How to Simulate an Anarcho-Capitalism using Minecraft!

Agreed. Maybe giving every player the /ban ability right off the bat might be a bad idea, but we shouldn't put that in the hands of anyone... maybe on a timer. Give griefers a chance to show themselves before they go on a "killing spree".

Oh, so a five day waiting period on guns?  Yeah, that doesn't sound like something a government would do at all.

More like mom and dad not giving a gun to their five-year old kid and letting him wander around the neighborhood.

More like mom and dad not giving a gun to their five-year old kid and letting him wander around the neighborhood.

But surely in an AnCap society, somebody would eventually show the kid a gun...

No, you know what?  As long as it's consistent and it's described up-front on all descriptions of the server, you can treat it as a law of physics.  As long it's purely mechanical (done by the server itself, not the op interacting with the server,) and you never prevent it from happening or change the length of time it takes.

So what length of time are you going to set it at?  Five days?  18 days?  A year?  It ultimately boils down to what specific type of violence monopoly you want the Old Money to have over the Nouveau Riche.

So what length of time are you going to set it at?  Five days?  18 days?  A year?  It ultimately boils down to what specific type of violence monopoly you want the Old Money to have over the Nouveau Riche.

I was actually thinking in hours... maybe 6 to 8, tops, but not less than 2. Won't stop the guys playing the long game, but most griefers just come in and start sh*t right away. Giving these people /ban right away... it would be messy.

OK, if "not playing minecraft" = "stone age", I'm more like, oh, Australopithecus.  Still, I am totally for each player having that /ban ability.  You're being afraid of your own imagining of what people might do with that kind of power, which is (I think) exactly where government comes from.  This "minecraft" is a game; it's a fine way to find out what people actually will do, and nobody gets hurt (except virtually).

It's possible that, since it's a game, people will "kill" much more freely than they would really kill in real life; otoh, since it's a game and /ban = game death (not real death), it might scale.

Only one way to find out, guys.

I'm curious as to how these "griefers" might alter their behavior knowing that anyone could ban them, as opposed to what I imagine usually happens:  waiting until enough players have expressed enough annoyance that "God" sighs, puts down His Cheetos, and bans them.

Yep, only one way to find out!

Keep in mind, though, you're not competing with Real Life.  You're just competing with standard, run-of-the-mill minecraft servers that restrict some specific abilities in order to mitigate some specific types of attacks. 

If you consistently get more players than the typical "well-moderated" server, congratulations!  Your AnCap society is considered desirable by humans.

You definitely need a meaningful death mechanic to cause players in a game to seriously role-play the situation, without which this will have less than no connection real life sociology.  A strong current example of a game with death is the Day Z Mod for ARMA, which is showing some very interesting and atypical styles of play.  (Possibly relevant note: Full-on zombie apocalypse survivalist anarchy, and popular enough to drag a full price game out of retirement after years of lying fallow)

My first thought for mechanics would be to use an old concept from pen and paper role playing games, where players are incapacitated rather than killed by physical damage, and can then be rescued or killed outright (banned?) by another player, provided no-one else interferes.  This would allow for degrees of criminality, and give murder some moral weight, without limiting it to the use of a magical command against which there is no natural defense.

... a quick look at pre-existing mods turns up Death & Rebirth, in which dead players become ghosts largely incapable of interacting with the world, but can be resurrected by another player using up a valuable item defined by the server admin.  Not perfect, but pretty close, especially if ghosts could be immobilised.  It certainly allows for recovery from accidental death while leaving premeditated murder on the cards, the aggressor could trap the ghost far from rescue attempts, or declare war and kill off anyone prepared to assist their chosen victim.

I find it interesting that, when I suggested an armed society could lead to a bloodbath under the right conditions, you all rejected it as nonsense, but you same people are concerned about giving everyone the right to ban anyone in a game! You even acknowledge that a universal ban ability is analogous to having a deadly weapon! Doesn't this strike you people as being disingenuous, even a tad hypocritical?

I have no qualms about giving everyone a ban command. What I have concerns about is giving them all a ban command right away. Even a "good" player might ban someone - possibly multiple people - before realizing how much damage they're doing. See the above example of the people handed fake guns. A couple of hours to get to see the world, interact with the people, etc, should make that less likely to happen. Just like the people who have had gun training. That's what we call an "analogy".

The problem with a /ban command is that it's not a deadly weapon, it's a godlike power.  Infinite range, never misses, no defense, can't get your shot in first, all you need is a name.  If everyone has that you're not simulating anything human, but the politics of demigods on Mount Olympus.  Is that the goal here?

The problem with a /ban command is that it's not a deadly weapon, it's a godlike power.  Infinite range, never misses, no defense, can't get your shot in first, all you need is a name.  If everyone has that you're not simulating anything human, but the politics of demigods on Mount Olympus.  Is that the goal here?

Ouch... good point. Anyone have any suggestions, like tying the ban to a weapon hit, or the like?

Anyone have any suggestions?

Four posts back, sir.  

Anyone have any suggestions?

Four posts back, sir.  

Herp-a-derp. Thanks.

The problem with a /ban command is that it's not a deadly weapon, it's a godlike power.  Infinite range, never misses, no defense, can't get your shot in first, all you need is a name.  If everyone has that you're not simulating anything human, but the politics of demigods on Mount Olympus.  Is that the goal here?

Obvious solution is to make it probabilistic, and that if you use it, counterfire can stop both your name and your IP.

So if Bob attempts to ban Carol, there is a thirty percent chance that Carol is banned, a ten percent chance that Carol's IP gets banned, a ten percent chance that Bob gets banned and a five percent chance that Bob's IP gets banned.  There is, however, a seventy percent chance that Carol is not banned, is notified of the operation, and gets the option of responding.

These probabilities are independent.  Worst case outcome is that Carol gets banned, Bob gets banned, and his IP gets banned.  Most likely outcome is that no one gets banned, but Carol is aware that Bob is sniping at her.

You get one shot for each period that both people are logged on, or if semipermanently logged on, one shot per day.

The problem with a /ban command is that it's not a deadly weapon, it's a godlike power.  Infinite range, never misses, no defense, can't get your shot in first, all you need is a name.  If everyone has that you're not simulating anything human, but the politics of demigods on Mount Olympus.  Is that the goal here?

I figured the goal is to see what happens when you give 100% of the members of a society the right to use deadly force, while removing any type of central authority.  We're concerned with rights, here, not tactics.  Right?

We can easily just assume that in the real world, some of the shots would have missed, hit innocent bystanders, devolved from duels into skirmishes, etc.  Right?

The right to use deadly force is pretty much on by default in computer games, and Minecraft is no exception.  The problem you need to solve is the other default, where anyone killed immediately comes back to life, making deadly force almost meaningless.  I don't think turning everyone into Valentine Michael Smith is your best possible solution.

The problem with a /ban command is that it's not a deadly weapon, it's a godlike power.  Infinite range, never misses, no defense, can't get your shot in first, all you need is a name.  If everyone has that you're not simulating anything human, but the politics of demigods on Mount Olympus.  Is that the goal here?

Obvious solution is to make it probabilistic, and that if you use it, counterfire can stop both your name and your IP.

So if Bob attempts to ban Carol, there is a thirty percent chance that Carol is banned, a ten percent chance that Carol's IP gets banned, a ten percent chance that Bob gets banned and a five percent chance that Bob's IP gets banned.  There is, however, a seventy percent chance that Carol is not banned, is notified of the operation, and gets the option of responding.

These probabilities are independent.  Worst case outcome is that Carol gets banned, Bob gets banned, and his IP gets banned.  Most likely outcome is that no one gets banned, but Carol is aware that Bob is sniping at her.

You get one shot for each period that both people are logged on, or if semipermanently logged on, one shot per day.

What?  So we simulate a society in which all guns randomly misfire?  Instead of giving every citizen the ability/authority to take a life to protect the common good, we hamstring everybody, good guys and bad guys alike, with artificial randomness?  This sounds less like a way to deal with troublemakers and more like Russian Roulette.

Remember what the point of a ban command is in the first place.  Some guy logs on and starts deleting everybody else's buildings.  You catch him doing it, you ban him.  The longer he's running around doing it, the more of your world is destroyed.

The actual worst case scenario, according to your system is, Bob logs on, starts tearing apart the town square, and Carol and 5 other people accidentally commit suicide trying to stop him.  He laughs and continues tearing apart the town square.  Because physics favors the defender for some reason.

This isn't that complicated.  It's a moral question, not a question of tactics.  Someone is breaking the rules.  You have perfect tools to stop him.  What do you, as a society of equals, choose to DO about it?

You have the authority and you have the capability, and your opponent is equally matched with you.  How do you resolve a conflict?