So, the suggestion is that anarchists must unite against a common enemy and co-ordinate their efforts, perhaps even sacrificing themselves for the greater good.
Does this then prove that:
(a) Anarchism, as a practical concept in governance in a universe where interaction with non-anarchists is unavoidable, is by definition impossible?
(b) The only way to save anarchies is for anarchists to become hypocritically anti-anarchistic in attitude?
(c) Anarchism only exists in the ED universe because the organized powers and superpowers allow it and tolerate it, in the sense that they simply couldn't be bothered trying to eradicate it before now?
Necro of an old post but I can't help pointing out nerdily that the tenets of anarchism include mutual aid and cooperative management. While the term anarchy is often used in popular culture to evoke images of scorched earth raiders or disorganised bedlam (in Elite the aesthetics lean in to this idea too) as a political philosophy it's by no means diametrically opposed to organisation... and in fact it's entirely dependent on cooperation. So there's nothing hypocritical about the idea of anarchy factions coming together to help each other. It
would be hypocritical if such an alliance led to authoritarian or paternalistic individuals being allowed to take control. Every individual group needs to be mindful of this already if they want to characterise themselves as a 'proper' anarchy.
More importantly though, everything you and I typed above is kind of moot in the context of a multiplayer videogame, a medium I hope would generally be fun and varied. Elite is sim-like in some aspects but I'd be wary of trying to shoehorn IRL political discussions into the gameworld. The reality is many anarchy faction supporters don't even know what the word means, and just want to roleplay
fun pirates with cool jackets... and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. The distribution of government types in Elite can never be a representation of or bellwether for IRL politics because it's just a bunch of numbers glued together to varying degrees of competence in a rootin' tootin' videogame about spaceships. (It
could maaaaybe have some value as sociological data but still extremely dubious.)
In this context I'd argue the systematic extermination of any given flavour of faction due simply to Fdev having dropped the ball on BGS balancing is not fun or fair for the players who have invested lots of time in supporting them. A power discrepancy already existed between the government types which you could argue was adding a 'bit of flavour to proceedings', but what we're experiencing now can't really be characterised as a reasonable, planned discrepancy; it's rampant, unintentional systemic bias.
If a specific coalition of, say, Federal players came together with the intention of eradicating a nearby anarchy (which they often do, as Screemonster pointed out) that would be players dynamically interacting with one another via the BGS. One side would win, the other would lose but regardless of outcome there would have been an interaction
, a valuable exchange between players in a multiplayer environment. What's happening post-Odyssey is a particular government type is just being strangled by random traffic due to the unfortunate convergence of several mechanics that needed more time in the oven.
