FOREWARD
In this short essay, I use some examples of Founder Supremacy. These examples are solely from my memory, and thus may be wrong or oversimplified. If you wish to correct the examples, please contact me via telegram (nation is Zukchiva) or discord (@imsotiredofthisapp).
Whenever I think about arguments on ethical topics, I often start off by trying to find the areas of arguments with which I’m uncomfortable. It allows me to feel/explore what needs to be argued against and solidify my own principles. Although NS is a game and thus ethics aren’t as important, IC ethics still exist and thus this process still works out.
And one thing I tend to feel uncomfortable about is the concept of “Founder supremacy”.
WHAT THE HIJINCKS IS “FOUNDER SUPREMACY”
So the first thing is to define what Founder supremacy is. The way I’d define it is that it’s the idea that the Founder should have the ability to do whatever they want with a region they own, stemming from the mechanical ability the Founder has to banject anyone in the region they’re Founder of. Or in simple terms, regardless of activity or size of the region, a Founder can do whatever the hell they want with “their” region.
Now, I should note it’s probably more accurate to say “Founder/Governor Supremacy”, but that sounds stupid and I’ve been in NS before Governors were a thing. So just assume anything I’m saying is “Founder Supremacy” held by “Founders” actually applies to Governors and/or Founders who still retain Governor-powers. “Founders” in this case means a similar thing.
Where Founder Supremacy comes from is pretty clear - the mechanical ethical R/D relativism that permeates NationStates, which basically says “if they have, and can hold, the mechanical power of a region, they can do what they want”. It’s the same ethical philosophy behind TWP’s Delegate Supremacy, or raiders when they’re griefing a region. It’s a general sense of “because they have the power, they should be able to wield its power to the fullest’'.
Now, NationStates is pretty littered with Founder Supremacy examples. Unfortunately, I don’t know most of them as I’m not omnipresent. But it’s safe to say that most Founders tend to exercise Founder supremacy somewhat, in the OOC establishment of Administrative teams. So I’ll add another caveat - I’m only speaking of IC Founder supremacy in this short opinion piece, the merits of OOC Founder supremacy (when it comes to decisions to regulate player safety) are not for debate.
In any case, Founder Supremacy examples. Some I have in mind include:
- 2017, wherein The Union of Democratic States’ founder fired all government officials in an emergency maneuver (though it should be noted this was an explicit power in the IC constitution of the time).
- 2020, wherein the Social Liberal Union’s founder decided to close the region down because they disagreed with the OOC political takes of some people in the region (this could be termed an OOC matter, but since most people find the OOC reasonings not-good, I’m mentioning this).
- 2024, wherein Thaecia’s founder, Andusre, decided to unilaterally dissolve Thaecia’s government after Thaecia had been in a state of decline.
- 2024, wherein Astoria’s founders, without much communication with the overall community, tried to shut down Astoria and merge the region with a side-region of the founders, Athena - ultimately killing off Astoria.
In all of these examples, a Founder decided to exercise their unilateral powers to affect the region they owned in some way. Also, in all of these examples, the residents of the regions got extremely pissed off and, in the case of Astoria/Athens and SLU, led to many regions closing relations with the original “Founder-couped” region.
This leads to two conclusions:
- In cases in which Founder supremacy is exercised in a way without community consent, the community gets pretty angry. Most would call it a sense of injustice.
- Founder Supremacy, the very idea of it, exists and has been used in regions to a notable effect.
Conclusion 2 was already discussed prior, and I don’t think it’s a novel idea. I want to analyze Conclusion 1, though. Because a question definitely needs to be asked: why were the residents of these four regions so angry, when their Founders took their unilateral actions?
One argument could be that people get irrationally angry all the time. Logically, it’s the Founder’s right to use their region as they wish, and if those residents were to ignore their emotions, then they’d agree with the idea of Founder Supremacy and that the Founder had the right of way. One could argue it’s perhaps even the residents’ right to be angry (afterall, the region is still important to them) but their anger is nonetheless irrational - or at least, not justified, because the Founder holds the power and thus wields power as they wish.
But there is another argument. That when the Founder decided to enact a unilateral decision, it caused a sense of unfairness to arise within the residents (and often observers) of the affected regions. That the anger isn’t an anger born out of pain/hurt/time wasted, but also a sense of an inherent unfairness. This leads us to the concept of “justice”, which is a concept inherently tied to ethics.
This is what I want to base my argument against wanton Founder Supremacy on.
WHY WANTON FOUNDER SUPREMACY IS BAD
Justice is a very varied term and can mean a whole lot of different things depending on who you ask. But I think the sense of justice that functions for this argument is that justice is about fairness - or, as Aristotle put it, “justice consists in what is lawful and fair, with fairness involving equitable distributions and the correction of what is inequitable” (Justice, Western Theories of | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy). When a Founder exercises “Founder Supremacy” in a way a region’s community disagrees with, it could be accurate to say the community generally feels like it was treated unfairly. That something inherently theirs was taken away from them. That some previously equal distribution of resources was inherently unbalanced, arbitrarily and without warning, for the greater bad.
So thus the question becomes why that general distribution of resources was taken away. Or put another why, why exactly do people feel that Founder Supremacy is an unfair ideal.
My argument for this is related to something Altys mentioned to me in a private conversation. And it’s basically this idea that a Founder loses the ability to do whatever they want with their region once it has an active community, because now others have invested themselves into the region. Thus, by investing their own resources into the region - whether it be their time chatting or doing projects, written works, or maintaining infrastructure - the residents of a region enter into ownership of a region alongside the Founder. So while the Founder still holds/”owns” the mechanical region, they do not “own” the activity other people put in place (to varying extents). For example - the Founder of the Union of Democratic States doesn’t own the time I dedicate to the UDS - it’s my own resource I can choose to invest into the region, or not. And at any point in time, I can refuse to give more of my time. And, depending on the resource, I could go further - like deleting every article I’ve written up for Everyday News, my private newspaper there (I say “depending” because obviously you can’t unilaterally delete a law you passed via the legislature).
But there has to be a reason why people invest their resources into a region. And while people do do good things out of free will, I argue that it isn’t wholly the case for most people when they’re participating in a region. If it isn’t free, there has to be a payment. And I think this payment is the expectation that the region they’re dedicating time to stays generally the same - and that if it changes, it only does so with their consent in a manner they agree with or can at least tolerate. And I mean - I don’t think this is an unreasonable trade. If I’m willing to bring my social activity to the table, then the place I’m devoting my social activity to better stay as a place I actually like.
Now, one can make the argument that people are always free to leave and form their own community if they don’t like the rules/decisions of that one. And, in fact, when already pre-established rules are explained to newcomers - many decide to do so! And that’s perfectly fine. But there is very much a difference between that and a Founder, without prior notice, exercising Founder supremacy. When a region grows into a certain set of expectations/norms that get enforced - or when a change to those norms is made in a way the general community agrees with - then the Founder is acting in line with the general community’s interests. And if a resident or two feels a sense of injustice, that their time in the region isn’t being treated fairly - then it makes sense for them to leave in such a circumstance.
Compare this to a Founder supremacy action that the community does not agree with, but the action occurs anyways with little to no prior notice. Should a large portion of the community, or even most of the community, leave a region they’ve collectively invested so much in and formed memories in, because the Founder - one person - decided to throw away their work? I’d argue no - of course not. The region belongs generally to the community - and if an individual disagrees with its direction and has no means to change it, then it is them who are free to leave (just like the example of 1 or 2 residents leaving prior). Whether that person founded the region or not, whether they mechanically own the region itself, is irrelevant - because the region is no longer only theirs fully, but only partly, out of the joint ownership of usually tens to hundreds of individuals.
Put in other words, a minority should not have power over the majority. But if a minority has power over the majority (i.e. a Founder over a region), then it is generally most ethical for all if that power is used in the majority’s interests. Which is why Founders unilaterally using Founder Supremacy to justify wide-spread, sweeping, destructive actions is bad.
A SUMMARY
To stave off Occam’s Razor, my argument summarized is this: when a region has an active community, that community comes to jointly own the region with the Founder, because “ownership” of a region isn’t just holding the Governor seat. If you invest resources into it, you should own part of it. Thus, it is wrong for a Founder to destroy/substantially change the region without community agreement or neutrality.
Now, to be clear - I don’t think it’s wrong for Founders to view a region as theirs, or to seek beyond-normal methods to save/better the region they started. But I DO think it is wrong to do this without prior warning, alongside without making sure the community is either neutral or happy with the change. If you don’t fully own something, then you shouldn’t make decisions alone that fully affect it.
Of course - if your view of the region is stuck to a purely mechanical mindset… you’ll probably disagree with all this. But like all arguments, I can’t change your fundamental principles - so do what you will.
Thanks for reading this.