Irony of Post-War America

[mkborgelt13]

Hearing a Mister Gutsy's jingoist, anti-Communist rants, I was struck with a sense of irony.

 

The settlements you work with are basically small workers' Communes, where the settlers work at subsistence level for the "common good," survival of each other and the settlement itself. There is basically no ownership of any property, you (the "State," the authority) can take their belongings from them at will, redistribute them, and so on.

 

Bourgeois class is gone totally, which is also ironic as you see signs of ruined pre-war consumerism. (Nuka Cola, Corvega, etc).

 

Looking at posters on walls, from the general 2077 vibe, it seems a large part of the American war effort was anti-Communist propoganda. Now, after the catastrophe of that war, the thing they feared the most, has re-formed on its own and is the standard of living.

 

China won, in the end.

 

As the oligarchs in Boyleston Club said, "To the world that was. Mankind shall never see its like again."

[Wunderbot]

Bourgeois class isn't gone at all, really. Every Fallout game has had groups of them. Diamond City has the folks of the upper stand. In New Vegas you have the casino owners, especially the White Gloves, and you also run into several very wealthy ranchers. There are also independent companies like the Gun Runners and Crimson Caravan whose leaders seem to be quite wealthy.

[cossayos]

Bourgeois class isn't gone at all, really. Every Fallout game has had groups of them. Diamond City has the folks of the upper stand. In New Vegas you have the casino owners, especially the White Gloves, and you also run into several very wealthy ranchers. There are also independent companies like the Gun Runners and Crimson Caravan whose leaders seem to be quite wealthy.

 

Yeah, but that rather reminds me of racketeers. Not that burgeous and racketeer are mutually exclusive, Andrew Carnegie, cough, cough, but it's not as if there was some real enterprise going on.

 

Also, China obviously didn't win anything. Otherwise they wouldn't be straded as ghoul pockets all over the wasteland. The only message I took from all the Fallouts is, there's no winner in nuclear conflicts. But that message I already got during the actual Cold War.

 

And I still don't get why people still abide in shacks 200 years after the bombs fell. I get it, the world wouldn't be as advanced as it was, but solid walls and clean cloths should well be possible after 2 centuries.

Edited August 22, 2016 by cossayos

[DoctorKaizeld]

... Not really. The settlement system only shows the base structure of how a couple places work and it is quite simplified. Your settlers get paid via rescources such as food and things they can trade. The FO world in the US is focused on the narter system which has been heavily stated and implied. As the settlement system is quite shallow you only see the rescources gained in excess and as the leader you decide what to do with that excess. While yes it has many similarities to comunism it is not actually communism as you the leader get all the excess and pay your workers with the requirement system.

 

 

Then you look at the NCR and the Legion both are not communist and take up massive chunks of N. America. The NCR are based on the American system and rules Oregon, California, Utah, Nevada, and parts of Mexico. They are very much a capitalist nation. The legion is totalitarian and rules parts of Arizona, parts of Utah, parts of colorado, a small chunk of Nevada, parts of New Mexico, and a large chunk of central America.

 

Those two alone contol almost a third of the US. Megaton is focused on the barter system and Rivet City is as well you keep what you find but pay a tax for security. This is similar to the settlements who pay in the form of trade goods and annoying quests for your protection... Which you apparently suck at as they keep being kidnapped and raided.

 

You can draw similarities to communism and debate how parts of what i said are wrong on the settlement stuff but saying China won when the two largest groups in cannon are not communist is flat wrong. No one won that war in the long run..

[ahnjd]

The biggest powers in the wasteland tend to be those who run Caravans. They are considered to be the Bourgeois class. Every state like entity in the Wasteland (probably with the exception of Enclave because they don't really tell how they get their resources) like the NCR, like Caesar Legion and even in Fallout 4 the settlement you run and Bunker Hill, the people who have the money (or caps in this case, just another form of intrinsic value that honestly is no different than the dollar bills in our pockets today in principle) are the regional power. Post war consumerism is no different than pre war, just the priorities are different. People will pay more money for clean water over dirty water, more for an assault rile than a pipe rifle, etc.

Edited August 22, 2016 by ahnjd

[cossayos]

The biggest powers in the wasteland tend to be those who run Caravans.

 

So the Jimmy Hoffas of the time.

[DoctorKaizeld]

The biggest powers in the wasteland tend to be those who run Caravans. They are considered to be the Bourgeois class. Every state like entity in the Wasteland (probably with the exception of Enclave because they don't really tell how they get their resources) like the NCR, like Caesar Legion and even in Fallout 4 the settlement you run and Bunker Hill, the people who have the money are the regional power. Post war consumerism is no different than pre war, just the priorities are different. People will pay more money for clean water over dirty water, more for an assault rile than a pipe rifle, etc.

 

Actually they do say how the Enclave get their stuff. It is typically from similar methods that the Bro Hood do by finding prewar weapons caches and military bases. As they are the owners of these locations, sort of, they have a lot of the password, location layouts, inventory lists, and the equipment and know how to make things easier then the Bro Hoods attempts. Everything else is gained through tithes from the people of the United States that they protect... So they force people to hand over stuff at gun point because that is their civic dut... Anybody else starting to see some similarities to the Eastern Bro Hood?

[mkborgelt13]

Well... I didn't mean China won in a literal sense, because you guys are correct, nobody actually won (and Nick Valentine says this, I won't argue with him ).

 

I do think the pre-war lifestyle of an employed middle class with discretionary income is gone. There is a small amount of people with an advantage over others through bartering caps or force, but I would call them "Capitalists," not bourgeois. The bourgeois is the group of people who work for the capitalists with discretionary income who are the driving force of consumerist economy, such as the Sole Survivor before the war. (i.e. middle class). part of the bourgeois is also "intellectual" professions, like artists and so on, which are in short supply.

 

I think people are still living in rusted shacks is due to the lack of industrial infrastructure needed to produce uniform building materials. They have to recycle everything, basically.

 

I wasn't considering the NCR when I posted, but Shady Sands when you first encounter it is similar to a Fallout 4 settlement. They even task you with protecting them.

 

I can't deny the capitalist flavor of caravans and trading. But settlements still seem very much like workers' Communes to me. or at least, the way I run them ;)

[mkborgelt13]

The concept of pre-war caches is fascinating. The former Enclave guy in Far Harbor mentions the Enclave getting pre-war fusion cores from some kind of storage facility.

 

Are the Forged actually melting down scrap or just playing around in the foundry?

[cossayos]

 

I wasn't considering the NCR when I posted, but Shady Sands when you first encounter it is similar to a Fallout 4 settlement. They even task you with protecting them.

 

 

 

We haven't been in NCR heartland as of yet. But going by their president still wearing a dirty suit like any wayward hobo, it can't be paradise. My bar tender makes a better appearance.

Edited August 22, 2016 by cossayos