announce it, or someone leaks it.
The worst kind of Werewolf game to play would be where the Uninformed Majority are the "video game companies" and the Informed Minority are the "Insiders". You play the game, the video game companies yell "There is a leaker among us!", the insiders don't know who the real leaker is because 99% of the leakers are just people trying to farm attention on social media with fake leaks even though they are supposed to be the informed minority!
Anyway, that's not what I want to talk about. I want to focus on Gnosia for a moment. There are many roles to choose from in Gnosia and they are grouped into two classes.
Classes:
- Gnosia (role: Gnosia)
- Crew (roles: Crew, Engineer, Doctor, Guard Duty, AC Follower, Bug)
Actually, it could be split into three classes:
- Gnosia
- Crew
- Bug
We're getting ahead of ourselves here, let's just focus on Gnosia and Crew as classes. One of the things I had thought about Mafia is the idea of "the informed minority and the uninformed majority" which forms the basis of the game's rules. There are people that have tried to abstract the game Mafia to explain about things in the real world.
When I think about the game rules when they're applied to the real world, I think there's a flaw. When you are playing the game, you assume the role of the uninformed majority and the game's rules tell you there is an informed minority. The flaw I am pointing out is how the uninformed majority are being informed of their class according by the game's rules.
Let's apply this to Gnosia, let's pretend that I am playing a game of Gnosia. I set the crew number to 15, and let's pretend... that I set the number of Gnosia to zero... (VERY SUSSY). You're probably thinking that I set the game so that there are no Gnosia which results in an automatic win, that isn't what I am intending. Zero isn't what is known, it's unknown. There are 15 crew members on a spaceship, there are no alerts of Gnosia because it would inform the uninformed majority. No voting game occurs, no cold sleep occurs, day by day passes and for some reason the crew members are being eliminated and they don't even know why.
You point out, "They're being eliminated by Gnosia!". They could be, but as I said, the number of Gnosia is unknown. We don't know what they're being eliminated by because there's no rules telling them who the enemy is. That's one aspect of the game I wanted to look at, the other aspect are the win conditions in Mafia. Why is it that the condition to win is to eliminate the other group? This is why I was curious about the research paper. When you hear, "The informed minority versus the uninformed majority" you think about control, and the win conditions done through voting require manipulation.
In the video game Gnosia, if you are Gnosia during the voting game, you have to convince others to vote for someone that isn't Gnosia to put into cold sleep. If one of your other teammates that is Gnosia is confirmed to be Gnosia, you may have to vote them out to avoid drawing suspicion to yourself. Actually, funny thing. If you are Gnosia and you accuse someone of being Gnosia and they are not put into cold sleep and, if you decide to eliminate them during the night phase. The Crew members will immediately suspect you the following day.
Anyway, the point is about control and manipulation. The conditions for winning in the real world don't have to involve eliminating someone. There are other reasons that an informed minority would want an uninformed majority and it's not to eliminate them, mainly it's either financial gain or political gain.
There has to be an exchange where one side gains something and the other side loses something. In the game Mafia, they gain by wiping out all the villagers. The villager's loss is their life, and vice versa. An equal exchange occurs.
Now to make an example regarding financial gain, the informed minority are scammers, and the uninformed majority are the victims. They mislead and manipulate the person for the end result of obtaining a financial gain. The scammer gets money, the victim loses money. There is not a vice versa though, the victim has to avoid losing money and the scammer gets away with the crime if they can't get caught. The exchange isn't equal, and it shows the powerlessness of the victim seeing as they can't do anything to stop the scammer.
Now let's go back and apply the other idea I mentioned which is regarding the flaw of the game's rules. The instance above is assuming that the victims (uninformed majority) are even aware of the scams in the first place i.e. the game rules. Whenever a new scam appears, there has to be victims first before others can be warned about (and hence, the game rules appear) what the scam is so they can avoid being manipulated.
This is still not even what I want to talk about as I was setting up things.
ABSTRACTING THE THEORY FROM GNOSIA TO CREATE NEW MODELS
I mentioned how there were two classes: Gnosia and Crew. Let's create a theoretical model to apply it into the real-world, let's change the class names. Let's try: Rulers and Workers. Let's set a period of time, I don't know... how about 1950 to 1970? The informed minority are the rulers, the uninformed majority are the workers. What's being exchanged is power and the balance of power has been shifting over to the workers during this time.
The rulers didn't like this, so a period of time passes and then the rulers thought, "What if we changed the rules?" A ruler appears, let's call her... Baroness Thatcher. She gives a speech (source) saying how there are those that cast their problems onto the government such as "I am homeless, the Government must house me!" and so on, she claims, "They're casting their problems onto society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first."
There is now no such thing as society, only individuals. The government isn't supposed to do this and that for all of your problems, you are now responsible for your own problems. The rulers won the voting games and eliminated the threats to their power.
Anyway, let's look at those classes again, wait what happened to the classes?
Class: Individuals.
Hmm... Ok, so is that an informed minority or an uninformed majority? Oh well, I don't foresee any problems here.
Foreshadowing is a narrative device.
Some decades pass, a new game appears. What are the classes?
Classes: Individuals.
Ok, what are the game rules? Unknown. What's being exchanged? Unknown.
Of the individuals in this game, 1% of them seem to have all the wealth. The majority of the individuals are facing hardships, why? They don't know. They don't discuss with other individuals their hardships because they believe the cause of their hardships is their own fault, their own responsibility. If no discussion occurs then there is no co-operation, no voting game, there is no action to take to address these hardships, there is no realization of what the game rules are and what is being exchanged.
So, the problem that has occurred in this game is that there is no class-consciousness. Can you see why in the video game Gnosia that there are two classes, and they are conscious of the "game rules", the classes understand what their objective is and how they are going to solve it.
Let's try creating a new theoretical model that restores this class-consciousness and, we'll create a new scenario that gives rise to a new objective.
Let's call this, the Freedom from Private Housing model.
There was a problem I was trying to solve, remember in my thread about the $1 bajillion dollar global derivatives market that I talked about how the owners of Commercial Real Estate, especially those that own office space couldn't pay back the banks their loans? So, the banks were extending the maturity date of the loan to give time for the borrowers to pay off their loans but what's happening is that delinquency rates are rising above 6% for offices in the US currently.
Now, you are probably looking at COVID and how that caused offices to be abandoned and led to remote work. That is not the cause of the issue, the problem happened years before COVID. There was a global financial crisis, governments around the world bailed out their banks, then they needed to use "quantitative easing" by printing money and lowering interest rates to almost 0.0%. They had to lower interest rates to almost zero to convince investors to borrow money and invest it in assets. What did those investors borrow the money for? Commercial Real Estate. New commercial real estate was being built, especially office space. They thought, "the economy will recover and that will mean more workers in the office." There's just one problem, the economy didn't recover, interest rates were at 0% for many years. The idea is that the economy will recover, business will boom because now there will be more workers, and those workers will need an office to work from, and I will get economic rent from the businesses that are renting my commercial real estate. That never happened, there's a reason that WeWork failed so hard even without COVID. COVID only exacerbated the problem for a period of time, even if you returned every worker to the office right now, there will still be commercial real estate that is vacant. You know why? Because the economy is still shit, parts of the economy are more shit than the other, but you only get the news that "the economy is going good" because you are given a number to look at and are comparing that number to last year.
Anyway, the remote worker isn't the cause of the problems of commercial real estate. But it was a good model to look at, the landlord of the commercial real estate is suffering because no businesses want to occupy his land.
Let's now set up the game.
Classes: Landlords, Tenants.
Let's start the game... "There is a werewolf among us!"
In this model, we have the informed minority that are the landlords. The uninformed majority are the tenants of residential housing. As I said before, I have been trying to solve this problem that occurs. The landlords extract wealth from the tenants, the tenants cannot build wealth to afford their own housing, the solution isn't "Just get a job with a six-figure salary" because guess what? There's not enough of those to go around. No amount of side hustles and sigma grind sets will get you to that goal.
I needed to figure out a way to get those tenants that were being exploited to be able to live remotely, away from the landlords just like the remote workers that are away from the commercial landlords.
The only solution I could come up with was, flying houses. There is a lack of land, we can't just move people further and further away into remote areas where there is a lack of infrastructure such as, hospitals. If we can't move them further away, how can we move them closer? Flying houses. You the reader are reacting like this, "This is sus...", the flying house isn't real. It's a concept to arrive to the solution of this problem. Did you not play the first Ace Attorney game and get to that pivotal scene where you are told in-game that you needed to think of something crazy to solve the problem you were having? Now you're thinking, "Why don't we just build higher density housing?", you can do that, it's not going to solve the central problem that is economic rent. You still have no wealth to accumulate, higher density housing gets built, who's going to outbid you to buy that housing? The rentier. Now you just have a different landlord to serve and, you hope that your rent isn't as high.
So, while I am thinking about literal flying houses such as airships fueled with hydrogen. A YouTube channel I watched before when they interviewed Yanis Varoufakis had a new interview up with a person named Grace Blakeley. She brought up good points and, to save time from me having to write it out, just listen to the video whenever you have an hour of free time, especially if you were born in any year after 1980:
Let's go back to the game with the Landlords vs Tenants. What is a crucial problem we overlooked? This scenario is after the model that produced the Individual class. The tenants are individuals, they are not discussing with each other their problems. They are not coming to the conclusion that the system is failing them because there is an unequal exchange where they give money to the landlord for shelter, but the landlord just uses that money to acquire more housing and raise the price of rent, they are not struggling to accumulate wealth, the tenant struggles to accumulate wealth. They have to realize that this is not their own fault, they have to realize, to put it crudely: the system was always rigged against them.
Once they realize that, a change occurs with the classes.
Classes: Landlords, Collective of Tenants
The tenants now realize their struggle and they have to come up with solutions, I've got one: flying houses.
Let's step aside to talk about something from the video game Gnosia. If you were the Gnosia, and the Crew knew you were the threat. How would you defeat them? I probably already talked about using methods of control and manipulation, but how would that work against the Crew who are united in stopping the Gnosia?
Remember the concept of the informed minority and the uninformed majority? If the majority are uninformed, there is a simple strategy to essentially destroy the Crew and win. It's called Divide and Conquer, a phrase you may have heard that is used in many different ways. Let's say there are 3 Gnosia and 12 Crew with a Doctor, Engineer and Guard Duty among them. How do you deal with the threats that are those special roles? Slowly, but surely, you control and manipulate the crew and make them ally with you to turn against the Engineer and put him into cold sleep. Failed to do that? That's fine, just don't eliminate him in the night phase on any day because the Crew will immediately suspect you. Who do you target then in the night phase? The Guard Duty, because they are already confirmed to not be Gnosia, you will not be able to convince the Crew to put the Guard Duty into cold sleep.
As you DIVIDE AND CONQUER by removing these threats slowly but surely through control and manipulation, all that remains are regular Crew who do not know who the Gnosia are and cannot rely on the Doctor and Engineer to tell them because they were eliminated or in cold sleep.
What threats do you think Baroness Thatcher crushed to Divide and Conquer the Workers which resulted in the class known as Individuals?
Anyway, back to the game of Landlord vs Collective of Tenants. I had just said the solution to the problem is flying houses (very sus). Let's pretend there was a solution similar to the one where the commercial landlords can't pay off their loans. While I am sure you would love your landlord to be unable to pay off their loans, that isn't going to solve your objective. The banks will just take ownership of the house, vacate the premises and either rent it out or wait for the value to go up to sell it.
You want something that stops the cycle of exploitation, the wealth that gets extracted from you. You need to research the politicians in power that very often have ownership of many properties and are renting them out. You need to find out where those properties are and get in contact with the tenants who live there. You need to convince them to join your cause and that you will try to help them out with their living conditions. What you are trying to achieve here is that after you get the tenant to vacate the premises, you have to use collective action such as protests at the location of those properties to deter potential renters from signing a lease.
You are putting the squeeze on that politician you targeted by having him lose his source of rent, he could be earning more than $500k per year from rent in all the properties he holds. If you get the tenants out of those houses, and stop anyone from renting them, then you will hurt the wallet of that politician and that politician will have to come to the table to listen to your demands.
This sounds all well and good, but you have already asked, "What happens to those tenants?". It depends on the circumstances, either they were able to move out and find a different property not owned by that politician, if they are struggling to live elsewhere then... help by putting whatever things they don't need into temporary storage and have them live with you.
You react, "Are you crazy? Having someone I don't know living with me!?" and I just respond... "flying houses". What else are you going to do? What communities do you have? Do you have like a religious building you can house them in? I'd love to say, "build a flying house for them" but you know that isn't going to work. You're also a tenant so even if you lived in a home, you can't suddenly build a second home on the land, can you? There are no flying houses here, if you can't co-operate with the people who are having the same struggles as you then you will not solve the objective. The government won't save you because look at what Baroness Thatcher did to it when in control of it!
Speaking of the objective. By making that politician get squeezed out of the wealth he his extracting, what is the exchange here? You are trying to make the politician lose financially in exchange for power. What are you using that power for? To stop having the system be rigged against you. You get into negotiations with the politician to help you else you will continue to squeeze him financially.
I'm not an economist and I'm glad I'm not a neoclassical economist. But the crazy idea I had for helping with this issue of not being able to accumulate wealth is, to make the wages you use to pay for rent to the landlord 100% tax-deductible. If your income tax already reached zero but you still have rent paid from wages to deduct from your tax, then it becomes a tax-refund. The government refunds that money to you, the wealth the landlord extracted from you goes back to you and now you have a chance to accumulate wealth and may one day afford a home. That doesn't solve every problem though because there's the issue of asset price inflation which is fueled by borrowed money (creating debt) and you'd have to go back to my true ending route thread to read about and/or read the book from Michael Hudson, Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy.
This sounds all well and good, but you ask, "The income taxes received by the government would go down, how would we even pay for this?". If you do not understand how the system is rigged against you, especially if you are a worker and not a rentier, then you're going to overlook all the tax benefits the rentier gets. You have to make the politician pass laws to increase taxes for the rentier along with that tax-deduction idea for the tenants.
Again, this is not the only solution to this game. I need to remind you; this is a theoretical model. Because this hasn't been applied to the real-world, we don't even know if this would be successful. Maybe the politician is so massively wealthy that you can't squeeze him financially. Maybe the politician passes laws saying you can't protest outside of properties owned by politicians to prevent prospective tenants. The harder the politicians create this fight, then, you have to find even more people to join your cause, to do what? To target even more politicians, not all of them can be the 1% in wealth. Make them buckle under the weight of your cause.
Remember from the video game Gnosia, they are the informed minority, you are the uninformed majority. The above tactics that the Gnosia would use against you to win would be to DIVIDE AND CONQUER. How do you, the Crew, stop the Gnosia from trying to DIVIDE AND CONQUER you? You find others to join your cause, you scale-up your operations and target more of the Gnosia, you put the squeeze on them. What will happen eventually? The Gnosia can no longer DIVIDE AND CONQUER you, why? Remember how, if the ratio of Gnosia is 1:1 or higher than the Crew, the Gnosia win. Remember when the ruling class changed the game rules? You can change the game rules too, let's pretend that we're no longer capped with a max of 15 Crew and a max of 6 Gnosia. What do you do to give you a better chance of winning against 6 Gnosia? You increase the number of Crew while keeping the Gnosia at the same number. Let's pretend it's now 1000 Crew and only 6 Gnosia.
The ratio of Crew to Gnosia is so high that it becomes statistically unlikely for the Gnosia to win, why? Because they can no longer rely on their tactics to divide and conquer. They are no longer dealing with a ragtag crew; they are now having to take on a SWARM. Like those Japanese Bees, they will SWARM on a Japanese Hornet and use the physics of vibrations to produce heat which ends up eliminating the hornet. When the ratio of Crew is so high, they can take on more than one Gnosia at a time. How does the informed minority counter such a SWARM without creating any unintended consequences? Maybe the Gnosia passes martial law, now they counter your SWARM with an ARMY, and that army has guns. Does the Gnosia really end up crushing the SWARM using an escalating tactic such as that without dooming their own class? But let's say they do, and they escalate things. Now the SWARM has to get guns to defend themselves from the Army. What happens if the Gnosia realize that the Army is losing which will end in the destruction of their own class? That's when they call out the Imperialist Space Empire, "Help Space Empire, our ruling class is going to be lost forever." and then the Imperialist Space Empire announces, "We will crush Evil in the name of Democracy", and then the Imperialist Space Empire crushes the SWARM, saving the ruling class from losing their power.
Again, this is a theoretical model. I cannot predict what would happen in the real-world. Understandably, your first reaction is going to be, "You created a model to explain how to free people from economic rent in private housing, how the hell did that end up with an Imperialist Space Empire invading!?"
And my response is, "flying houses". Did you not hear me the first time when I said that in the first Ace Attorney game, there is a pivotal scene where you are told in-game that you have to think up something crazy to solve the problem that was occurring. As I said, this is a theoretical model, you can't come up with a plan to be successful and think, "Surely nothing will go wrong when we do this in real-life."
So as extreme as the scenario of an Imperialist Space Empire is, we can take a few steps back to before deciding to overwhelm the Gnosia with a SWARM. This would be a good time to point out that I came up with that idea from looking at the game theory of Mafia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_(party_game)#Mathematical_study
Let's look at what it says:
That is a statistics formula, I've forgotten how you would use a Scientific Calculator to calculate this formula to know how big your SWARM needs to be to overwhelm a hornet. It became obvious that you are statistically more likely to win if you just overwhelm the mafia with a massive number of villagers. If you're concerned about the SWARM method because of the Imperialist Space Empire invading, we can go back a few steps and see how else we can divide and conquer.
We'll go with the scenario that the politician you were trying to squeeze financially is so wealthy, it won't hurt him. Then if we can't divide and conquer him financially, we'll do it politically. We find someone in his region that is willing to take up your cause and fight to beat him in an election, if the election is years away then don't just stop with him. There is a whole hierarchical structure of power, let's pretend his power is at the state level, then you need to also divide and conquer at the local level and the federal level, not just the state level (in this theoretical model that doesn't assume anything else). You cannot end up in a scenario where, "Yay, we voted him out!" and then nothing changed because the informed minority realized what you were doing and were just going to group up and make sure that you can't even enact change. So unfortunately, you are going to end up with many years of struggle where you don't even know if it's going to result in change.
The point is though, what was it you were exchanging? Power. If you do not take back power, even slowly, then the ruling class will continue to sit back and laugh as you struggle.
You the reader react, "Well, I'm glad I have finished reading this long thread."
No, we're not even done. That was just one model.
"Oh."
Let call this next model, the Freedom from Owners/CEOs model.
Let's pretend you're a video game developer at a video game publisher. What are the classes?
Classes: Owners, Workers.
Informed Minority: Owners.
Uninformed Majority: Workers.
Let's start the game, "There is a werewolf among us!"
The workers are exchanging their time and labor for wages (very sus). You're wondering who the owners are, it's not just the CEO of the company, but also the shareholders. You do work to create this value which results in a profit, who benefits from the profit? The Owners of the company, not just the CEO but also the shareholders. Do you get a share of the profits as a worker? Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha... no.
One day, the CEO of the company announces, "Economic conditions are looking bad, interest rates are going up, also our competitor just laid off a huge portion of their workforce. To appease our shareholders, we're going to follow that idea. You're all fired."
Of course, you didn't even know the CEO said that because he announced it on social media. That explains why you couldn't access the office that day. You meet up with your now laid off co-workers and one of them has a crazy idea, "Let's start a worker co-op!"
I'll reuse a very quick summary of what a worker co-op is:
You know what business model follows a workplace democracy? The Worker Cooperative, or worker co-op for short. It's a flat hierarchy where there is no CEO, every worker in the worker co-op has ownership of the business. Business policies are decided democratically, not by a single figure.
Go to this thread if you want a longer explanation of what a worker co-op is: https://www.installbaseforum.com/fo...-ceo-owner-employer-workplace-democracy.2183/
Let's continue the scenario. Your laid off co-worker said, "Let's start a worker co-op! We'll be both the owners and the workers of the business!" You being the pessimist responds, "I don't know, it sounds risky. How are we even going to compete against our former boss?" The co-worker explains, "We're not going to be a company that produces video games, we're going to become a company that can produce anything!" You respond, "Now you've really lost me."
I'll take over and speak here instead of relying on imaginary dialogue. There's another flaw I haven't talked about in the game rules for the video game Gnosia. In Gnosia, there are a list of roles: Crew, Gnosia, Engineer, Doctor, etc. When you work at your job, you have a role, with a fancy title, and low wages. In your role you have to report to someone else (above you in hierarchy) that will tell you what to do, they "lead" you and order you to perform whatever the monotonous task is.
In your job, you are expected to be docile, like a sheep and follow orders. The uninformed majority are like sheep, and the informed minority are like "shepherds". This is where I'll quote a bit from that earlier video with Grace Blakely mentioned:
I bet you're having your mind blown by that quote from Hayek. I didn't know that quote until this video and yet I said earlier in this post that it was annoying that I can't find that research paper from Davidoff to explain why he came up with the terms "informed minority" and "uninformed majority" for the social game Mafia.
See that description of what a worker is? As an architect? That they yearn to create things? Probably now you can see why kids love Minecraft. Also on that point, do you remember now in other threads why I kept putting emphasis on that companies value IP more than their workers? Even though it was the workers that created those IP in the first place. But because "We need to appease shareholders", those workers get laid off instead of selling the IP to keep the workers around.
Back to what I was talking about, the flaw of the roles in the video game Gnosia is how you only have one role to choose in a game. That doesn't work in the real-world. Let me explain.
You're working your crappy low-wage job and suddenly someone from another department is sick. The boss comes to you and says for you to do that job, and you reply, "That is not within the scope of my role". I will point out quickly, if you are doing a role that you weren't given the proper safety training for, then don't risk your health for something you aren't sure of.
What I am wanting to point out and let's say it's not a dangerous job. It's just tedious for you that you are now having to do someone else's work besides the stuff you need to get done. You're probably thinking, "They should be paying me extra for this." yes, you should be getting the proper compensation. There's something else I wanted to point out that you probably don't think about.
Do you not realize what you are doing? You are doing different roles; you are doing those roles for your boss who orders you around. Why do you even need a boss to tell you what to do? Why are you restricting yourself to what you are being told from people above you in hierarchy? Do you not realize how this middleman between you and producing something isn't needed?
So that was the flaw I was trying to point out from how static roles are in the video game Gnosia.
Let's get back to the scenario I was talking about. We have this imaginary group of laid off workers and one of them said, "We're going to create a company where we can produce anything!" and then if you've already read my Workplace Democracy thread then you are familiar with the flat hierarchy and how they'll vote to choose what the business policies are, they're both the workers and owners of the business.
I don't want to waste time creating more fiction here for the sake of the theoretical model. I want to use a real-life example of a company where the workers can produce anything. IMPORTANT NOTE: I do not know the business model of the business I am going to talk about, there is a good chance they have never even heard of a worker co-op. Me talking about them is to point out how there is nothing stopping you from creating anything, you don't need a boss to be telling you what your role is.
The three people I am going to talk about are Prosumers. A reminder to read my thread about Prosumers if you don't know what a Prosumer is: https://www.installbaseforum.com/fo...e-industry-part-4-rise-of-the-prosumers.2393/
The three people I am talking about are Connor, Joey and Garnt from the Trash Taste Podcast. They all got big being Prosumers on the internet. Joey and Garnt got big talking about anime on YouTube from their respective channels and I think Connor got big from streaming on Twitch, I am aware that Connor started out creating content by doing voice acting which you may realize is similar to Prozd on YouTube.
They all have their own channels, they weren't following the orders of some boss, they just made content they wanted to create and uploaded it to YouTube/Twitch. They got payouts from YouTube/Twitch because reminder, they are not employees, they do not receive wages from YouTube/Twitch, they're more like contractors, they get paid as long as their videos get views.
Then one of them got the idea of making a podcast with his friends, that resulted in the creation of the Trash Taste Podcast. You're probably thinking, "So they made a podcast to talk about anime?". No, they made a podcast to talk about anything (within YouTube's Terms of Service). Their podcast was way more successful than they ever imagined, and all they do is just talk about anything for an average of 2 hours per episode.
Do you realize that? You, you get paid to follow the orders of someone. These guys make one episode per week where they get together to talk about anything and people want to listen to them and, because enough people listen to them, they get a payout from YouTube.
You react, "Well, I may have to follow the orders of someone. But at least I get wages, and my job is secure." well, it's secure until the CEO has to appease the shareholders.
Even Connor, Joey and Garnt are aware of how risky it is to be a content creator, because they know that eventually your view count will drop, and continue to drop each year, until you can no longer sustain yourself as a Prosumer.
Speaking of the static roles I mentioned before, Joey has mentioned on the podcast how he regrets calling his YouTube channel "TheAnimeMan" because he restricted the content he could produce to just anime. So, he ended up making a second channel using his real name so that he could create any content he wanted, and people can watch it if they want.
That doesn't stop there, since they are aware of the risks of their roles. They looked at opportunities where they weren't dependent on YouTube. Joey has said on the podcast that he knew nothing about fashion, but what did he do with the money made from his YouTube channel? He started up a clothing brand. He knew nothing about fashion, but that didn't stop him from learning about fashion and making a company that produces clothing.
The Trash Taste Podcast themselves sells clothes too, but it's more like what every other content creator does, as merchandise. What did the Trash Taste Podcast as a company do recently to standout? They partnered with a brewer in Australia to sell Trash Taste Podcast branded beer: https://www.mobrewing.com.au/trash-taste-pale-ale/
They said the reason the beer is only in Australia is because of alcohol laws. So, they have difficulties with trying to expand to other regions. They're just a podcast and they're selling beer. Think about what would happen if they didn't own their own company, if their brand "Trash Taste" was owned by some publisher? The publisher would be telling them what they can and can't do. The publisher would most likely be milking their content for views on YouTube, instead of being a one episode per week content, the publisher would have them create a "content mill" where they have to create content constantly every day for YouTube. What would happen then? They would get burned out and retire from YouTube, but the publisher still owns the brand and made money off of them (ignoring the money that YouTube is also making off of them as Prosumers).
So, while they still have a boss they have to work for: YouTube/Twitch. The money they're making will allow them to create businesses that they own after they retire from YouTube/Twitch. Again, this is not an example of a worker co-op since I don't know how they run their business models. The point was that they can make anything, and they don't have a boss telling them what to do and that work made them successful.
You react, "That's a nice story. How does this fit into the theoretical model you're talking about?"
If you've already read my workplace democracy thread, then you would already know. The previous model was about freedom from private housing. This model is freedom from owners/CEOs. Don't worry, I don't think any Imperialist Space Empires will be invading you in this model.
You react, "Well, that was a long thread but finally..."
We're still not done.
"No!"
Let's call this next model, Freedom from Privatized Infrastructure/Utilities.
Classes: Rulers, Workers.
Informed Minority: Rulers.
Uninformed Majority: Workers.
Let's start the game, "There is a werewolf among us!"
We're back where we started. Before Baroness Thatcher declared, "There is no such thing as society!". Before all those utilities and infrastructure were privatized for the benefit of the informed minority to make economic rent from.
This is going to be similar to the model for the freedom from private housing. Use Divide and Conquer strategies to gain power, political power. What is the objective?
While it's been nice to think, "If only the State owned the utilities/infrastructure, then things would be produced at cost, which would lower cost-of-living standards." The problem is, there is always the scenario that the Rulers will use their power to just privatize the utilities/infrastructure again, repeating this endless cycle.
So, what's the idea then? Similar to freedom from the Owner/CEOs. Instead of letting the State hold ownership over the utilities/infrastructure. The Workers take ownership of those utilities/infrastructure and operate a workplace democracy, that is, a worker co-op.
Let's imagine a scenario where the utility and infrastructure are the water and sewerage systems. Instead of letting the State hand over ownership to the corporations and 1% which are among the Rulers. You gain political power to hand it over to the workers.
No more risk of cost-of-living standards going out of control, the workers actually use what they're paid to maintain and invest in infrastructure, whereas in comparison when it's privatized by the 1%, they look for profit in the short-term, "I don't want the money to go to repairing pipes, I want the money." So, with the workers owning the utilities/infrastructure, the business policies get decided democratically by the workers, they listen to the communities that rely on their services and act appropriately.
What about the Healthcare System? You're probably familiar with this strategy that the Neoliberals always do to State-owned Public Infrastructure/Utilities. They want to sell the public healthcare system to the 1% but they know that if they do that, it will cost them politically. So, what do they do? Divide and Conquer. Slowly but surely, they will underfund the healthcare system, the workers in the healthcare system will tell them they need more funds so you assume the State would increase the budget, right? WRONG.
Their plan is to keep doing "cost-cutting" on the healthcare system so that it runs so poorly that they can use propaganda to claim, "See? The healthcare system is in shambles. It would be running so much better if it was operating in the free market." Then they go and sell the public healthcare system to the corporations and the 1% and unsurprisingly, cost-of-living standards go up. Did the services at least improve? Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha... no.
If the workers using a worker co-op own the healthcare system, then they can democratically vote on policies that will improve the healthcare system, they can invest in IP that they will own and make money from, and then they can use those profits to benefit society.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Three models; freedom from the landlord, freedom from the owner/CEO, freedom from privatization. These ideas are very dangerous to the Ruling class because, instead of being stuck in some power struggle for all eternity, we decide that we no longer want to maintain this relationship where we are dependent on Rulers in almost every aspect of our lives.
Thinking about the informed minority and the uninformed majority again, in the video game Gnosia there is this subtext to how you are supposed to win in the game and finally complete it. You know what that subtext is? The accumulation of knowledge is what will create answers to solve your problems.
There is a line that I will say from the game that is out of context that you will think it's not subtext:
"Don't doubt. Don't be afraid. And know. Knowledge will save all."
That is all.
Extras
This looks like it's my longest post for a thread yet. This took way longer than you think, I had to keep cutting and pasting the text when I was making other threads in the week since you can't draft multiple threads to make.
When I was making this thread, I originally ran into issues when I was doing the section on "abstracting theory from Gnosia". I was like, "So we call the informed minority the oil company, and then when you call your Engineer to scan the climate and claim climate change is real and manmade, the oil company will use their "Engineer" to claim it's not real and not manmade. And then the Bug is in this game except we rename it from Bug to Side Effect to mean an unintended consequence. So, the side effect is climate change, and if the informed minority and the uninformed majority don't take care of the side effect, then the side effect wins the game and everyone else loses."
And then I'm thinking about it, and I'm like, "This isn't as impactful as I thought it was in my head when I wrote it out."
So that's when I thought about, instead of just abstracting theory from Gnosia, why don't we create new models from it? And that's how the thread ended up the way it is.
What I imagine is most likely going to be the takeaway from this thread is the following:
"Hello this is developer studio Petit Depotto."
"Yes hi, it's your publisher. Do you have any idea why sales of Gnosia increased by 10,000% this week?"
Also, what I will imagine will happen:
Nintendo: "Why did sales of Pikmin 4 increase by 1,000% this week and what is this thing called swarming that social media is talking about?"
Last statistic, the word count for this post is over 9000.