I remember when Lonesome Road came out, a lot of people basically said "Bomb the Legion if you're with the NCR, the NCR if you're with the Legion, both if you're independent and neither if you're with House." I agreed with that, but recently it got me thinking...Maybe the last two are the other way around?

House is basically the embodiment of capitalism. The reason one wouldn't bomb either is because those are potential customers that he could use and abuse. However, at the same time, by bombing both, you eliminate competition, ensuring that you have a "monopoly" of sorts over the wastes. Yes, having the NCR alive means you have more caps flowing into your economy, but having the NCR (and the Legion) gone means that you now own what's basically the entire post-apocalyptic economy within your nation. It's also worth noting that the last time the world was set to be nuked, House let it happen and only protected himself (and his city; his "company"). It's also worth noting that the Mojave as a whole can become self-sufficient, with Goodsprings and Westside already growing crops, the Gun Runners have a base there, the Followers provide medicine and there's plenty of water and electricity for the area, so it's not like they NEED to leech off the NCR.
Basically with the other two alive, yes he has two other economies to leech off of, but there's always a threat of competition and a threat of war. If you nuke both, then the cards you currently have on the table are those you have to work with from now on, but there's also nobody to stand in your way. You essentially control "everything" and there's no one to stop you from meeting your goals; you have a monopoly, you have total control.

Thoughts? Opinions?

It's made very clear in LR that without NCR as a customer, Vegas would be in trouble. But at the same time, I think keeping the Legion is pragmatic in the best interests of Vegas. I mean, you can't very well send your army to fight an army of god-mode robots when you have the Legion around too. House is interested in building a long term survival plan for humanity, nuking the I15 is counter productive to this.

I think that most of the people within the strip come from NCR locations, and most of the settlements around New vegas are too poor to visit the strip, It seems more logical to keep the constant cash flow to the strip from the NCR and plan to deal with future dealing with the NCRs military, rather than destroying the cash flow to the strip just to insure future independence for New Vegas. Mr House could control New vegas, but most of the area would be disrupted, without cash flow to the strip the famalies that rule the strip would be difficult or impossible for Mr house to control. Destroying the NCR and Caesers legion could also bring the Eastern Bos and MWbos into power in their respective areas, The MW Bos has the strength to atleast Strike New Vegas, and could also incorporate former members of the legion into their ranks.

Monopoly over the economy? What economy? From the very beginning, House has made tourism the cornerstone of Vegas' economy, and for that he needs a clientele that's rich, comfortable, and looking for new entertainment. If you cut that foreign cashflow out, then not only does House see considerably less income, but most of the services dotting the Mojave (including the Kerrs' roadside grill at the 188, the Novac inn, and the Vikki and Vance Casino) would dry up from lack of customers (namely, tourists traveling to and from Vegas). All that would be left are a bunch of farmers, ranchers, and prospectors living hand-to-mouth, too poor to really be demanding the kind of luxuries House is supplying. If House wanted to cut off NCR and "monopolize" the Mojave's economy, then pretty much his entire model has to change and he would have to sell a completely different product than what he intends.

Nuking the NCR or Legion doesn't mean nuking the whole NCR or the Legion. At best the nuking is a set back to the faction that gets nuked.

Since Mr.House doesn't want Caesar killed or Presiden Kimball killed, I doubt he would want you to nuke NCR or the Legion. The faster the main event (The Second Battle for Hoover Dam) happens, the faster he can take control of his Robot Army.


The Legion isn't going away anytime soon and NCR doesn't seem to have any plans to invade Arizona anytime soon. So the Legion will continue to be a threat for along time, but removing the Legion from their side of the Colorado, driving them back a couple dozen miles from New Vegas would reduce the Legion attacks in the Mojave.

Any kind of WMD use against NCR would be against House's interests. It's pretty clear that when NCR loses the Dam they will give up on Vegas so there is no reason to further bully them by nuking one of their military bases.

As for Legion I don't see a single reason House would want them alive. They are a persistent threat, represent a government House despises greatly, and their existence brings nothing to Vegas expect raiding parties and splitting troops to guard the Eastern Front. The Legion has nothing Vegas really needs.

House makes it clear that he doesn't like the Legion but if you ask him if you should kill Caesar he says something like "I don't want you to touch even a single hair on that mans head." He needs the Legion to attack the Dam. The sooner that happens the better for him. Nuking a Legion staging point would only delay House's plan.

My point was...
House himself hardly seems to give the impression that his plan is to feed off of tourism forever; it seems like a way to jumpstart his economy. Something that he chose because it's what Vegas is capable of and because it would take money out of the NCR and into the Mojave, as tourism is perhaps the ONLY service the Mojave can provide that the NCR really can't.
Long-term however, House talks about wanting to get society back on track and back on the road to progress, talking about space travel and colonization on other planets. How is he going to do this with casinos alone? At some point he must change his business plan so that his people aren't just leeching off tourists, but producing technology and rocketships.
He then, again, states himself that after his victory at Hoover Dam, Vegas will see a dip in revenue for half a year at least.
My point is that to me, I start to question which decision is more profitable. Either he leeches off the NCR with casinos a bit longer or he starts changing his business plan around now. It's an inevitability if he's serious about his goals, and it seems as though cutting ties to the NCR would eventually become a profitable decision anyways, when they stop being of use (once their economy starts to tank) and they only offer competition. If not right now, wouldn't he perhaps support such a decision down the road?


The scenario I'm talking about refers to if we literally make the nuke decision DIRECTLY before taking Hoover Dam.
House doesn't want Caesar harmed because he needs Caesar to keep the NCR busy, not because he has any other use for them. Their citizens are probably the last who would ever consider turning to Vegas, as they've been taught very different morals, ones that go against the ideas of personal property, greed, drug usage etc. They offer no profit to him.
The NCR could, but my question was more about is the NCR's profit worth it in the long run? At some point in time, House seems to imply he intends to convert his business plan entirely, going from casinos to something else (probably technology production). If the NCR and the Legion both have irradiated borders, the citizens of the Mojave have little choice of where to go, meaning they basically HAVE to play ball with Mr. House. Money would also become a non-issue because if you look at the Mojave itself without outside nation involvement, House already owns a giant majority stake in the economy. The value of the bottlecap would change, but House would remain more or less unaffected by it.

Again, what use is there in leeching off another economy to gain money when you can directly manipulate the economy and the value of the bottlecap in your favor? The only loss I see is that House is of course more likely to find more technologically talented employees among the Mojave AND the NCR than he is in just the Mojave alone.

So if you have already done everything House asks of you to set the Battle for the Dam in motion, and then you go play Lonesome Road and are faced with the option to nuke the Legion.

Then go for it. You would be helping Mr.House out. He got what he wants so nuking them is just a bonus.

And the NCR? I'm not even neccesarily talking about immediately before the Hoover Dam battle in their case.
For me, it's a conflict of interests and it's questionable which action suits him, his goals and the ideals of capitalism best. It seems like eventually the NCR would have to go, as they would lose their worth with time.
On one hand, a monopoly is definitely profitable. On the other hand, he would be losing customers and potential employees, though with them comes competition.

The NCR are valuable to House′s profit of Vegas. I dont think he would want them gone, but the Legion would be a problem. Legion have many many warriors, and that makes them a threat. NCR would probably go after Vegas eventually if they lost the battle at Hoover Dam, but i dont think House would take them out.

Legion, as I said, seems like a no-brainer. They've been taught to work towards the common good as a community, and Mr. House's nation definitely doesn't have this ideal of "the common good," so it's incredibly unlikely any Legion citizens would come to Vegas. Maybe Mr. House personally would be against the idea of nukes altogether (we don't know, though on one hand, he did gladly let the rest of the world burn til only his nation remained), but I suppose I'm asking more from a question about the general capitalist standpoint.
The NCR is the one in question because they provide resources, but they also provide competition, and to be honest, the only resource the NCR has that the Strip would want is customers. Food, water, meds etc, the Mojave can become capable of producing these itself.

Aside from what Styles said, there's also something else to consider - the NCR is far more likely to accept House's Securitrons as an asset instead of a threat if the Legion is an active threat across the Colorado. That is to say, the NCR is far less likely to have a change of heart regarding abandoning the Mojave if it sees House's New Vegas as a buffer state against the hated Legion. Otherwise House is going to have to contend with a belligerent NCR the next time a hawkish president gets elected in Shady Sands.

Good point.

however, with competition comes differentiated products, incentive, motivation and many other benefits to the economy as a hole, therefore, creating a reason (IMO) to destroy Mr.House and his robots.

Just chiming in, House COULDN'T save the world. (Even though he says 'I knew I couldn't 'save the world', nor did I care to, but I knew I could save Vegas.'), seriously, between the vast fortune he set up in Vegas alone, I doubt he could have afforded a US grid to destroy then nukes. Plus, you can't take House's projections literally. Even if they were one of the world's brightests minds, would YOU believe someone who went to the President and said 'Hey guys, I just found out that the world will burn on (Specific date)'. He'd have lost a lot of credibility in Congress for sure.

Why? Unlike the NCR or the Legion, Mr. House is for all intents and purposes creating an independent nation state of New Vegas. He has no desire to expand beyond the borders of the Vegas regon. NCR's modus operandi is 'salvage Pre-War stuff, and be a government, and take other people's resources.'

The way I see it, Mr. House is making a USE of their economy. I feel the NCR is just a bumbling child, it means well, but it constantly slips up. Hell, Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout NV, it ALWAYS needs some white knight to come right it's wrongs. Does House need the Courier at first? Undeniably. But at least he planned ahead how to STOP relying on something. The NCR the whole game treats you like some grunt merc or something. "Oh, I'm sorry, but despite you killing all the fiend leaders, saving the monorail, wiping out Nelson, and carrying our incompetence on your back, we don't find you impressive'. House basically gives you every luxury you could ever want in the ending for helping him. House appreciates everything you do for him, he just wouldnt be all admitting of it.

Wat

Anyways, just wanted to say real quick that again, I'm not focusing on House himself so much, but rather capitalism personified. House is simply the character that got me to ponder on this, as one thing some citizens of New Vegas fear is House having total control with eyes and ears everywhere. It got me thinking, capitalism, the goal is to make money; the goal is to grow and expand and make progress. On one hand, one could argue growing and expanding is better done when you have something to work with and leech off of. On the other hand, when you alone are the only one in control, then yeah you'll be pretty damn effective at growing and expanding nonetheless, since you're calling all the shots. This leads me to question what capitalism personified (in this case House) would prefer, as both seem to meet the goal, albeit in DRAMATICALLY different ways.


This is one of the few things where despite what the game states, I disagree.
I usually believe that, if someone in the game says something with no one with another opinion to contest it (though someone does contest this claim of House; Ulysses does, albeit at the last minute of course) then the developers and writers are trying to imply this is fact. However, for House to ONLY use the Mojave is counter-productive to everything he stands for. House can be summed up with the word "progress," and anyone who's taken even the most basic of economic courses (or ffs, played a game like Age of Empires even) can tell you that a nation can grow faster with more people working within it. House suggesting he plans to only use the Mojave Desert is as if Microsoft were to only sell computers within the US even though they're absolutely certain they could be making money if they sold internationally. This doesn't mean House will conquer everything in sight with time, but rather that House will conquer and expand whenever he feels it's profitable. The Mojave as a whole is under his rule immediately following the Hoover Dam battle, and perhaps with time, parts of Arizona and California could become profitable aswell. "Nothing shall stand in the way of progress," as he says himself.

Which is part of the idea behind this thread. Maybe he wouldn't nuke the NCR initially if it were his call (maybe he would, but that's another argument), but with time? After he's used them up as a "resource?" After they cease being profitable and only pose a threat?

Thats... kinda what i said, but thanks for the details

I think you're missing my point. House would have no desire for control of the world outside Vegas. But he'd very likely have a..... RobCo Shady Sands branch or something similar. A business must expand to have a reach that House intends, but just because your business expands, doesn't mean you are inherently expanding. Let's use your Microsoft example. Microsoft is a household name amongst many products, but it doesnt control your daily lives or what you want to do. Same logic applies here.

Of course, but again that still encompasses my main question: is it better to work alongside or to completely control when we're talking about capitalism?
Capitalist companies that we know in this world choose the very option you suggest because it's realistic. Controlling the entire economy, having a monopoly on the entire market? That's unrealistic in our world. What's even more unrealistic is "eliminating" your competition (in my example, nuking them), as our world happens to have this great thing called "the police" and "the government" which would work against you if you did so.
But House has a shot at this; at controlling the whole market. Instead of simply developing a Robco Shady Sands branch, he could buy out Shady Sands. Or as I suggested, he could simply destroy it and all other competition.

That's my question: if capitalism personified would continue to live alongside competition OR, if it had the chance (which in the real world, it never does and never will), would it simply eliminate the competition?
The fact that the possibility is completely fictional is what has me pondering on the suggestion, about the likelihood of it all.

Disregard your personal opinions of House, such as if he hates nukes or if he has no desire for control of the world. Capitalism personified is what I'm concerned about, House being mentioned only because he's obviously the closest thing to it in New Vegas. And personally, I'm not sure what capitalism personified would do as both options (living beside competition or obtaining a complete monopoly) have strengths and weaknesses.



I suppose on one hand, it's an inevitability that people will disagree with your nation's way of doing things, and it's good to provide these people with a place to go, so that their work and resources still exist and are still able to be accessed SOMEHOW, but complete and total control doesn't seem bad either.

No. Without one of them, the other would take over his Vegas. If both of them were gone, he'd have killed his Vegas.
He NCR holds back the Legion and the Legion keeps NCR in Vegas because of this, and because NCR are in Vegas, House is milking them for all they got. The presence of these two armies is a profit waiting to be cashed in on.

He has alot of money, he just needs complete control over Vegas. A stalemate cannot continue forever, either NCR or Legion would win if nothing would be done about it, and if no one would stop them, then the winner would surely take Vegas. Thats what lil Robert House is trying to do. Complete control over the Vegas strip, without starting a war against the NCR was he′s plan. Just cause he makes money off the war between the NCR and Legion doesnt mean they should not be considered a threat.

Territorial expansion does not automatically bring with it economic prosperity, though. The NCR in the Mojave is the poster boy for this - they're burning lots of caps officially through military deployment and unofficially through Strip tourism, without really getting much in return due to various factors. Generally speaking it's also much harder to be an autocrat over more people than less, and larger territories have longer borders that need policing. Instead of territorial expansion I'd have guessed that House would instead start building up some manufacturing capacity of his own.

If I understood House correctly, his plan is to eventually into space, in both the metaphorical and literal sense. The Legion I can see him deciding he could do without, since they are Luddite raiders with no consumer culture or indeed private property. But it would be counter-productive to nuke an entire society of consumers like the NCR.

That's a little unfair, since the reason the NCR in the Mojave even needs the Courier to help them so much is that they're strapped for resources. House on the other hand is running a more limited operation, swimming in caps and (this is the more important part) is an autocrat and so does not need to answer to the people like the NCR does.

It's true that you will not be as comfortable in luxury siding with the NCR, but does that make the NCR route somehow less worthy? In my opinion, no. Siding with the NCR implies a certain philosophical position - that it's worth sacrificing some economic prosperity for democracy and the rule of law (but also a belief that the Mojave is in the long run better off in the NCR).

Of course the stalemate won't last forever, that's why House has the Courier upgrade and activate his Army, so he can intervene when they do go to war again. He considers them both a threat for how they just walk over land claiming it as their own, he isn't going to nuke them for it though, he doesn't have enough nukes to destroy the whole NCR lands, or the Legions. If he did nuke them he'd likely kill himself and his town in the process because of the radiation and the winds, since Legion and NCR are on either side of him he is most certainly going to get affected by the fallout.

I also suppose it's true that a capitalist would rather have the resources available (in this case, the people) instead of COMPLETEY destroying all competition outright.