the_dunk_tank

The creative team are all Estonian leftists/Marxists who lived through the 1990s. It’s clearly what they draw on - the absolute devastation of global capitalism.

No, you don’t understand! That’s the fault of those union thugs!!

but have you dumb commies considered that the *price stabilitié* is fantastic now? Didn't think so. Maybe if you actually attended an EPIS meeting you'd understand why you can't just fix problems and improve your local living conditions.

(Note: I don't understand either but I am paid to to pretend)

Damn those moralists and their checks notes good governance.

The Adults In The Room have Made The Hard Decisions and Got Shit Done

Also the large building that used to be full of thriving small businesses is destitute and nearly abandoned except the one dice maker lady. You can literally pick through the remains of the failure of capitalism that has left only a husk of itself behind.

And yeah, nearly every NPC in the game is living in poverty, is angry all the time, or has resigned themselves to quietly suffering

They've rationalized it in a "My enemies got mad and lost their temper therefore I am vindicated" kind of way.

The fact that the game mocks their beliefs merely reinforces the enlightened status of those beliefs.

One of my favorite exchanges in the game is when you can identify yourself as an ultraliberal to Evrart. He simply doesn't entertain the idea. He finds the concept so stupid he just insults you and moves on.

"You're not an ultraliberal Harry. Get the fuck out of here."

I thought liberals were supposed to be media savvy but they completely miss the point

They consume media that makes them feel media savvy, especially when Adults In The Room Make The Hard Decisions and Get Shit Done in such media.

This is on the devs for making the communism vision quest not mandatory, but the game literally has a character turn to the screen and monologue about how Communism is the only ideology that promises a better world is possible for each and every human being and that struggling for it is worth it even if you fail or are killed.

Meanwhile the fascism quest is all about how cope is destroying your life and ability to relate to other human beings, the moralism side quest has you fuck around with dumb bullshit that doesnt matter and almost gets you kidnapped by the state, and ultraliberalism is memes.

its Suharto, Sukarno was the guy that got couped

A fascist is just a liberal who understands how the sausage is made.

the world around the player is in utter decay as a result of said factions

Gestures wildly at the real world and

Someone with some insight might take away something from the fact that their preferred ideologies are both absent and omnipresent from the actual characters of the game.

The prime rep for ultraliberalism is a cynical billionaire whos company has just sent in a fascist death squad to resolve a labor strike, and anyone else who might be described as an "ultraliberal" in the game are literally on the shit tier of society either grifting for scraps or just completely delusional.

And moralisms prime rep is a literal occupying warship, followed by a bureaucrat who bullshits you about the economy while secretly engaging in sexual relationships with someone living in a filthy decaying slum, and finally Kim who deliberately refuses to engage in any serious politics and therefore doesnt really count.

Edit: Just remembered Trant, whos technically listed as a moralist on the wiki I guess but whos also an apolitical coward more than anything, and a crypto-social democrat.

The actual people of Martinaise are neither ultraliberals nor moralists, makes you think huh?

Wow cool airships!

"See? Moralism is BASED!"

the mass murders are highly contested by contemporary scholars

I think its just "oh u mad?" type vibes, the bad people talk about globalism therefore globalism is based now.

And also shes a board member of the company that hired a fascist death squad that has literally literally no experience outside of committing gruesome sexual and physical cruelties on colonized peoples, to "deal with" a workers strike.

She's very sneaky about her responsibility and involvement in that stuff, its easy to overlook while she makes jokes about being a great wyrm upon a hoard of the worlds wealth or something, what that actually involves.

Thesis: Ask her for lots of money

Antithesis: Don't ask her for money

Synthesis: Ask her for just enough money to cover repairs to the Whirling In Rags room and a stay for the night

She will give you money if it's a small amount. Although what I got from that exchange is she interprets it as a bribe.

But can it make me money?

The pale is just an externality. The right thing to do is to tax it so that the market can regulate the Time Void That is Slowly Swallowing the World and keep its growth steady.

Yeah, in the late game you basically need Council Republic because the Investment Pool contributions get artificially nerfed the larger your GDP gets. And nerfed in such a way that the capitalists money just disappears into the void it doesn't recirculate. So you want to have as few capitalists as possible then. Capitalism so good it suffers from it's own success.

The problem with capitalism is that it makes the investment class too rich. This shows that capitalism is actually an extremely good system with no flaws.