Almost every society in the Wasteland does that and most people hand over or accept NCR rule simply because they do provide the luxury of being a part of a fledgling nation with robust functions of government. Even House sends out securitrons to claim places in his endings so he is no different.
Yeah how dare you get money you need to found stuff like a working rail system, basic education, a sciences department, irrigation works, correctional facilities and a stable economy. You deserve all of the benefits of a stable society without ever being asked to maintain it or contribute to its upkeep.
Every state in the NCR pays taxes and in return the NCR enables them to enjoy benefits from the government. Also House himself also has taxation on the power he would give conditionally the NCR if he wins. The terms of which are both unfair and condition to change whenever House wishes.
Except that is because of the war with Caesar’s Legion. The NCR have a lot of troops and many people will point that out, not as much as the Legion but they can make do. Also I bet you dollars to donuts if the NCR did have a great military presence that is reflected in-game that you would say they are fascist installing troops everywhere.
Except of course for the fact that the NCR has food-drives in the poorest part of the city and it was NCR-educated Follower engineers that restored their water delivery system. You can’t supply everywhere all at once especially if you don’t fully control an area and are simultaneously at war with a nation the size of the US Southwest. Did you forget the war they are fighting? Against a society that tolerates rape, pederasty, slavery and cannibalism and is led by a man who thinks he is a Roman empire but acts like a Visigoth chieftain?
House himself also isn’t above seizing something he wants by force, his entire story arch is literally him seizing the dam because he feels entitled to it.
Yeah did you play that quest? The Followers and West Vegas residents were literally stealing water from the NCR sharecroppers from the irrigation system they started. They murder the NCR trooper looking into their water theft because he found out the truth and was going to report it.
All farms have quotes, all jobs have quotas and if you don’t meet them then you are replaced, demoted or fired.
Bitter Springs wasn’t a refugee camp back then, it was a Khan encampment. The refugee camp was set up by the NCR to tend to war refugees after the massacre cleared the place out. We don’t know if the massacre was intentional and if it was we don’t know who intentionally fixed it. The game provides the theory that the NCR could have ordered it as retribution but the Khans you talk to who were there but are NCR imply the Khans intentionally sent them out to die
You also seem to think the Khans are innocent despite them historically trying to massacre Shady Sands, continuously harassing them after the Khan-Republic War, continuously provoking them by attacking their citizens indiscriminately and many of the Nevada Khans selling drugs to the evilest faction in the fucking game. Bitter Root even says the Khans are shit people his parents tried to sell him for Jet for fuck’s sake.
I didn’t say the NCR weren’t perfect. They are expansionist, they are paternalistic, they can be militaristic, they have the makings of a wealth divide, they have good men who get screwed over and sometimes bad people get their way in the NCR. For both good and bad the NCR have the makings of a nation, a real nation based on a system that can expunge whatever ills come its way.
House is no better than a feudal city state with a nice glowing paint job of a technocracy. It is like if Vegas was a ghost, acting like 200 years of history never happened. A man who has spent the last 200 years living in the past locked up like a rack of casino chips dreaming of something he will most likely never able to obtain. I can’t believe I am saying this but Ulysses was right, he is a pre-war relic that is better of resigned to the dustbin of history he narrowly avoided for so long.
The biggest take away from the NCR path is that democracy is messy, it isn’t all that easy, you might not even find people who want it, you might find people can be hard done by it and most importantly is that democracy is conditional. It is something that exists when it is used and sometimes using it can be costly. Democracy lasts because it is people who want to follow a path of most resistance because they feel the end of that path allows them a standard of living they can live in, because they are active participants. Democracy doesn’t belong to one person, it doesn’t necessarily belong to any group of special interest either, it is there waiting for you to use it. It is the most empowering thing in the world and all you have to do is be willing to work in defence of it.
Also it is pretty rich of you to call the NCR greedy and corrupt then simp for a billionaire technocrat.
So if you want to decide early, pick your order of quests.
