If the Goblins had good land from the start, how would that be better?

[pyrefiend]

Okay, so here's what I'm thinking. Suppose when the gods create the next world, they're in a more egalitarian mood. They create two sentient species, the Onefolk and the Twofolk, and they give them each equally good land. We can even imagine that they start on islands that are identical copies of each other.

Still, they're probably not going to stay equal forever. Eventually — say 500 years into the history of the world — the Onefolk could have a way better standard of living than the Twofolk. Maybe there was a big war and they won, or maybe they just happened to develop faster, or maybe their leaders are more competent, or maybe it's some combination of factors. But at this point we're 500 years into the history of the world, and the situation between the Onefolk and the Twofolk is basically the same as the situation between the Dwarves and the Goblins. If you're born a Dwarf, then you're lucky: you have a way better start in life than if you were born a Goblin. In the same way, if you're born a Onefolk you're lucky: you have a way better start in life than if you were born a Twofolk.

So how is this situation with the Onefolk and the Twofolk any better than the old situation with the Dwarves and the Goblins? It's true that the gods aren't directly responsible for the Twofolk's plight, whereas they are responsible for the Goblins's plight. But how is that any comfort to the Twofolk? Their lot in life is still just as bad as the Goblins'.

I think Durkon and Redcloak are both wrong to put so much emphasis on the fact that the Goblins were given poor resources from the start. If they'd given everybody equal resources, then at best that would only guarantee that there are no serious inequalities for a couple of generations. But those inequalities could still arise. So the real problem, I think, is that the gods make no efforts to fix serious inequalities when they arise.

[Fyraltari]

A) The Dwarves apparently hail from one specific place whereas the goblins (and the hobgoblins, and the bugbears, and the aquatic goblins and the nilbogs and the norkers) are from all over the world, like the humans, and all their starting lands sucked.

B) You're overthinking the allegory. The point is that historical reasons lead to a bad situation, the specifics of the reasons hardly matters (beyond the level of intentionality behind it I guess) what matters is is what is going to be done moving forward to fix it. This isn't a socio-economic treatise, you are expecting a lot of thought to be put into the worldbuilding of a comic that features the nation of "Some Place Else".

[Kish]

"They got the good land" was just part of it in Start of Darkness. Redcloak believes the goblins were designed to be cannon fodder. Durkon now knows that their creator, Fenris, wanted and intended them to succeed. And the "those rules are crap and you know it!" D&D aspect, where goblins just have terrible stats compared to most of the PC races, seems to be being ignored at this point, perhaps for approachability to non-D&D players.

[pyrefiend]

The point is that historical reasons lead to a bad situation, the specifics of the reasons hardly matters (beyond the level of intentionality behind it I guess) what matters is is what is going to be done moving forward to fix it.

But the characters seem to think the specifics matter. When Durkon tells Roy that Redcloack was right, he says:


It's na quite as cut n' dry as 'e wants it ta be, but 'is people were treat'd poor when tha world was made. It weren't fair. Thar's na reason 'is folk shoulda gotten so l'il when yers an' mine got so much.

It seems clear that the main complaint here is that Dwarves and Humans got better land than Goblins at the start.


This isn't a socio-economic treatise, you are expecting a lot of thought to be put into the worldbuilding of a comic that features the nation of "Some Place Else".

Obviously it's not a treatise, and it has lots of silly stuff in it, but it has serious themes and messages too. I think Rich did put a lot of thought into it.

[brian 333]

A) The Dwarves apparently hail from one specific place whereas the goblins (and the hobgoblins, and the bugbears, and the aquatic goblins and the nilbogs and the norkers) are from all over the world, like the humans, and all their starting lands sucked.

B) You're overthinking the allegory. The point is that historical reasons lead to a bad situation, the specifics of the reasons hardly matters (beyond the level of intentionality behind it I guess) what matters is is what is going to be done moving forward to fix it. This isn't a socio-economic treatise, you are expecting a lot of thought to be put into the worldbuilding of a comic that features the nation of "Some Place Else".

A) Where does the comic support this? We have the word of people with agendas, but who were not there in the beginning. I'm not saying it's untrue: I'm saying that the only evidence we have for it is assertions from biased sources and a non-denial by Thor.

B) This has been my point since Day 1. Thanks for coming over to the dark side with me. Prepare yourself for slings and arrows.

[Fyraltari]

But the characters seem to think the specifics matter. When Durkon tells Roy that Redcloack was right, he says:
It seems clear that the main complaint here is that Dwarves and Humans got better land than Goblins at the start.
Err, no? What Durkon is saying there is that the goblins got done dirty. And that is what matters, the specifics of how exactly that happened don't matter. The point is that Durkon is explaining to Roy here is that Redcloka is coming from a place of genuine grievances and has an actual cause, whereas they had until then been operating under the same assumption Miko was (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0371.html), that they were trying to destroy/conquer the world for no other reason than they were evil. Note that what Roy focuses on in that exchange is that team Good GuysTM never once considered that the enemy might have a reason to their actions.

The specifics of the wrongs done (how much land, with what access to what resources or whatever and how that snowballed) isn't something that needs to be spelled out or explored for the allegory to work.


Obviously it's not a treatise, and it has lots of silly stuff in it, but it has serious themes and messages too. I think Rich did put a lot of thought into it.
Yes, the Giant put a lot of thoughts in the messages and themes, but your thought experiment with the two islands isn't about theme, it's about the mechanics of the world-building.

[InvisibleBison]

Still, they're probably not going to stay equal forever.

Why would you think that? All evidence in the comic is that the various PC races, who did get roughly equal high quality starting resources, have stayed more or less equal to each other. There's no reason to think that had the goblins gotten a starting position as good as what the elves got they wouldn't be as well off today as the elves are.

[pyrefiend]

Err, no? What Durkon is saying there is that the goblins got done dirty.

That's fine! My point isn't really about the land, it's about the Goblins being done dirty more generally. What I'm saying is that whether or not they got done dirty isn't really relevant to the situation now. Even if, historically, the Goblins were somehow at fault for the poor state of their society, new Goblins born into that society would not be at fault. They would deserve help even if the gods hadn't done their ancestors dirty.


Why would you think that? All evidence in the comic is that the various PC races, who did get roughly equal high quality starting resources, have stayed more or less equal to each other. There's no reason to think that had the goblins gotten a starting position as good as what the elves got they wouldn't be as well off today as the elves are.

That's a good point actually. I guess I was assuming that different societies' fortunes would rise and fall like they do in the real world. We do have some evidence that OOTS-world isn't totally static. Azure City was toppled obviously, and there's also whatever happened to the Ancient Empire. But yeah, if the OOTS-world is unlike a real world, in that each society can be expected to maintain a standard of living that's roughly equivalent to its native resources, then the point I'm making doesn't really apply.

[hroþila]

I agree that ultimately the real problem is that the gods created this universe as a zero-sum game where competition for resources was inherently baked in, and that even in a universe with perfectly equal starting positions inequality could still emerge over time and screw over this or that people. But I still think it's important to highlight that the starting positions were not fair, because it's common for people who are better off to reject the notion that their position could be unfair or that they didn't earn their status fair and square. And getting them to agree to that is important if the problem is to be addressed at all.

[Fyraltari]

That's fine! My point isn't really about the land, it's about the Goblins being done dirty more generally. What I'm saying is that whether or not they got done dirty isn't really relevant to the situation now. Even if, historically, the Goblins were somehow at fault for the poor state of their society, new Goblins born into that society would not be at fault. They would deserve help even if the gods hadn't done their ancestors dirty.
Okay but we would lose part of the point of the allegory: the people at the top (ie the gods) passively profit from the goblins' misfortune who they are directly responsible for and while they could, theoretically, improve their lot, they won't out of apathy to their plight and refusal to give up even part of their privilege (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1256.html).



That's a good point actually. I guess I was assuming that different societies' fortunes would rise and fall like they do in the real world. We do have some evidence that OOTS-world isn't totally static. Azure City was toppled obviously, and there's also whatever happened to the Ancient Empire. But yeah, if the OOTS-world is unlike a real world, in that each society can be expected to maintain a standard of living that's roughly equivalent to its native resources, then the point I'm making doesn't really apply.
It's worth noting that the OOTS world is less than three thousand years old. If we take agriculture as the beginning of our civilizations (which is arbitrary as hell, but is as good as anything) we're on eleven thousand years and counting.

[Throknor]

t's worth noting that the OOTS world is less than three thousand years old. If we take agriculture as the beginning of our civilizations (which is arbitrary as hell, but is as good as anything) we're on eleven thousand years and counting.

Also this is the gazilliointh world and Thor has commented about wanting to give evolution a try. It's reasonable to deduce that the world itself was created to some degree in media res. In other words races were created with languages and towns and cultures and anything else the gods felt they should begin with. They didn't have to discover magic or smithing or agriculture. It may even be that the goblins had equivalent starting knowledge as the rest but because they started in a resource poor environment they could not keep up with their neighbors. E.g. knowledge of metal smithing does you no good if your lands have no appropriate deposits.

Conflict between equal races probably could work just as well for what the gods need. But they do not interfere with each others' ideas (Ninjas? Ninjas! (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0274.html)) so no one stopped Fenris' plan to make the goblins have to work more.

[Reach Weapon]

Maybe there was a big war and they won, or maybe they just happened to develop faster, or maybe their leaders are more competent, or maybe it's some combination of factors.
Maybe the known and present gods deemed one of the groups "inherently evil"?
Of course, that would be less of an issue in your analogy, as there are not multiple aligned competitors against the "monsters".

[brian 333]

Maybe the known and present gods deemed one of the groups "inherently evil"?
Of course, that would be less of an issue in your analogy, as there are not multiple aligned competitors against the "monsters".

And this, of course, gave the Neutral and Evil denizens of the world justification to kill goblins on sight? But, wait...

Are there not other beings of every kind who are deemed to be evil?

Alignment is not the issue. It is appearance. Certain races in the OotSworld are dominant, and they see anything that deviates too much from their appearance to be monsters. Monsters can be killed on sight or, if they appear to be powerful, fled from whilst screaming for the nearest PC.

[Keltest]

And this, of course, gave the Neutral and Evil denizens of the world justification to kill goblins on sight? But, wait...

Are there not other beings of every kind who are deemed to be evil?

Alignment is not the issue. It is appearance. Certain races in the OotSworld are dominant, and they see anything that deviates too much from their appearance to be monsters. Monsters can be killed on sight or, if they appear to be powerful, fled from whilst screaming for the nearest PC.

Lizardfolk, kobolds and orcs seem to get along with society just fine, either taking part in it or minding their own business in their own space without trouble. Maybe the problem really is just with the goblins? They seem to get on just fine when they set aside their belligerence.

[Jasdoif]

But I still think it's important to highlight that the starting positions were not fair, because it's common for people who are better off to reject the notion that their position could be unfair or that they didn't earn their status fair and square. And getting them to agree to that is important if the problem is to be addressed at all.It's far more important to highlight that the people who benefited from their starting position are not the ones responsible for the starting positions. They can claim that they're not responsible, and that's entirely true. And that's important because, despite the huge amount of overlap, the responsible thing and the right thing aren't interchangeable. Doing the right thing sometimes involves taking steps despite a lack of responsibility; and focusing exclusively on responsibility is, at best, missing the forest for the trees (and at worst, deliberately subverting what's right in the name of "responsibility").

[Fyraltari]

Lizardfolk, kobolds and orcs seem to get along with society just fine, either taking part in it or minding their own business in their own space without trouble. Maybe the problem really is just with the goblins? They seem to get on just fine when they set aside their belligerence.

Lizardfolks and kobolds are fine in the Western Continent, not the Northern or Southern ones. Therkla had to deal with a fair bit of racism in azure city for being part-orc (also Roy and his first team were once hired to kill a bunch of orcs who just wanted to attend a concert and were assumed to be rampaging pillagers) and it's surprising to paladins that Serini, a halfling, has good relations with a community of trolls.

It's not just the goblins.

[Keltest]

Lizardfolks and kobolds are fine in the Western Continent, not the Northern or Southern ones. Therkla had to deal with a fair bit of racism in azure city for being part-orc (also Roy and his first team were once hired to kill a bunch of orcs who just wanted to attend a concert and were assumed to be rampaging pillagers) and it's surprising to paladins that Serini, a halfling, has good relations with a community of trolls.

It's not just the goblins.
There isn't exactly an abundance of dwarves in the West or elves in the South either. We don't even know if the Gnomes have more than the one major settlement on the entire planet. Humans being everywhere is the exception, not the norm. Ironically, only goblins/goblinoids have been shown as being remotely competitive with Humans in that regard, being populous in both the North and South.

[Sapphire Guard]

Is 'Monster' by itself such a disadvantage? Trolls are monsters, but they have huge advantages over most of the other human enemies like regeneration. The inequality comes from the matchup being conceived as 'adventurer v monster' and not 'monster v civilian', which, considering how rare high level adventurers are in this world, would be much more common.

[Keltest]

Is 'Monster' by itself such a disadvantage? Trolls are monsters, but they have huge advantages over most of the other human enemies like regeneration. The inequality comes from the matchup being conceived as 'adventurer v monster' and not 'monster v civilian', which, considering how rare high level adventurers are in this world, would be much more common.

Indeed. Humans have lost the genetic lottery to, among other things, the common housecat if you take away adventurers.

[Fyraltari]

Lizardfolks and kobolds are fine in the Western Continent, not the Northern or Southern ones. Therkla had to deal with a fair bit of racism in azure city for being part-orc (also Roy and his first team were once hired to kill a bunch of orcs who just wanted to attend a concert and were assumed to be rampaging pillagers) and it's surprising to paladins that Serini, a halfling, has good relations with a community of trolls.

It's not just the goblins.
There isn't exactly an abundance of dwarves in the West or elves in the South either. We don't even know if the Gnomes have more than the one major settlement on the entire planet. Humans being everywhere is the exception, not the norm. Ironically, only goblins/goblinoids have been shown as being remotely competitive with Humans in that regard, being populous in both the North and South.
Okay. This has nothing to do with the post you replied to, though.

Is 'Monster' by itself such a disadvantage? Trolls are monsters, but they have huge advantages over most of the other human enemies like regeneration. The inequality comes from the matchup being conceived as 'adventurer v monster' and not 'monster v civilian', which, considering how rare high level adventurers are in this world, would be much more common.

Indeed. Humans have lost the genetic lottery to, among other things, the common housecat if you take away adventurers.
Yeah, a human usually loses to a shark in a fight. Doesn't stop humans from frequently slaughtering hundreds of sharks every time a surfer gets injured. Having seven points of strength (or however more, I don't care) more than humans doesn't really make up for having to live out in the wilderness and being hunted for your blood.

[Keltest]

Okay. This has nothing to do with the post you replied to, though.


Yeah, a human usually loses to a shark in a fight. Doesn't stop humans from frequently slaughtering hundreds of sharks every time a surfer gets injured. Having seven points of strength (or however more, I don't care) more than humans doesn't really make up for having to live out in the wilderness and being hunted for your blood.
Well that's why worldbuilding is kind of important. As far as we've been shown, the goblins have belligerently attacked their neighbors since the dawn of the world and don't even really try to deny it. As much as Redcloak talks about resource scarcity, it sure doesn't seem to be holding them back.

[woweedd]

Well that's why worldbuilding is kind of important. As far as we've been shown, the goblins have belligerently attacked their neighbors since the dawn of the world and don't even really try to deny it. As much as Redcloak talks about resource scarcity, it sure doesn't seem to be holding them back.

They attack their neighbors because of the respurce scarcity. An, sans someone like the Dark One or Redcloak, it seems theu don't tend to win often.

[Keltest]

They attack their neighbors because of the respurce scarcity. An, sans someone like the Dark One or Redcloak, it seems theu don't tend to win often.

Every time the goblins have tried settling down they've been happy and successful until someone comes with the specific intention of bringing them back on the war path. Resource scarcity may have been a thing once, but it's not visibly a factor anymore.

[pyrefiend]

Maybe the known and present gods deemed one of the groups "inherently evil"?

Right, but my point is that even if the gods didn't do any bad stuff like that (distribute resources unequally, label some groups as monsters, whatever) there could still end up being really unjust inequalities.


But I still think it's important to highlight that the starting positions were not fair, because it's common for people who are better off to reject the notion that their position could be unfair or that they didn't earn their status fair and square. And getting them to agree to that is important if the problem is to be addressed at all.

If Im understanding you correctly, the thought is that people born into a wealthy/fortunate society tend to think that they (themselves and their family) earned their status fair and square. And, to get them to see that it's not really fair, you might have to make the case that their society didn't earn its wealth/fortune fairly.

That might be true. But it's kind of ignoring the elephant in the room, which is that it makes no sense at all to say that you deserve to be wealthy and privileged because you were born into a wealthy and privileged society. When you're a literal infant, what can you possibly have done to deserve more than other literal infants?? I think that should be the message to people born into privilege.

EDIT: That's why it feels weird to me that there's so much emphasis on the Goblins having been done dirty when the world was made. Goblins who are being born now are getting a raw deal just by being born into a crappy Goblin society, and they would be getting a raw deal whether or not their ancestors had been done dirty when the world was made. By placing so much emphasis on the Goblins having been done dirty, Roy and Durkon kinda make it sound like they have an obligation to help only because the "starting points" were unfair.

[Mechalich]

Right, but my point is that even if the gods didn't do any bad stuff like that (distribute resources unequally, label some groups as monsters, whatever) there could still end up being really unjust inequalities.

Broadly this is an 'equality of opportunity' versus 'equality of outcomes' issue. Initial placement is an aspect of opportunity and, if we treat societal development in Stickworld like a game of Civ, a very important one (note that this requires treating the various D&D species as being equally suited to the same types of environments which OOTS seems to want even though traditionally this has not even been close to true in D&D). However, equality of opportunity does not guarantee equality of outcomes.

Additionally, subsequent discussion has made it fairly clear that primary means that equality of outcomes is maintained (within a range, obviously) in Stickworld is by each species having some god or gods backing that species to make sure they get the boosts they need. This makes sense, of course, since in 3.X D&D the most important aspect of a society's power isn't land quality or culture or anything found in real world but is instead spellcasting prowess. Divine casting is a very substantial component of said prowess, probably more important than arcane casting - the DMG demographics tables posit that divine casters such as adepts and clerics are vastly more numerous and commonly found at higher levels than arcane casters.

Fenris, according to Thor, abandoned the goblins. This means, presumably, that he deprived them of divine support and quite possibly stopped granting them spells. That action is almost certain to have had a massively greater impact on the development of goblin society than any initial environmental variance. Even when the Dark One emerged and filled the gap, his lack of a supporting pantheon presumably limited the level of support he could provide to the goblins.

Now, critically, no mortal being in Stickworld is responsible for either sticking the goblins with a crummy start location - since that happened before they were all created - or for causing Fenris to abandon the goblins - since they have no means to influence divine decision making in such a way. The whole thing is the fault of the gods and the fact that the gods are asking mortals to try and fix it (both Thor asking Durkon directly and the rest of the gods failing to properly integrate the Dark One into their councils) is a huge abrogation of responsibility on the part of the gods.

[pyrefiend]

Broadly this is an 'equality of opportunity' versus 'equality of outcomes' issue. Initial placement is an aspect of opportunity and, if we treat societal development in Stickworld like a game of Civ, a very important one (note that this requires treating the various D&D species as being equally suited to the same types of environments which OOTS seems to want even though traditionally this has not even been close to true in D&D). However, equality of opportunity does not guarantee equality of outcomes.

I agree that's a useful way of framing the issue. However, I think it is misleading to apply the concepts of 'equality of opportunity' and 'equality of outcomes' directly to species, rather than to individuals within those societies. If the Humans and the Goblins had been equal at the start, but the 10th generation of humans is rich and the 10th generation of Goblins is poor, is that an inequality of 'opportunities' or 'outcomes'? If we're applying those concepts to the species as a whole, it looks like 'outcomes'. Through their own choices, the Humans and Goblins produced different outcomes. And since nobody expects there to be a perfect equality of outcomes, it's easy to say that the Humans have no particular responsibility to the Goblins.

But if we're just looking at the gaggle of Humans and Goblins that make up the 10th generation (ignoring that Goblins breed way faster than Humans) it seems like there is clear inequality of opportunity. Those humans were born into a position of having way more opportunities than those Goblins. And if inequality of opportunity is unjust, then somebody should do something about it. If the gods can't or won't, then that leaves the Humans.

[Mechalich]

I agree that's a useful way of framing the issue. However, I think it is misleading to apply the concepts of 'equality of opportunity' and 'equality of outcomes' directly to species, rather than to individuals within those societies. If the Humans and the Goblins had been equal at the start, but the 10th generation of humans is rich and the 10th generation of Goblins is poor, is that an inequality of 'opportunities' or 'outcomes'? If we're applying those concepts to the species as a whole, it looks like 'outcomes'. Through their own choices, the Humans and Goblins produced different outcomes. And since nobody expects there to be a perfect equality of outcomes, it's easy to say that the Humans have no particular responsibility to the Goblins.

But if we're just looking at the gaggle of Humans and Goblins that make up the 10th generation (ignoring that Goblins breed way faster than Humans) it seems like there is clear inequality of opportunity. Those humans were born into a position of having way more opportunities than those Goblins. And if inequality of opportunity is unjust, then somebody should do something about it. If the gods can't or won't, then that leaves the Humans.

Well, maybe, but the thing here is that 'the world' is a unit of operation in this moral calculation. Specifically, the gods can, at any time, create a new world, and they could give the goblins a fair start the next time around. Redcloak, notably, is all for this, and it's a solution so obvious and in keeping with divine perspective that the author had to specifically write in a carve out to disallow it as an option by claiming the Dark One is 'too new' to survive the transition.

This is also the solution to the outcomes problem. Because the gods can destroy the world at any time, if it ever becomes suitably unequal that a majority of deities are at a disadvantage - for example if the elves conquered the world somehow - then they'll destroy the world and start over. There's a clear bound in inequality past which the restart button is triggered. This also had to have a carve out written in - in this case the Hel bet, which renders destroying the world really bad this one time out of thousands.

This is the grimdark problem revealed by the godsmoot, because the permutations of the world are bounded by what 50%+1 of the gods are willing to tolerate on any axis imaginable everything is eternally constrained within those boundaries. Good, evil, law chaos, blue, yellow, no one can win.

[Riftwolf]

My thought is: the entire comic could've run exactly the same if the goblins had equal land/resources at the beginning and squandered them. That doesn't stop the Dark One from ascending, and he could spin the 'Gods need worship' into 'we're a six piece goblin bargain bucket to Gods' pretty easily.
But this world runs with narrative as a universal force, and having Thor say "well they started off on equal footing but they just turned out rubbish" would undercut the story a lot.

[BloodSquirrel]

Why would you think that? All evidence in the comic is that the various PC races, who did get roughly equal high quality starting resources, have stayed more or less equal to each other. There's no reason to think that had the goblins gotten a starting position as good as what the elves got they wouldn't be as well off today as the elves are.

None of that is actually in evidence. We have no actual information regarding what resources each race started with or what nations currently have the highest GDP. We have seen plenty of dirt-poor humans and cesspits like the Empire of Blood.

Literally every part of the "Goblins started off really badly" narrative comes from one source: Redcloak, who in turn is drawing from what the Mantle is showing him. When Thor addresses it, he spends most of his time pointing out why it's more complicated than that. And considering that page space (and in this case, the commune spell) is limited, and that Thor doesn't have time to write a 1,000 page detailed treatise on the subject, it would be silly to take a failure on Thor's part to specifically deny any one point of Redcloak's framing as confirmation.

[CountDVB]

I remember this from Snowtwo:


Something I want to add.

IRL a species with both a high birthrate and low life expectancy is typically considered to be a prey animal. At best it might become a pack hunter but rarely do they become true apex predators. Even among the apex they usually have the chance to live longer than their relative counterparts. This is because the high birthrate allows for the species to survive when being preyed upon and there's little need for longterm investment since they can't compete with the higher predators. Better to 'put it all upfront' as it were and have 1-3 years of fruitfulness before you get killed by something you can't fight against.

Intelligent species benefit immensely from a lower birthrate and longer lifespan however. This is because they can focus the resources more towards individual members, including education, and then live long enough to pass on their knowledge to future generations. You don't want to be competing against your own after all. An elven child won't need to compete against their siblings for attention or resources, will be able to receive a focus in education, able to leverage their education for longer, and then pass off that education + accumulated knowledge to future generations with ease. Meanwhile a goblin has to compete for both resources and educational attention, won't be able to leverage their education for as long, and even if they do survive to old age won't have much accumulated knowledge to pass on.

To make it worse, in a society with a high population innovation tends to stagnate as solutions can be 'solved' with manpower. For example, a knight is EASILY superior to a peasant in combat. They have superior armor, weapons, and so-forth. However armies are made up of peasants. This is because while knights are powerful and, when deployed properly, highly effective they are expensive and outfitting a peasant is as simple as handing them a spear and maybe a shield or cheap armor. When knights clash there's a contest of weapons, armor, and training in which any improvement can be a deciding edge. When armies clash while tactics and equipment factor in the defining factors are things like manpower and supply lines (which is dependent on manpower). Even out of combat there's no need to innovate when you simply can throw more people at an issue especially when social cohesion and stability matters more that innovation. There's a reason why many major technological innovations happened in places with high individuality and low population and places with more population tend to lag behind. Higher resource competition, solutions solvable through manpower application instead of innovation, and a desire for a stable society instead of an innovative one.

To finally 'cap it off', in an intelligent society you want your geniuses to live as long as possible. That way they can develop new innovations and pass them on to later generations. You don't get that in a society in which there's high competition (which typically rewards physical capabilities; though intelligence can impact) and with a high birthrate (where fertility can have a massive impact instead of intellect).

In other words: Fenris basically made a race of sentient rabbits incapable of actually leveraging the advantages they have in the long term or creating the type of society capable of out-competing the normal races since their biology is effectively trapping them in a society that doesn't allow them to leverage their own intellect. The best they can hope for is leveraging their numbers as a labor force and leech off of the innovations of others... who they opt to pillage and raid from instead of working with. It's likely that Gobtopia or w/e will last only as long as Redcloak does regardless of any outside activity before devolving into a tribalistic raiding nation. It will be highly interesting to see how well they stack up against the refugees in a year or three.

It would fit pretty well that the goblins have some problems they need to tackle though unsure how accurate it would be to all this.

[BloodSquirrel]

I agree that's a useful way of framing the issue. However, I think it is misleading to apply the concepts of 'equality of opportunity' and 'equality of outcomes' directly to species, rather than to individuals within those societies. If the Humans and the Goblins had been equal at the start, but the 10th generation of humans is rich and the 10th generation of Goblins is poor, is that an inequality of 'opportunities' or 'outcomes'? If we're applying those concepts to the species as a whole, it looks like 'outcomes'. Through their own choices, the Humans and Goblins produced different outcomes. And since nobody expects there to be a perfect equality of outcomes, it's easy to say that the Humans have no particular responsibility to the Goblins.

But if we're just looking at the gaggle of Humans and Goblins that make up the 10th generation (ignoring that Goblins breed way faster than Humans) it seems like there is clear inequality of opportunity. Those humans were born into a position of having way more opportunities than those Goblins. And if inequality of opportunity is unjust, then somebody should do something about it. If the gods can't or won't, then that leaves the Humans.

Equality of Opportunity vs. Equality of Outcome is a very blurry line in even the best of circumstances. Not only does "Equality of Opportunity" require Equality of Outcome as a starting position, but as soon as Outcomes diverge you would need to reset everything to have Equality of Opportunity again. And this isn't even getting into how impossible it is to take real-world resources- which are highly heterogeneous- and objectively decide upon what an "equal" distribution would even be, or account for differences in natural ability, or how to account for random events that aren't a clear product of the starting conditions.

The world isn't designed for equality, and attempts to impose quality onto it are, by necessity, extremely messy even just in concept.

This is why, ultimately, even aside from the issues with The Plan, Redcloak's worldview is non-viable. It leads to a focus on retribution (even against people who haven't actually done anything wrong) rather than pursuing ways in which conditions can be improved moving forward that are fair to everyone.

Which, incidentally, is how the biggest gains in real-world living conditions have been, and continue to be, made. Improving technology, capital accumulation, specialization of labor, and trade massively benefit everybody. If we were still fighting over how to distribute the wealth the world had in the year 1,000 AD we wouldn't have enough food to feed the world's current population, let alone be arguing over the internet.

[brian 333]

I don't disagree with the above, but I think culture plays a major role.

If the rabbit analogy is correct, we're talking about intelligent, tool-using rabbits. Tools equalize the playing field between predator and prey. Now the rabbits can not only fight back, they have the numbers to swarm the dog pack. It's a bad day to be a dog.

If peaceful coexistence is their goal, the goblins need only farm where they are, and use their army to destroy adventurers who invade their homeland. They don't need treaties with anyone.

Change the culture and goblins will thrive, eventually out-competing everyone.

[BloodSquirrel]

My thought is: the entire comic could've run exactly the same if the goblins had equal land/resources at the beginning and squandered them. That doesn't stop the Dark One from ascending, and he could spin the 'Gods need worship' into 'we're a six piece goblin bargain bucket to Gods' pretty easily.
But this world runs with narrative as a universal force, and having Thor say "well they started off on equal footing but they just turned out rubbish" would undercut the story a lot.

I'm not so sure about that.

One of the reasons that we don't have great information about a lot of these things is that the comic has a very strong underlying theme of "Your circumstances do not excuse your actions", so to a large extent questions like "What was the fertility index of goblin land vs human land 1,000 years ago" is almost entirely beside the point beyond what Redcloak thinks the answer is and how it informs his actions.

The comic seems to be more interested in presenting a problem that is messy, and showing us why trying to fix it with grand, bombastic gestures is counter-productive. And the goblins having squandered their resources 1,000 years ago works just as well for that. Either way, Redcloak can believe what he's inclined to believe, and it doesn't make goblins' currently circumstances any more or less the fault of either the currently living goblins for humans.

[BloodSquirrel]

I don't disagree with the above, but I think culture plays a major role.

If the rabbit analogy is correct, we're talking about intelligent, tool-using rabbits. Tools equalize the playing field between predator and prey. Now the rabbits can not only fight back, they have the numbers to swarm the dog pack. It's a bad day to be a dog.

If peaceful coexistence is their goal, the goblins need only farm where they are, and use their army to destroy adventurers who invade their homeland. They don't need treaties with anyone.

Change the culture and goblins will thrive, eventually out-competing everyone.

I agree that a lot of it is wrong- particularly the part about peasant armies, which is not even close to being historically accurate- but he does have a good point about long lifespans being an advantage in knowledge-based societies where you can spend more time reaping the benefits of someone who has spent the first thirty years of their life becoming an expert in something.

Also, "faster breeding" meaning "bigger population" just isn't true. Population is usually bounded by things other than the physical ability to produce children. A faster breeding population may be able to expand faster when resources are plentiful, but children consume a lot of resources before they produce anything, so a longer-lived population can support more people (assuming the same biological needs for an adult in both populations) on the same resources on a long-term basis, even without factoring in their advantage of being able to use the resources better due to living long enough to develop higher expertise.

[CountDVB]

I don't disagree with the above, but I think culture plays a major role.

If the rabbit analogy is correct, we're talking about intelligent, tool-using rabbits. Tools equalize the playing field between predator and prey. Now the rabbits can not only fight back, they have the numbers to swarm the dog pack. It's a bad day to be a dog.

If peaceful coexistence is their goal, the goblins need only farm where they are, and use their army to destroy adventurers who invade their homeland. They don't need treaties with anyone.

Change the culture and goblins will thrive, eventually out-competing everyone.

Honestly, it’s mostly correct, but it’s more hilarious that Snowtwo missed the obvious correlation. A better analogy would be like that if a pack animal, like ya know, a wolf… their creator XD.

They would still need to compete with each other as well. Goblinoids aren’t united as we saw with MitD’s thoughts on Redcloak’s pangoblinoid narrative and sectarian differences between regions and the like will occur. However, they still have to deal with disadvantages.

Culture is shaped by environment and other physical properties such as lifespan, reproduction cycles and the like, especially as they reflect how those are handled..

[CountDVB]

I agree that a lot of it is wrong- particularly the part about peasant armies, which is not even close to being historically accurate- but he does have a good point about long lifespans being an advantage in knowledge-based societies where you can spend more time reaping the benefits of someone who has spent the first thirty years of their life becoming an expert in something.

Also, "faster breeding" meaning "bigger population" just isn't true. Population is usually bounded by things other than the physical ability to produce children. A faster breeding population may be able to expand faster when resources are plentiful, but children consume a lot of resources before they produce anything, so a longer-lived population can support more people (assuming the same biological needs for an adult in both populations) on the same resources on a long-term basis, even without factoring in their advantage of being able to use the resources better due to living long enough to develop higher expertise.

Goblins can only live like 50 years and I think one of the points was that it shows why Fenris’ plans for the goblins were doomed from the start: he designed them poorly.

[Saint-Just]

My thought is: the entire comic could've run exactly the same if the goblins had equal land/resources at the beginning and squandered them. That doesn't stop the Dark One from ascending, and he could spin the 'Gods need worship' into 'we're a six piece goblin bargain bucket to Gods' pretty easily.
But this world runs with narrative as a universal force, and having Thor say "well they started off on equal footing but they just turned out rubbish" would undercut the story a lot.

It has been also been noted that whatever resources they started with their high fertility will inevitably result in Goblins getting relatively less and less per goblin as generations pass. That's why you cannot posit "they have to little" as a problem and redistribution of lands as a solution - that solution does nothing to prevent the problem from recurring in the future, and if everything continues as it did it will recur.

[Keltest]

It has been also been noted that whatever resources they started with their high fertility will inevitably result in Goblins getting relatively less and less per goblin as generations pass. That's why you cannot posit "they have to little" as a problem and redistribution of lands as a solution - that solution does nothing to prevent the problem from recurring in the future, and if everything continues as it did it will recur.

I mean, that has nothing to do with a high fertility rate though, thats just a natural consequence of ANY rate of population growth over time. The rate of growth affects how quickly it becomes a problem, but if the land can only support X number of goblins, then X is how many it will plateau at, no matter how fast they got there.

The real flaw with the goblins, as one might expect, is that because theyre evil and competing with each other, they never actually fight to their strengths. It doesnt matter if your species outnumbers the humans 3 to 1 if only a tenth of you are fighting them at any given time and the rest are fighting each other or ignoring the whole thing.

[Saint-Just]

I mean, that has nothing to do with a high fertility rate though, thats just a natural consequence of ANY rate of population growth over time. The rate of growth affects how quickly it becomes a problem, but if the land can only support X number of goblins, then X is how many it will plateau at, no matter how fast they got there.

The real flaw with the goblins, as one might expect, is that because theyre evil and competing with each other, they never actually fight to their strengths. It doesnt matter if your species outnumbers the humans 3 to 1 if only a tenth of you are fighting them at any given time and the rest are fighting each other or ignoring the whole thing.

This has to do with the higher rate of fertility.Means that in N years average goblin's share of resources decreases more than the average human's. So equality becomes inequality even if the start is equal and nobody dipossessed anybody.

[Peelee]

This has to do with the higher rate of fertility.Means that in N years average goblin's share of resources decreases more than the average human's. So equality becomes inequality even if the start is equal and nobody dipossessed anybody.

Does this factor in lifespan, death rate, and resource consumption rates not neveccarily being equal?

[OvisCaedo]

I'm still curious about how exactly they ended up with worse land to start with. Thor seemed to both acknowledge that it was true and say that it wasn't really done intentionally. So they just... accidentally made one region have much worse land than the other places and the goblins just happened to end up there? Did Fenris deliberately choose for them to have worse land to try to force them to attack everyone else? Is there a point-buy system for race creation and Fenris took all the points out of land to shove them into reproduction rate?

[Keltest]

I'm still curious about how exactly they ended up with worse land to start with. Thor seemed to both acknowledge that it was true and say that it wasn't really done intentionally. So they just... accidentally made one region have much worse land than the other places and the goblins just happened to end up there? Did Fenris deliberately choose for them to have worse land to try to force them to attack everyone else? Is there a point-buy system for race creation and Fenris took all the points out of land to shove them into reproduction rate?

For that matter, what is "worse" land? I can only imagine that the dwarves would suffer mightily if you put them in elf territory, and vice versa. And yet both seem to be doing quite well.

[BloodSquirrel]

Does this factor in lifespan, death rate, and resource consumption rates not neveccarily being equal?

See my comments above.

In real life, we don't have species which compare nicely on this front, but it's worth noting that species with low birth rates (like humans) tend to invest a lot of resources into each child and expect there to be a high chance that each one at least reaches adulthood, whereas species with high birth rates (like spiders) expect 99% of their offspring to die in, like, five minutes.

Lower resources consumption per individual might mean that you can feed 1,000 goblins on a piece of land that can only feed 500 humans, but once you've reached that 1,000 goblins you'll still have the issue that if each adult goblin female has ten offspring, eight of them will need to die before reaching adulthood in order to keep the population stable, whereas if each human woman has three offspring, only one will need to die. Absolute population numbers will be much less relevant to the experience of each individual than their % chance of living to adulthood and having offspring of their own. If you don't assume psychological differences to account for this, then you would expect a goblin mother to look at a human mother and be jealous that she was able to feed her children much more easily, and didn't have to watch most of them die because food was scarce.

Our sample size in real life stands at (1) sapient species, but given that our traits are the result of natural selection and not random chance, it stands to reason that our being one of the longest lived and slowest breeding animals on the planet (especially compared to animals of similar size) is indicative of it being a more successful strategy

[Resileaf]

For that matter, what is "worse" land? I can only imagine that the dwarves would suffer mightily if you put them in elf territory, and vice versa. And yet both seem to be doing quite well.

I was under the impression that goblins live in mountainous regions, much like dwarves, but the dwarves are already well settled in the tunnels while the goblins live on the surface, where resources are scarce and the earth not very fertile.

Well at least the hobgoblins. Thinking about it, Redcloak's tribe was in a forest, so probably shared territory with the elves.

[Keltest]

I was under the impression that goblins live in mountainous regions, much like dwarves, but the dwarves are already well settled in the tunnels while the goblins live on the surface, where resources are scarce and the earth not very fertile.

The Dwarves appear to live primarily in the far north. While we dont have a complete map, I cant imagine that dwarves have a monopoly on the livable tunnels in the entire world.

[BloodSquirrel]

I'm still curious about how exactly they ended up with worse land to start with. Thor seemed to both acknowledge that it was true and say that it wasn't really done intentionally. So they just... accidentally made one region have much worse land than the other places and the goblins just happened to end up there? Did Fenris deliberately choose for them to have worse land to try to force them to attack everyone else? Is there a point-buy system for race creation and Fenris took all the points out of land to shove them into reproduction rate?

Simple negligence would explain it. Hospitable conditions are not the default- it takes an active effort to create them. If Fenris just didn't put as much effort into, say, making sure that the local weather patterns would provide the right amount of rain, the land could have wound up being barren.

But, as I noted before, Thor doesn't really say that it's true either. There is a lot going on in that conversation, and the point he was acknowledging was that the rules of their ecosystem, even if impartial, still favors those who start off in a better position- and the fact that such is relevant to current conditions is more important than who started with what land.


I was under the impression that goblins live in mountainous regions, much like dwarves, but the dwarves are already well settled in the tunnels while the goblins live on the surface, where resources are scarce and the earth not very fertile.

Well at least the hobgoblins. Thinking about it, Redcloak's tribe was in a forest, so probably shared territory with the elves.

To repeat myself from earlier: The only source we have for this claim is Redcloak, who gives us very few specifics, and is not a very reliable narrator. The most important takeaway from Thor is "It's more complicated than that".

This suits the story just fine, because the theme is much closer to "Your circumstances do not excuse evil actions" than "It's okay to murder people because your tribe got a raw deal 1,000 years ago", but it does mean that the kind of interrogation that we're engaged in gets very speculative very quickly.

[Peelee]

The Dwarves appear to live primarily in the far north. While we dont have a complete map, I cant imagine that dwarves have a monopoly on the livable tunnels in the entire world.

I miss the times when the Giant would read through forum discussion and do things like say "the dwarves have a monopoly on all livable tunnels in the entire world. CANON" or the like.

Also, many livable tunnels are simply called "Dungeons". :smallwink:

[Saint-Just]

Does this factor in lifespan, death rate, and resource consumption rates not neveccarily being equal?

It is highly unlikely that death rate itself will put a significant damper on the population growth - and both lifespan and resource consumption per individual are multipliers (or dividers) while population growth is exponential. It will still result in arriving at the same situation one or two (goblin) generations later than otherwise. I also have trouble with seeing how or why goblins would consume less than other races - they are not even smaller in this world.

I do presume that purposefully designed "zerg rush" race doesn't just have one more kid per family than humans, but have more significant disparity. With just the right proportions lifespan and resource consumption may shift the problem in the far future but that sounds like too convenient coincidence unlikely for a race that was intended to outbreed others for the purpose of outfighting them.

I am no malthusian, I have no doubt that goblins can live in peace with the others but if others should give up resources to goblins just because they have less then the goblins (as a race) are on the way to control more and more purely by moral suasion and biology becomes destiny (they breed more therefore they deserve more).

[Keltest]

I miss the times when the Giant would read through forum discussion and do things like say "the dwarves have a monopoly on all livable tunnels in the entire world. CANON" or the like.

Also, many livable tunnels are simply called "Dungeons". :smallwink:

Sure, and "dungeons" tend to be filled with "monsters" like goblins.

[BloodSquirrel]

I do presume that purposefully designed "zerg rush" race doesn't just have one more kid per family than humans, but have more significant disparity. With just the right proportions lifespan and resource consumption may shift the problem in the far future but that sounds like too convenient coincidence unlikely for a race that was intended to outbreed others for the purpose of outfighting them.

I am no malthusian, I have no doubt that goblins can live in peace with the others but if others should give up resources to goblins just because they have less then the goblins (as a race) are on the way to control more and more purely by moral suasion and biology becomes destiny (they breed more therefore they deserve more).

Again- very little of this is strongly established in the text. Goblin birth rates may have helped cause the problem, but in the real world we see that birth rates decline even as nations become richer and could- if we didn't divert the resources to higher living standards- support even more children. Once the narratively interesting problems like "Goblins are worshiping an evil god who is leading them into a plan that might get the world blown up" are solved, a lot of the other problems might be fixable with boring, practical solutions like "give the goblins some condoms".

[BloodSquirrel]

It is highly unlikely that death rate itself will put a significant damper on the population growth -

The "death rate" is, in the long run, the same for all species- 1.

How many goblins make it to adulthood to have children of their own and how long a female goblin is within her child-bearing age, however, will affect population growth.

[brian 333]

I'm still curious about how exactly they ended up with worse land to start with. Thor seemed to both acknowledge that it was true and say that it wasn't really done intentionally. So they just... accidentally made one region have much worse land than the other places and the goblins just happened to end up there? Did Fenris deliberately choose for them to have worse land to try to force them to attack everyone else? Is there a point-buy system for race creation and Fenris took all the points out of land to shove them into reproduction rate?

My head canon is that the gods have a point-buy system when creating races.

Thor: Okay, 15 points in longevity, 10 points in toughness, -5 points in cross-racial appeal, leaves 30 points for homeland, so 15 points in mineral rich, 5 points in grazing lands, and another 10 points in defensible underground dwellings. Hmm, let's give them 7 grandfather's and 7 grandmother's as their starting population, which frees up another 5 points, so put their homeland beneath tundra, and we can have lots of room to grow.

Fenris: -5 for lifespan and +20 for breeding rate. Let's give them a starting population of hundreds of thousands for 10 points, and spread them evenly around the world for another 15 points. Let's make them militaristic and aggressive for an extra 10 points. If I make them Small I can get 5 extra points for starting land. Nah, let's roll with it and they can take whatever land they can get.

[Throknor]

I'm still curious about how exactly they ended up with worse land to start with. Thor seemed to both acknowledge that it was true and say that it wasn't really done intentionally.

I took it to mean more that as a group they didn't intentionally put the goblins at a disadvantage just to be used by other races to level up as Redcloak believes. Fenris may have intentionally given them less to begin with because his plan is ridiculous and the other gods ended up benefiting but they never directly thought about it.

[pyrefiend]

For that matter, what is "worse" land? I can only imagine that the dwarves would suffer mightily if you put them in elf territory, and vice versa. And yet both seem to be doing quite well.

Redcloak's comment about Durkon "growing up surrounded by gold and gems" makes me think that the Dwarves' lands are rich in gold and gems and such, whereas the Goblins' mountains are not.

As for why Fenris put the Goblins in crappy, resource-poor lands, my headcanon is that he had some combination of the following three motivations:

(1) He wanted the Goblins' lands to "look cool", and he thinks big barren craggy mountains look cool.
(2) He wanted to encourage the Goblins to be aggressive and raid other settlements for resources.
(3) He wanted the Goblins' lands to be defensible and difficult to invade.

Probably mostly (1) is my guess. In any case, Fenris just didn't care about Goblins having access to farmable land (farming isn't cool) or mineral wealth (mining isn't cool either).

[Gnoman]

Redcloak's comment about Durkon "growing up surrounded by gold and gems" makes me think that the Dwarves' lands are rich in gold and gems and such, whereas the Goblins' mountains are not.


Redcloak is assuming that, because he's from a very poor society and projecting a lifetime of resentment into his perceptions. We know Durkon didn't grow up surrounded by gold and gems. More importantly, we have some indication of the wealth of his town - 20,000 GP is is the threshold for the "top donors" list at the Temple, and enough gems for five Raise Dead spells was more than his mother had ever seen, not merely just more than she'd ever hoped to have. Sigi was a veteran soldier who would have had ample opportunity to see wealth. None of that invalidates Redcloak's grievance - the fact that the Dwarven society is wealthy enough and stable enough to support a maimed soldier and her child in even a modest amount of comfort would look like incalcuable wealth - but you can't just take his assumptions at face value.

Indeed, however the Giant is planning to go with this will work a lot better if the "civilized" races are not universally unimaginably wealthy. If aiding the goblins involves real cost, it reads way different from if their needs can be satisfied with metaphorical crumbs.

[pyrefiend]

Redcloak is assuming that, because he's from a very poor society and projecting a lifetime of resentment into his perceptions. [..]

Indeed, however the Giant is planning to go with this will work a lot better if the "civilized" races are not universally unimaginably wealthy. If aiding the goblins involves real cost, it reads way different from if their needs can be satisfied with metaphorical crumbs.

I agree, I didn't mean to imply that I think the Dwarves are rich. I just assumed that Redcloak's off-handed claim had some basis in fact. Maybe it doesn't, though, who knows.

[Peelee]

I agree, I didn't mean to imply that I think the Dwarves are rich. I just assumed that Redcloak's off-handed claim had some basis in fact. Maybe it doesn't, though, who knows.

It's possible to have a wealthy nation with abundant resources that still have some areas that are in poverty.

[gbaji]

If the rabbit analogy is correct, we're talking about intelligent, tool-using rabbits. Tools equalize the playing field between predator and prey. Now the rabbits can not only fight back, they have the numbers to swarm the dog pack. It's a bad day to be a dog.

And now I'm having flashbacks to playing Wabbit Wampage back in the day. Oh yes. I'm a rabbit. Running amok on your tractor. With a chainsaw.... Muahahah!


Simple negligence would explain it. Hospitable conditions are not the default- it takes an active effort to create them. If Fenris just didn't put as much effort into, say, making sure that the local weather patterns would provide the right amount of rain, the land could have wound up being barren.

Yeah. I kinda assume something like this. Most of the gods, having taken a turn creating a species, followed up in subsequent turns detailing the lands for them and defining resources, culture, religions, etc, all with an eye towards supporting that species success. It's possible that whole pantheons would cooperate on the creation of complete sets of species within a given region of the world in fact. Fenris may very well have just created goblins with a very basic "these are intelligent creatures, breed fast, fight a lot, and we'll see if they just swarm over everything cause that would be cool", and then proceeded to ignore them from that point on, moving to the next monster, creature, or whatever that he was interested in.

So I think the answer is that "they are all right". From the goblins perspective, it's certainly going to look like they were given bad lands, and a lot in life to exist purely as cannon fodder for the advancement of others (A "tough, but not too tough" foe to be defeated). But that need not have been by design specifically. It just worked out that way. And having worked out that way, there's not a lot the gods can do to undo that. Further complicating this, is that there is absolutely a perception by all the other sentient species that goblins are just evil things to be fought *and* the unfortunate fact that goblins themselves (due in no small part to the impact that high birth rate and short lifespan) tend to be very likely to engage in constant internal conflict amongst themselves. Redcloak and other leaders may be able to band them together to try to make something greater, but there's no guarantee that's going to last long before the whole structure collapses. Goblins simply have no history of maintaining larger social structures. Doesn't mean they can't, but it's something that runs counter to how they have lived since the beginning.

Someone mentioned earlier about Dwarves being "rich" because they can afford to provided pensions for retired/disabled veterans. Sure. But one can also argue that a society *becomes rich* over time if they have those sorts of ideals baked into them. When people in a society know that they will be cared for if something bad happens to them, they are more likely to give/risk more for the society as a whole rather than just fight and scheme for themselves. I have a suspicion that the goblin equivalent of a "pension" for a disabled warrior who can't fight anymore involves less monetary benefits, and more a sharp bladed object used to "solve" the problem. Certainly historically. Now, if Redcloak and Jirix can establish a greater sense of stability and "future" for goblins, that may very well change.

[Resileaf]

Worth remembering that the gods don't all have the same domains. Fenrir is the god of monsters, not of weather patterns. He creates his monsters and places them where he thinks they fit in best within the context of the world the gods created together. Some other gods handled making the world livable, with its geographic features and weather patterns and such.

I assume that the process to create a world goes something like:
1. Figure out how to weave creation in ways that makes it stronger against the Snarl.
2. Decide what kind of theme to give the next world.
3. Plan out its major features and the races that will inhabit it to make sure everything fits in.
4. Create the Snarl's prison.
5. Let each god place their features on the prison, gradually turn it into the world they decided on (with the occasional last-minute addition from various gods)
6. Finalize the process, locking in the world's features so the gods can't make any changes without destroying the whole thing.
7. Infuse the world with its mortal inhabitants, presumably with prior 'knowledge' of how their world works and with enough history that they don't question their sudden existence.

Give or take a few steps.

So in that process, a god like Fenris is most likely barely involved in planning out features that aren't part of his domain and basically just focuses on creating his monster concepts so they can be placed somewhere fitting in that new world. Once he's created his short-lived, fast-breeding race intended to overwhelm the other races with numbers, he places them somewhere he thinks they'll be encouraged to do that to survive with little input from the other gods to make him change his mind (they're used to his antics by now so they don't even try) and, as usual, it doesn't work so he loses interest in them and gives his favor to other monsters that are strong enough to attract his attention.

[pyrefiend]

It's possible to have a wealthy nation with abundant resources that still have some areas that are in poverty.

That's true, but I don't think I implied otherwise.


Goblins simply have no history of maintaining larger social structures. Doesn't mean they can't, but it's something that runs counter to how they have lived since the beginning.

Does it? The Hobgoblins at least seem to have had a big, organized social structure that existed long before they conquered Azure City.

[ZhonLord]

The Hobgoblins at least seem to have had a big, organized social structure that existed long before they conquered Azure City.

As proven way back at Xykon's first evilgasm of the comic (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0197.html). It may have been built on mountainous terrain and had few resources to work with, but it was a city of considerable size nonetheless.

[Keltest]

As proven way back at Xykon's first evilgasm of the comic (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0197.html). It may have been built on mountainous terrain and had few resources to work with, but it was a city of considerable size nonetheless.

I did the math once, and if I remember correctly, assuming that fully half the population of the city was militarized and mobilized (which is extremely generous from a logistics perspective) it was about the size of medieval London.

[hroþila]

There's no reason to believe medieval standards apply, though. Since its ~30,000 strong army was said to represent 90% of its population, if we assume that actually meant 90% of all military-age males (which seems reasonable to me), even assuming a human-like demographic distribution (which doesn't seem reasonable to me) that would give a population of ~100,000 as an upper limit, and probably closer to ~80,000. Which would certainly have been impressive in 14th-century western Europe, but not so much in the OotS-verse where these hobgoblins were marching against just one human nation with a population of 500,000, 250,000 of them living in the capital city.

The hobgoblins were scrapping by, and even their relative prosperity was the result of recent and rather extraordinary circumstances stemming from the open-mindedness of a handful of people.

[Keltest]

Since its ~30,000 strong army was said to represent 90% of its population

Was it? When was this said?

[Saint-Just]

There's no reason to believe medieval standards apply, though. Since its ~30,000 strong army was said to represent 90% of its population, if we assume that actually meant 90% of all military-age males (which seems reasonable to me), even assuming a human-like demographic distribution (which doesn't seem reasonable to me) that would give a population of ~100,000 as an upper limit, and probably closer to ~80,000. Which would certainly have been impressive in 14th-century western Europe, but not so much in the OotS-verse where these hobgoblins were marching against just one human nation with a population of 500,000, 250,000 of them living in the capital city.

The hobgoblins were scrapping by, and even their relative prosperity was the result of recent and rather extraordinary circumstances stemming from the open-mindedness of a handful of people.

half of the population in the capital city is definitely something absolutely impossible by medieval standards, so yes all comparisons with real history go out of window.

[Jasdoif]

Since its ~30,000 strong army was said to represent 90% of its populationWas it? When was this said?In strip 320a, Redcloak says it'd never occurred to the hobgoblin's previous Supreme Leaders to mobilize 90% of their population before; something Xykon attributes to their self-preservation, that he doesn't expect to continue being a problem....

[Keltest]

In strip 320a, Redcloak says it'd never occurred to the hobgoblin's previous Supreme Leaders to mobilize 90% of their population before; something Xykon attributes to their self-preservation, that he doesn't expect to continue being a problem....

Huh, interesting. That makes Redcloak's later commentary about the family left behind at the founding of Gobbotopia rather odd though.

[hamishspence]

I figure the remaining 10% represents children far too small to fight, and their mothers.

[gbaji]

There's no reason to believe medieval standards apply, though. Since its ~30,000 strong army was said to represent 90% of its population, if we assume that actually meant 90% of all military-age males (which seems reasonable to me), even assuming a human-like demographic distribution (which doesn't seem reasonable to me) that would give a population of ~100,000 as an upper limit, and probably closer to ~80,000.

Why assume only military age males? Sure, the art only seems to show males, but that may just be Rich not wanting to spend time/effort creating female hobgoblin images, and scattering them into the battle scenes. Certainly, having been given an order by their new supreme commander to mobilize everyone who can fight, and who's got this lich enforcer who kills and zombifies folks for fun as additional motivation, those scrambling to comply with that order would not limit themselves in their compliance. If Redcloak says it was 90% of the population, maybe we should assume it was actually 90% of the population. Which now drops us down to about ~33k total population.

That's still a huge number for the described region, but it's possible that there were initially a large number of smaller hobgoblin villages and settlements thinly spread out in the area, until the order was given, and then they mobilized as ordered into one area, bringing everybody physically capable of getting there, and bringing every scrap of supplies with them. Er, and they built a big fort/town in the second valley?



The hobgoblins were scrapping by, and even their relative prosperity was the result of recent and rather extraordinary circumstances stemming from the open-mindedness of a handful of people.

Also, the mobilization itself would be a completely unsustainable action, but that was the point. Team Evil only needed these folks long enough to take Azure city. By mobilizing "everyone" and not just a number the population could sustain, you get a much bigger army. Uh. The numbers are still pretty ridiculous, but I've always seen the whole hobgoblin army bit as just something we're expected to suspend disbelief on and just accept. It requires a large amount of industry and infrastructure to support a military that size (using earth normal human rules of course). But this isn't earth. And these aren't humans.

It does absolutely highlight the one key advantage a race that breeds fast and has a short lifespan has though. The ratio of able bodied fighters to developing/aged ones is much much higher, making something like this possible. So a combination of rare circumstances that allowed them to breed for several generations in relative peace, followed by a new supreme leader coming along and mobilizing them in this way, made the whole thing possible. Dunno.

[Fyraltari]

Why assume only military age males? Sure, the art only seems to show males, but that may just be Rich not wanting to spend time/effort creating female hobgoblin images, and scattering them into the battle scenes. Certainly, having been given an order by their new supreme commander to mobilize everyone who can fight, and who's got this lich enforcer who kills and zombifies folks for fun as additional motivation, those scrambling to comply with that order would not limit themselves in their compliance. If Redcloak says it was 90% of the population, maybe we should assume it was actually 90% of the population. Which now drops us down to about ~33k total population.

That's still a huge number for the described region, but it's possible that there were initially a large number of smaller hobgoblin villages and settlements thinly spread out in the area, until the order was given, and then they mobilized as ordered into one area, bringing everybody physically capable of getting there, and bringing every scrap of supplies with them. Er, and they built a big fort/town in the second valley?




Also, the mobilization itself would be a completely unsustainable action, but that was the point. Team Evil only needed these folks long enough to take Azure city. By mobilizing "everyone" and not just a number the population could sustain, you get a much bigger army. Uh. The numbers are still pretty ridiculous, but I've always seen the whole hobgoblin army bit as just something we're expected to suspend disbelief on and just accept. It requires a large amount of industry and infrastructure to support a military that size (using earth normal human rules of course). But this isn't earth. And these aren't humans.

It does absolutely highlight the one key advantage a race that breeds fast and has a short lifespan has though. The ratio of able bodied fighters to developing/aged ones is much much higher, making something like this possible. So a combination of rare circumstances that allowed them to breed for several generations in relative peace, followed by a new supreme leader coming along and mobilizing them in this way, made the whole thing possible. Dunno.

I think our best look at what hobgoblin mobilization is like comes from HtPghS, in the form of the impromptu war party at the beginning. It is made up of seven hobgoblins:

The leader who wields a greatsword and sports a facial scar, implying previous combat experience.
The one with the shield: the only woman of the group, fights with a shield and sword. Her outfit is similar to Bo's and might be armour.
The one with the axe: fights with an axe. Appears to be wearing an apron into battle.
The one with the beard. wields a sword. Also uncelar if he's wearing armour or not. Survives one katana strike from O-Chul which might imply he's slightly higher level than his fellows who otherwise all die in one hit.
The one with the spear. Fights with a spear and is clearly wearing armour.
Pangtok and Tingtox: two commoners with zero fighting abilities press-ganged into going into battle wearing casual clothing and wielding what appear to be a dagger each. Only there because the leader was strong enough to push them around.



So I'm guessing that the hobgoblin horde was gender-mixed but that a large portion of it (maybe half of it) had no training nor proper equipment.

[Liquor Box]

Why would you think that? All evidence in the comic is that the various PC races, who did get roughly equal high quality starting resources, have stayed more or less equal to each other. There's no reason to think that had the goblins gotten a starting position as good as what the elves got they wouldn't be as well off today as the elves are.

I don't think there's any evidence of that at all in the comic. Other than the fact that dwarfs live underground (which seems to me to be a bad starting position), we have no idea what the starting position was of any of the PC races. I also don't think the comic portrays PC races as equal now - it appears that humans are everywhere and elves/dwarves/halflings are confined to corners of the world or being minorities in human lands.

In real life, starting position does not equal outcomes either. For example, Africa has more resources (is a better starting position) than any other continent, but mostly has a below average standard of living nowadays. Japan has very few natural resources, but has a high standard of living. The fortunes of different countries rise and fall for a variety of reasons, often unrelated to resources.

[Fyraltari]

In real life, starting position does not equal outcomes either. For example, Africa has more resources (is a better starting position) than any other continent, but mostly has a below average standard of living nowadays. Japan has very few natural resources, but has a high standard of living. The fortunes of different countries rise and fall for a variety of reasons, often unrelated to resources.

Which is what I was getting at when I said the comic isn't a treatise in socio-economics. The notion that the goblins' problems stem from them being shafted at the beginning of the world is a simple cause that would not make sense in the real world that we kind of have to accept as is because:

A) Giving a cause that would hold up to scrutiny would involve completely derailling the comic as we delve deep into the history of this world in excrutiating details.

And

B) the specifics of the wronging don't really matter. What matters is how people react to this wrong, on the goblin side (trying to make the most of a bad situation vs seeking justice/revenge) and on the human side (not caring/making the situation worse vs trying to make it right).

[hroþila]

Why assume only military age males? Sure, the art only seems to show males, but that may just be Rich not wanting to spend time/effort creating female hobgoblin images, and scattering them into the battle scenes.
Rich did absolutely do it that way because he just copy/pasted the hobgoblins and only later realized that meant there were no women, but then he figured it was also a useful way to make the reader root for the Azurites a bit more by making them more relatable. Still, the art shows what it shows, and the art shows no women in the hobgoblin army, even though we saw some in HtPGHS. So I think it's possible to believe the women were not part of the general mobilization (mobilizing 90% of your able-bodied men is already pretty unsustainable, especially if trained women are only a small minority, because you're basically gambling the survival of the whole tribe on a single battle).

Still, I guess it's possible that we only saw a portion of all hobgoblin forces, that the ones with actual training were used first, that those were largely male, or indeed that only male soldiers happened to be caught on panel.

Who knows. Maybe 90% of all hobgoblins were indeed mobilized, but many of them would have been porters - who knows what the tooth-to-tail ratio of an OotS-verse hobgoblin army would be. In that case, 30,000 could be the number of actual fighting troops (in which case the term 'legion' would be essentially a military term, as a way to record combat troops only), or the army's total number including porters (in which case 'legion' would be an administrative term of military origin which would refer to the whole hobgoblin population). But that would mean Team Evil would no longer have a 3:1 advantage at the siege, which is kinda important.

Certainly, having been given an order by their new supreme commander to mobilize everyone who can fight, and who's got this lich enforcer who kills and zombifies folks for fun as additional motivation, those scrambling to comply with that order would not limit themselves in their compliance. If Redcloak says it was 90% of the population, maybe we should assume it was actually 90% of the population. Which now drops us down to about ~33k total population.
Sure, that's possible, and it is the most parsimonious interpretation, but it does have its problems.

[Mechalich]

B) the specifics of the wronging don't really matter. What matters is how people react to this wrong, on the goblin side (trying to make the most of a bad situation vs seeking justice/revenge) and on the human side (not caring/making the situation worse vs trying to make it right).

The specifics of the wrongdoing absolutely matter. The goblins are, currently impoverished and suffering compared to the status of the other major sapient species. That's known, but there's a huge difference between an inequality that arose primarily due to the active oppression of the goblins by other sapients versus an inequality that arose primarily through external factors (environmental, ecological, etc.) or through divine neglect (a sort of special case external factor).

If other species, such as the dwarves, have been oppressing the goblins, then they can be said to owe compensation. By contrast, if other sapient weren't involved - for example the residents of the western continents who have no interaction with the goblins at all, they don't owe anything. It would still be charitable of them to help the goblins, but there's not obligation. In D&D alignment terms, this is the difference between a situation where not helping the goblins would be an evil act versus a neutral one.

[Fyraltari]

The specifics of the wrongdoing absolutely matter. The goblins are, currently impoverished and suffering compared to the status of the other major sapient species. That's known, but there's a huge difference between an inequality that arose primarily due to the active oppression of the goblins by other sapients versus an inequality that arose primarily through external factors (environmental, ecological, etc.) or through divine neglect (a sort of special case external factor).

If other species, such as the dwarves, have been oppressing the goblins, then they can be said to owe compensation. By contrast, if other sapient weren't involved - for example the residents of the western continents who have no interaction with the goblins at all, they don't owe anything. It would still be charitable of them to help the goblins, but there's not obligation. In D&D alignment terms, this is the difference between a situation where not helping the goblins would be an evil act versus a neutral one.
So, you would say the dwarves of Firmament owe Oona's tribe compensation, for example?

The fact that the PC races have been picking on the goblins and other monster species is important of course*, it's the specifics of how that came about that don't matter.

*see the "making it worse" reaction in my little list.

[Keltest]

So, you would say the dwarves of Firmament owe Oona's tribe compensation, for example?

The fact that the PC races have been picking on the goblins and other monster species is important of course*, it's the specifics of how that came about that don't matter.

*see the "making it worse" reaction in my little list.

I disagree strongly. If goblins are treated with hostility because they have a generations long habit of attacking their neighbors unprovoked, it's really their own fault that nobody wants them around, whereas if they are fighting in self defense then maybe compensation is owed.

[Liquor Box]

Which is what I was getting at when I said the comic isn't a treatise in socio-economics. The notion that the goblins' problems stem from them being shafted at the beginning of the world is a simple cause that would not make sense in the real world that we kind of have to accept as is because:

A) Giving a cause that would hold up to scrutiny would involve completely derailling the comic as we delve deep into the history of this world in excrutiating details.

And

B) the specifics of the wronging don't really matter. What matters is how people react to this wrong, on the goblin side (trying to make the most of a bad situation vs seeking justice/revenge) and on the human side (not caring/making the situation worse vs trying to make it right).

I think that, looking at it through a more realistic lens, one might draw the conclusion that it was not the goblins poor starting position that led to their current state, but rather other factors (like the path they cut for themselves and the choices they made). But I agree with you, that the comic is avoiding such complexities and means for us to conclude that the gods giving goblins less advantageous land is what has led to them being less well off than others.

Avoiding such complexities probably makes for a better story, but also probably makes any intended analogy with the real world less meaningful.

[brian 333]

Perhaps hobgoblin female attributes are muted outside of their fertile times, or when not actively raising young? As an example, Oona, viewed at a distance, looks similar to the males of her tribe. She certainly does not act differently.

In fact, now I have a head canon for use in my world: dominant females breed, and their pheromones suppress the fertility cycle of submissive females, who can usually only become fertile in the times dominants are not emitting strong pheromones while pregnant or nursing.

[BloodSquirrel]

I think that, looking at it through a more realistic lens, one might draw the conclusion that it was not the goblins poor starting position that led to their current state, but rather other factors (like the path they cut for themselves and the choices they made). But I agree with you, that the comic is avoiding such complexities and means for us to conclude that the gods giving goblins less advantageous land is what has led to them being less well off than others.

Avoiding such complexities probably makes for a better story, but also probably makes any intended analogy with the real world less meaningful.

This is highly debatable. As I noted before, this assertion comes from exactly one source: Redcloak. Thor spends his time with Durkon explaining why it's more complicated than that, and not even the other goblinoids seem to be caught up on what land they had to start of with 1,000 years ago.

And even taking Redcloak's story at face value: Considering what the Dark One's army did after his death, it seems like they must have at least temporarily had possession of whatever lands the humans they were killing were on, and must have been later pushed back. So the idea that land distribution has remained completely static simply is directly contradicted by Redcloak himself.

We have two options here: Believe something that is highly implausible, or believe that the confirmed unreliable narrator is oversimplifying things.

[Liquor Box]

This is highly debatable. As I noted before, this assertion comes from exactly one source: Redcloak. Thor spends his time with Durkon explaining why it's more complicated than that, and not even the other goblinoids seem to be caught up on what land they had to start of with 1,000 years ago.

And even taking Redcloak's story at face value: Considering what the Dark One's army did after his death, it seems like they must have at least temporarily had possession of whatever lands the humans they were killing were on, and must have been later pushed back. So the idea that land distribution has remained completely static simply is directly contradicted by Redcloak himself.

We have two options here: Believe something that is highly implausible, or believe that the confirmed unreliable narrator is oversimplifying things.

It's an opinion also expressed by Durkon (and accepted by Roy). Whether you think it's a rational opinion based on what they know, it does seem to be communicating to the audience how the comic wants us to see it.

Also, I think you go to far to label it highly implausible that the Goblin's limited starting spot is the reason for their lack of resources now. Just because that's not the only way things can work out, nor the way it has tended to work in the real world, does not make it implausible. And even if it were implausible it is intuitive, and the Giant not necessarily being an expert in such things may have still written his comic that way.

[Fyraltari]

Perhaps hobgoblin female attributes are muted outside of their fertile times, or when not actively raising young? As an example, Oona, viewed at a distance, looks similar to the males of her tribe. She certainly does not act differently.

In fact, now I have a head canon for use in my world: dominant females breed, and their pheromones suppress the fertility cycle of submissive females, who can usually only become fertile in the times dominants are not emitting strong pheromones while pregnant or nursing.

What the hell did I just read?

[Tzardok]

Musings on the possible reproductive biology of hobgoblins. Where's the problem?

[Fyraltari]

Musings on the possible reproductive biology of hobgoblins. Where's the problem?
Well let's break it down:

Perhaps hobgoblin female attributes are muted outside of their fertile times, or when not actively raising young?
Is a very odd theory to come up with to explain a difficulty to ascertain biological sense at a glance in stick figures. Remember that lots of people thought Banadana and Andi were men when they first showed up and the elves' whole androgyny and social genderqueerness came about because readers couldn't tell whether V was a man or woman, even though The Giant thought that was clear at first.

As an example, Oona, viewed at a distance, looks similar to the males of her tribe.
Oona only looks similar to the menfolk of her tribe in that they wear face-concealing masks and in some cases large capes. Oona's mask is long enough to partially hide her noticeable breasts in the comic's artstyle which is why she could be confused for a man, not because her "female attribute" are muted.

She certainly does not act differently.
Considering we haven't seen anyone from her tribe but Oona speak, I have to wonder what Brian means here. How exactly would he expect a bugbear woman to act? And based on what?


In fact, now I have a head canon for use in my world: dominant females breed, and their pheromones suppress the fertility cycle of submissive females, who can usually only become fertile in the times dominants are not emitting strong pheromones while pregnant or nursing.
If by "my world" Brian means a work of fiction unrelated to Oots, okay cool, you do you. But if, as "head cannon" and the fact that he brings this up in an OOTS thread suggest, this is him theorizing about hobgoblins in OOTS. I can only wonder why he thinks there are "dominant" and "submissive" women in hobgoblin society, where he got the idea that hobgoblins affect each other's physiology through pheromones.
This notion that goblins have little control over their own reproduction, ascribing their dynamics to biology rather than sociology , the constant use of zoological terms like "female" and "male" instead of "man" and "woman" or "breed", and various other posts by Brian on the matter point to him seeing the (hob)goblins more like an invasive species of animals rather than the orange/green/brown skinned humans with pointy teeth and fewer Hit Dice the comic portray them as.

Also, the notion that hobgoblins have biological checks on their ability to reproduce is directly contradicted by the comic telling us Fenrir wanted them to "breed a lot".

[brian 333]

Musings on the possible reproductive biology of hobgoblins. Where's the problem?

And an excuse for the non-depiction of females in the hobgoblin army. They were there, but to us humans they simply appeared male.

[dancrilis]

Why assume only military age males?


So I'm guessing that the hobgoblin horde was gender-mixed but that a large portion of it (maybe half of it) had no training nor proper equipment.

And an excuse for the non-depiction of females in the hobgoblin army. They were there, but to us humans they simply appeared male.

Or - and this is just a theory - when Redcloak stated 'back to the mountain forts where so many of your women and children still live (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0702.html)' it was meant to imply that a lot of female hobgoblins had not marched with the army.

Seperately we do see a female hobgoblin in panel 12 (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0703.html).

[BloodSquirrel]

It's an opinion also expressed by Durkon (and accepted by Roy). Whether you think it's a rational opinion based on what they know, it does seem to be communicating to the audience how the comic wants us to see it.

Two problems here:

1) Neither Roy nor Durkon know anything about what lands the goblins had 1,000 years ago- they are just taking what Redcloak says at (somewhat) face value and reacting to it.

2) Both Roy and Durkon are present-minded enough that it doesn't really matter to them whether the goblins are in a bad situation now because they were given lands 1,000 years ago or because things have just been crappy for them for the last couple of generations. Their conversation about what level of responsibility they have to fix it is agnostic to that point, so neither of them spend much time interrogating that part of the premise.

What's relevant is that the currently-living goblins inherited a bad position. Redcloak, doing what extremists do best, is taking the least nuanced position on it possible.



Also, I think you go to far to label it highly implausible that the Goblin's limited starting spot is the reason for their lack of resources now. Just because that's not the only way things can work out, nor the way it has tended to work in the real world, does not make it implausible. And even if it were implausible it is intuitive, and the Giant not necessarily being an expert in such things may have still written his comic that way.

1) Death of the author and all that- The Giant's (presumed) lack of expertise in economics does not bind us to interpreting his work in a way that is absurd when a more elegant interpretation fits the text just as nicely.

2) It is highly implausible. There are good reasons why it doesn't work that way in the real world- and we've seen evidence in-comic that goblins can and have conquered lands at various points. We've seen that geopolitical boundaries are not static, and 1,000 years is a very long time for them to be static.

Again: Even Redcloak contradicts himself on this point. If it really were a matter of "Well, we got screwed 1,000 years ago" the establishment of Gobbotopia should mean that the problem is fixed. But he doesn't think that way, because he's stuck reasoning backwards from his pre-existing conclusion (The Plan is justified and necessary), and everything else is just a matter of convenience for his narrative.

[Mechalich]

2) It is highly implausible. There are good reasons why it doesn't work that way in the real world- and we've seen evidence in-comic that goblins can and have conquered lands at various points. We've seen that geopolitical boundaries are not static, and 1,000 years is a very long time for them to be static.


It's not implausible, it's inconsistent. An environmentally deterministic fantasy world wherein the starting distribution of 'races' saw some of them placed at a tremendous disadvantage they could never overcome is quite possible. For an extreme example: 'hey why does this world have no gnomes? They got Antarctica. Oh...'

However, you are correct in that Stickworld does not appear to possess such a history. While the goblins may have begun at a disadvantage - if the hobgoblin settlements are an example they would seem to have been given moderately less fertile highland environments compared to lowland ones - they have clearly managed to acquire other, better lands at points. Also important is that because Stickworld goblins are essentially green humans with a dental quirk, they can live in lands used by humans just fine. They have no physiological variation that world place them at a permanent disadvantage in the way a species, for example, incapable of consuming cereals would be.

So yeah, the big problem is that the in-comic evidence of what the goblins socioeconomic status actually is contradicts statements by various characters as to that status being permanent disadvantage.

[Liquor Box]

Two problems here:

1) Neither Roy nor Durkon know anything about what lands the goblins had 1,000 years ago- they are just taking what Redcloak says at (somewhat) face value and reacting to it.

2) Both Roy and Durkon are present-minded enough that it doesn't really matter to them whether the goblins are in a bad situation now because they were given lands 1,000 years ago or because things have just been crappy for them for the last couple of generations. Their conversation about what level of responsibility they have to fix it is agnostic to that point, so neither of them spend much time interrogating that part of the premise.

What's relevant is that the currently-living goblins inherited a bad position. Redcloak, doing what extremists do best, is taking the least nuanced position on it possible.

That may be true, which was why I said "whether you think it's a rational opinion or not". Durkon clearly believes (and Roy accepts) that the Goblin's lack of resources is because of their poor starting position. Even if that it is not a well founded conclusion, in my opinion it is what the author is trying to communicate.


1) Death of the author and all that- The Giant's (presumed) lack of expertise in economics does not bind us to interpreting his work in a way that is absurd when a more elegant interpretation fits the text just as nicely.

2) It is highly implausible. There are good reasons why it doesn't work that way in the real world- and we've seen evidence in-comic that goblins can and have conquered lands at various points. We've seen that geopolitical boundaries are not static, and 1,000 years is a very long time for them to be static.

I don't think there is much to be gained in arguing the toss whether it is improbable or highly implausible, and if we start using real world examples it may tempt us toward the forbidden topics. I may have to suffice to say that I think it is merely improbable, whereas you think it is highly implausible.


Again: Even Redcloak contradicts himself on this point. If it really were a matter of "Well, we got screwed 1,000 years ago" the establishment of Gobbotopia should mean that the problem is fixed. But he doesn't think that way, because he's stuck reasoning backwards from his pre-existing conclusion (The Plan is justified and necessary), and everything else is just a matter of convenience for his narrative.

This is a good point though. Whatever the reason the the goblins having poor lands at the start of the comic, why has the seizure of Azure City not remedied it? Are there any theories for why Redcloak presses on, other than zealotry?

[pyrefiend]

This is a good point though. Whatever the reason the the goblins having poor lands at the start of the comic, why has the seizure of Azure City not remedied it? Are there any theories for why Redcloak presses on, other than zealotry?

I thought he started to address this in his talk with Durkon, although Durkon cut him off. Something about wanting more recognition from the gods for the Goblins. Ideally he probably wants the gods to (i) apologize and (ii) make reparations to the Goblins.

[Mechalich]

This is a good point though. Whatever the reason the the goblins having poor lands at the start of the comic, why has the seizure of Azure City not remedied it? Are there any theories for why Redcloak presses on, other than zealotry?

Two reasons.

The first is that Redcloak is a priest and all the evidence is that he's genuinely devout. The Plan is, so far as he knows, the Dark One's will, and therefore it's his sacred duty to carry it out. If the Dark One told him to stop, he'd stop. He'd probably be upset about all that wasted effort, but he'd do it.

The second reason is Xykon. Redcloak has sold Xykon a bill of goods and if Xykon doesn't get what he believes he deserves he will absolutely turn his skeletal but around and lay waste to Gobbotoppia out of pure spite. Redcloak is very aware of this and as such his continued pursuit of the plan is also a means to protect Gobbotoppia. Now Redcloak should have the means to stop Xykon, since he has control of the phylactery, but because he believes that he needs Xykon's power to complete the plan - and he does, for the action economy if nothing else - so long as reason one remains he needs to keep Xykon moving.

Now, this does mean that the continued plot is entirely dependent upon the Dark One holding the divine idiot ball. A ten minute frank conversation with basically any of the other gods, with the possible exception of Hel, could resolve this. However, pretty that's not going to happen. OOTS has reached a point where the overall plot is that the mortals must rectify the failures of the gods.

[Fyraltari]

This is a good point though. Whatever the reason the the goblins having poor lands at the start of the comic, why has the seizure of Azure City not remedied it? Are there any theories for why Redcloak presses on, other than zealotry?

Gobbotopia is just one city-state. It isn't enough to accommodate the needs of the goblinoid people worldwide. And Redcloak expresses worry that Gobbotopia would be destroyed the moment the Azurite are strong enough to try. (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1209.html) Now, I don't think that getting divine recognition would help luch in that regard, but he has a point that with Xykon out of the city, likely for good, Gobbotopia only exists as long as the neighbouring kingdoms allow it too. For the moment Cliffport sees Gobbotopia as an asset in their rivalry with elven lands and it's likely the other states have similar pragmatic reason tolerating its continued existence. But that's hardly a confortable position to be in. If you felt your survival depended on people who hate you finding you useful, wouldn't you look for ways to ensure your safety?

Now that I've advocated for the devil... That isn't the reason Redcloak presses on. He presses on because at this point completing the Plan has become the end rather than the mean. securing one nation-state isn't enough to justify the people he's sacrificed to Xykon in his eye(s), he will accept nothing less than what he set out to do in the first place.

[WanderingMist]

Okay, so here's what I'm thinking. Suppose when the gods create the next world, they're in a more egalitarian mood. They create two sentient species, the Onefolk and the Twofolk, and they give them each equally good land. We can even imagine that they start on islands that are identical copies of each other.

Still, they're probably not going to stay equal forever. Eventually — say 500 years into the history of the world — the Onefolk could have a way better standard of living than the Twofolk. Maybe there was a big war and they won, or maybe they just happened to develop faster, or maybe their leaders are more competent, or maybe it's some combination of factors. But at this point we're 500 years into the history of the world, and the situation between the Onefolk and the Twofolk is basically the same as the situation between the Dwarves and the Goblins. If you're born a Dwarf, then you're lucky: you have a way better start in life than if you were born a Goblin. In the same way, if you're born a Onefolk you're lucky: you have a way better start in life than if you were born a Twofolk.

So how is this situation with the Onefolk and the Twofolk any better than the old situation with the Dwarves and the Goblins? It's true that the gods aren't directly responsible for the Twofolk's plight, whereas they are responsible for the Goblins's plight. But how is that any comfort to the Twofolk? Their lot in life is still just as bad as the Goblins'.

I think Durkon and Redcloak are both wrong to put so much emphasis on the fact that the Goblins were given poor resources from the start. If they'd given everybody equal resources, then at best that would only guarantee that there are no serious inequalities for a couple of generations. But those inequalities could still arise. So the real problem, I think, is that the gods make no efforts to fix serious inequalities when they arise.

There's an actual explanation for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect

Basically, the snowball effect applies in opposite directions in regards to wealth, so the side that starts with more will slowly acquire more, and the side that starts with less will slowly lose more. The inequality doesn't even need to have started out particularly badly, but it would've gotten worse and worse with each passing generation. Like, one side starts with $1 (Side A), and one side starts with -$1 (Side B). Presume both sides earn $1 over their entire lives and each side has two children. At the end of their lives, they give half of their money to their children. Side A, who started with $1, is able to give $1 to each of their children. Side B, who started with -$1, can't give their children anything, so both children must borrow $1 before they can start earning money for themselves. This leaves Side A with $2, while Side B has -$2. This is a simplified explanation, but I'm sure you can extrapolate from here.

[brian 333]

There's an actual explanation for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect

Basically, the snowball effect applies in opposite directions in regards to wealth, so the side that starts with more will slowly acquire more, and the side that starts with less will slowly lose more. The inequality doesn't even need to have started out particularly badly, but it would've gotten worse and worse with each passing generation. Like, one side starts with $1 (Side A), and one side starts with -$1 (Side B). Presume both sides earn $1 over their entire lives and each side has two children. At the end of their lives, they give half of their money to their children. Side A, who started with $1, is able to give $1 to each of their children. Side B, who started with -$1, can't give their children anything, so both children must borrow $1 before they can start earning money for themselves. This leaves Side A with $2, while Side B has -$2. This is a simplified explanation, but I'm sure you can extrapolate from here.

That actually is disproven by real world experience. Over many generations, wealthy families get less wealthy while impoverished ones get rich. It takes longer in places where the law entrenches privilege, but it happens over time.

The aquisition of wealth has far more to do with innovation and effort than starting position. As an example, when I was young, China could not afford to feed its population. Then the government allowed entrepreneurship. Any guesses where the most, and richest, people can be found? (Happened in one generation.)

Wealth has nothing to do with where you begin. It has everything to do with being able to benefit from effort, and leveraging that benefit for more benefit. Hard work alone is not enough; education is required, so that the one attempting to improve can recognize opportunities.

Any 'solution' that involves giving wealth to those who have not earned it is doomed to fail every time. Not knowing how to acquire it leaves the suddenly wealthy being with no ability to maintain the wealth, and dependant upon the generosity of their benefactors for more when the wealth runs out.

In short, there is nothing the Azurites can do about the goblin's poverty. The solution lies with the goblins. They must educate themselves in agriculture and trade, utilize the resources they do have and leverage them to acquire better.

Economics does not favor a particular appearance, it favors a particular mindset. And it rewards hard work.

[WanderingMist]

That actually is disproven by real world experience. Over many generations, wealthy families get less wealthy while impoverished ones get rich. It takes longer in places where the law entrenches privilege, but it happens over time.

The acquisition of wealth has far more to do with innovation and effort than starting position. As an example, when I was young, China could not afford to feed its population. Then the government allowed entrepreneurship. Any guesses where the most, and richest, people can be found? (Happened in one generation.)

Wealth has nothing to do with where you begin. It has everything to do with being able to benefit from effort, and leveraging that benefit for more benefit. Hard work alone is not enough; education is required, so that the one attempting to improve can recognize opportunities.

Any 'solution' that involves giving wealth to those who have not earned it is doomed to fail every time. Not knowing how to acquire it leaves the suddenly wealthy being with no ability to maintain the wealth, and dependant upon the generosity of their benefactors for more when the wealth runs out.

In short, there is nothing the Azurites can do about the goblin's poverty. The solution lies with the goblins. They must educate themselves in agriculture and trade, utilize the resources they do have and leverage them to acquire better.

Economics does not favor a particular appearance, it favors a particular mindset. And it rewards hard work.

Pretty sure there's not supposed to be real-world talk, but I'd bet almost anything it was people in cities with access to resources that people far away from the cities didn't have, and possibly weren't even aware existed.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There's a reason I called it a simplified explanation. That may apply to singular families within a culture, but not to entire cultures themselves. The richer a culture starts compared to its neighbors, the richer it gets over time compared to them.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Honestly, it's amazing you said it's disproven by real world experience and then immediately proceeded to give examples of exactly how the effect works in the real world, where hard work alone isn't enough even though it's supposed to be, you need to have started out with something to give you an edge over someone else, which is exactly what the goblins are complaining about.

"A poor man will buy 10 pairs of boots for $10 each, while a rich man will buy a single $50 pair of boots. And at the end of the day, the poor man's feet are still wet." -Sam's Vimes Boots Theory Of Socioeconomic Unfairness

The poor spend more money than the rich over time, because they can't pay high up-front costs for quality, which, again, leads to a downward spiral. Again, these are classes as a whole, not individual family's accruings of wealth.

[Mechalich]

Real world examples of are of extremely limited utility with regard to a 3.5e D&D style world, even one like OOTS that is relentlessly unoptimized. Factors like the fertility of the land determining population density and therefore largely determining overall economic output and military power simply do not apply in a world where a single individual can charge into battle against hundreds and slaughter them all (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0439.html).

In this world, where everything about the comparative power and prosperity of a culture is determined by its ability to produce high-level individuals, the formula for societal success is drastically different than the real world. As an extreme example, it is entirely possible to turn 'bad land' into 'good land' permanently with the right spells. The ideal 'starting circumstance' is therefore the one most likely to produce high-level individuals. Now, the comic did advance (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1232.html) the argument that the physical resources are important - better armor, better weapons, even better nutrition. And this makes some sense. Mathematically the lowest levels are swingy, and even a small advantage, such as the +1 bonus from having a masterwork weapon, would lead to significantly greater survivorship into the mid-levels across tens of thousands of cases.

Now, such an analysis presupposes that high-level individuals aren't using their phenomenal power to put their thumb on the scales and shift everything to the permanent advantage of those they favor. That's an unrealistic assumption - Dark Sun, where the first guy to unlock the equivalent of epic level went on a xenocidal rampage, is a much more likely scenario - but Stickworld does seem to maintain it.

Of course, because the leveling system actively mandates conflict as the path to power, it seems more or less inevitable that someone gets the short end. A society becomes strong by having its elite members go out and murder other people, and this is inherently somewhat zero sum. As another extreme example, it is entirely possible for a society to become strong by having its elite members slaughter literally everyone else in that society, which is how necromancer-kings come to power. In a very real sense, the goblins, because of their high birthrate coupled to an apparent willingness to have lots of children even when living in abject poverty, actually serve to empower the rest of the world by providing additional grist for the leveling millstone. The world is a "big ol' soul farm."

Fixing the problem, as I see it, requires finding a way to power up souls without paying the price in other souls. For example, leveling up need not rely on fighting other sapient beings. There's plenty of constructs and such out there that could be slaughtered as level fodder in order to make the world stronger, so long as their invasion could be channeled in a way that made the casualties to soul empowerment ratio work out positively.

Edit: in theory, assuming the Snarl's 'invasion' actually takes the form of some endless horde of killable monsters, the way to save the world is actually to fight to the bitter end and induce mass leveling, and allowing the gods to reap a truly prodigious quantity of energy from the suddenly empowered fallen.

[InvisibleBison]

the leveling system actively mandates conflict as the path to power

No it doesn't. You get XP from overcoming challenges, not from winning fights. Not to mention roleplaying XP, which is confirmed to exist in the comic.

[pearl jam]

That actually is disproven by real world experience. Over many generations, wealthy families get less wealthy while impoverished ones get rich. It takes longer in places where the law entrenches privilege, but it happens over time.

The aquisition of wealth has far more to do with innovation and effort than starting position. As an example, when I was young, China could not afford to feed its population. Then the government allowed entrepreneurship. Any guesses where the most, and richest, people can be found? (Happened in one generation.)

Wealth has nothing to do with where you begin. It has everything to do with being able to benefit from effort, and leveraging that benefit for more benefit. Hard work alone is not enough; education is required, so that the one attempting to improve can recognize opportunities.

Any 'solution' that involves giving wealth to those who have not earned it is doomed to fail every time. Not knowing how to acquire it leaves the suddenly wealthy being with no ability to maintain the wealth, and dependant upon the generosity of their benefactors for more when the wealth runs out.

In short, there is nothing the Azurites can do about the goblin's poverty. The solution lies with the goblins. They must educate themselves in agriculture and trade, utilize the resources they do have and leverage them to acquire better.

Economics does not favor a particular appearance, it favors a particular mindset. And it rewards hard work.

This is absolutely ridiculous. Sure, wealth is not entirely static, it's not entirely impossible for a truly wealthy family to lose that wealth or for someone to rise up from poverty to create generational wealth, but chalking up the success of the wealthy to hard work and and ignoring all the different ways that wealth begets wealth is just the propaganda of the ruling class.

[pendejochy]

I think even if the goblins got "good land" they would have wound up in a similar position as they do today. Being on fertile land doesn't give you the knowledge to farm it, and being on top of rich deposits of gems or precious metals doesn't give you the knowledge to mine it. I think what mainly screwed over the goblins was being abandoned by Fenris. Look at the kobolds, they are similar to goblins in that they are easy "prey" for low level adventurers, and that they live in bad land with another race hogging all the good land. However, the kobolds have Tiamat and possibly other gods supporting them, so they have a place in the society of the western continent than just being raiders and brigands. With the support of gods, other peoples have powerful divine beings with an overt interest in helping your society be prosperous, who can appoint clerics who can hopefully guide your own people. It's like two families living in a run down neighborhood. Even the children of a poor family have a chance to grow up to eventually be prosperous under the guidance of wise and loving parents. But a group of orphans turned loose on the streets with nobody to care for or to protect them is more likely to wind up to turn out badly.

In an alternate scenario where the goblins started off in the most resource rich lands possible, they could have very well have ended up having a similar lot in life as they do in the present world of the comic if Fenris had still abandoned them. Goblin society would stagnate or decline without religious leadership, and then the gods of humans, or dwarves, or elves, or whatever other race wanted that land would still give them clerics, prophets, and other such gifts to make up for their lack of resources, resulting in the goblin lands being raided and the goblins overrun or pushed aside.

[brian 333]

This is absolutely ridiculous. Sure, wealth is not entirely static, it's not entirely impossible for a truly wealthy family to lose that wealth or for someone to rise up from poverty to create generational wealth, but chalking up the success of the wealthy to hard work and and ignoring all the different ways that wealth begets wealth is just the propaganda of the ruling class.

History proves otherwise. Wealth earned in one generation is squandered by the next. In very rare cases several generations grow wealth before it is lost. It is only when governments actively prohibit access to self improvement that multi-generational wealth becomes possible. Various caste and privileged class systems prevent upward mobility, some more successfully than others, but that is a product of societal control rather than economics.

Wealth does not beget wealth. If that was true, Spain would be the wealthiest nation on the planet, considering the volume of American gold and silver that flowed into that nation just a few centuries ago.

One cannot be given wealth. A history of lottery winners illustrates that. Those who have no education in wealth management quickly find out how easy it is to turn millions into millions in debt. On the other hand, with that education and some determination, wealth is not all that hard to acquire, even if you have nothing else. The only limit is how much work you want to put into it.

[Mechalich]

History proves otherwise. Wealth earned in one generation is squandered by the next. In very rare cases several generations grow wealth before it is lost. It is only when governments actively prohibit access to self improvement that multi-generational wealth becomes possible. Various caste and privileged class systems prevent upward mobility, some more successfully than others, but that is a product of societal control rather than economics.

Incorrect. Historically, multi-generational wealth has been the norm. This has only changed since the industrial revolution, due to a combination of government policies (such as estate taxes), rapid societal turnover (such as large-scale wars), and extremely rapid changes in overall economic output. Fortunes that are resistant to such methods, such as those held by the world's remaining royal houses, have successfully endured for centuries.


Wealth does not beget wealth. If that was true, Spain would be the wealthiest nation on the planet, considering the volume of American gold and silver that flowed into that nation just a few centuries ago.

The wealth of the pre-industrial past has been dwarfed by the post-industrial revolutionary present. Spain was, possibly, the richest country in the world in 1550, but total global economic output in 1550 was a mere ~450 billion dollars. Total output (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-gdp-over-the-last-two-millennia) in 1900 was 3.4 trillion, and in 2000 was 65 trillion (adjusted for inflation).


One cannot be given wealth. A history of lottery winners illustrates that. Those who have no education in wealth management quickly find out how easy it is to turn millions into millions in debt.

This is a myth. While a small number of highly publicized lottery winners do go bust, most lottery winners are just fine (https://slate.com/human-interest/2022/07/mega-millions-jackpot-winner-numbers-myths-about-lotteries.html), and many of those who do have trouble had pre-existing gambling problems. Yes, there are certain groups who struggle to manage drastic upward change in their financial circumstances, notably pro athletes, but this is uncommon.


Now, misconceptions aside, there is some truth to the idea that power cannot be given in D&D, since power is spellcasting and there no way to just give someone levels in a Tier I class. It is possible to upgrade a society's spellcasting quotient, for example using Simulacrum or spellstitched undead, but the true ultimate power of 9th level spells does have to be earned.

[theNater]

Spain was, possibly, the richest country in the world in 1550...
Worth noting that Spain is still within the top 15%. Very much not the riches to rags story brian 333 is suggesting.

[hroþila]

Remember that study that said the richest families in Florence in 1427 were still by and large the richest families in Florence in 2016?

[pyrefiend]

That actually is disproven by real world experience. Over many generations, wealthy families get less wealthy while impoverished ones get rich. It takes longer in places where the law entrenches privilege, but it happens over time.

Not disputing this, but it certainly doesn't suffice to establish your conclusion that


Wealth has nothing to do with where you begin.

Wealth has a lot to do with where you begin, even if rich kids tend to squander inherited wealth.

Ask yourself: if you had to give a newborn baby to either a very rich family or a very poor family, and if were just trying to maximize the amount of money that baby will have when it grows to be an adult, which would you choose? (You don't know anything else about the families, other than how wealthy they are.) I think it is absolutely obvious that you would give the newborn to the rich family. It's ridiculous to suppose that being born in a rich or poor family has nothing to do with your future financial prospects.

[Liquor Box]

I thought he started to address this in his talk with Durkon, although Durkon cut him off. Something about wanting more recognition from the gods for the Goblins. Ideally he probably wants the gods to (i) apologize and (ii) make reparations to the Goblins.


Two reasons.

The first is that Redcloak is a priest and all the evidence is that he's genuinely devout. The Plan is, so far as he knows, the Dark One's will, and therefore it's his sacred duty to carry it out. If the Dark One told him to stop, he'd stop. He'd probably be upset about all that wasted effort, but he'd do it.

The second reason is Xykon. Redcloak has sold Xykon a bill of goods and if Xykon doesn't get what he believes he deserves he will absolutely turn his skeletal but around and lay waste to Gobbotoppia out of pure spite. Redcloak is very aware of this and as such his continued pursuit of the plan is also a means to protect Gobbotoppia. Now Redcloak should have the means to stop Xykon, since he has control of the phylactery, but because he believes that he needs Xykon's power to complete the plan - and he does, for the action economy if nothing else - so long as reason one remains he needs to keep Xykon moving.

Now, this does mean that the continued plot is entirely dependent upon the Dark One holding the divine idiot ball. A ten minute frank conversation with basically any of the other gods, with the possible exception of Hel, could resolve this. However, pretty that's not going to happen. OOTS has reached a point where the overall plot is that the mortals must rectify the failures of the gods.


Gobbotopia is just one city-state. It isn't enough to accommodate the needs of the goblinoid people worldwide. And Redcloak expresses worry that Gobbotopia would be destroyed the moment the Azurite are strong enough to try. (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1209.html) Now, I don't think that getting divine recognition would help luch in that regard, but he has a point that with Xykon out of the city, likely for good, Gobbotopia only exists as long as the neighbouring kingdoms allow it too. For the moment Cliffport sees Gobbotopia as an asset in their rivalry with elven lands and it's likely the other states have similar pragmatic reason tolerating its continued existence. But that's hardly a confortable position to be in. If you felt your survival depended on people who hate you finding you useful, wouldn't you look for ways to ensure your safety?

Now that I've advocated for the devil... That isn't the reason Redcloak presses on. He presses on because at this point completing the Plan has become the end rather than the mean. securing one nation-state isn't enough to justify the people he's sacrificed to Xykon in his eye(s), he will accept nothing less than what he set out to do in the first place.

Asked and answered, thank you.


There's an actual explanation for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect

Basically, the snowball effect applies in opposite directions in regards to wealth, so the side that starts with more will slowly acquire more, and the side that starts with less will slowly lose more. The inequality doesn't even need to have started out particularly badly, but it would've gotten worse and worse with each passing generation. Like, one side starts with $1 (Side A), and one side starts with -$1 (Side B). Presume both sides earn $1 over their entire lives and each side has two children. At the end of their lives, they give half of their money to their children. Side A, who started with $1, is able to give $1 to each of their children. Side B, who started with -$1, can't give their children anything, so both children must borrow $1 before they can start earning money for themselves. This leaves Side A with $2, while Side B has -$2. This is a simplified explanation, but I'm sure you can extrapolate from here.

This is about having status attributed to you for your scientific work (the greater your initial profile, the more recognition for later works). I don't think it has much application to the question of whether peoples with more or less resources will snowball to become even more extreme.

As noted earlier, Africa is probably the continent with the most resources but most peoples from there have quite low standards of living nowadays. Japan has almost no natural resources, but the people there have a high standard of living (same is true of Europe, which is not particularly well endowed with resources). There are so many other factors that go into the success of a society/country/people that starting resources is generally not a strong indicator.


Worth noting that Spain is still within the top 15%. Very much not the riches to rags story brian 333 is suggesting.

I think the point was that it did not snowball upward, but instead declined.

For more stark examples of riches to rags, take the Ottomon Empire to now Turkey, or Mali from 800 years ago until now. The reverse is the very poor Japan of a couple of hundred years ago to now.

[brian 333]

Not disputing this, but it certainly doesn't suffice to establish your conclusion that



Wealth has a lot to do with where you begin, even if rich kids tend to squander inherited wealth.

Ask yourself: if you had to give a newborn baby to either a very rich family or a very poor family, and if were just trying to maximize the amount of money that baby will have when it grows to be an adult, which would you choose? (You don't know anything else about the families, other than how wealthy they are.) I think it is absolutely obvious that you would give the newborn to the rich family. It's ridiculous to suppose that being born in a rich or poor family has nothing to do with your future financial prospects.

This has more to do with access to education {scrubbed}.

With that education, and scrubbed, formerly impoverished people become wealthy in staggering numbers. The starting point really does not matter.

[pyrefiend]

The starting point really does not matter.

Are you really saying that, all else being equal, children of poor families are just as likely as children of wealthy families to end up being wealthy themselves?

[theNater]

This has more to do with access to education...
You know that familial wealth influences access to education, right?

[brian 333]

Are you really saying that, all else being equal, children of poor families are just as likely as children of wealthy families to end up being wealthy themselves?

No. I'm saying that, rich or poor, education and drive enable the person to recognize opportunity and improve their economic situation. Poor children seldom have the same educational opportunities that rich ones do. But a person who understands money can make the best of what he has and improve, the only limit being how much effort he is willing to put into it.

Example: when I was 10, my mother made me wash the windows on our house. My aunt saw me doing this and offered me $2/window to wash hers. With the $20 I bought a bucket, a brush on a pole, and a bottle of detergent, (and some candy,) and went around my neighborhood washing windows. The next summer I bought a pump-up sprayer and a cheap, $120) pressure washer. I did windows and vinyl siding. My friend joined, and we expanded our customer base to his family's houses. By the time I was 13 I had established myself as the kid who washed houses, and even after getting a full time job washing dishes at a Chinese restaurant I would get calls from former customers to do windows on my days off. In fact, after I got out of the navy my friend and I continued to earn money on the side washing houses. I could have built a business around it. I made other choices, but when I began all I had was a strong back and a mother who wanted clean windows.

(If you need money, give it a try. A scrub brush, a bucket of dishwashing liquid and water, and a garden hose will earn you $10/window and take about ten minutes each. Want to make $60/hour?)

It really isn't where you start that matters. It's that you start. And keep learning and keep trying even when you fail.

[Peelee]

No. I'm saying that, rich or poor, education and drive enable the person to recognize opportunity and improve their economic situation. Poor children seldom have the same educational opportunities that rich ones do. But a person who understands money can make the best of what he has and improve, the only limit being how much effort he is willing to put into it.

Example: when I was 10, my mother made me wash the windows on our house. My aunt saw me doing this and offered me $2/window to wash hers. With the $20 I bought a bucket, a brush on a pole, and a bottle of detergent, (and some candy,) and went around my neighborhood washing windows. The next summer I bought a pump-up sprayer and a cheap, $120) pressure washer. I did windows and vinyl siding. My friend joined, and we expanded our customer base to his family's houses. By the time I was 13 I had established myself as the kid who washed houses, and even after getting a full time job washing dishes at a Chinese restaurant I would get calls from former customers to do windows on my days off. In fact, after I got out of the navy my friend and I continued to earn money on the side washing houses. I could have built a business around it. I made other choices, but when I began all I had was a strong back and a mother who wanted clean windows.

(If you need money, give it a try. A scrub brush, a bucket of dishwashing liquid and water, and a garden hose will earn you $10/window and take about ten minutes each. Want to make $60/hour?)

It really isn't where you start that matters. It's that you start. And keep learning and keep trying even when you fail.

I read Star Wars books and played Guitar Hero while you were washing windows. I now have two cars with no car payments and two houses with no mortgage payment, because it's all paid off, because I was born into generational wealth. I am soon to have a third house.

Next time you make your mortgage payment make sure to write me a note on how generational wealth doesn't matter.

[hroþila]

It really isn't where you start that matters. It's that you start.
But if you hadn't started in suburbia you wouldn't have been able to do any of that. And your family needed money to get there in the first place.

[Mechalich]

All this discussion of individual wealth is largely beside the point. While a society is assembled from individuals, that aggregation is not constant. One of the biggest reasons the wealth of any given society changes is that its membership changes, sometimes peacefully through immigration or emigration, but often through warfare. In pre-industrial societies where wealth is largely represented by land, societies lose or gain wealth through the accumulation or loss of land via the change in boundaries with their neighbors.

With regards to the goblins, this does lead to the consideration of xenophobia/ethnic prejudice and its relation to wealth. The very idea of 'goblin lands' is an extremely racialized concept, since it intrinsically rejects the idea of multiracial society where everyone can participate in the economy and the economic fate of the entire society is not tied to the fortunes of a specific racial or ethnic group. And we know such a thing is possible. The Empire of Blood, notably, was multi-racial with non-humans in high-level positions and as far as can be determined no explicitly race-based legal oppression (now, this is at least partly through the expedient of universal evil autocracy: 'oppression for everybody!' so it's hard to generalize from that).

Of the other hand, goblins are not humans and speciesism is not equal to racism, because of the difference between apparent variation and actual variation. The apparent variation, in the case of the goblins, would be their green skin, which does not appear to have any practical impact of any kind. By contrast their reduced lifespans and higher reproductive rate are actual variations that would result in a goblin society having a different structure from a human society even if all other factors were equal. OOTS has, IMO, not handled this well, alternatively conflating goblins with humans when it suits the narrative and dividing them from humans when it doesn't. It also doesn't help that the principle differences - lifespan and birth rate - are difficult to show in the timescale of the narrative. A more obvious difference, like inability to eat the same foods, would make this clear. Note that this doesn't have to be some huge variance like obligate carnivory, it could simply be something like inability to eat the same crops. Azure City had an east Asian theme, so the principal crop was probably rice. Imagine if the goblins couldn't eat rice and had to replant every field for corn instead. that would mean every time the goblins conquered an Azurite settlement that'd have to completely restructure the agriculture base.

Actually, that sort of thing is also how the 'bad land' issue could persist long term. If the goblins were initially given some sort of upland hill environment and their bodies are optimized to consume crops native to that environment - ex. root vegetables - that don't have the same level of productivity as lowland cereals, even when they are able to expand to such areas the goblins might be unable to reach the same density as humans because they cannot achieve the same level of hectare-to-hectare productivity as human farmers. Now, D&D is a bad system to use to try and make a point like this because it includes various ways to produce infinite food - such as the endless hydra head restaurant example in the comic - but the idea is sound.

[Liquor Box]

You know that familial wealth influences access to education, right?

The extent to which it does, if at all, differs a lot from place to place. Brian appears to acknowledge that not everyone in every country has access to education by his use of the word 'if'.

Brian's premise seems to be that, if a person has access to education, and if they are sufficiently capable then they will have a comparable chance of getting a well paid job regardless of wealth. He acknowledges that the education point is an 'if'. Some people might thing that lack of wealth might present other barriers (and this may even be true in some cases), but I don't Brian's point is clearly wrong. When we discussed IQ tests some months back, we found research that IQ was a much greater predictor of economic success that starting wealth.

That does though apply more to income from employment. You need seed money to get wealth through investments, and it's a significant disadvantage if you have to generate that seed money yourself. So Brian's point probably means that a clever person with access to education can make their way to the upper middle class (doctors, lawyers etc) without a good starting point, but it will be unusual for them to become actually rich.


All this discussion of individual wealth is largely beside the point.

This is absolutely true. Social mobility of individuals/families within a lifetime has little to do with the point of the thread - whether starting land for a whole people is a strong predictor of their standard of living thousands of years later. The discussion on individuals is just an aside.

[Reach Weapon]

(If you need money, give it a try. A scrub brush, a bucket of dishwashing liquid and water, and a garden hose will earn you $10/window and take about ten minutes each. Want to make $60/hour?)

In fairness, if it was generally acceptable for some elf to hire you to wash some upper story windows and then push you to your death, it would limit the success of your entrepreneurial endeavor, no?

(The level of headwinds against any specific individuals or groups need not be so stark, but this example was supported by prior comics, so...)

[pyrefiend]

Are you really saying that, all else being equal, children of poor families are just as likely as children of wealthy families to end up being wealthy themselves?No.


It really isn't where you start that matters.

This is a contradiction, isn’t it? If your answer to my question is “no”, then you do think that where you start matters. It’s not all that matters, obviously, but it does matter.


I read Star Wars books and played Guitar Hero while you were washing windows. I now have two cars with no car payments and two houses with no mortgage payment, because it's all paid off, because I was born into generational wealth. I am soon to have a third house.

I agree with you that being born into a rich family matters for one’s future prospects, but this really seems to be reinforcing Brian’s point about what happens to generational wealth.

[Mechalich]

I agree with you that being born into a rich family matters for one’s future prospects, but this really seems to be reinforcing Brian’s point about what happens to generational wealth.

Except real estate is wealth, so being in a position to buy a third house means considerable wealth accumulation has occurred. In fact real estate is one of the largest stores of wealth known and a big part of the reason why certain extremely long-enduring organizations tend to be exceedingly wealthy, because they've held lots of land over the long term. This is doubly true in pre-industrial agrarian economies in which economic growth was both drastically lower than it is now and also much less variable. In such economies the reason a rich family lost a fortune was most commonly that someone else took it from them, usually by force of arms, in which case the fortune by no means disappeared, it was just inherited via iron rather than blood. Fortunes based in land ownership could be lost due to factors such as climate change (common in irrigation dependent 'oasis states') or due to siltation (common in harbor cities), but these processes tend to operate on a timescale of centuries.

It would, in fact, be possible to measure the variance in starting position given to a species via a form of survey of their starting lands, by assigning every hectare a value based on things like agricultural productivity, game production level, mineral resources, timber resources, and the presence of miscellaneous resources like lacquer or spices. Certain video games, like Civilization, already do this, and while it's an approximation, it's certain suitable to make a point about one group starting in a position of disadvantage. Here, I'll throw around some simplified numbers. Let's say that when Stickworld was created each major species got 100 squares worth of land. Those squares all have some average value. Combine these two together and there's a 'starting real estate value' for each species. It's entirely possible that species like Dwarves and Humans had numbers like 5,000, while the Goblins only got 2,500.

Now, there's the very important question of, if such a thing happened, why did it happen. If you're building a world 4x style it is generally intended that every species or civ has the same amount of starting points. So if the goblins got shorted in the 'initial real estate' category they should have gotten compensated for in some other area, but, and this is an important but, as most veteran 4x players know, even when games are intending to be balanced, it generally turns out that certain traits are actually way more valuable than others and certain traits are trap options and should never be taken. That's why games like Stellaris have 'species build' lists.

The key factor here is that the Gods have a 'no post-creation edits' rule in place and are deeply imperfect and flawed beings. This means that basically every time they create the world they're using the alpha version, with no patches allowed. That's going to have species fall out in an unbalanced fashion, and in the case of Stickworld it was the goblins who ended up with the crummy build (though honestly their build still seems to be pretty good, it's not like they have an Int or Wis penalty or something that would be really crippling in 3.5 D&D).

So, actually, thinking this way, the plight of the goblins really comes down to insufficient playtesting. Which, as a moral regarding TTRPG game and setting design is very much on point, though I don't feel like it was the originally intended one.

[BloodSquirrel]

I read Star Wars books and played Guitar Hero while you were washing windows. I now have two cars with no car payments and two houses with no mortgage payment, because it's all paid off, because I was born into generational wealth. I am soon to have a third house.

Next time you make your mortgage payment make sure to write me a note on how generational wealth doesn't matter.

This is binary thinking.

The son of a billionaire is almost certainly going to go through life more well-off than the son of a welfare recipient, but both are very likely to deviate significantly from their father. We can see- both from basic math and from real-world examples- that even a 50% difference from generation to generation will accumulate very rapidly as generations pass, and the biggest gains/losses are likely to occur when the old generation is on the extreme end of the scale.

Generational wealth matters in the short term, but it doesn't persist very long from a historical standpoint. A very few families get lucky enough to enshrine their wealth within a stable political system, but the richest man in America right is not a Rockefeller, let alone the direct male decedent of Robert Morris. Generational poverty lasts longer to the degree that poverty is more common than wealth in the first place, but people escape it with regularity.

[BloodSquirrel]

Of the other hand, goblins are not humans and speciesism is not equal to racism, because of the difference between apparent variation and actual variation. The apparent variation, in the case of the goblins, would be their green skin, which does not appear to have any practical impact of any kind. By contrast their reduced lifespans and higher reproductive rate are actual variations that would result in a goblin society having a different structure from a human society even if all other factors were equal. OOTS has, IMO, not handled this well, alternatively conflating goblins with humans when it suits the narrative and dividing them from humans when it doesn't. It also doesn't help that the principle differences - lifespan and birth rate - are difficult to show in the timescale of the narrative. A more obvious difference, like inability to eat the same foods, would make this clear. Note that this doesn't have to be some huge variance like obligate carnivory, it could simply be something like inability to eat the same crops. Azure City had an east Asian theme, so the principal crop was probably rice. Imagine if the goblins couldn't eat rice and had to replant every field for corn instead. that would mean every time the goblins conquered an Azurite settlement that'd have to completely restructure the agriculture base.

I would point out once more that the comic handles this perfectly well for its own purposes. This debate, by in large, deviates from the thematic scope of the comic. It over-emphasizes one (highly biased) character's viewpoint and ignores the explicitly stated counter-viewpoint (That, regardless of the historic reason for the goblins' situation, fixing the problem requires present-day thinking).

As far as the comic's narrative is concerned, Redcloak's personal psychology is by far and away more important as a driving factor in the conflict than whether goblins can metabolize gluten or not. There's nothing wrong with getting into the weeds in this kind of discussion, but let's at least keep in mind that where the trail is.

[Peelee]

This is binary thinking.
I responded to a personal anecdote with a personal anecdote. If brian 333 wants to use his own life experience as evidence then I assume he would have no issue with me using mine to rebut.

Generational poverty lasts longer to the degree that poverty is more common than wealth in the first place, but people escape it with regularity.
Define "poverty" and "regularity".

[brian 333]

I read Star Wars books and played Guitar Hero while you were washing windows. I now have two cars with no car payments and two houses with no mortgage payment, because it's all paid off, because I was born into generational wealth. I am soon to have a third house.

Next time you make your mortgage payment make sure to write me a note on how generational wealth doesn't matter.

While you were doing that, I was touring the world, and Charles Payne was avoiding bullies by hiding in the Detroit Public Library.

I have been without money several times in my life, but currently own a 17 acre wood lot which I am repurposing for my retirement.

Which is more reinforcement of my point: Charles Payne started with a public education and access to a library. I started with my older brother's little red wagon. He was able to get stupid rich, and I was able to live my life by my rules.

So, enjoy your wealth. It really isn't that hard to get. You just need an education and be willing to work.

[Mechalich]

I would point out once more that the comic handles this perfectly well for its own purposes. This debate, by in large, deviates from the thematic scope of the comic. It over-emphasizes one (highly biased) character's viewpoint and ignores the explicitly stated counter-viewpoint (That, regardless of the historic reason for the goblins' situation, fixing the problem requires present-day thinking).


Actually, I think the problem is that the problem, in-universe isn't historic at all. In comic 1232, Durkon asks Thor to makes the goblins land better. The implication is that, however long it's been since the world was made the goblins are broadly still occupying the same crummy lands they started with. Now, unless the world was created very recently, this implies an extraordinary level geographic stasis. Which...actually could be possible, given fantasy rules and all, but it goes against the only evidence we possess, that of extremely high kingdom turnover on the Western Continent.

The other problem is that 'bad lands' is not actually a difficult problem in the context of 3.5 D&D, especially if the gods are capable of collectively recognizing it as an injustice or even just wanting to make the situation for the goblins better as a means of bribing the Dark One. Especially not right this moment with all sorts of important clerics gathered at the Godsmoot. The pantheons just send a message: "the clergy of every deity are responsible for n castings of Miracle for the express purpose of improving the productivity of lands currently controlled by goblinoid species within the next week."

[Peelee]

So, enjoy your wealth. It really isn't that hard to get. You just need an education and be willing to work.

And good luck, and no bad luck. Seriously, this mindset is infuriating insulting to anyone who does get those things and doesn't get your luck, or is stricken by bad luck. You are effectively blaming poor people for being poor, which is horribly offensive to me.

[dancrilis]

And good luck, and no bad luck. Seriously, this mindset is infuriating insulting to anyone who does get those things and doesn't get your luck, or is stricken by bad luck. You are effectively blaming poor people for being poor, which is horribly offensive to me.

I believe (and I could be wrong) that brian 333 was initially talking on a societal level where if the Goblins take their Gobbotopia and the surrounding lands and trade relations with their neighbours and work to continually improve themselves they will essentially have no problems - on the other hand if they blame every setback (and all people will have setbacks at times) on nefarious others and make no change to improve themselves rather then trying to tear those others down they are going to have lots of problems.

The same is true for the remnants of Azure city - yes they have a lot less then Gobbotopia but if they focus on improving their current situation they will likely end up alright, if on the other hand they blame everything on Gobbotopia and devote their time and resources (including alliances) to attacking the new state they will likely end up worse off.

Now the above doesn't really account for narrative causality - which will have a lot more baring on where any group ends up in a narrative then anything else.

Personal anecdotes muddy the water down from a societal level down to a personal level - so don't really think they are helpful.

A poor, stupid, unpleasant and lazy person can still become a millionaire via luck (winning a lottery or the like), and a rich, smart, likeable and hardworking person can still end up dead before they achieve anything (by a pigeon having a heart attack and falling out of the sky unto their soft unprotected head or the like) - but in general being smart, likeable and hardworking (and rich) will benefit the average person more then the inverse even if exception do occur and can be referenced.

[Peelee]

The path one takes to offensive statements matters less to me than the belief in the offensive statements. I hope brian 333 never gets shown how wrong he is through personal experience.

[brian 333]

And good luck, and no bad luck. Seriously, this mindset is infuriating insulting to anyone who does get those things and doesn't get your luck, or is stricken by bad luck. You are effectively blaming poor people for being poor, which is horribly offensive to me.

I'm sorry to have offended you.

But luck has only to do with starting position. Opportunity surrounds us all; one needs only be trained to see it.

The author of this comic is one such opportunist. He parlayed a hobby into a life's work through education and hard work. Who would have thought, in 1999, that a Kickstarter for a webcomic could generate a million dollars?

Societies operate on the same principle. For example, when comparing resources, Mexico beats Sweden by a long count. Compare individual wealth. What's different there?

The goblins can blame whomever they like, but blame produces nothing but anger. I'm saying there is a better way, and I don't understand why that offends anyone.

[Keltest]

I'm sorry to have offended you.

But luck has only to do with starting position. Opportunity surrounds us all; one needs only be trained to see it.

The author of this comic is one such opportunist. He parlayed a hobby into a life's work through education and hard work. Who would have thought, in 1999, that a Kickstarter for a webcomic could generate a million dollars?

Societies operate on the same principle. For example, when comparing resources, Mexico beats Sweden by a long count. Compare individual wealth. What's different there?

The goblins can blame whomever they like, but blame produces nothing but anger. I'm saying there is a better way, and I don't understand why that offends anyone.

No offense, but this sounds an awful lot like survivorship bias to me.

[dancrilis]

But luck has only to do with starting position.


This I hold to be inaccurate - winning the lottery is not a starting position of luck nor is getting killed (or brain damaged) by a pigeon.

Further standing by a friend who is going through some stuff and is being difficult might pay off decades later when they stand by you with something serious, but might also backfire as other people you could have made friends with avoid you by your association with the difficult person which prevents you from hearing about a job offer that would have been great for you - and you will never know what would have happened on the road not taken.

Luck plays a part in a lot of life often in ways that cannot be fully quantified as you don't notice avoiding bad luck you only notice it when you don't avoid it (good luck might be even harder to notice as a lot of people might put good luck down to there own abilities).

[Peelee]

But luck has only to do with starting position.

Fun fact! Medical bills are the number one cause of bankruptcy in the United States.

Luck is present at all times. You have already been shown to be wrong in numerous other wild claims. You continue making even more claims. Just because you haven't been hit by an uninsured driver or diagnosed with cancer or any number of other medical issues that can occur with little to no warning doesn't make you immune to it.

I'm sorry to have offended you.
I'm sorry that you think that poor people deserve to be poor.

[pearl jam]

And good luck, and no bad luck. Seriously, this mindset is infuriating insulting to anyone who does get those things and doesn't get your luck, or is stricken by bad luck. You are effectively blaming poor people for being poor, which is horribly offensive to me.

Oh, yes, that is very much intended to be the take away of the myth of meritocracy. The wealthy deserve their riches and the poor deserve their poverty. Capitalism is designed to redistribute wealth from the poorer up to the richer. It's the whole idea.

[dancrilis]

Capitalism is designed to redistribute wealth from the poorer up to the richer.

Not really (in my view) - capitalism (and most economic systems) are intended to improve the quality of life for the average person operating in the system (but I have never really been a fan of assuming negative motives without compelling evidence), how well they deliver this is debatable.

In many countries which could be considered capitalist things like indoor plumbing, access to sufficent food, access to decent clothing, access to accomadation, etc for anyone above the absolute buttom (what percent that would be can likely be widely debated and likely dependant on which country is selected) is effectively a given. The richest in these societies are still likely eating the same food as the average person and likely don't have any particularly better blankets or chairs - they are wealthy (which has power attached to it) but there is a level of day to day comfort where additional money likely doesn't really act to improve that level.

Seemingly very few people migrate from nations which are considered capitalist to nations which are not, where the reverse is much more common so wisdom of the masses would seem to point towards the results of this system being considered beneficial.

As such Redcloak is likely correct to not interfere with Dan making a million GP, nationalising such businesses such as Hydra Head would likely lead to a loss of innovation (i.e Hydra-Burgers whether an expansion or a rival business might not become a thing) and result in a reduction of food availability and therefore an increase in food costs and therefore food scarcity for the less wealthy being more likely.

[Ionathus]

Every time the goblins have tried settling down they've been happy and successful until someone comes with the specific intention of bringing them back on the war path. Resource scarcity may have been a thing once, but it's not visibly a factor anymore.

I do think resource scarcity was still a thing even when Redcloak stumbled upon the hobgoblin settlement. Rich mentions in the latest Patreon questions that he doesn't think of it as even being a big city:

It’s one large-ish town, and probably the biggest settlement of goblinoids in the world at the time that Redcloak discovers it. Compare that to just the human cities we’ve seen in the course of the comic: Cliffport, Greysky City, Azure City, Tarquin’s capital. Compare the log-and-rope construction to the elaborate underground architecture of Firmament, a relatively minor dwarven town, or the almost literal ivory tower the elves abandoned on the island where the Azurite refugees settled—much less Tinkertown. The hobgoblins are clearly poorer, fewer in number, and technologically less advanced than the humans, dwarves, elves, or gnomes.
So I think even if the hobgoblins have recently settled down and been doing "better" for themselves, they definitely still have a long way to go to catch up with the other civilizations.

[brian 333]

Fun fact! Medical bills are the number one cause of bankruptcy in the United States.

Luck is present at all times. You have already been shown to be wrong in numerous other wild claims. You continue making even more claims. Just because you haven't been hit by an uninsured driver or diagnosed with cancer or any number of other medical issues that can occur with little to no warning doesn't make you immune to it.

I'm sorry that you think that poor people deserve to be poor.

I am being so badly misunderstood here.

Poor people do not deserve to be poor, not do I imply that anywhere ever.

I'm saying that there is a way out. It's fairly obvious by the replies I'm getting that it is not being taught.

And, yes, bad stuff happens to good people. That is true. But who is better equipped to deal with bad stuff, someone who knows how to improve his position, or someone who waits for someone else to fix the problem?

Fun fact: I lost everything but the contents of a handful of plastic totes in Hurricane Katrina. A few years ago I lost everything again in the Baton Rouge floods.

Starting with, literally, a motorcycle just a few years ago, and with zero credit history, I worked my way up to buying a farm in the country, which I plan to use as a way to keep busy long after I am forced to retire.

At the age of 17 I had only an 8th grade education and the clothes I wore. I have since made many opportunities to improve my education.

So, I know what it's like to salvage cans from the roadside to buy oatmeal for supper. I also know, without a doubt, that I am not exceptional. Anybody can do it.

There is a broad difference between saying anyone can do it and saying it's their own fault for not doing it. Most people don't know that they can, and others believe they cannot succeed, no matter how hard they try.

And that's the point I'm trying to correct. You can go from being a welfare kid in Detroit to being owner of an investment firm worth millions. Most people would stop somewhere in the middle. My goal was to see the world outside of New Orleans.

[Fyraltari]

There is a broad difference between saying anyone can do it and saying it's their own fault for not doing it. Most people don't know that they can, and others believe they cannot succeed, no matter how hard they try.

And that's the point I'm trying to correct. You can go from being a welfare kid in Detroit to being owner of an investment firm worth millions. Most people would stop somewhere in the middle. My goal was to see the world outside of New Orleans.

"Anyone can do it" is very different from "everyone can do it". The owner of that million dollars firm is only getting that money because there are a lot of people working under him, earning money for him, not for themselves. Each one of them may think they're going to be as rich as him one day, but if even one of them does it, they'll be beating the odds. They are only so many places at the top and getting to one of them requires making it harder for everyone else to get to that level.

And being the one who beats the odd isn't about how hard you work. Your average minimal wage worker who juggles three jobs work much, much harder than your average CEO (not to mention, stock holder), yet the second one has fifty time the income of the first one.

[Peelee]

I am being so badly misunderstood here.

Poor people do not deserve to be poor, not do I imply that anywhere ever.
I'm afraid that I understand all too well, and you are indeed implying (very directly, at that) that poor people deserve to be poor, even if you are unaware of it.

I'm saying that there is a way out. It's fairly obvious by the replies I'm getting that it is not being taught.

[snip]

You can go from being a welfare kid in Detroit to being owner of an investment firm worth millions.
This is the implication. If there is a way out that anyone can take at any time, then by that direct logic, those who do not do so are at fault. It doesn't matter if it's because they "don't know" or don't want to or whatever else you want to erroneously claim. That directly puts the onus entirely on the person, and puts the fault on them alone.

You may not mean this. You may not realize this is the logical conclusion. But that does not mean this is not the end result of the argument you're making.

And, aside from everything else, you are suffering from a massive case of survivorship bias. You did it so anyone can do it. That's like Tsutomu Yamaguchi going around saying "Psh, atomic bombs aren't that bad, I've survived two of them! Anyone can do it!"

[dancrilis]

That directly puts the onus entirely on the person, and puts the fault on them alone.

Bad luck can result in a bad outcome for anyone (within reason), but at times someone experiencing a bad outcome is at fault.

The difference between bad luck and poor choices might be difficult to determine at times and no doubt that bad luck can easily lead to poor choices at times - but those choices are still choices and the chooser does bar reasonsibility for making them.

Redcloak for instance seem to think that any goblin hardship is the fault of other people (i.e bad luck for the goblins not to be created as a 'pc race') - but there does seem to be a fair amount of arguement from the comic (including non-online books) that bad choices might have lead them to bad outcomes, whether that plays out in the end of the story remains to be seen.

[Peelee]

Bad luck can result in a bad outcome for anyone (within reason), but at times someone experiencing a bad outcome is at fault.

I agree, and am not saying the person can never be at fault. However, by stating "anyone can do it, getting a large amount of money is not hard", then one is by necessity putting the fault on all.

[gbaji]

And good luck, and no bad luck. Seriously, this mindset is infuriating insulting to anyone who does get those things and doesn't get your luck, or is stricken by bad luck. You are effectively blaming poor people for being poor, which is horribly offensive to me.

You've repeated this point several times. And it's a fair point. To a point. The problem is that the counter position is that poor people have no hope to make their own lives better, so what? Don't bother trying? I think that's a far more harmful position to take. Can we agree that while overall individual outcome is certainly affected by starting position, that outcome position relative to that starting point is 100% affected by what that individual does over their lifetime. A rich kid who sits on his butt living off his trust fund is going to be far less better off at the end of his life than if he'd taken that wealth and built on it. And a poor kid who works his butt off and makes good choices (education, work ethic, investment, etc), will be far better off at the end of his life than he would have been if he'd just muddled his way through. And yes, we can certainly imagine cases where the lazy rich kid still ends up better off than the hard working poor kid, but it's less about absolute position as directional economic mobility.

I also think a good bit of this is only somewhat relevant. Talking about what individuals within a given socio-economic strata may or may not accomplish within a range of industrial to post industrial economic systems isn't terribly relevant to considering what an entire society of people may or may not be able to accomplish as a whole in a pre-industrial (but magical!) economic system in Stickworld.

And I think at least some of this was foreshadowed in the conversation with the bandits in the woods. That living off stealing from others is not a sustainable methodology. The goblins, perhaps due to poor starting position, and certainly at least to some degree due to being "abandoned by the gods", have largely lived as scavengers and stealers. They live on the margins of "civilized" societies, raiding and pillaging to get things they can't make themselves. At least, historically.

Changing that is very difficult. Taking a city like Gobotopia is a decent start. Jirix focusing them on trade and productive outputs allows them to build on that (possibly). The trick is that if you live in a society where "the strong prey on the weak" may be a basic function of societal advancement (heck. Just look at how Redcloak became the Supreme Leader in the first place), it's hard to transform that society into one in which cooperative productive output becomes the focus. Possible. But difficult. It will require generations of stable leadership to establish new social patterns and habits by the goblins as a whole, and is incredibly subject to failure. They're literally one assassination away from collapse, and if that happens, the Asurites come back and slaughter them and drive them back into the wastelands.

The one factor that's hard to measure here is how much TDOs commandments may affect these outcomes. And, if they can get recognition, not just as a matter of convenience from other city/states, but from other societies and races as a whole. And I assume that's what TDO actually wants Redcloak to do (maybe?). It's hard to tell, because "hold the other gods hostage to the snarl" doesn't seem like a great way to actually build that respect and recognition. If anything, that's more in line with the "take what we can by force" method they started with (and which is, arguably unsustainable in the long run).

So yeah. I guess if I have any conclusion at all, it's that The Plan is more or less doomed from the start. At least, as anything other than a threat to be stopped in typical high fantasy adventure manner. And yeah, one might take this in a very broad view as "blaming the poor for being poor", but in this case, if the goblins are poor because of their societal advancement methodology (which in turn may have been influenced by starting conditions and requirements "at the beginning"), then yes, their almost certain continual impoverishment will entirely be one of their own making. Or, since this is a fantasy world, the making of their maker (Fenris). They were literally made this way. It's going to be incredibly hard for them to overcome that, and it's not really about land IMO. It will take a dramatic re-shaping of their society to affect a lasting change, and while "having better lands" absolutely helps that, it's not all that will need to happen. And one can imagine that there will be quite a number of factors within goblin society itself that will resist that change. As long as it's viewed as easier to take than to build, and taking is viewed as an acceptable means to personal advancement, the society as a whole will struggle.

[elros]

I am trying to figure out how technological advancement works in the stick-verse. What does an ability to create advanced technology represent?
The gnomes appear to have the most advanced technology, but magic can reproduce or surpass it. Does that make technology less important than magic?
I ask because Redcloak pointed out that Goblins lack powerful wizards, and they also lack technology, and it is not clear on the origin of either of them.

[Tzardok]

That gnomes have advanced technology doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't in stasis too. If the gnomes were created with all that stuff (or with the knowledge how to create all that stuff), but didn't invent anything new over the course of the last 1,000 years, the status quo remains the same like it always was.

[Peelee]

You've repeated this point several times. And it's a fair point. To a point. The problem is that the counter position is that poor people have no hope to make their own lives better, so what? Don't bother trying?

If you wish to create a false dichotomy, then yes. However, I am not saying that. I am only saying that the position of "anyone can become wealthy regardless of the starting position if they just work hard" is not true and serves as the basis for actively harmful beliefs. Obviously doing nothing does not help in any way, but there are multiple paths to upward mobility, and hard work is no guarantee at all of upward mobility.

You ever see Thank You for Smoking? This is the ice cream debate, except without being artificially maneuvered into it. I'm not arguing that vanilla is the best flavor. I'm arguing against the idea that chocolate is objectively the best flavor.

[Liquor Box]

I'm afraid that I understand all too well, and you are indeed implying (very directly, at that) that poor people deserve to be poor, even if you are unaware of it.
....
You may not mean this. You may not realize this is the logical conclusion. But that does not mean this is not the end result of the argument you're making.


If you wish to create a false dichotomy, then yes. However, I am not saying that. I am only saying that the position of "anyone can become wealthy regardless of the starting position if they just work hard" is not true and serves as the basis for actively harmful beliefs. Obviously doing nothing does not help in any way, but there are multiple paths to upward mobility, and hard work is no guarantee at all of upward mobility.

You apply a false dichotomy to Brian, and reject it when he points out you are putting words in his mouth and this is not what he means, then snap at someone who you feel is doing the same to you.

Both the conclusion you drew from Brian and the one gbaji drew from you are intuitive, but neither is necessarily the only conclusion that can be drawn.


So, enjoy your wealth. It really isn't that hard to get. You just need an education and be willing to work.

Do you not think that to be wealthy from a poor starting position, you also need to have need to have the capacity to perform valuable services (for example, the intelligence to train oneself to get a high paying job like a doctor)? Training and education will only take you so far if you do not have the inherent ability. And menial work (that not requiring any special skill) wil not usualy make you wealthy.

I agree with you that there is the opportunity for people with a low starting position to become wealthy (although, depending on the society they live in it might be harder for them) if they have the talent such that training will mean they have a useful skill. But I don't think that is true of everyone.

[brian 333]

I'm afraid that I understand all too well, and you are indeed implying (very directly, at that) that poor people deserve to be poor, even if you are unaware of it.

No. You are imposing the value judgement. Very few deserve to be poor, or sick, or injured. That happens all the time to people who don't deserve it. Your assertion that something I said means anything except what I said is the flaw in your argument.


This is the implication. If there is a way out that anyone can take at any time, then by that direct logic, those who do not do so are at fault. It doesn't matter if it's because they "don't know" or don't want to or whatever else you want to erroneously claim. That directly puts the onus entirely on the person, and puts the fault on them alone.

Who should the onus be on? The guy born rich? He should be punished because of inequities he had nothing to do with creating, and for which his punishment will do nothing to alleviate?

Wealth is not a single pie that is being shared unequally. So long as the zero sum approach to solving the problem is the only one considered, the solution will always elude us.

Wealth is not about getting your share of the pie. It is about learning how to make pie. The question, then, is who is responsible for learning?

There are many people who, for many reasons, will never learn this simple truth. Is it their fault? Is it the fault of the teachers who do not teach them? Is it society's fault? Fault does not matter. What matters is that blame does not solve the problem.


You may not mean this. You may not realize this is the logical conclusion. But that does not mean this is not the end result of the argument you're making.

And, aside from everything else, you are suffering from a massive case of survivorship bias. You did it so anyone can do it. That's like Tsutomu Yamaguchi going around saying "Psh, atomic bombs aren't that bad, I've survived two of them! Anyone can do it!"

I reject the idea that your conclusion is logical. There is a huge difference between anyone can and everyone can. Didn't you see Ratatouille? But certainly, with education anyone can improve his personal station.

The dishwasher at the Chinese restaurant did not have to join the Navy so he could go to Electrical trade school, but he did, and he improved his life. He didn't have to go to night school to learn algebra, trigonometry, and calculus, but he did, and he improved his life.

How are those not things anyone can do? The difference between what I'm saying and the bomb survivor is simple: there is one like him. There are millions and millions like me.

[Liquor Box]

Can we agree that while overall individual outcome is certainly affected by starting position, that outcome position relative to that starting point is 100% affected by what that individual does over their lifetime. A rich kid who sits on his butt living off his trust fund is going to be far less better off at the end of his life than if he'd taken that wealth and built on it. And a poor kid who works his butt off and makes good choices (education, work ethic, investment, etc), will be far better off at the end of his life than he would have been if he'd just muddled his way through. And yes, we can certainly imagine cases where the lazy rich kid still ends up better off than the hard working poor kid, but it's less about absolute position as directional economic mobility.

I agree completely with this. Financial success is a mix of starting position, inherent ability, and the choices/actions people take. We will probably never all agree on how much each of them matters relative to the others, and that probably differs significantly from society to society. But for what it's worth most research suggests that ability plays a bigger part than socio-economic background:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120329142035.htm

[Fyraltari]

Wealth is not a single pie that is being shared unequally. So long as the zero sum approach to solving the problem is the only one considered, the solution will always elude us.


Wealth is not about getting your share of the pie. It is about learning how to make pie. The question, then, is who is responsible for learning?

Society is a thing, you know. The fact is that we produce enough wealth for everyone in the world to live confortably and then some. However the system is set up so that wealth flows towards wealth with the result that some live in luxury thanks to the labour of those who don't.

The notion that everyone is in it for themself is the problem. When everyone cook a pie together, there's enough pie for everybody.

Edit:

But for what it's worth most research suggests that ability plays a bigger part than socio-economic background:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120329142035.htm

Since IQ testing only measures one's ability to take IQ tests, what this is worth isn't much.

[Liquor Box]

Society is a thing, you know. The fact is that we produce enough wealth for everyone in the world to live confortably and then some. However the system is set up so that wealth flows towards wealth with the result that some live in luxury thanks to the labour of those who don't.

The notion that everyone is in it for themself is the problem. When everyone cook a pie together, there's enough pie for everybody.

When everyone cooks a pie together rather than making new pies for themselves, the amount of pie does not grow though. Way fewer people (proportionally) are in poverty today than a hundred years ago, because of the new pies being made.


Since IQ testing only measures one's ability to take IQ tests, what this is worth isn't much.

It's certainly not a perfect measure of intelligence, but can you think of a better way of measuring it?

[Fyraltari]

When everyone cooks a pie together rather than making new pies for themselves, the amount of pie does not grow though.
Does it need to grow? We've got more than enough already and the planet's on fire.

Not that I believe competition to be necessary for growth at all.

Way fewer people (proportionally) n poverty today than a hundred years ago, because of the new pies being made.
And that's not enough. There shouldn't be any people in powerty. What's worse, in many countries the proportion of people under the poverty line is growing.




It's certainly not a perfect measure of intelligence, but can you think of a better way of measuring it?
It's not a measure of intelligence at all. It was created to measure how well the education system met up the needs of children so that those with special needs may be properly accompanied. Since then it has been appropried as a measure of intelligence as an excuse to justify neglecting people with learning disorders, a different cultural background as the people making the tests or are just poor. Or even much worse policies. Looking up the history of yhe ties between IQ and eugenics is... quite the experience.

The simple fact that training to pass IQ tests almost guarantees to raise your score is evidence enough that they don't measure anything intrisic to someone.


There is no better way to measure intelligence because it is likely that intelligence isn't a thing to measure with. Intelligence is an umbrella term we use to refer to a wide variety of skills related to logic, memory, empathy, pattern recognition, etc. Modern utilisation of IQ testing is based on the presupposed notion that there exists a "general factor" that influences all those skills, which is what the test purports to measure. But there is no evidence such a thing exists, despite many studies trying to find some. It's also assumed that, like many biological traits, this factor would be distributed among a population following a natural distribution (a bell curve), but part of scoring IQ tests is to tweak the point value of each question until you get that curve. It's arbitrary and artificial.

IQ is like there was a Physical Quotient claiming to measure up how physically fit you are, that's measured by making someone run and climb and swim. And then you end up with people with low PQ being told they won't succeed in life because they can't do either of these three things very well. But guess what? Turns out they can lift things better than average because that's what they've trained for and the tests weren't lookking for that.

[Peelee]

You apply a false dichotomy to Brian
I did not. I pointed out the logical conclusion of that line of thought. Which, depressingly, I have encountered from numerous people in real life, and have a great distaste for.

then snap at someone who you feel is doing the same to you.
Snap?

Do you not think that to be wealthy from a poor starting position, you also need to have need to have the capacity to perform valuable services (for example, the intelligence to train oneself to get a high paying job like a doctor)? Training and education will only take you so far if you do not have the inherent ability. And menial work (that not requiring any special skill) wil not usualy make you wealthy.
Of course. Such training (eg college) is also largely gatekept, typically with exorbitant fees - at least, around here it is. Those without the initial ability to go more often than not require student loans that cannot be discharged by bankruptcy (which also helps feed into a loop of the ever-increasing tuition rates) or join the military and potentially be maimed or die in order to simply afford the ability to afford such training. This latter option also offers an increased rate of suicide for the rest of your life as a bonus!

Of course, there are scholarships that can be attained, but even this is a band-aid that overlooks the problem. I'm a fan of the reduction to absurdity school of metaphors - imagine an orphan crushing machine that offers escape passes to some orphans. One might point out that these passes are an excellent way for the orphan to not be crushed, but doing so ignores the fact that there is an orphan crushing machine to start with, and why do we not simply do away with that instead of celebrate that some orphans are able to not be crushed?

Also, what is "valuable" is just as much due to luck as anything else. If Michael Jordan was born in 1863, he would not have anywhere near the amount of wealth he has currently regardless of how much he trained at basketball because it was not valued as it was in the 1990's. In fact, he would likely not have anywhere near even a fraction of his wealth if he worked as hard at anything else than he did at basketball, regardless of when he was born. Also, being born in America is a prerequisite to this as well, as basketball is similarly not as prized in, let's say, Costa Rica, who not. And if I work every waking hour of my life practicing basketball, I will never be as good as Michael Jordan (or for that matter, anyone else in the NBA), and will never achieve any measurable amount of wealth despite my hard work in a valuable field. Because, as you point out, some people simply lack the requisite innate ability that goes hand in hand with hard work. Not everyone is cut out to be a doctor or athlete or whatever. All of these are major luck factors that can make how hard you work irrelevant to your success. "Just work hard" is not a guarantee of success and I will constantly rail against those who claim it is. Hell, Warren Buffet, one of the wealthiest people on the planet, constantly and loudly proclaims that luck was a major factor contributing to his success. He is leagues above Michael Jordan in terms of wealth. His net worth dwarfs Jordan's roughly as much as Jordan's dwarfs mine. And I would wager than Jordan worked harder than Buffet to achieve his wealth, and yet.

Menial work may well be all that many people are capable of. And even if that were not the case, the world will always need menial jobs done. That does not mean they should be as devalued as they currently are. Menial jobs are hard work and often pay peanuts. This is wrong. And when people who are stuck in this hear "just work hard and you'll get wealthy, it's not hard", I cna hardly blame them for being infuriated at that sentiment. Hell, I'm infuriated at it and I do pretty well for myself. It's a bad sentiment.



Who should the onus be on? The guy born rich? He should be punished because of inequities he had nothing to do with creating, and for which his punishment will do nothing to alleviate?
There's a lot I could have replied to, but I think this is the biggest focal point. This is central to how you are arguing that poor people deserve to be poor, even if you don't realize it. Because holy hell, punished? There's a phrase - when you have a life of privelege, equality looks like oppression.

Look at it this way. My dad went to one of the top schools in the country. Let's ssy the school has one opening left, and you and I are the final two applicants. Everything is weighted the same, we have the same GPA, same extracurriculars, you'd have thunk we were twins. I'd get the spot and you'd get the boot because I have legacy status. I did absolutely nothing to earn it. I have no greater claim to the seat in their classes than you. But it auto-defaults to me. Hell, I'd most likely get it even if you were the slightly better candidate in other areas. That's legacy, baby! You worked your ass off to be able to get into that college, far harder than I did, but I'm the one getting in.

Would dissolving legacy status as a factor in admissions be punishing me? I'm losing something of value, something that would drastically alter how the rest of my life would play out. But that's not a punishment. That's leveling the playing field. And yet, every time people rant and rave about the same things you do, such things are called punishments. They're being held back because they no longer have the unfair advantages they had before. I'm sorry, but I have absolutely zero sympathy for the idea that you are being somehow "punished" because the poors can now have equal standing.

It's bad enough when it's people who were born into money espousing it, but this is even worse. You managed to climb out of the well by slim grips on the walls, and then refuse to help build a ladder for the rest to get out as well. You just look at them with disdain saying they could climb the walls if they really wanted to get out, and maybe some of them just don't know that, the poor simple folk. Instead of doing anything to embrace the idea that maybe they could be helped out by those that aren't in the well, you just turn a blind eye and say they can climb the walls if they want. I likewise have no sympathy for that point of view, and you'll forgive me if I refuse to ever entertain it as a viable view on life.

Those who are better off are more able to help those who are not. The strong should protect the weak. You are one of the weak who was protected by the strong, became strong yourself, and then don't see why you should protect anyone, they can protect themselves.

I do not accept that on the most primal, fundamental level.

There are millions and millions like me.
And in a world of billions that makes you a pretty damn small fraction.

Does it need to grow? We've got more than enough already and the planet's on fire.

And that's not enough. There shouldn't be any people in poverty. What's worse, in many countries the proportion of people under the poverty line is growing.
Yes, listen to the Frenchman!

[hroþila]

...
I love you Peelee

[Mechalich]

I am trying to figure out how technological advancement works in the stick-verse. What does an ability to create advanced technology represent?
The gnomes appear to have the most advanced technology, but magic can reproduce or surpass it. Does that make technology less important than magic?
I ask because Redcloak pointed out that Goblins lack powerful wizards, and they also lack technology, and it is not clear on the origin of either of them.

Technology is, at least in theory, significantly more scalable than magic, since it does not rely on the actions of a specialized group that not everyone can join. In an agrarian economy, 'technological progress' is mostly the advancement of agricultural technologies. Many aspects of which, such as better crop rotation methods, better crop varieties, higher quality livestock breeds, more effective irrigation methods, and so forth, are incredibly scalable since they require only knowledge transfer or can reproduce themselves.

Magic is more powerful than technology, at least immediately and it is also, significantly, able to jump across processes that require many steps of technological advancement. While technological progress often follows a 'build the tools to build the tools to build the thing' iterative framework (especially in fields like chemistry), magic can jump straight to 'cast the spell to do the thing we need.' Magic can also cheat in the sense that it can violate fundamental rules that impede the development of non-magical processes. This doesn't just mean spellcasting. Goblin Dan's all-you-can-eat hydra head buffet depends on an extraordinary violation of the law of conservation of mass and is functionally a perpetual motion machine, just one that produces limitless meat instead of limitless electricity (though if you use the hydra heads to power a biomass-based reactor, it is exactly that).

Lack of wizards among the goblins is a real issue and might even be the crux of the goblins disadvantage. Notably, the general D&D conception of wizardry requires hitting certain development benchmarks - a writing system and writing media that can be compressed into a spellbook (ie. paper, palm leaves, or bamboo strips) most notably. However, wizardry is a transformational 'technology' that, in most eyes-opened interpretations of 3.5e D&D rules, cause the transformation of the entire setting into either a post-scarcity magic-based utopia (the Tippyverse being the most famous example on this forum, but there are others) or a post-apocalyptic dystopia with the world divided up into the dominions of all-powerful caster-kings (Dark Sun being close to an operational example). That this hasn't happened yet in Stickworld is anomalous, especially since soul-spliced V threw around more than enough power to make it clear that an epic-level wizard absolutely can do this (the single casting of Familicide changes dragon demographics on a global scale).

Fundamentally, this is the biggest problem with this whole plotline, it's predicated on fairly complex society level economics which relies on robust worldbuilding in order to produce sufficient verisimilitude that the plot is convincing that 3.5e D&D functionally cannot produce.

[Fyraltari]

What Peelee just said. All of it.

[dancrilis]

Hell, Warren Buffet, one of the wealthiest people on the planet, constantly and loudly proclaims that luck was a major factor contributing to his success. He is leagues above Michael Jordan in terms of wealth. His net worth dwarfs Jordan's roughly as much as Jordan's dwarfs mine.

Not really my business and you are obviously entitled to your opinion (and entitled to be annoyed about whatever you want to be annoyed about) - but if you have ~$50million in net worth (Buffet at $97 billion and Jordon at $2.2 billion) and this is generational wealth meaning your family likely has more money then that (assuming parents still alive - which if they are not sorry to hear that) and siblings (which you may not have), and assuming generational is more then one generation and as such aunts, uncles, cousins etc all come into play - then I am assuming your family is seriously wealthy (and good for you and your people).

But personal opinion it that it comes across as somewhat odd to be effectively talking down to Brian 333 about how they don't understand the real struggles of poor people.



And that's not enough. There shouldn't be any people in powerty. What's worse, in many countries the proportion of people under the poverty line is growing.

My understanding is that the poverty line moves (people rarely talk about absolute poverty any more) - poverty today and poverty fifty years ago in many nations are wildly different, and if they consistently move the line there will always be poverty - perhaps the only way to therefore eliminate poverty is to stop moving the line and see what happens.

[Fyraltari]

My understanding is that the poverty line moves (people rarely talk about absolute poverty any more) - poverty today and poverty fifty years ago in many nations are wildly different, and if they consistently move the line there will always be poverty - perhaps the only way to therefore eliminate poverty is to stop moving the line and see what happens.
Did you forget about inflation? Fifty years ago money was worth much more.

The simple fact is that fifty years ago a single salary could support an entire family of five and that's just not true anymore. The price of life is going up and despite economic growth the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer.

[dancrilis]

Did you forget about inflation? Fifty years ago money was worth much more.

I don't really care that much about the money as compared to the quality of life - the quality of life for the poorest people seems to be improving faster then the quality of life for the richest people.
Better housing, better food etc.


The simple fact is that fifty years ago a single salary could support an entire family of five and that's just not true anymore.
That family of five for a poor family was living a much worse quality of life then a single salary family of five today (and such a family is somewhat rarer depending on where in the planet you are)- as near as I can tell.



The price of life is going up and despite economic growth the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer.
The rich are getting richer, the poor are also getting richer - the rich might be getting richer faster then the poor but the poor are benefiting from the advances much more then the rich, traveling the world is now available to the middle, having a car is also, having effectively a library at your fingertips in the form of the internet etc.

The rich always had access to nice things now a lot of other people do also.

But think I will drop out of the topic though (reserving the right to change my mind etc) think I would just keep saying the same things in various different ways if I stayed - and unlikely to convince anyone that I am correct and they are wrong (and probably equally unlikely for anyone to convince me I am wrong).

Happy debating all.

[Liquor Box]

Does it need to grow? We've got more than enough already and the planet's on fire.

Not that I believe competition to be necessary for growth at all.
Way fewer people (proportionally) n poverty today than a hundred years ago, because of the new pies being made.
And that's not enough. There shouldn't be any people in powerty. What's worse, in many countries the proportion of people under the poverty line is growing.

In terms of the environmental point, the kuznetz curve suggests that increased wealth leads to less pollution at a societal level. The theory is that, with enough excess, people can develop and afford to implement more ways to avoid pollution. I get that it is not without its critics, so it is not a slamdunk, but it is also not obvious that increasing the proverbial pie is necessarily bad for the climate.

As to the rest of your point, I feel it's one thing to discuss whether it's possible for poor people to improve their economic lot, but another to discuss whether global economic growth is a good thing and what the fairest/best way for resources to be apportioned. I feel like the second category is getting a little to close to the forbidden topics to carry on with.


It's not a measure of intelligence at all. It was created to measure how well the education system met up the needs of children so that those with special needs may be properly accompanied. Since then it has been appropried as a measure of intelligence as an excuse to justify neglecting people with learning disorders, a different cultural background as the people making the tests or are just poor. Or even much worse policies. Looking up the history of yhe ties between IQ and eugenics is... quite the experience.

Whatever it was originally developed for, and whatever it may have been used to misguidedly justify in the past, has no bearing on whether it measures intelligence or not.


The simple fact that training to pass IQ tests almost guarantees to raise your score is evidence enough that they don't measure anything intrisic to someone.

Training to pass any kind of test can raise your score at that test. Are you meaning to discredit testing as a whole, or are you saying that IQ tests are somehow different?


There is no better way to measure intelligence because it is likely that intelligence isn't a thing to measure with. Intelligence is an umbrella term we use to refer to a wide variety of skills related to logic, memory, empathy, pattern recognition, etc. Modern utilisation of IQ testing is based on the presupposed notion that there exists a "general factor" that influences all those skills, which is what the test purports to measure. But there is no evidence such a thing exists, despite many studies trying to find some. It's also assumed that, like many biological traits, this factor would be distributed among a population following a natural distribution (a bell curve), but part of scoring IQ tests is to tweak the point value of each question until you get that curve. It's arbitrary and artificial.

Intelligence is a thing. At the least it is what you say (an umbrella term for logic, memory, pattern recognition etc). I get that there is debate as to whether there is a common g factor underpinning all those functions. But even if not, there is a grouping of mental skills that are relevant to many professions, and IQ tests are widely accepted as a way (albeit not a perfect one) to measure which people are better and which are worse at this grouping og mental skills. That remains true even if there is not a g factor which underpins them all.

I can accept that breaking intelligence down into the individual functions and testing those might be more accurate and relevant to certain things.

The assumption of a normal distribution is only relevant to the scale on which IQ scores are presented. Whether there is normal distribution is not relevant to the point that a person who does better on an IQ test will usually be better at the grouping of mental skills than a person who does more poorly, just whether the particular scores they get accurately represent the degree to which they are different.


IQ is like there was a Physical Quotient claiming to measure up how physically fit you are, that's measured by making someone run and climb and swim.And then you end up with people with low PQ being told they won't succeed in life because they can't do either of these three things very well. But guess what? Turns out they can lift things better than average because that's what they've trained for and the tests weren't looking for that.

So if you included lifting in the PQ, it would be an accurate test? An answer may be that there will always be physical tasks that fall outside the particular measures (eg jumping) no matter how much more you include. However, I suggest that once the PQ test is sufficiently broad it would still be a reasonable predictor of success in a field that requires physical endeavour. For example, climbing is not an event in a decathlon, but I'd be amazed if decathletes aren't on average better climbers than most of the population.


I did not. I pointed out the logical conclusion of that line of thought. Which, depressingly, I have encountered from numerous people in real life, and have a great distaste for.

Yes, then went on to deny him when he told you that was not the conclusion he intended. Then when someone points out the logical conclusion of what you had said, you deny that was the conclusion you intended.


Of course. Such training (eg college) is also largely gatekept, typically with exorbitant fees - at least, around here it is. Those without the initial ability to go more often than not require student loans that cannot be discharged by bankruptcy (which also helps feed into a loop of the ever-increasing tuition rates) or join the military and potentially be maimed or die in order to simply afford the ability to afford such training. This latter option also offers an increased rate of suicide for the rest of your life as a bonus!

I completely accept this. Whether it is gatekept differs from country to country, but I get that you probably have USA in mind, and you'll probably know more than me about whether education in USA is accessable by the poor. However, Brian's entire position was on the basis of "if" education is available. So he acknowledged that the absence of education is a barrier to his position.


Of course, there are scholarships that can be attained, but even this is a band-aid that overlooks the problem. I'm a fan of the reduction to absurdity school of metaphors - imagine an orphan crushing machine that offers escape passes to some orphans. One might point out that these passes are an excellent way for the orphan to be crushed, but doing so ignores the fact that there is an orphan crushing machine to start with, and why do we not simply do away with that instead of celebrate that some orphans are able to not be crushed?

I agree with you that scholarships don't completely solve issues around access to education.


Also, what is "valuable" is just as much due to luck as anything else. If Michael Jordan was born in 1863, he would not have anywhere near the amount of wealth he has currently regardless of how much he trained at basketball because it was not valued as it was in the 1990's. In fact, he would likely not have anywhere near even a fraction of his wealth if he worked as hard at anything else than he did at basketball, regardless of when he was born. Also, being born in America is a prerequisite to this as well, as basketball is similarly not as prized in, let's say, Costa Rica, who not. A

What is valuable depends on what goods and services the society you live in wants to consume, and your ability to provide those goods and services. That does change over time, and differ by area, so basketball as an entertainment service was not valuable in 1862, but was a century later. More relateably, being physically strong and fit was a more valuable skill in the olden days than it is today, but being clever is more valuable now.

So, yes value differs and changes. Not sure I'd charactorise that as luck though.


nd if I work every waking hour of my life practicing basketball, I will never be as good as Michael Jordan (or for that matter, anyone else in the NBA), and will never achieve any measurable amount of wealth despite my hard work in a valuable field. Because, as you point out, some people simply lack the requisite innate ability that goes hand in hand with hard work. Not everyone is cut out to be a doctor or athlete or whatever. All of these are major luck factors that can make how hard you work irrelevant to your success. "Just work hard" is not a guarantee of success and I will constantly rail against those who claim it is. Hell, Warren Buffet, one of the wealthiest people on the planet, constantly and loudly proclaims that luck was a major factor contributing to his success. He is leagues above Michael Jordan in terms of wealth. His net worth dwarfs Jordan's roughly as much as Jordan's dwarfs mine. And I would wager than Jordan worked harder than Buffet to achieve his wealth, and yet.

I agree with here. Indeed, it is exactly what I was saying - that inherent talent is an important part of the equation (I'd say the most important part in most cases). Again, up to you whether you characterise having inherent abilities like height/athleticism or cleverness or whatever luck or not.

Just on your "just work hard" point, I don't think it is a guarantee of success. It is one factor influencing success though, and probably the one most in your control.


Menial work may well be all that many people are capable of. And even if that were not the case, the world will always need menial jobs done. That does not mean they should be as devalued as they currently are. Menial jobs are hard work and often pay peanuts. This is wrong. And when people who are stuck in this hear "just work hard and you'll get wealthy, it's not hard", I cna hardly blame them for being infuriated at that sentiment. Hell, I'm infuriated at it and I do pretty well for myself. It's a bad sentiment.

I agree that menial jobs are all that some people are ever going to be able to do, and I agree that they have value and people who do them deserve respect. The question of whether they are sufficiently remunerated for doing their menial work strikes me as too close to politics to go into, and in any case differs massively from place to place.

Again, I agree with you that just working hard is no guarantee of wealth (although I'm sure it usually helps). I think that Brian is missing the point that some people are just more inherently capable than others (like your Michael Jordan example above).

Also, while I understand why Brian's perspective is annoying to some, and while I don't completely agree with him. I don't think it offensive for him to approach the discussion in good faith holding the view that he does.

[Mechalich]

The simple fact is that fifty years ago a single salary could support an entire family of five and that's just not true anymore. The price of life is going up and despite economic growth the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer.

This is a positional artifact that applies only to certain countries (and in many cases only regions within those countries) due to changes in income and wealth distribution. The issue is actually quite complicated and has to do with factors such as the barriers to the relocation of labor (ie. people) being much higher than that of the relocation of capital.

21st century capital is extremely mobile, to the point of, in some cases, having no physical existence at all (ex. cryptocurrency), while barriers to the mobility of labor such as immigration laws, language barriers, and good old cultural prejudice make it much more difficult for labor to relocate to ideal circumstances. This is notably, more or less the reverse of the conditions in Stickworld, where the position of capital is largely fixed because it is almost entirely land and/or buildings while labor is much more mobile because the average person owns few durable goods and can simply pack up a wagon and walk to wherever there is opportunity (also everyone speaks common).

Now, the goblins, interestingly, do appear to suffer from significant cultural prejudice. The very fact that there are 'goblin lands' that are lower productivity than those of their neighbors indicates that goblins do not have the ability to move their labor towards zones of opportunity. There's no easy solution here, because not only are other nations disinclined to allow free immigration of goblins to their lands, neither are goblins inclined to try and immigrate themselves and there's a huge cultural gulf in place as all of the goblins worship different gods than everyone else (which raises the interesting point that the Dark One's very existence is a significant barrier to the goblins achieving equality).

[Fyraltari]

But think I will drop out of the topic though (reserving the right to change my mind etc)

I think, it's probably wise to take a bow now before the thread gets locked and we're all sent to naughty jail.

[Liquor Box]

Did you forget about inflation? Fifty years ago money was worth much more.

The simple fact is that fifty years ago a single salary could support an entire family of five and that's just not true anymore. The price of life is going up and despite economic growth the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer.

A single salary could support an entire family because the usual standard of living was so much lower. 50 years ago it was typical for a family to have a single car, a single TV, to eat out and travel seldomly. Nowadays a typical family will have more than one screen per person, two car families are common, and people regularly eat out and travel.

ou can still support a family on an average single income in a first world country, in a similarly spartan manner to 50 years ago. But you will feel poorer in comparison to everyone else because average standards of living have risen so much.

I also don't think there's any evidence of the poor getting poorer. They may be poorer relative to those who are richer, but they are not poorer at an absolute level. As noted, a smaller proportion of the world population is starving and illiterate now than 50 years ago.

Edit: Ninja'd by Dancrilis, who said it better.

[brian 333]

Okay, take a deep breath, and sit down. Your legs may get a bit wobbly and your vision may blur a bit after my next statement.

Ready?

Okay.

I agree with almost everything in your post.

Calm, calm. Steady there. Okay?
Here we go.


I did not. I pointed out the logical conclusion of that line of thought. Which, depressingly, I have encountered from numerous people in real life, and have a great distaste for.

The logic fails here. First you assume that I imply criticism towards those who are poor. This is factually incorrect, and thus your point is illogical, as it rests on an implication I never made.

But suppose you meet people who are certain the moon is made of cheese? Is it fair to smile condescendingly and agree with their ignorance? Or do you hurt their feelings and point out the flaws in their assumptions?

The difference is, people who believe the cheese-moon theory are not harmed by their belief. People who believe they cannot rise above their current economic situation are harmed. They are trapped in a mindset from which they can never escape, and totally dependent on the largess of the wealthy.

I know that is not your intent. I know that your intentions are good. But it is what that mindset produces.

Logic that produces the opposite of it's intended outcome is flawed logic.


Snap?

Of course. Such training (eg college) is also largely gatekept, typically with exorbitant fees - at least, around here it is. Those without the initial ability to go more often than not require student loans that cannot be discharged by bankruptcy (which also helps feed into a loop of the ever-increasing tuition rates) or join the military and potentially be maimed or die in order to simply afford the ability to afford such training. This latter option also offers an increased rate of suicide for the rest of your life as a bonus!

Of course, there are scholarships that can be attained, but even this is a band-aid that overlooks the problem. I'm a fan of the reduction to absurdity school of metaphors - imagine an orphan crushing machine that offers escape passes to some orphans. One might point out that these passes are an excellent way for the orphan to not be crushed, but doing so ignores the fact that there is an orphan crushing machine to start with, and why do we not simply do away with that instead of celebrate that some orphans are able to not be crushed?

Also, what is "valuable" is just as much due to luck as anything else. If Michael Jordan was born in 1863, he would not have anywhere near the amount of wealth he has currently regardless of how much he trained at basketball because it was not valued as it was in the 1990's. In fact, he would likely not have anywhere near even a fraction of his wealth if he worked as hard at anything else than he did at basketball, regardless of when he was born. Also, being born in America is a prerequisite to this as well, as basketball is similarly not as prized in, let's say, Costa Rica, who not. And if I work every waking hour of my life practicing basketball, I will never be as good as Michael Jordan (or for that matter, anyone else in the NBA), and will never achieve any measurable amount of wealth despite my hard work in a valuable field. Because, as you point out, some people simply lack the requisite innate ability that goes hand in hand with hard work. Not everyone is cut out to be a doctor or athlete or whatever. All of these are major luck factors that can make how hard you work irrelevant to your success. "Just work hard" is not a guarantee of success and I will constantly rail against those who claim it is. Hell, Warren Buffet, one of the wealthiest people on the planet, constantly and loudly proclaims that luck was a major factor contributing to his success. He is leagues above Michael Jordan in terms of wealth. His net worth dwarfs Jordan's roughly as much as Jordan's dwarfs mine. And I would wager than Jordan worked harder than Buffet to achieve his wealth, and yet.

Menial work may well be all that many people are capable of. And even if that were not the case, the world will always need menial jobs done. That does not mean they should be as devalued as they currently are. Menial jobs are hard work and often pay peanuts. This is wrong. And when people who are stuck in this hear "just work hard and you'll get wealthy, it's not hard", I cna hardly blame them for being infuriated at that sentiment. Hell, I'm infuriated at it and I do pretty well for myself. It's a bad sentiment.

I agree with this. As I said from the start, education is the key to wealth. However:

Libraries are free. The internet, (was not even a fantasy when I was coming up!) is also free. Very few career paths actually require a college degree.

Did you know that auto mechanics who apprentice for four years and go to night school, (often paid at least in part by their union or employer,) make almost as much money as an RN? With much greater upward mobility.

University isn't the only path up. When your father is a janitor in a hospital, becoming a facility technician is a huge leap in wealth. Teaching young folks to not only dream they can do better, but teaching them how to recognize the bottom rungs of the ladder to success is a major key.

For a lot of reasons, not all will make it. But learning that it is possible, and worth trying for, even if you fail a few times? How is that insulting to anyone?


There's a lot I could have replied to, but I think this is the biggest focal point. This is central to how you are arguing that poor people deserve to be poor, even if you don't realize it. Because holy hell, punished? There's a phrase - when you have a life of privelege, equality looks like oppression.

Punished, as in having something that belongs to him taken away because of circumstances he did not contrive, and punished because the taking will not alleviate the suffering that is used to justify its taking.

For example, you have three houses. We should take two from you and give them to poor families. And I'm sure you have extra rooms in your remaining house. We should use them to give shelter to homeless people.

Now do you see what I mean by punished? By your own logic, you do not deserve three houses. Is it only someone else's wealth that should be used to help the deserving poor?

Your logic leads to taking from people who do not deserve to be taken from. My way leads to people earning their way into a better place. Which is more equitable?


Look at it this way. My dad went to one of the top schools in the country. Let's ssy the school has one opening left, and you and I are the final two applicants. Everything is weighted the same, we have the same GPA, same extracurriculars, you'd have thunk we were twins. I'd get the spot and you'd get the boot because I have legacy status. I did absolutely nothing to earn it. I have no greater claim to the seat in their classes than you. But it auto-defaults to me. Hell, I'd most likely get it even if you were the slightly better candidate in other areas. That's legacy, baby! You worked your ass off to be able to get into that college, far harder than I did, but I'm the one getting in.

Would dissolving legacy status as a factor in admissions be punishing me? I'm losing something of value, something that would drastically alter how the rest of my life would play out. But that's not a punishment. That's leveling the playing field. And yet, every time people rant and rave about the same things you do, such things are called punishments. They're being held back because they no longer have the unfair advantages they had before. I'm sorry, but I have absolutely zero sympathy for the idea that you are being somehow "punished" because the poors can now have equal standing.

I defend legacy status, not because you deserve it, but because your father earned it. It is his benefit that he gifts to you. You would not be entitled to it if he had flunked out. I likewise would like to gift my offspring with an education better than the one I got, (but a life spent as a tourist is not a life that leads to a family.)


It's bad enough when it's people who were born into money espousing it, but this is even worse. You managed to climb out of the well by slim grips on the walls, and then refuse to help build a ladder for the rest to get out as well. You just look at them with disdain saying they could climb the walls if they really wanted to get out, and maybe some of them just don't know that, the poor simple folk. Instead of doing anything to embrace the idea that maybe they could be helped out by those that aren't in the well, you just turn a blind eye and say they can climb the walls if they want. I likewise have no sympathy for that point of view, and you'll forgive me if I refuse to ever entertain it as a viable view on life.

This is also factually incorrect. I have trained apprentices at every opportunity, with no expectation of personal benefit. I have recruited the children of my childhood companions for employment opportunities, and helped to set them on the path of self betterment. (Two of those mentees now own electrical contracting companies and both have hired me to work on their projects a few times.) I am the guy who had a Saturday afternoon, "Algebra makes no sense!" study session with the children of friends and their friends for many years.

I do not forget where I came from or those who reached back to pull me forward. (I am currently helping the elderly widow of one such mentor renovate her home to help her deal with the aftermath of a recently broken hip.) And any time I see a kid who looks like he wants to try, I do my best to help him start on the path of his dream.


Those who are better off are more able to help those who are not. The strong should protect the weak. You are one of the weak who was protected by the strong, became strong yourself, and then don't see why you should protect anyone, they can protect themselves.

I do not accept that on the most primal, fundamental level.

I agree. And I don't accept that premise either. It is not the life I lived, and I don't see how you could ever conclude it was.


And in a world of billions that makes you a pretty damn small fraction.

A pebble rolling from a mountain top can cause an avalanche. But you underestimate how many self-made people there are in the world, because you do not see the nurse working 60 hours a week for $80,000 a year as rich. Her mother may have averaged less than half that in year-adjusted wealth and her children have probably never gone hungry. They may even own their own homes one day.

By the standards of the world, that's rich.


Yes, listen to the Frenchman!

The problem with the one pie theory is that there is never enough to go around, and those in charge of dividing it somehow always end up with bigger pieces. The reason there is enough pie now is because people who were not happy with their allotted shares made more pies, expecting to get a bigger piece for themselves. Take away that incentive and the extra pies don't get made. The result is bad for everyone.



Post Script:

Thank you for participating. I don't think I can add anything more to the conversation beyond this. When the conversation shifts to other topics I'll almost certainly have something to say, but this dead horse is thoroughly beaten.

[pyrefiend]

I agree with pretty much everything Liquor Box has said (as per usual).

It's obvious that one's chances of getting rich are affected a lot by (i) one's background, including generational wealth and access to resources, and (ii) one's willingness to work hard to become rich. (Also obviously, those aren't the only two relevant factors)

But you can accept that (i) matters without thinking that people born into poor backgrounds have no hope of improving their situation.

And you can accept that (ii) matters without thinking that everyone who is poor is blameworthy for being poor.

We probably disagree about the relative importance of (i) and (ii). Brian thinks background is less important than I do. But, probably we can all agree that both background and hard work matter.

[Ionathus]

Getting back to the initial thread premise:

To me, it's more about "if the Goblins had someone watching out for them from the start." (And I'm not just saying that because I'm sick to the teeth of endless weird hypotheticals based on everyone's mismatched assumptions about what "good land" and "bad land" means in this comic. :smallbiggrin:)

I think the Goblins' situation is pretty unique in Stickworld. I don't get the impression that gods abandon their creations easily: most sentient creatures seem to have a god or force they worship that gives them at least some consistent support. Literal near-omniscient, quasi-omnipotent beings who guide and protect and shepherd their worshipers into progress and prosperity through their clerics and paladins and probably some other Godsmoot-approved minor intercessions.

Lacking that support at the start seems to have done some real damage to the Goblins' sense of direction, unity, spirit, self-actualization, whatever. It's less like "they weren't there when we were passing out the oversized novelty checks that one single time" and more like "nobody ever even explained how to open a bank account, so they couldn't cash that check even if they'd gotten one." Sure, the worse resources are a problem, but the bigger problem is that nobody was there to notice and try to fix it.

The Goblinoids are the only kids at the science fair whose parents don't help them with the project every year. And they're angry that they keep on flunking the assignment. Sure, one of them actually managed to graduate and he does his best helping the rest every year, but he's entirely self-taught so he can only do so much. And they keep flunking and it's really demoralizing so they figure hey, this science fair thing sucks, maybe we'll just steal another kid's display and pass it off as our own, maybe wreck a few more displays along the way, and okay the metaphor's getting away from me let's wrap it up.

The point of the goblin story in OotS is that the designers of this world weren't thinking of the implications when they made goblins and abandoned them, and the heroes are just realizing this for the first time and have decided to change how they interact with goblins as a result. It's meant to parallel how (in the author's opinion) the creators of D&D weren't thinking of the implications when they made the monstrous races "humans with funny skin and a single stereotyped personality trait", and we as players should re-evaluate how we interact with those races in our D&D games, and maybe also examine any similar assumptions in our real-world lives too.

It's a pretty simple concept, story-wise. And it's a pretty fantasy-specific scenario. Trying to extrapolate real-world social or economic theories from that, or saying "but in real life XYZ would have happened", feels meaningless. Yeah well, in real life, the world also wouldn't have spent 3000 years in medieval stasis. Why are we applying these rules inconsistently? It reminds me of Peasant Railgun thinking: applying real-world and game-world laws arbitrarily, to arrive at a certain conclusion.

[Ruck]

Well, I guess I don't have much to add at this point, but it's a fact in our world today that the single best predictor of a person's wealth is their parents' wealth.


Not really (in my view) - capitalism (and most economic systems) are intended to improve the quality of life for the average person operating in the system

The intention of capitalism is to create profit and constantly grow the rate of profit.

Anyway, Peelee more or less has the right of it here, which is probably a good place to leave it. Because I have a lot of thoughts on how those previous two paragraphs tie together and the policy decisions made to that effect, and I feel like in elaborating I would almost certainly cross the forum rules line on real-world issues, if I haven't already.

So, moving on to something actually in the strip...


It's a pretty simple concept, story-wise. And it's a pretty fantasy-specific scenario. Trying to extrapolate real-world social or economic theories from that, or saying "but in real life XYZ would have happened", feels meaningless.

Perhaps, perhaps not. As you yourself say:


It's meant to parallel how (in the author's opinion) the creators of D&D weren't thinking of the implications when they made the monstrous races "humans with funny skin and a single stereotyped personality trait", and we as players should re-evaluate how we interact with those races in our D&D games, and maybe also examine any similar assumptions in our real-world lives too.

Emphasis mine. We know Rich thinks stories only have real value in how they reflect and comment on our world (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?232652-Redcloak-s-failed-characterization-and-what-it-means-for-the-comic-as-a-whole/page5&p=12718655#post12718655). So I suppose the question is whether the goblin metaphor is only meant to comment on how we treat certain peoples on an individual level, or if we should, as Roy and Durkon and Thor have done, think about the socioeconomic structures of our world that have led to placing those peoples in positions where stereotyping and demonizing them are common.

[pyrefiend]

Getting back to the initial thread premise:

To me, it's more about "if the Goblins had someone watching out for them from the start."

I actually don't think this has much to do with it, because the gods can't really interfere with creation (except in some very limited ways e.g. clerical magic) once they've created the world. So...


I don't get the impression that gods abandon their creations easily: most sentient creatures seem to have a god or force they worship that gives them at least some consistent support. Literal near-omniscient, quasi-omnipotent beings who guide and protect and shepherd their worshipers into progress and prosperity through their clerics and paladins and probably some other Godsmoot-approved minor intercessions.

Does this really happen? I guess I'm not really seeing it. The gods definitely give divine goodies to their worshipers, but I don't think we've seen them give guidance and support to larger populations than that. (I think the exception is Thor's intercessions to prevent souls from being taken by Hel, but that's a problem for which he's partially responsible in the first place so I'm not sure it counts.)

And also, have we seen anything to suggest that gods will turn away worshipers? Why would they, given their reliance on worship and souls? I can't think of any good reason, what makes think that if some big hobgoblin settlement started worshiping Tyr or Hiemdal or something, the god they chose would be glad for the support. If so, then the Goblins can't complain about lacking divine support or guidance. If they wanted a divine patron (of any alignment!), all they had to do was start worshiping one.

[Mechalich]

Emphasis mine. We know Rich thinks stories only have real value in how they reflect and comment on our world (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?232652-Redcloak-s-failed-characterization-and-what-it-means-for-the-comic-as-a-whole/page5&p=12718655#post12718655). So I suppose the question is whether the goblin metaphor is only meant to comment on how we treat certain peoples on an individual level, or if we should, as Roy and Durkon and Thor have done, think about the socioeconomic structures of our world that have led to placing those peoples in positions where stereotyping and demonizing them are common.

The tricky part is with this metaphor is that the mortals aren't at fault, the gods are, which undercuts the idea of the whole situation being "an injustice," since mortals aren't responsible for the actions of the gods.

For example, lets consider two city-states, A and B. Right now A is vastly more prosperous than B, but several hundred years ago they were effectively identical. Now, why is this the case? Here's two scenarios:
1. Long ago the people of City A unexpectedly ambushed City B, killed all the adult males, burned the city down, and salted the best cropland.
2. Long ago a massive earthquake hit city B, caused a huge firestorm and flood that killed most of the citizens and ruined the best cropland.

Both of these events set City B equally far behind City A on the developmental curve, and so even if the quantitative contributions necessary to produce equality between the cities in the present are the same, the two situations are qualitatively immensely different. In scenario #1 the people of City A owe the people of city B, because they inflicted a horrible injustice upon them, while in scenario #2 the people of City A don't owe City B anything. Now, helping City B out is still the right thing to do, but psychologically it's not the same. There's also the issue of prioritization. If the people of City A aren't responsible for City B's underdevelopment and it turns out there's a City C that's even worse off out there, then in scenario #2 the people of City A should actually prioritize this City C. Only in scenario #1 does City B have any sort of exclusive demand on resources as recompense.

And this argument has come up before when discussing this goblin issue with regard to OOTS, because while the goblins do have it bad, in the aggregate, they don't have it the worst, especially not following the conquest of Azure City. And, broadly, the comic even admits this. The reason to prioritize the goblins isn't because they are in a uniquely bad situation, but because the Dark One's existence gives them unique power over a completely different but ultimately more important problem. It's rather like the Dark One holds the final vote needed to pass some extremely important piece of legislation - let's call it the 'save the world' bill - and the gods sent Durkon to try and buy his vote. Unfortunately the gods' own rules bar them from actually making the Dark One a real offer of the things he wants. Ironically, it's their ironclad commitment to the 'no post-launch patches' principle that prevents a solution from being easily worked out.

[Ruck]

The tricky part is with this metaphor is that the mortals aren't at fault, the gods are, which undercuts the idea of the whole situation being "an injustice," since mortals aren't responsible for the actions of the gods.

Ah, but whether an injustice exists is not dependent on who perpetrated it. I'm reminded of this from The Giant, which, while I enjoy it as an analysis of Superman, is applicable here as the same concept in reverse:


As far back as Plato and his story of the Ring of Gyges, philosophers have debated whether or not a man who was free from the physical constraints of society could be virtuous. If a man was invisible, it was argued, clearly he would run around doing whatever thing he could get away with because society could not stop him, and therefore justice was a social construct only. Socrates rejects that point, saying that justice exists whether or not society is able to enforce it, and the man who abuses the Ring would be miserable with his power, while the man who resists its temptations would be happy in his abstinence.

Emphasis mine. Similarly, an injustice exists whether or not the people who can right it are the ones who caused it.

What makes Roy a hero is his willingness to take responsibility to right injustices that he is not responsible for.


For example, lets consider two city-states, A and B. Right now A is vastly more prosperous than B, but several hundred years ago they were effectively identical. Now, why is this the case? Here's two scenarios:
1. Long ago the people of City A unexpectedly ambushed City B, killed all the adult males, burned the city down, and salted the best cropland.
2. Long ago a massive earthquake hit city B, caused a huge firestorm and flood that killed most of the citizens and ruined the best cropland.

Your metaphor already falls apart because the second example is essentially a random act of happenstance (the use of "act of god" in insurance contracts and the like notwithstanding). In OOTS-world, the goblins are the way they are by the relative design and care (or lack thereof) of the gods, not an unforeseeable act of nature.


And this argument has come up before when discussing this goblin issue with regard to OOTS, because while the goblins do have it bad, in the aggregate, they don't have it the worst, especially not following the conquest of Azure City. And, broadly, the comic even admits this. The reason to prioritize the goblins isn't because they are in a uniquely bad situation, but because the Dark One's existence gives them unique power over a completely different but ultimately more important problem. It's rather like the Dark One holds the final vote needed to pass some extremely important piece of legislation - let's call it the 'save the world' bill - and the gods sent Durkon to try and buy his vote. Unfortunately the gods' own rules bar them from actually making the Dark One a real offer of the things he wants. Ironically, it's their ironclad commitment to the 'no post-launch patches' principle that prevents a solution from being easily worked out.

It also happens to be where the heroes are and where they can actually have an impact. They did not set out for this, to be sure. But, now that they are here, they have learned of the injustice created and perpetuated on the goblins that is directly intertwined with their current quest. And, being the heroes, they feel they ought to right the injustice even if they were not responsible for it.

As far as the urgency of it as a priority, well, it comes as no surprise to me that a marginalized and disadvantaged group has to amass the power in one way or another to genuinely threaten the status quo before those who benefit from it will take notice and consider their cause.

I am curious, though, which species are specifically cited as being more disadvantaged in OOTS-world. Not that I'm incredulous at the idea, but I think it would help to have specific examples or citations rather than just take it as a given.

[Smoutwortel]

Did you forget about inflation? Fifty years ago money was worth much more.

The simple fact is that fifty years ago a single salary could support an entire family of five and that's just not true anymore. The price of life is going up and despite economic growth the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer.

Supporting a large family from a single salary is pretty common in the poorer parts of the world(mostly caused by the demographic transition and an higher chance on taboo for working women combined with child labor restrictions) and I know from both anecdotal evidence(around 40 families) and statistics(3 countries) that this is at least possible in multiple western countries.
You're right that inflation exists, but that just means you need and get more money.
The effect you described is also an existent effect of which although I don't know the English term, but that effect is in general something people who argue things like the person you're reacting to see as a key performance indicator of the actions undertaken for their goals.

[BloodSquirrel]

Not really (in my view) - capitalism (and most economic systems) are intended to improve the quality of life for the average person operating in the system (but I have never really been a fan of assuming negative motives without compelling evidence), how well they deliver this is debatable.


To say that capitalism is "intended" to do anything is false. Capitalism is the economic system that results whenever people's property rights are respected and when voluntary exchange is the basis for economic activity. People can advocate it for a variety of reasons, both because of the positive effects of capitalism's ability to generate wealth (capitalism has been extremely effective at both reducing absolute poverty worldwide and allowing individuals to amass fortunes) and because the alternative to capitalism inherently involves a more intrusive, more powerful state that engages in coercive violence to enforce its economic policies.

[Sapphire Guard]

The dwarves have it pretty bad, thanks to Hel's deal.

The thing about the levelling system is, it mostly applies to the super elite privileged part of society, which are adventurers. Most of the individual people in any gameworld are not adventurers, and don't see those benefits. We don't get to see the perspectives of the dirt farmers who are much more likely to be victimised by goblins than people who get to go to Fighter college like Roy.


The point of the goblin story in OotS is that the designers of this world weren't thinking of the implications when they made goblins and abandoned them, and the heroes are just realizing this for the first time and have decided to change how they interact with goblins as a result. It's meant to parallel how (in the author's opinion) the creators of D&D weren't thinking of the implications when they made the monstrous races "humans with funny skin and a single stereotyped personality trait", and we as players should re-evaluate how we interact with those races in our D&D games, and maybe also examine any similar assumptions in our real-world lives too.

Yes, this is what the story is getting at. It's a good idea. Where we run into issues is the crossover between meta and non meta. Because there is an implicit assumption that the world will also only create level appropriate encounters for good aligned parties, which isn't the faults of the D&D creators, that is the fault of the GM.

Adventurers are rare, and these stories only function because adventurers are relatively rare (otherwise, a mid level party like OOTS doesn't get to change the fate of nations). Looking at interspecies interactions only through the lens of adventurers is essentially from the perspective of the elites, because the world is literally built from the ground up to accommodate adventures.

Fenris is a munchkin, when the goblins apply his intended tactics, they work, but he has not factored in that they want to do other things than try to take over the world or that individual goblin lives are worth preserving. How to fix that is the tricky part.

[Ionathus]

Emphasis mine. We know Rich thinks stories only have real value in how they reflect and comment on our world (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?232652-Redcloak-s-failed-characterization-and-what-it-means-for-the-comic-as-a-whole/page5&p=12718655#post12718655). So I suppose the question is whether the goblin metaphor is only meant to comment on how we treat certain peoples on an individual level, or if we should, as Roy and Durkon and Thor have done, think about the socioeconomic structures of our world that have led to placing those peoples in positions where stereotyping and demonizing them are common.

I do think it's both, and that the latter naturally follows from the former, but that the former is the most important part. My favorite part of Roy & Durkon's goblin conversation isn't Durkon explaining the situation, it's Roy pausing and going "wow, we never even asked, did we? I'm known for talking during combat and I never even thought to ask." They aren't ever going to acknowledge the deeper issues if they're not thinking of the goblins as people in the first place.

The deeper issues and responsibility for societal change are secondary to that core message...and the circumstances that the writer contrived to enable this discussion are tertiary at best. Which is why I always find it so strange when people try to construct elaborate scenarios to pick apart the "goblins started with less" backstory. I suppose that's because we all "get" the core message already...and we do like to debate nitpicks on here.


The tricky part is with this metaphor is that the mortals aren't at fault, the gods are, which undercuts the idea of the whole situation being "an injustice," since mortals aren't responsible for the actions of the gods.


Ah, but whether an injustice exists is not dependent on who perpetrated it...Similarly, an injustice exists whether or not the people who can right it are the ones who caused it.

What makes Roy a hero is his willingness to take responsibility to right injustices that he is not responsible for.

My thoughts precisely. Very well said - and succinctly, too!


Yes, this is what the story is getting at. It's a good idea. Where we run into issues is the crossover between meta and non meta.

No; respectfully, that's where you run into issues. Because it sounds like you have trouble suspending your disbelief about some tertiary lore, and it's affecting your experience of the core message. Which is understandable - that's happened for me too in other media - but it's not a universal experience.

Rich is telling a fairly straightforward story about a population that got overlooked. He's provided scant details to show that, yes, they really were "abandoned" in a way that no other race was, the ones who abandoned them won't be helping fix it, and now that the heroes see them as real people they've resolved to help out. The problem is that the population leader they have to work with is particularly pissed about the situation, which complicates things.

That's the whole story in a nutshell.

But you're fixating on those scant details and trying to reconcile them as if they were real things instead of a lore handwave to get the story on track. You're asking followup technical questions about the "leveling" system in this world, how rare adventurers are, and how all of that would affect society at large. And the answer is "irreconcilably; neither society nor the characters' psyches would be recognizable to our Real World brains, and the story would collapse. Don't think about it this hard."

To use the Superman example cited above: authors use Superman to explore the nature of virtue, responsibility, and personal codes of honor. Nitpicking the minutiae of how the Krypton/Earth differences give him superpowers is fine and to be expected, but extrapolating that to try making points about virtue, responsibility, and personal codes of honor is not really in the spirit of the work.

[Fyraltari]

The deeper issues and responsibility for societal change are secondary to that core message...and the circumstances that the writer contrived to enable this discussion are tertiary at best. Which is why I always find it so strange when people try to construct elaborate scenarios to pick apart the "goblins started with less" backstory. I suppose that's because we all "get" the core message already...and we do like to debate nitpicks on here.

You are a more generous man than I.

[mashlagoo1982]

The difference is, people who believe the cheese-moon theory are not harmed by their belief. People who believe they cannot rise above their current economic situation are harmed. They are trapped in a mindset from which they can never escape, and totally dependent on the largess of the wealthy.




Libraries are free. The internet, (was not even a fantasy when I was coming up!) is also free. Very few career paths actually require a college degree.


I do not want to derail the thread too much, but I did want to point out one thing I noticed that maybe part of the point Peelee was trying to make.

It seems your position makes certain assumptions as to what people are capable of accomplishing. I have seen you state or imply numerous times the idea "I did it, so that means anyone can do it."

This itself is not bad. I took it to mean that you do not consider yourself to be special in any overly advantageous way. But, what it fails to consider is that there are plenty of people whom are differently abled from you that are incapable of doing what you did for reasons outside their control. People with certain mental or physical disabilities, other people whom suffer from medical conditions that make activities painful or impossible. They are some of the people this mentality (generally but not always) can be blind towards.

I do not mean to imply that you do this yourself either.

It is like the idea about libraries and internet being free. They are, but their are other non-monetary costs you are failing to consider. Does said hypothetical person have means to get themselves to the library? How will they access the internet? Computers are not free. You also generally need to be physically capable of interacting with such things. There are ways to work around physical impairments, but they are never as effective.

[gbaji]

I did not. I pointed out the logical conclusion of that line of thought. Which, depressingly, I have encountered from numerous people in real life, and have a great distaste for.

It's a pretty huge leap to go from "You can become wealthy if you educate yourself and work hard" to "blaming the poor for being poor". That's not a logical conclusion at all because no one is "blaming" people for their economic outcomes here. They simply "are".

I think also some people hear "wealthy" and think "filthy rich" or something. That's not what it means. If you are earning more money than you must spend simply to eat, shelter, basic travel, clothing, etc, then you are "wealthy". Anyone who is earning more than subsistence level is "wealthy". How wealthy is another matter. Wealth is literally the measure of all the earnings you have made in your life minus all the expenses you have paid in your life. If there is a positive value, you have "wealth" (ie: dollars worth of value of all goods you possess, plus goods owed to you (also called "money")).

You don't have to be a millionaire to be "wealthy". Someone making a comfortable mid-high 5 figure salary can be "wealthy". We don't need to put an "all or nothing" component in here. And yes, everything else being equal, a person will always be better off if they work to educate themselves (in useful subjects) and work hard, so as to make their labor more valuable to other people and thus earn a better living for themselves.

I guess what's surprising to me is that this idea somehow "infuriates you", yet, as I pointed out earlier, the alternative is to tell poor people that they have no control over their own lives and outcomes, and they should just not bother? What's the worse that happens to a poor person if they adopt the "teachings of Brian"? They fall for the "lie", and go out and learn a trade and work hard and only earn somewhat more money as a result than they would have otherwise. They are still better off than the alternative.

I also find it amusing that you brought up Thank you for Smoking (great film btw). You do realize that you are putting yourself in the position of the Dad, teaching his kid a debate trick, right? That's not a valid way to make decisions. It's a way to trick people into supporting your "side" in a debate. Avoiding showing that your "side" is better, but instead simply showing that the other "side" isn't "best", is great at wooing an audience to your side. It's a fantastically terrible method to actually make decisions and choose courses of action. Because the Dad didn't actually determine which flavor of ice cream was best, right? There's no value to what he did, except to tear down his son's favorite flavor. That's pretty darn counterproductive.

And discouraging poor people from putting forth effort to improve the value of their labor is also pretty darn counterproductive.



Also, what is "valuable" is just as much due to luck as anything else. If Michael Jordan was born in 1863, he would not have anywhere near the amount of wealth he has currently regardless of how much he trained at basketball because it was not valued as it was in the 1990's.

Sure. But at any point in history, for any person in history, there is a set of "good choices" and "bad choices". Why not, as Brian is doing, encourage people to make "good choices"?



Menial work may well be all that many people are capable of. And even if that were not the case, the world will always need menial jobs done. That does not mean they should be as devalued as they currently are. Menial jobs are hard work and often pay peanuts. This is wrong. And when people who are stuck in this hear "just work hard and you'll get wealthy, it's not hard", I cna hardly blame them for being infuriated at that sentiment. Hell, I'm infuriated at it and I do pretty well for myself. It's a bad sentiment.

He didn't say "just work hard". He said to gain an education. I'll go one further. It's not about education specifically, but about learning skills that make your labor more valuable to others. No amount of working harder to dig a ditch makes the innate value of that ditch greater than it is to the person who needs/wants a ditch dug. The "work hard" components of this is that all the education and skill in the world doesn't do much if you don't actually use them in a way that provides value to others (the consumers of the fruits of your labor). Both are needed, and Brian referenced both. Countering only half of what he said isn't terribly useful either.

Er. I will also point out that, everything being the same (again), "working harder" at whatever you are skilled to do is still going to produce better results then "put in the minimum effort" will. Right? Let's stop with the "all or nothing"/"rich or poor" dynamic nonsense and just think in terms of one person and what will make that one person's life better. "Better" is always better. The fact that one person's "better" doesn't make them the equal of someone else's is not a reason to not strive for "better" in the first place. That's the sort of silly line of thinking that infuriates me. It's incredibly harmful since it (again) actively discourages people from trying to make their lives "better" because they are unlikely to make themselves "rich".

Don't strive for "rich". Strive for "better". You'd be surprised what will happen as a result.


Look at it this way. My dad went to one of the top schools in the country. Let's ssy the school has one opening left, and you and I are the final two applicants. Everything is weighted the same, we have the same GPA, same extracurriculars, you'd have thunk we were twins. I'd get the spot and you'd get the boot because I have legacy status. I did absolutely nothing to earn it. I have no greater claim to the seat in their classes than you. But it auto-defaults to me. Hell, I'd most likely get it even if you were the slightly better candidate in other areas. That's legacy, baby! You worked your ass off to be able to get into that college, far harder than I did, but I'm the one getting in.

What a calamity! So Brian has to take a second slot at a somewhat less prestigious school, and maybe earn a tiny bit less money in his lifetime. You're right. Brian should just not bother trying to earn a degree at all, because he can't get the top slot in a top university. Failing to attain the absolute top level of economic success is clearly "failure", so let's just not do any of that.

The one thing that guarantees failure? Not trying. So no. Anything that encourages people to "try" is a good thing.



It's bad enough when it's people who were born into money espousing it, but this is even worse. You managed to climb out of the well by slim grips on the walls, and then refuse to help build a ladder for the rest to get out as well. You just look at them with disdain saying they could climb the walls if they really wanted to get out, and maybe some of them just don't know that, the poor simple folk. Instead of doing anything to embrace the idea that maybe they could be helped out by those that aren't in the well, you just turn a blind eye and say they can climb the walls if they want. I likewise have no sympathy for that point of view, and you'll forgive me if I refuse to ever entertain it as a viable view on life.

Nonsense. He's encouraging others to succeed the same way he did. What is wrong with that?


Those who are better off are more able to help those who are not. The strong should protect the weak. You are one of the weak who was protected by the strong, became strong yourself, and then don't see why you should protect anyone, they can protect themselves.

Again though, that's incredibly negative thinking. You're essentially saying that no one's ever able to succeed as a result of their own efforts. That only "the strong" helping them will ever work. That's incredibly condescending to the tens of millions of people who do, in fact, make good livings without needing someone else to provide their success. It's also another method for "the strong" (assuming this is an analogy for "the rich") to continue to hold their power over "the poor", by convincing them that their outcomes are purely the result of largess from the rich.

How about just empowering others instead? Shocking concept, I know.



Well, I guess I don't have much to add at this point, but it's a fact in our world today that the single best predictor of a person's wealth is their parents' wealth.

That may be true, but how much of that is due purely to economic assistance, or some sort of wealth inertia, and how much of that is about good financial choices being passed from those who made those good choices themselves to their children? And on the flip side, if the parents made a series of bad choices and didn't do well financially, is it the absence of money in the household that increases the odds of their children "being poor" as well, or that their children are more likely to follow in their footsteps in terms of life choices as well?

It's a very broad statement that can have a lot of factors to it. But to simply distill this all down into some kind of "wealth begets wealth" position is a bit presumptive IMO.


How does this tie into the Goblins? Maybe it's also about their choices? Just a thought. I raised this earlier, that it's not as simple as just what land they had, or what land they have now. It will require a significant social change to adjust the Goblins way of thinking from "take what others have to better ourselves" (short term and not scalable or sustainable) to "build better lives for ourselves". It's a good bet that simply giving them "stuff/land" isn't going to change things in the long run. There has to also be a change from within.

[truemane]

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