I'm going to go into this more when I have more time. It saddens me a bit that people let their ideologies determine their realities to such a large degree.
If we had a doctor writing articles about tips for better health, I would take those articles pretty seriously.
At the risk of being an "arrogant prick" I think that having someone who started with nothing who is now "rich" providing observations on behaviors and about how the world actually works as opposed to how people wish it worked would be considered valuable. But to each their own.
So let me briefly summarize by pointing out two truths about life:
First, the world can broadly be divided between people who do things and people who don't do things. The spectrum is broad between the extremes but it isn't that graduated (that is, most people are significantly in one category or another, they aren't skirting the gray area in the middle as much as one might think).
Second, the world can broadly be divided between good people and evil people. I know the word "evil" makes some people uncomfortable. So when I say evil, I mean people whose natural instincts are so destructive to civil society that great harm emerges when they gain power over others.
The people who do things always have the power. How that power manifests itself depends on whether they gravitate towards the public or private sector.
Most people are good and so most people who do things are good too.
The public sector and the private sector are neither good nor evil. Individuals are good or evil but institutions are neither. However, the public sector has a monopoly on the use of legal violence.
Evil people who do things will tend to gravitate towards the public sector either directly (rarely) or more commonly manipulating the public sector through corrupt private organizations.
That is why it is never a good idea to allow the public sector to get too big. Because people who do things who are also bad people will be more inclined to make full use of the fact that the public sector has a monopoly on the legal use of violence to their own end.
What most people don't seem to realize is that in the end, the people who do things almost always end up on top of any situation while the people who don't do things are largely at their mercy.
Whenever the government does something, the people who do things are rarely impacted because they simply adapt. Change campaign finance laws and the people who do things will find a way (such as the 527's). Taxes too high? People who do things outsource jobs. Raise minimum wage on them and they'll replace workers with automation (think about that next time you're checking yourself out at the store). Regulate an industry too much and the people who do things go elsewhere.
The important thing to remember is that because most people don't do very much (and I don't mean that to be insulting, but it's all relative) they end up the victims of the unintended consequences of policies they probably supported. Usually, the people who don't do much don't even recognize what's happened to them until after the fact. To them, everything that happens probably seems like it was "bound to happen" when in fact it happened because specific people did things largely in response to a recognized opportunity.
So next time you're supporting some policy that targets the people who do things, just remember that it doesn't actually affect them. They'll adapt. Most people won't and they'll be left with the consequences.
GameSpy has released their review of Sins of a Solar Empire. The first review from one of the major game magazines. From the review:
Sins of a Solar Empire v1.02 is now available for download. To get it, use either Stardock Central or click on the update button within the game itself.