TheSagaContinues

Lhenro crosses his arm, and with a grin, asks,

"Why did it take so long for us to be freed from the Corporate Alliance?"

Lhenro smiles nervously as he asks, "How is my family doing? They are still maintaining good ties with this House, I hope?"

Lhenro looks on as the man is dragged out of the Ugly after being stunned, and turns to Rhade, before giving a hearty handshake, as a massive smile spreads.

A pleasure to meet you sir, I am Lhenro Donhent, of the Donhent merchant family.

Knowledge check

1d20+4 = 19 (Rolled a 15)

http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4212564/

Lhenro aims the ion turret in the Ugly's general direction, but does not fire.

"I'd rather not fire on any vessel until we're sure it's hostile", Lhenro says loudly over his shoulder.

Lhenro clutches onto the chair he's sitting on for support.

1d20+5= 17 (Rolled a 12)

http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4200690/

While I'll mostly agree with you on your definition of state capitalism, I think you're forgetting one of the things that makes the People's Republic of China slightly communist as well as state capitalistic in their economy, which is that the businesses that dominate the Chinese economy are all state controlled. The Chinese government also controls all of the vital economic pillars in China such as energy resources, and heavy industry, while watching the development of other industries from behind the scenes. Mao's communism was more like fascism mixed with socialism, with some Chinese elements added in.

I don't count Cuba as a successful communist country because nearly everything is rationed, and society is VERY controlled, and combined with the fact Cuba is fairly isolated, I can't say for sure how successful Cuba truly is.

I'd hate to live in China, but I would love to visit it, to view some of the cultural and historical sights.

And while it's true that the Nazis liked animals, and were against smoking (and I'll admit, being Jewish, I might have some bias in my opinion), but I think Lenin wouldn't go as far as to commit genocide on a complete race of people. He'd kill a lot of people if needed, but never simply because of racial bias.

I also want to note that Scandinavia is also highly developed and hardly totalitarian. Seriously, their gun laws are some of the best in my mind. (You can get a submachine gun at age 18 in Sweden provided you have no criminal history, you have a background check, and you have a legitimate reason to own one.)

Lenin was brutal, but not nearly as paranoid as Stalin was. Lenin may have enacted the Purges, but I think he'd also have some limits.

Ah, Winston Churchill. His quotes are some of my favorite. My grandparents and my great-grandparents, who lived through World War 2, even the Scottish ones, always seemed to view him favorably (I'm have dual citizenship, both American and British).

One of my favorites is, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." It reminds me of the USA's founding fathers' views that government is a necessary evil, albeit one they don't like.


And while the USSR and Nazi Germany's economies were fairly similar, there's still a difference in that the USSR was communist with the state control production and the economy by its own industries, Nazi Germany's economy was corporatism, where businesses were really closely involved with the state and their labor forces and were rewarded for successes, but were not outright controlled by the government. It's more that the businesses and industry were in close agreement in guiding the economy.

Ultimately, I think modern-day China shows that governments really need to allow some form of privatization in order to sustain their economy. Nowadays, China's economically powerful after it went from Mao's communism into what I'd regard to as "state capitalism" with a few communist elements, which is not so much communism as it is having a market that's watched by the government with state controlled businesses being run like capitalist ones and only has slight communist elements in that the state absolutely controls the energy production and heavy industry sectors. It's not what I would personally like as an economic system, but it's working, I'll give it that. That's the only form of communism that seems to be thriving (Cuba's too tiny for me to truly count), and even then, people around the world (me included) have issues with the authoritarian one-party government the People's Republic of China has.

I have to agree,  a massive, theocratic, fascist government is easily a government I'd oppose.

The Confederacy does seem to take elements of the power of big business rivaling the state, but it also has elements of growing discontent over the large bureaucracy of the Republic (somewhat like the Confederates in the American Civil War).

Fel's Empire, from what I know, seems to have quite a few metropolitan worlds like Bastion and Muunilinst (both of which they controlled).

Not just his policies, there was also the civil war that the Revolution caused, and to be honest, I believe Lenin was a lesser evil than Stalin. Lenin was known to be friendly to children, and was open to reform towards the end of his life, but sadly he died before he could implement these reforms. He was also scared of Stalin taking power (though Stalin did). And agreed, the USSR and Nazi Germany were essentially different only in being opposites economically. Also, considering that the Red Army took out 80% of the Wehrmacht, who knows how things would be different if Stalin didn't take power? Perhaps the USSR would have fallen to Germany.