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As a Poli Sci guy, I love the examination of how fantasy tropes in a setting interact with real world political models, and I like the chance to learn more about Golarion... but at this point, I'm mostly distressed that the word "republic" appears only once in this thread so far, and that is as a reference to the Roman one and doesn't acknowledge a difference between the concepts.
Democracy is a terrible system. It is mob rule by the largest majority, leaving minorities of any kind as victims. It's insular in the extreme, hypertraditionalist (deviating from local traditions and mores is a great way to ensure you never win a vote, appeals to traditionalism and nationalism have an extreme advantage in any popular vote in a democratic society), incredibly slow to respond to changing conditions, scales beyond the local level terribly without advanced technology... really, true democracy has only one advantage, and that's the lack of true aristocracy... which melts when the de facto aristocracy inevitably arises through faction-building.
The OP loses some points because they appear to be reaching for the idea of the constitutional republic, but never gets there.
We laypeople say "democracy" to mean any government where a significant portion of the population, such as male landowners, votes on policy or to elect representatives. Thus, we count republics as democracies. I do not remember any large-scale democracies that lack constitutional checks and balances. I have participated in tiny-scale democratic control in hobby-based clubs. All members vote to direct the club. In those, members know that if they vote for indulgence then the club will collapse and we will lose its benefits, so they vote for practicality. On a less tiny scale, churches and clubs run like businesses have bylaws in a charter to limit what the members can decide.
In most Pathfinder campaigns, the PCs don't interact with the government enough to tell a republic from an aristocracy. They might know that a town has a mayor and a sheriff, but not how each obtained that job. The module might give clues, such as calling the leader of a province a viceroy rather than a governor, but those clues are more for flavor than for gameplay. Campaigns built around political intrigue are an exception, because the players have to manipulate the leadership.
The beginning of the Ironfang Invasion adventure path, Trail of the Hunted, is a case where the module did not bother to define the government of the village Phaendar. The campaign starts with the Ironfang Legion invading Phaendar and the villagers acting helpless. My players hate cluelessness among NPCs who should know better, so I organized a civil defense for the village. Furthermore, my wife had to unexpectedly leave town for a month right before the scheduled beginning of the campaign, so she asked for a pre-campaign quest to introduce her character to other characters whose players could attend an early game session. I had to invent a village government to provide the pre-campaign quest. It was not a democracy, because Phaendar is in the anarchy state Nirmathas. Instead, the most prominent citizens made the big decisions and persuaded the other villagers to go along with their ideas.
On the other hand, a subplot in the 3rd module, Assault on Longshadow, required the party to persuade the Mayor of Longshadow, Thom Crawfbert, and his council of advisers that the Ironfang Legion was a true threat to the walled city. Thus, the module defined that government.
A single year of adventuring had earned him [Thom Crawbert] a lot of money, and Thom found his way back to Longshadow and set himself up comfortably, using the goods he had acquired as an adventurer to establish a curio shop. After a few years, Thom made his bid for mayor, winning handily thanks to his reputation as a local hero.
Twenty years later, he remains a simple miner at heart, and leaves most of the hard work of governance to a panel of advisers selected from the city’s merchants and guild masters. Thom prefers to spend his time associating with his constituents and listening to their problems, seeing himself as a voice for the common citizen.
The other entry in Assault on Longshadow's NPC Gallery is Lieutenant Kosseruk, the minotaur commander of the thousand-soldier army that was besieging Longshadow.
Growing unrest in the [minotaur] tribe eventually saw Kosskaran [Kesseruk's mother and the tribe's chief] slain and Kosseruk exiled along with her few followers. In Molthune, her physical power and strategic mind were not only respected, but feared. As one of the army’s terrifying mercenary legions—the War Maze—Kosseruk and her followers grew powerful and wealthy by crushing humans distracted by petty squabbles. Kosseruk met Azaersi by chance while both served at the Ramgate Massacre, and after an hour’s debate the minotaur realized she had met her equal—perhaps even her superior. When Azaersi broke from Molthune and declared she would form a new home for those the humans labeled “monsters,” Kosseruk happily joined the cause. Finally recognized for her true talents, Kosseruk now serves as one of the Ironfang Legion’s most experienced and trusted lieutenants.
That is as much as we learn about the command structure of the Ironfang Legion. Soldiers who proved their leadership in the Molthune mercenary divisions and whom General Azaersi trusts were appointed as commanders by General Azaersi. I invented some internal politics for allocating resources to explain why the initial assault on Phaendar was filled with raw recruit soldiers when that conquered village was intended as the anchor border outpost of the conquered territory. I also changed Kosseruk's rank from Lieutenant to Brigadier General. The Pathfinder world building is as bad about the size of armies as it is about the size of cities.
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What the heck? It seems like the forum either ate a post I made earlier or it was removed.
It did mention things about current the current political climate in the US but to the best of my knowledge did not break any site rules.
It mostly waxed about the state of our democracy sliding towards authoritarianism.
I'm concerned about why it was removed.
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What the heck? It seems like the forum either ate a post I made earlier or it was removed.
It did mention things about current the current political climate in the US but to the best of my knowledge did not break any site rules. ...
Yes, that comment was right before my most recent comment. I had considered quoting it in my comment as part of a discussion of checks and balances in a democracy. But I decided that that could divert the thread away from discussing Golarion nations. This thread has the potential to discuss interesting world-building if it does not drift to another topic.
Real-life politics have a tendency to override game discussions. I guess the moderators are being cautious.
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I mostly wanted to challenge the notion that democracy in and of itself would "rule the world" in an undisputed way.
So I brought up how the US was becoming less democratic.
Further, the other major players in the world are a international alliance with varying entities sliding into authoritarianism and another entity represent about 20% of the world population that is very very deeply authoritarian.
I'm not suggesting we should want authoritarian regimes as an end goal, but rather that over a long time line it might be unavoidable.
For basically most of human history we've had mostly authoritarian governments in charge with democracy only being strongly represented for 200 years. A democracy has helped see the world flourish, as in authoritarian governments you only see those in power (and those needed by those in power to maintain their power) getting what they want.
Without the checks and balances you mention, a group of people can steer a democracy to work for a very small number of people instead of The People.
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Yes, but I believe finding loopholes is a very chaotic concept in itself.
Yeah it's one of the ironies of Pathfinder that the bastion of Lawful Evil is, in fact, not particularly Lawful at all.
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Yeah it's one of the ironies of Pathfinder that the bastion of Lawful Evil is, in fact, not particularly Lawful at all.
Yes, but I believe finding loopholes is a very chaotic concept in itself.
I disagree, actually.
Lawful Evil is all about the rules - and those rules being unfair, demanding “system mastery” of legalese. Deliberately being opaque, capable of interpretation, or prone to loopholes is what makes it Evil, just as much as the more obvious cruelty.
Lawful Neutral is a contract that defines the terms of work. Lawful Evil is when that contract includes vague verbiage that says your employer doesn’t have to pay you for a day in which they think you’re intentionally subverting the workplace - terms someone might think are reasonable until they realize they go without pay because your boss didn’t like your facial expression at noon.
Policies that let the authorities arrest anyone who seems “suspicious” are easily bent to Lawful Evil, as they become a remit to go after literally anyone they want. So are orders that let a military force put anyone they deem a “threat” to the sword - “Look, he had a pitchfork!” LE thrives in the wiggle room around the letter of the law, and often thinks the spirit of the law is bait for suckers.
I think the tension between that style of LE and the more classic Judge Dredd stuff is the source of some really potent stories! “The Law should be clear but merciless and harsh” and “the Law exists to punish the stupid and reward the canny” are both equally valid, interesting takes on the Alignment - part of the reason I love the brewing Thrune/Hellknight clash.
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I mostly wanted to challenge the notion that democracy in and of itself would "rule the world" in an undisputed way.
So I brought up how the US was becoming less democratic.
Further, the other major players in the world are a international alliance with varying entities sliding into authoritarianism and another entity represent about 20% of the world population that is very very deeply authoritarian.
I'm not suggesting we should want authoritarian regimes as an end goal, but rather that over a long time line it might be unavoidable.
For basically most of human history we've had mostly authoritarian governments in charge with democracy only being strongly represented for 200 years. A democracy has helped see the world flourish, as in authoritarian governments you only see those in power (and those needed by those in power to maintain their power) getting what they want.
Without the checks and balances you mention, a group of people can steer a democracy to work for a very small number of people instead of The People.
They have had democracies meaning groups of people doing something like a vote deciding things. Authoritarian governments are what we talk about the most, but they aren't as common as you think. They just get the most ink because historians like studying empire builders and conquerors as they brought large groups together in a nation-state. But the methods of governing have varied and changed over time.
It's hard for a human to see the world, so they mostly default to looking at the large nations. But take a nation like Switzerland. They been around a long time and have practice a sort of democracy for a long time. They've been highly successful. They did not want the European nations in their area. They often avoided the common tropes in Europe.
I still recall reading how it was common between nations like France and England to capture knights and ransom them back to noble families. They tried to invade Switzerland thinking to the same, but the Swiss killed their enemies regardless of social status and wealth and sent a clear message of "don't come here."
I think they've had the canton system for much longer than modern democracy existed.
There are a lot of small nations that you don't read much about who minded their business and ran things in a more democratic type of fashion.
But history books don't give them much ink because it's not that interesting to talk about a smaller nation or group of people who didn't get embroiled in Empire building, yet didn't end up conquered and kind of ran things in a relatively fair and equitable fashion. Who would read about that very long?
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I think the basic issue is that there's two extremely distinct kinds of lawful evil. There's "I believe the only desirable end is maximal law, and I don't care if I have to use evil means to get it" and then there's "using the law to oppress people will allow me to promote the most evil."
These are people who should be on the same side, but they absolutely should not trust each other.
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I did like the idea of playing a Chelish noble who perverts the intent of Chelish law to lawful good ends.
And her grandfather had outlasted several Thrune monarchs. He has given up being surprised at the efficiency of their coups, whereby they always managed to present each new ruler as a fait accompli with no succession struggle after the death of each previous ruler.
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I think the basic issue is that there's two extremely distinct kinds of lawful evil. There's "I believe the only desirable end is maximal law, and I don't care if I have to use evil means to get it" and then there's "using the law to oppress people will allow me to promote the most evil."
These are people who should be on the same side, but they absolutely should not trust each other.
Can't this be said of most Alignments? The Abadaran who wants to bring civilization and commerce to the frontier has little in common with the Iroran chasing self-mastery despite them both being LN. Abraxas loves forbidden magic and probably doesn't not want Rovagug to unmake the universe he keeps all his magic in, even though they're both CE.
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You left out "The law is a game. I play to win." It's not about maximization of Evil as an ideology or a faction, but maximizing personal short-term advantage.I think the basic issue is that there's two extremely distinct kinds of lawful evil. There's "I believe the only desirable end is maximal law, and I don't care if I have to use evil means to get it" and then there's "using the law to oppress people will allow me to promote the most evil."
These are people who should be on the same side, but they absolutely should not trust each other.
I still think it is best to keep them separate.
Lawful means that I think society has to have significant body of law to function effectively. Or perhaps society is best when it has laws.
Evil means I am out for me and mine, I'm more than happy to exploit others to do that. The degree of evil being how far along this spectrum I am willing to go.
Yes Evil is quite happy with laws that it can take advantage of. But it is also happy with no laws.
The intersection of these ideas can be a somewhat useful description of society or person, but they stand alone too.
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Yeah it's one of the ironies of Pathfinder that the bastion of Lawful Evil is, in fact, not particularly Lawful at all.
Yes, but I believe finding loopholes is a very chaotic concept in itself.I disagree, actually.
Lawful Evil is all about the rules - and those rules being unfair, demanding “system mastery” of legalese. Deliberately being opaque, capable of interpretation, or prone to loopholes is what makes it Evil, just as much as the more obvious cruelty.
Lawful Neutral is a contract that defines the terms of work. Lawful Evil is when that contract includes vague verbiage that says your employer doesn’t have to pay you for a day in which they think you’re intentionally subverting the workplace - terms someone might think are reasonable until they realize they go without pay because your boss didn’t like your facial expression at noon.
Policies that let the authorities arrest anyone who seems “suspicious” are easily bent to Lawful Evil, as they become a remit to go after literally anyone they want. So are orders that let a military force put anyone they deem a “threat” to the sword - “Look, he had a pitchfork!” LE thrives in the wiggle room around the letter of the law, and often thinks the spirit of the law is bait for suckers.
I think the tension between that style of LE and the more classic Judge Dredd stuff is the source of some really potent stories! “The Law should be clear but merciless and harsh” and “the Law exists to punish the stupid and reward the canny” are both equally valid, interesting takes on the Alignment - part of the reason I love the brewing Thrune/Hellknight clash.
I think you're right about the concept, but to me that doesn't really describe LE conceptually.
The tenants of alignment imply some sort of adherence to a certain set of values. A character or group of characters who see the Law as a useful framework for helping them achieve their goals, but reject (directly or indirectly) that same framework whenever it's inconvenient for them is not, by definition, someone with a strong Lawful component to their alignment.
Fundamentally, that's the problem with Hell being signalled as a cornerstone of Lawful Evil, because the beings within it generally have little concern for any tenants of Lawfulness as a personal philosophy or ethos.
Your example, the authority figure who weaponizes power structures to suppress people they don't like while also believing themselves to be above and removed from those same rules is not a Lawful Evil person, they're firmly neutral evil (or maybe even CE) and just so happen to see a legal system as a convenient framework for enforcing their personal power. The very notion of applying rules arbitrarily and capriciously contradicts the underpinings of the alignment.
A character who pantomimes altruism only when it's convenient for them and has no problem harming others for personal gain cannot be Good, and if Paizo called a character who behaved that way Good aligned, eyebrows would be raised.
You left out "The law is a game. I play to win."
There are definitely lots of characters (and other examples) that display this sort of ethos.
But you can't really be said to have convictions or principles if they only exist when it's particularly convenient to have them. Again, the character who donates to charity only when they can use it to bolster their image or it's otherwise convenient to them wouldn't be Good, either.
Having an alignment suggests that those components are somehow important to your identity or describing you as a character. This is especially true for outsiders who are supposed to be literally made out of the stuff.
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Someone who uses the law as a means to an end is indeed probably Lawful. An LE villain would still gladly murder someone he doesn't like despite murder being illegal, he would just be able to use some stupid law as a shield.
Further, exploiting loopholes to harm people is very lawful evil. If they actually followed all the rules, they would probably not be evil given that most rules stop bad stuff from happening (ideally). Saying "you didn't follow the rules in the specific way you were supposed to" and then punishing you for it is absolutely a function of using the law as a means to harm and exploit others.
Dnd4e was correct to just make LE and NE one alignment. Ultimately the evil alignments are very similar, because their main goal is "do bad things to others for whatever reason".
I do appreciate that we're just mostly completely ignoring the OP though since his posts are nonsense.
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yo the book this dude is basing all his posts on is by a bunch of economists instead of anyone who knows anything about how governments works. imagine getting roasted by fukuyama
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There's an old joke in Math that economics is the science of applying mathematical models in those situations where they do not apply. It's basically a systematized way to ignore contradictory evidence.
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The tenants of alignment imply some sort of adherence to a certain set of values. A character or group of characters who see the Law as a useful framework for helping them achieve their goals, but reject (directly or indirectly) that same framework whenever it's inconvenient for them is not, by definition, someone with a strong Lawful component to their alignment.
Fundamentally, that's the problem with Hell being signalled as a cornerstone of Lawful Evil, because the beings within it generally have little concern for any tenants of Lawfulness as a personal philosophy or ethos.
Your example, the authority figure who weaponizes power structures to suppress people they don't like while also believing themselves to be above and removed from those same rules is not a Lawful Evil person, they're firmly neutral evil (or maybe even CE) and just so happen to see a legal system as a convenient framework for enforcing their personal power. The very notion of applying rules arbitrarily and capriciously contradicts the underpinings of the alignment.
I'm not describing a character who feels above the Law or is abusing it - I'm describing Laws intentionally meant to empower imbalanced hierarchies and maintain monopolies of violence.
The "not smiling at work" example could very easily be applied to contracted laborers in a place like Cheliax or Isger, and wouldn't be seen as a violation of the law, but rather an appropriate leveraging of it over societal lessers - likewise for the constable with near-infinite jurisdiction or the commander empowered to scorch the earth by high command. A sadistic Inquisitor who quite likes their work in service to Nidal's state doesn't stop being Lawful just because she's got legal free reign over pretty much any citizen she wants - that's their system working as intended. When Walkena burns someone alive in the public square, some of Mzali's citizens think it is justice, even if the crimes are disproportionately small.
Law is not inherently fair. Lawful Evil has even less reason to be.
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Fundamentally, that's the problem with Hell being signalled as a cornerstone of Lawful Evil, because the beings within it generally have little concern for any tenants of Lawfulness as a personal philosophy or ethos.
I have to say that I don't think this quite flows from the information we have on what Lawful means in the context of the Lost Omens setting. I find the Lawful-Chaotic axis the axis with the most significant variation in how people interpret it, but the PF2 CRB's definition of the axis is:
Your character has a lawful alignment if they value consistency, stability, and predictability over flexibility. Lawful characters have a set system in life, whether it’s meticulously planning day-to-day activities, carefully following a set of official or unofficial laws, or strictly adhering to a code of honor. On the other hand, if your character values flexibility, creativity, and spontaneity over consistency, they have a chaotic alignment—though this doesn’t mean they make decisions by choosing randomly. Chaotic characters believe that lawful characters are too inflexible to judge each situation by its own merits or take advantage of opportunities, while lawful characters believe that chaotic characters are irresponsible and flighty.
I think the key bit here is that being Lawful means being consistent, stable, and predictable in your perspective. I agree that someone who doesn't have any care for the law and will change their perspectives on a dime based on what is useful to them isn't being particularly Lawful, but I see no reason to say that this applies to devils. Devils are creatures who have created an incredibly complex, downright labyrinthine legal system precisely because it allows for loopholes to exist and be taken advantage of. They don't value these loopholes because they want to be inconsistent, but because they view this system as the best way to get consistent, stable, predictable outcomes where their desired strict ranking of all creatures into a hierarchy of who is deserving of the power that exploiting these loopholes gives.
Devils fundamentally believe that there must be a hierarchy where those on a higher rung can exert total control of those on a lower rung, and the entire bureaucracy of hell is set up to ensure this happens. The loopholes and complexities allow for this hierarchy to be created by acting as the mechanism that judges where one must fit into the hierarchy. If that's taken as their perspective, I think they do overwhelmingly behave in a consistent, stable, and predictable (and thoroughly evil) way, as one would expect for Lawful creatures. If you prove you are deserving of a position in their hierarchy by appropriately exploiting their loopholes, they'll not break their rules to try and undo that - though they'll almost certainly try as hard as they can within their rules to push back against you. If you make a deal with a devil and manage to beat them at their own game and find a loophole, they'll allow you to renege on a contract that would've otherwise have lost you your soul. If you did that to a demon or other CE outsider, barring magical compulsion or something like that, you would expect them to just try to take it by force.
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Lawful, whatever the individual's specific goals, believes that a strong system based on traditions, rules, laws ... is a requirement to reaching their goals.
Chaotic considers that such a system is an obstacle to reaching their goals.
The goals might be Good (Happiness for everyone) or Evil (Crush your enemies and increase your power over lesser beings).
Neutral, on the Chaotic-Lawful axis, does not have any strong feeling about the system one way or the other. They only care about the goals.
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Most corporations are Lawful Evil. They exist to enrich their stakeholders by extracting the maximum amount of value for the least cost--to the corporation.
If there is no law to compel pro-social behavior the majority will not engage in it. If there's a fine for breaking the law, they'll pay it and keep doing the behavior so long as the fine is less than the profit.
If a corporation is putting forth Good behavior, it is to a selfish and Evil end. Almost invariably.
I start with that because I find it a much more valuable example than looking at any one individual's behavior. People will justify themselves through the twistiest of knots to make their behavior seem, at the least, not evil.
But the all consuming greed of a corporation gives you a good idea what Lawful Evil really is.
So, I find it helpful to imagine Hell as a corporation and Devils as Management.
You are showing a real lack of understanding of a corporation and inserting a political idea that isn't true and is a very biased and limited view of a business venture like a corporation.
You are completely ignoring the consumer-producer relationship which requires a business corporation to provide the consumer with value for their actions. If the corporation does not provide value to the user or employee in a free market including the labor market, then a consumer or worker has no reason to support them. They will go to the business that will provide them better value.
People who state this idea usually think of corporations as entities who somehow mind control people to buy their product or service regardless of the value it provides them or force them to work for them regardless of how they treat them and that just isn't the case.
It would be like viewing government as an entity that doesn't have to answer to the people and expecting them not to rebel, when a consumer has a much greater ability to alter corporate behavior with the use of their money than they do their government with the use of their vote or in the case of non-voting societies their resistance by whatever means they do it.
To put this more in D&D terms, any entity be it corporations or governments will only be as good or evil as the people running them. The base people and not the entity itself will ever cause people to act good or evil. They will be responsible for their own behavior.
Thus if a corporation pursues profits without regard to their effect on the consumer or the worker, then they are likely to be eradicated as workers and consumers will buy or work for a entity that benefits them rather than work for a company or purchase an item or service that harms them.
So this idea of corporations is very short-sighted and not accurate to the history of corporations. It is a very limited view of a corporations goals which is usually not "maximum profits" as that usually doesn't lead to "maximum profits." It's more like something you would see from a mission statement on Amazon "Best customer experience possible" or something like that which focuses on pleasing and providing benefit to the consumer. I'm sure Paizo has some mission statement or idea for the company which doesn't consist of "maximum profits", which is why they stay in business providing value to all of us Paizo customers looking for good gaming material.
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Companies... tend to go amoral. That doesn't mean that they go evil, necessarily. It just means that, especially as they become larger, and the individual becomes more attenuated, they become unbound from traditional morality. This does not inherently make them perform evil acts, but it carves away one of the standard mechanisms that discourage such acts in individuals.
The "as they become larger" here is important, as it tends to insulate them from the watchdogs, both internal and external, that would seek to guide them toward better behavior.
Beyond that, from the perspective of a company, money is oxygen. Money is the breath of life and the blood in their veins. It is an existential necessity, and companies suffocate all the time because they don't have enough of it. This focuses the attention.
So... basically, companies, as they purify, tend to be willing to do whatever they think they can get away with to gain advantage, constrained only by fear of exposure and resulting punishment. Some have a corporate culture of sufficient strength to prevent this, but such things tend to persist only so long as the folks at the top care about them, and it there is a natural human tendency to grow more corrupt when in a situation that enables it (like being very wealthy and in charge of a huge corporation). It is by no means absolute, but it is certainly a tendency that exists.
As for the sort of result that this process tends to produce when permitted to go far enough... is it "evil"? Well, it depends on your definitions, I suppose. I am not willing to argue against those who would claim that it is. At the same time, it might be argued that the concentration of power has tended to produce "evil" across all of history and all of human civilization. This certainly isn't the worst incarnation of the inherent corruption of power that has ever been (or, indeed, the worst that's out there currently).
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...and now I'm reminded of one of my personal favorite tropes - the character who's fundamentally Evil, but who's managed an enlightened sort of Evil, where they carefully ensure that their overall effects on the world are beneficial enough that people will turn a blind eye to the Horrible Brain Experiments that they have in the basement or whatever.
The world is full of heroes, after all, and they know that "death by hero" is one of the most common ways for people like them to go... so they carefully arrange reasons for the heroes to let them be even after their villainous deeds are discovered. What's the big deal? It's just a few peasants. In the meantime, I'm one of the major patrons of the Knights of Lastwall, and you know how much they need those supplies. Have I mentioned my work in rooting out Urgathoa cultists?
Even better if they're the party's patron. I mean, "funding adventuring parties to go out and Do Good Deeds" is pretty much right up their alley, you know? Especially if said adventuring parties can be aimed at their enemies (...who are *also* quite evil, and less inclined to compensate for it).
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As for the sort of result that this process tends to produce when permitted to go far enough... is it "evil"? Well, it depends on your definitions, I suppose. I am not willing to argue against those who would claim that it is. At the same time, it might be argued that the concentration of power has tended to produce "evil" across all of history and all of human civilization. This certainly isn't the worst incarnation of the inherent corruption of power that has ever been (or, indeed, the worst that's out there currently).
I get that you are trying to be balanced. But this falls short. Companies are amoral. They are trying to compete. They provide a service or goods that people want at a better price. This is a significant benefit to society as a whole and a net good. If society did not want that service it wouldn't happen.
Competition is not evil. Competition is a law of nature, and a fact of so many aspects of life. Competition is harsh but if you consider it evil then your definition needs a fix. Competition is just a concept that is and affects everything. It is a function of the reality we live in.
Where companies can go off track is in the side effects of generating a profit. With what they or individuals within them are prepared to do to make a profit, which naturally in some circumstances is a trade off with morality.
Society permits this with lax laws, corruption or just an unwillingness to deal with it because of the benefits the company provides.
We know that they are evil ways to gain a short term benefit, but I think we can say that cooperative, mutually beneficial and therefore good ways of running companies and society have been proven to be better. So I don't think that we can even say that companies tend to evil. It is a full spectrum.
Perhaps Competition doesn't have to be a part of a fantasy reality. In fact the presence of so many different intelligent species probably means that something else is a significant factor in a fantasy world. In the real world humans would have wiped most of them out, or been wiped out by them. It is just a matter of time.
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Companies... tend to go amoral. That doesn't mean that they go evil, necessarily. It just means that, especially as they become larger, and the individual becomes more attenuated, they become unbound from traditional morality. This does not inherently make them perform evil acts, but it carves away one of the standard mechanisms that discourage such acts in individuals.
The "as they become larger" here is important, as it tends to insulate them from the watchdogs, both internal and external, that would seek to guide them toward better behavior.
Beyond that, from the perspective of a company, money is oxygen. Money is the breath of life and the blood in their veins. It is an existential necessity, and companies suffocate all the time because they don't have enough of it. This focuses the attention.
So... basically, companies, as they purify, tend to be willing to do whatever they think they can get away with to gain advantage, constrained only by fear of exposure and resulting punishment. Some have a corporate culture of sufficient strength to prevent this, but such things tend to persist only so long as the folks at the top care about them, and it there is a natural human tendency to grow more corrupt when in a situation that enables it (like being very wealthy and in charge of a huge corporation). It is by no means absolute, but it is certainly a tendency that exists.
As for the sort of result that this process tends to produce when permitted to go far enough... is it "evil"? Well, it depends on your definitions, I suppose. I am not willing to argue against those who would claim that it is. At the same time, it might be argued that the concentration of power has tended to produce "evil" across all of history and all of human civilization. This certainly isn't the worst incarnation of the inherent corruption of power that has ever been (or, indeed, the worst that's out there currently).
The customer is the "breath of life." Money is a byproduct of providing value to a customer.
You do have to make enough of a return on investment to make the venture profitable to be worthwhile. If you are a businessman who constantly tells yourself "money is my primary motivator" you are likely to fail.
The orientation that most succeeds is focusing on a customer need or want whether that customer is an individual or another business. Then providing that need or want in an efficient manner that provides value to both the producer and consumer creating a relationship.
This idea that companies are amoral or immoral would depend on the goal of the company. Even when they scale, they are not all one way or the other as far as amoral or immoral behavior goes.
There is a lot that goes into running companies and to paint them all one way or the other is a false presumption. It really will always come down to what the company does, the owner or owners' personal morality, the marketplace, and how you view what they do.
Then you could add on the value generated within a community from taxes, investment, jobs, the product or service provided, and possible benefits for employees like schooling and training, then you have a much deeper discussion.
My main point is lumping the idea of corporations or businesses into a single moral lump is a false proposition that doesn't fit the reality of businesses within human societies. They are as vast and varied in their pursuits as the humans running them including their moral viewpoints and acts.
I'm going to leave it there as this is moving in the usual direction where the political bias of individuals invades threads like this leading to pointless and useless debates that have nothing to do with Paizo games.
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I'm not describing a character who feels above the Law or is abusing it - I'm describing Laws intentionally meant to empower imbalanced hierarchies and maintain monopolies of violence.
That's fair, and I largely agree with the rest of your post. My sticking point here is that Devils seem to often exist as the former. Devils are often described as trying to upend the system, avoid responsibility, or break the existing social order (in order to play themselves on top). Backstabbing and cheating are expected practices. Asmodeus is literally the prince of lies.
That does not describe a rigid adherence to order, or any particular value placed on consistency, tradition, ethics, and definitely not any code of honor.
It's not about law being fair, or good, or bad, but that it's just that the decision to make it little more than an aesthetic footnote makes them much more generic as villains and that's kind of a let down imo.
It may seem chaotic, but finding loopholes is anything but chaotic.
Disagree. If I were making a Chaotic villain who liked mocking the concepts of Law and Order, having them exploit minor, absurd, or nonsensical technicalities in order to make a mockery of the system would be a great way to do it.
If I were making a character who valued "stability and predictability" and followed a "strict code of honor" as Arcaian pointed, I would probably avoid tactics like that because it would undermine the premise of the character.
"I dIdN't TeChNiCaLlY lIe" is not the motivation of a character who intrinsically values a system of rules in and of itself.
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There are private corporations that are probably not evil by Pathfinder standards. But when you subscribe to the "we must commit to eternal growth for the sake of the investor class" then you're well into evil territory.
Like you should be able to run a company where your can pay for all of your expenses (wages, material) and instead of committing to "ever more profit" you're just happy that you're keeping the lights on and you can pay your employees a fair wage. That's probably Good even. If you cross over to "I want to spend less on employees, so I have more profit" that's probably where you cross over to Evil.
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There are private corporations that are probably not evil by Pathfinder standards. But when you subscribe to the "we must commit to eternal growth for the sake of the investor class" then you're well into evil territory.
Like you should be able to run a company where your can pay for all of your expenses (wages, material) and instead of committing to "ever more profit" you're just happy that you're keeping the lights on and you can pay your employees a fair wage. That's probably Good even. If you cross over to "I want to spend less on employees, so I have more profit" that's probably where you cross over to Evil.
You are delving into socialist terms to describe capitalism and using this to conclude that companies are mostly evil? Seriously!?!
eternal growth is not a requirement of a company, simply being profitable is. Growth can even be negative but if it is still the best possible then that can be OK.
investor class is a totally loaded term. It is based on failed theories, that have been proven false so many times it is embarassing that you bring them up. Classes are open and fluid at least in a good society.
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And now that this thread had devolved into the political slapfight it was always fated to be, after already having already become one of countless Alignment debates… I think it’s probably served its purpose.
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I'd argue that there are some corporations that could be Lawful Evil, but the average probably trends closer to LN, similar to Abadar. The last one I worked at was straight-up quietly abusive, paid well below the average, and was basically willing to do anything to make a quick buck. (They're still around, incidentally.) That's one I'd classify as LE.
My current one offers good pay (well over the standard, I believe), very friendly benefits, looks to improve workers in general, etc, but has also had very large-scale questionable reports in the past. I'm not sure if I'd be willing to call them Good that's been tainted by certain people, as I haven't worked with them long enough to tell, but they probably make the bar for LN at least.
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To return to the original topic, keftiu, your posts in other threads show an extensive knowledge of Golarion lore. Do you know the history of which Golarion nations have failed?
Places like the Worldwound (now Sakoris again) and the Sodden Lands were overwhelmed by disasters not related to their their own actions. Varisia is an odd case, because it fell when the leaders of the Thassilon nations hid before the Earthfall of the Starstone, but while other nations recovered in the following ten thousand years, it remained undeveloped. Nidal is ruled by an evil theocracy, but it is stable so does not count as fallen. Galt is in a permanent state of rebellion, but as far as I know it never rose high enough to count as failing.
On Earth, the most famous fallen state is the Roman Empire, which grew as a military empire, outsourced its military to foreign mercenaries, and then was invaded by those foreigners. Do either Taldor or Cheliax correspond to Rome?
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To return to the original topic, keftiu, your posts in other threads show an extensive knowledge of Golarion lore. Do you know the history of which Golarion nations have failed?
Places like the Worldwound (now Sakoris again) and the Sodden Lands were overwhelmed by disasters not related to their their own actions. Varisia is an odd case, because it fell when the leaders of the Thassilon nations hid before the Earthfall of the Starstone, but while other nations recovered in the following ten thousand years, it remained undeveloped. Nidal is ruled by an evil theocracy, but it is stable so does not count as fallen. Galt is in a permanent state of rebellion, but as far as I know it never rose high enough to count as failing.
On Earth, the most famous fallen state is the Roman Empire, which grew as a military empire, outsourced its military to foreign mercenaries, and then was invaded by those foreigners. Do either Taldor or Cheliax correspond to Rome?
Galt is tentatively on the road to doing better, as of Night of the Grey Death - but it got its start as a breakaway Chelish province. If you count losing lots of your empire and being reduced to your core territories as "falling," then both Cheliax and Taldor can be said to count; the latter lost most of Avistan (including Cheliax itself!), while the former has bled the aforementioned Andoran and Galt, plus Belkzen, Molthune, Nirmathas, Sargava, and Varisia). In both cases, it's local secession movements being emboldened by the empires' wars - Taldor's big spat with Qadira and Cheliax's civil war, respectively.
Ancient Osirion broke the Jistka Imperium and the Tekritanin League in wars before being military conquered by the Kelesh Empire, with modern Osirion having successfully won its independence about a century ago. The native Mwangi overthrew their Sargavan colonial masters and founded Vidrian instead. Xatramba was laid low by demons summoned by Rastel, and it's implied those same demons destroyed Rastel itself.
Iobarian civilizations routinely fall to potent plagues. The Ghol-Gan cyclopes were consumed by curses, dark magic, and a broad cultural decline caused by contact with dark entities. The Sekmin lost their surface empire to war with Azlant, while their Darklands holdings were claimed while they entered hibernation. One of the Spawn of Rovagug destroyed Ninshabur. Fire destroyed Yenchabur.
Yixing, Shu, and Lung Wa all ruled large swathes of Tian Xia, and their falls aren't super well documented; Lung Wa's collapse was caused by catastrophes that coincide with Aroden's death, the formation of the Eye of Abendego, and all that other fun stuff, then fracturing and descending into civil war. Chu Ye has arguably fallen, in that Oni now rule it, while a kraken seized Wanshou after a devastating flood.
So... broadly? War, revolution, natural disasters, and magical cataclysms, often as the deathblow after lengthy processes of falling apart.
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There are also the semi-autonomous city-states of the Shory Empire which mostly fell to infighting or pacts with either Leng or the Outer Gods.
Or plagues, or a Spawn of Rovagug, or crashing into Tian mountains… the Shory seem to have gotten spectacularly unlucky. I feel very silly for forgetting them! Super stoked to find out what’s with the Tian-Yae people whenever we get to them.