OFS vs SLN

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:OFS had no power, off the record. They had no ships, off the record. But they were plenty poised to right a few wrongs. The League and the SLN was a massive machinery. Redirecting a few bolts, behind the scenes, should have been child's play. I would have found it quite enjoyable had a number of FF units been upgraded with state of the art weapons. But, that's just me and my quirks as to how the world turns.

I don't wish to discount the MA's activities, no. But the League is a massive machinery. Everyone was not compromisingly nanited. Heck, everyone on Haven may as well have been controlled by nannies and agents too, except our Heroes.

Since OFS is one the main sources of the League's corruption (the exploitation of the Verge planets), I can't believe that it could also be your source of its betterment. In the absence of evidence it sounds as though you are just generating fan fiction as an alternative to the behind the scenes manipulation that has been operating for centuries.

You might want to address how an example you gave of the way this might might work, Caswwll Gweon, turned out to be one of the agents working against the League's best interests. If you have evidence of the number of Malign agents in Haven, then let us hear that also. Note that there do not have to be many such agents, if they can cause the "natural" deaths of those that stand in their way; such as Gweon's former section head.

I can't believe it either. I see them as the lesser of two evils. I'm certainly open to a better choice. The very fact that Gweon used them is evidence enough of their importance, and position to rise above.

You're right there. We don't know the lengths of MA infection within the League or on Haven. I'd hazard a guess its piddling next to the their respective populations, even right there in the Sol system. Of course, if I'm wrong, they should begin falling like flies, reminiscent of Earth's Final Wars.

To further your point, and in the name of truth, the MA only has to infect key positions -- but, EVERYWHERE!

cthia wrote:OFS had no power, off the record. They had no ships, off the record. But they were plenty poised to right a few wrongs. The League and the SLN was a massive machinery. Redirecting a few bolts, behind the scenes, should have been child's play. I would have found it quite enjoyable had a number of FF units been upgraded with state of the art weapons. But, that's just me and my quirks as to how the world turns.

I don't wish to discount the MA's activities, no. But the League is a massive machinery. Everyone was not compromisingly nanited. Heck, everyone on Haven may as well have been controlled by nannies and agents too, except our Heroes.

tlb wrote:Since OFS is one the main sources of the League's corruption (the exploitation of the Verge planets), I can't believe that it could also be your source of its betterment. In the absence of evidence it sounds as though you are just generating fan fiction as an alternative to the behind the scenes manipulation that has been operating for centuries.

You might want to address how an example you gave of the way this might might work, Caswwll Gweon, turned out to be one of the agents working against the League's best interests. If you have evidence of the number of Malign agents in Haven, then let us hear that also. Note that there do not have to be many such agents, if they can cause the "natural" deaths of those that stand in their way; such as Gweon's former section head.

cthia wrote:I can't believe it either. I see them as the lesser of two evils. I'm certainly open to a better choice. The very fact that Gweon used them is evidence enough of their importance, and position to rise above.

You're right there. We don't know the lengths of MA infection within the League or on Haven. I'd hazard a guess its piddling next to the their respective populations, even right there in the Sol system. Of course, if I'm wrong, they should begin falling like flies, reminiscent of Earth's Final Wars.

To further your point, and in the name of truth, the MA only has to infect key positions -- but, EVERYWHERE!

If your sentence construction parallels mine, then you are saying that Gweon used OFS; but that is not true. The other person that I named earlier was in OFS (Rajmund Nyhus), but Gweon was head of the ONI Office of Economic Analysis (Section 3). As mentioned in the books, by the Solarian officers trying to ferret out the corruption, a prime target for infection has to be the various intelligence and counter-intelligence offices in the government. Once the corruption sets in then people can be influenced by bribery and blackmail (similar to North Hollow's files) and agents are not needed everywhere: Crandall, Filareta and Rajampet were not agents, but were willing accomplices. Rajampet had the nanites, without being aware, to eliminate a loose end.

cthia wrote:My point is that those "reports" should have been the crème de la crème of gossip before being dead lettered.

why? How much credence do rumors of Iranian 6th generation stealth super-fighters get? Basically none because everyone knows they're a technologically backwards regime that has to bluster because they can't possibly design something as good as NATO or even Russian aircraft.

That's basically the League opinion on any of these "neobarb" navies (though the League opinion may be even stronger - and the rumors are from even further away).

Or take the British Royal Navy during the War of 1812. They didn't consider the US Navy few Super-Frigates to be more than overblown rumor until their own ships started losing to them. (Then they considered them cheating - and forbade their smaller frigates from seeking a 1-on-1 engagement with them). Militaries and their intelligence services have a long history of letting institutional arrogance blind them to the truth behind rumors of unexpected advances in their possible opponents. And few of them have had the millennium of actual overwhelming superiority to fuel that complacency and make it seem justified.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:My point is that those "reports" should have been the crème de la crème of gossip before being dead lettered.

why? How much credence do rumors of Iranian 6th generation stealth super-fighters get? Basically none because everyone knows they're a technologically backwards regime that has to bluster because they can't possibly design something as good as NATO or even Russian aircraft.

That's basically the League opinion on any of these "neobarb" navies (though the League opinion may be even stronger - and the rumors are from even further away).

Or take the British Royal Navy during the War of 1812. They didn't consider the US Navy few Super-Frigates to be more than overblown rumor until their own ships started losing to them. (Then they considered them cheating - and forbade their smaller frigates from seeking a 1-on-1 engagement with them). Militaries and their intelligence services have a long history of letting institutional arrogance blind them to the truth behind rumors of unexpected advances in their possible opponents. And few of them have had the millennium of actual overwhelming superiority to fuel that complacency and make it seem justified.

One rumor, maybe none. Two rumors, maybe none. Three rumors, maybe none. But these are report(s), and the people reporting them are not civilians aboard freighters without a military background. It would be interesting to know exactly how old these reports are -- where, when, who and what (circumstance) the initial report originates. Albeit, I admit that institutional arrogance is a mother of an infection.

When did OFS go off the rails and become corrupt? Was OFS created after the Mandarins had already corrupted the government?

For the people enquiring about Frisbee Golf.

cthia wrote:One rumor, maybe none. Two rumors, maybe none. Three rumors, maybe none. But these are report(s), and the people reporting them are not civilians aboard freighters without a military background. It would be interesting to know exactly how old these reports are -- where, when, who and what (circumstance) the initial report originates. Albeit, I admit that institutional arrogance is a mother of an infection.

When did OFS go off the rails and become corrupt? Was OFS created after the Mandarins had already corrupted the government?

For the people enquiring about Frisbee Golf.

IRL, there was noticed evidence that Germany was acquiring weapons in violation of the Versailles treaty in 1929. A British Journalist wrote a book titled the Great Pacific War in 1926, detailing ( if quite suprising accuracy) a war between Japan and the US in the mid 1930s, based on his observations of Japanese Jingoism and military expansionism while he was stationed there.

We all know how all that turned out. Humans can be downright dumb when they want to avoid something unpleasant.

cthia wrote:When did OFS go off the rails and become corrupt? Was OFS created after the Mandarins had already corrupted the government?

I have to believe that OFS is at least as old as the division between Battle Fleet and Frontier Fleet. It will be nice if/when we get a Solarian League equivalent to House of Steel. I would expect that at the beginning it was nice and idealistic and only gradually went off the rails.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:When did OFS go off the rails and become corrupt? Was OFS created after the Mandarins had already corrupted the government?

I have to believe that OFS is at least as old as the division between Battle Fleet and Frontier Fleet. It will be nice if/when we get a Solarian League equivalent to House of Steel. I would expect that at the beginning it was nice and idealistic and only gradually went off the rails.

I suspect the introduction of prolong in the early 1800s was the straw which broke that particular camel's back.

Just one prime example: Admiral Rajani. He was apparently born in 1798, making him 124 years old by the time of his "suicide". We know during his career, he managed to skim three billion credits.

Multiply that sort of behaviour across the vast League bureaucracy. At some point after prolong came in, the old bureaucrats who used to retire at 70-80 and die at around 100 stopped going away. They just stayed where they are and by 1920 were still around.

The RMN's policy of rotating senior officers between positions should also be applied to government and other civilian positions. Keep shaking things up before informal empires are built up. A hefty dose of accountibility helps also.

cthia wrote:When did OFS go off the rails and become corrupt? Was OFS created after the Mandarins had already corrupted the government?

tlb wrote:I have to believe that OFS is at least as old as the division between Battle Fleet and Frontier Fleet. It will be nice if/when we get a Solarian League equivalent to House of Steel. I would expect that at the beginning it was nice and idealistic and only gradually went off the rails.

munroburton wrote:I suspect the introduction of prolong in the early 1800s was the straw which broke that particular camel's back.

Just one prime example: Admiral Rajani. He was apparently born in 1798, making him 124 years old by the time of his "suicide". We know during his career, he managed to skim three billion credits.

Multiply that sort of behaviour across the vast League bureaucracy. At some point after prolong came in, the old bureaucrats who used to retire at 70-80 and die at around 100 stopped going away. They just stayed where they are and by 1920 were still around.

The RMN's policy of rotating senior officers between positions should also be applied to government and other civilian positions. Keep shaking things up before informal empires are built up. A hefty dose of accountibility helps also.

The rotation policy would have been good, but I expect the rot has been around much longer than prolong.

Consider the bureaucrats in OFS; none of the decisions that they make affects anyone that they care about, unless it is someone with whom they have a sweetheart deal. As long as the League members do not pay attention to what happens in the Verge, then there will be no splash-back from anything that they approve. How long after OFS was formed would it take for that to be corrupted?

Consider the Navy; they have had no imaginable enemy for centuries. All that is required is that their ships be big and shiny. It was within 25 years after WWII that Eisenhower warned about the military-industrial complex. What would it be like after a couple centuries?

This is from Mission of Honor, chapter 1:

Partly, that was because no matter how big Frontier Fleet was, it would never have enough ships to be everywhere it needed to be to carry out its mandate as the League's neighborhood cop and enforcer. Battle Fleet would have been a much more reasonable area for cost reductions, except that it had more prestige and was even more deeply entrenched in the League's bureaucratic structure than Frontier Fleet, not to mention having so many more allies in the industrial sector, given how lucrative superdreadnought building contracts were.

They have something like 10,000 BCs too. Compare the value of the 100-200 BCs built per year to the half-dozen SDs.

tlb wrote:The rotation policy would have been good, but I expect the rot has been around much longer than prolong.

Consider the bureaucrats in OFS; none of the decisions that they make affects anyone that they care about, unless it is someone with whom they have a sweetheart deal. As long as the League members do not pay attention to what happens in the Verge, then there will be no splash-back from anything that they approve. How long after OFS was formed would it take for that to be corrupted?

Consider the Navy; they have had no imaginable enemy for centuries. All that is required is that their ships be big and shiny. It was within 25 years after WWII that Eisenhower warned about the military-industrial complex. What would it be like after a couple centuries?

This is from Mission of Honor, chapter 1:

Partly, that was because no matter how big Frontier Fleet was, it would never have enough ships to be everywhere it needed to be to carry out its mandate as the League's neighborhood cop and enforcer. Battle Fleet would have been a much more reasonable area for cost reductions, except that it had more prestige and was even more deeply entrenched in the League's bureaucratic structure than Frontier Fleet, not to mention having so many more allies in the industrial sector, given how lucrative superdreadnought building contracts were.

Yep, it could even have gone the other way - all those flag officers and senior officials constantly rotating into and out of the industrial side of the MIC is a much higher corruption risk.

BUT at least the rotation allows for possibility of stagnant companies being sidelined and eventually abandoned. No forced rotation meant they inevitably ended up with too-big-to-fail entities such as Technodyne.