Ownership- GS

I was asked to determine what ownership meant. I think that in the real world, ownership means controlling something. I think that if I can do whatever I want to something, I truly own it. For example a house is the owned of its inhabitants because they can do anything they want with it, such as breaking down walls to make new rooms. On the other hand, an apartment is not owned by its inhabitants because they are limited in what they can do. In the case of an apartment the ownership would be in the hands of the landlord.

I think that the only way to own a country is a dictatorship because you have complete control over your land, while a democracy must vote making the land a possession of everyone in it. If I am asked I say that ownership is having total control over something or someone.

In Civ 5 there are multiple ways to get more land. You can conquer it or you can gain it naturally. This is different from the real world because the countries' borders do not grow naturally, since most of the space is already owned. So the main way land is gained is through war. An example of conquered land in Civ5 is the image above. The red circle used to be a Japanese territory. However, we went to war, as I talk about in my last post, and I claimed that piece of land. As you can see, my territory is growing into the red circle. In Civ if you lose land you lose its ownership. The invaders now control it and it is theirs. I think that no matter the time you have owned the land you lose it when it is captured by another Civ. This applies to almost everything In Civ, from sciences you can steal, to the builders you can capture.

This is similar to the real world in some cases.  For example, America was owned In this order,(oldest to newest). First, it the native tribes owned the land. Then the English came along and colonized America. Then the Americans took the land through the American revolution. As you can see The land shifted owners from the natives to the English to the Americans. I think that this shows that land over time becomes possession of the new leader. Notice I say over time. I think that unlike in Civ the possession of land can only be true if a deal is made (American independence) or by time (English control of the Americas). I do not know how much time must pass for the land to count as owned but I would say it is when the fighting for repossession of the land as stoped.

Justified Wars? -GS

I was asked to write about how or when war is ok. I think that war is not good, but that it can be justified, for example, if you're being attacked or if your quality of life is endangered.

 In my game, Japan was blocking my way to the rest of the world. This made my Civs life's hard, limiting me to my small part of land. This meant war because we wanted and needed to explore. I needed to explore in order to find the other Civs, to have a better chance at spreading my religion and to establish better trade routes. This war ended with two of their cities razed and a clear path for me to pass.

Now that I look back, I can see the strategic advantages that this war gave me. Before I attacked them, they were surrounding my Civ. That was not good from a strategic standpoint because they could attack me from almost all around, making it difficult to defend my Civ. So destroying some of their cities gave me a great strategic advantage, making them less powerful and as a bonus they feared me now.  It also gave me the possibility to conquer more land, making it possible for me to build more cities around the world. This, I think, is a justified war because my quality of life was threatened, and they would have declared war on us anyway if we did not attack them first.

I think that war should not be declared in real life except as a last resort. War should only be defensive and not offensive. This, I think, would reduce the number of wars a lot because multiple ways can be used to make things like the quality of life better. Some examples include making trade deals or establishing alliances. As I look back on my game, I see that I lost a possible powerful ally which would have made a wall for me in times of war.

GNP vs GNH -GS

The countries of the world are trying to measure happiness to make the quality of life in their country better. The main method for this is called GNP (gross national product). It tries to calculate happiness under the assumption that if more money is spent the people are happier. But in recent years a new method has challenged the GNP this method is the GNH (gross national happiness).

A country that is trying to initiate the GNH is Bhutan. Bhutan is a small country in between India and China. It was a small closed off country until it opened its borders to tourists in 1974. Bhutan is the main supporter of GNH, thinking that it represents better what the citizens' quality of life is than GNP. GNP is used to calculate the amount of money a country spends and try's to reflect its quality of life with that data. The most common con of this method is that things like traffic jams will boost the GNP (more gas is sold) but not make the people happy (who likes traffic jams?). However, GNH does not have this problem since it tries to measure the total sum of the economic output, environmental impacts, the spiritual and cultural growth of citizens, mental and physical health and the strength of the corporate and political systems. This brings up a better vision of what the quality of life is like in a country.

I personally think that GNH is better because it takes more factors into consideration. It takes into consideration the health of the population, the presence of religion, and more. This makes things like traffic jams have less impact on the total GNH.

This can connect to Civ because happiness is more important than wealth. The main reason for this is that happiness can impact the wealth of your Civ, and that your Civ can be happy with low wealth. So in all ways happiness is more important. An example is that in my game I have a lot of happiness, this leads to me getting the bonus that happiness gives. It also helps me get more wealth with the luxury resources I have in double. I can trade these resources to other Civs to make more money per turn. Yes, it could be argued that more money in Civ is important because you can buy happiness with buildings and that gold is a really important resource, but happiness can impact gold more than gold can impact happiness.

This is how GNP and GNH affect the real world and Civ 5.