eRepublik and moral justifications

Day 3,731, 09:44 • Published in USA Germany • by Korosh.

The point of this article is that I've been seeing a lot of calls to morality recently, so I decided to address it from my "VERY SUBJECTIVE" point of view.

There has been an unspoken rule for some time that whenever your country attacks, or gets attacked, no matter how weak the opponent is, it's always you are fighting "against the odds" or you're "David vs Goliath", or some other form of moral justification for your actions. It seems to me people feel the need to justify their wars or their actions from a point of view of “I have better morals than you,” even though that is extremely subjective.

Let me do a little recap of events:

1. USA Airstrikes Croatia. I don't want to mention Croatia does almost 3x our damage, because it is irrelevant. The responsibility of the war is in our hands, because we decided to Airstrike on our own. We don’t even need a “valid” reason to, because no reason is objectively “valid.” Nobody has the right to say an attack is unjust or unfair, an attack is simply an attack.

2. Croatia beats us. "Against all odds" as some would put it. Fair enough, absolutely nothing wrong with losing. We have no reason to complain about it, you’re stronger, and it was an expected outcome. Well done.

3. Croatia thinks now they have a “moral responsibility” to show their “craziness, bravery, morality” to the world by going against “big bad USA” for "revenge". Croatia attacks USA.

4. USA tries its hardest, but Croatia does more damage and wins the Airstrike. Again, completely fair.

5. Croatia gets airstriked by our alliance, and nobody from the Croatian side helps them. They fight all alone, whereas we have our whole alliance ready to fight directly the moment our cores are threatened.

In my opinion, virtue lies in actions and not intentions. You say you are brave and fight wars without fear (I don't know exactly what constitutes fear in an online game, but ok). You think this makes your cause just and moral.
But are your intentions more valuable than the results? Are your intentions more virtuous than their consequences?

It doesn’t matter if you call American strategies immoral or what not, the fact is that USA is the currently longest standing nation in eRepublik and a bastion of stability and success(both internationally and intra-nationally), whereas Croatia is wiped by Serbia most of the time, your people don't have bonuses, you don't have regions, you have no allies to help you, you can't even help your allies because your people don't make money from any companies, and waste their energy bars in useless wars. Even if your allies needed your help and called you for it, and you accepted their request, simply because of your "morality" your side has no strength to help each other, and no money for CO's because you have no income from taxes. You are outnumbered, out-powered, outgunned. Did your “morals” help your citizens in any way? Are they really the “morals” to have at this point if they cause the death of your country and your allies? Is this type of hyper-masculine/macho bravery resulting in anything other than your defeat?

On the other hand, USA is one of the richest countries in eRepublik. We are pragmatic, our priorities are our citizens, not a moral high ground. We don’t need to justify our actions in any way other than our need to survive. And look at the result. We are the leaders of one of the most stable, thriving alliances, in that we have helped our "core members" for years without any real danger to their sovereignty. On paper, our alliance is weak. But because of our ruthless pragmatism, our allies have money, our opinion matters in the eWorld, our alliance has the most bonuses per member, none of us are wiped.

So, tell me, where did this "morality" take you? Did your morals improve the lives of your citizens? Every year you have fewer allies. Every year you have less income and less regions. Every year the damage output from your side is lesser. You are losing wars. And all of this for what? So that you can win arguments on article comments? After getting kicked from Sirius/EDEN, we manage create our own bloc. We started from nothing after getting kicked from Sirius, and you had a stack of allies. And look where we are today, and where you are.

Who is more virtuous? The one who screams morality, or the one who produces results?

Korosh