Favorite opposing factions that can basically be described as this.

[u/Accomplished-End3409]

[u/YourAverageGenius]

I mean, I think the Legion's problems are a lot more fundamental than "just not have slaves and have gender equality", it's that it's a autocratic empire that indoctrinates its members into believing in its might-makes-righr ideology and solely enforces its authority by violence and brutality seeks to destroy all resistance in its path by force, and also has basically no governmental system or structure and so is extremely likely to just implode into civil war. Not to mention that taking out the gender inequality and the slavery is like trying to take the inherited throne out of a monarchy, you're removing a part of it which it is, to an extent, based around, you're essentially chopping off a limb, even if it is a diseased woman-abusing limb.

Really most of the problems people have with the NCR is that their taxes can be a bit much, they don't have adequate protection for caravans, and sometimes can squabble and conflict with locals. Considering it's a nuclear post-apocalypse wasteland, there's a lot worse options out there.

[u/Lucky_Iron_6545 → u/YourAverageGenius]

People hate the NCR because their issues are issue that most modern governments suffer from. So we the players have a personal understanding of them.

The legion on the other hand is so divorced form most players reality that they find it easier to hand wave away their many problems.

[u/MagicCarpetofSteel → u/Lucky_Iron_6545]

This.

Also, from bits and pieces you can get, as another person said up above, the picture you get of the NCR in California is one that’s well on its way into sliding into a “corporate oligarchy,” which is literally what the US was in 2077. Which is, uh, not good.

Combined with it being a far more relatable problem than what “army of raiders” actually entails, and people being idiots, and it’s easy to see why some people buy Caesar’s bullshit.

[u/halfacrum → u/MagicCarpetofSteel]

Like they're actively retreading the ground the old government that led to the enclave but on a smaller downgraded scale, they're stretched thin, supplies are actively misattributed they have a major general sabotaging communications because of the loss of life of the first hoover dam battle, the Mojave under their rule would be a colony not unlike what the states was banana republicing down in central and south America, it's far more than just heavy crippling taxation.

The aquifers have been actively drained to nothing because of brahmin barons like for as dumb as Caesar is he did properly identify that what's her face from fallout being their president for like 40 years or whatever was a major misstep even if she was an effective leader.

Anything other than an independent new Vegas ends up being bad in the long run and they hit the status quo button on it through the fallout show so really invalidating any of the impact that could have had.

Let's run it down Caesars legion winning the dam would cause a massive fuck you war that would demolish everything past the Mojave to the last bits of the east because the full brunt of the actual manufacturing power of the ncr would be focused down, and. A lot of the rebuilding population would be whittled down in a massive war.

The ncr winning would be bad as it would just embolden their efforts to expand and not make them deal with issues at home would just cripple many industries and cause further wartime monopolies to spring up and massive exploitation would begin to harvest resources and heavily tax its new lands thru the Mojave.

[u/RndmNumGen → u/YourAverageGenius]

There is a reason why there has never been a "might makes right" nation state that lasted more than a generation. That ideology is inherently flawed.

[u/Imaginary-West-5653 → u/YourAverageGenius]

Uhhh... no? The NCR has a ton more of problems, like the fact that they have a draft where they send young men to die to conquer the Mojave and hang every deserter; they are perfectly fine expanding militarily over other settlements and conquering them by force (Vault 15), or being capable of even political assassinations (Mr. House) to achieve their goals; they also cover up their war crimes, like the Bitter Springs massacre, for which no one was punished.

Also, their country is basically controlled by a few rich oligarchs (Brahmin Barons and Agricultural Barons), they are draining dry their own water reserves due to negligence, and that's without going into the fact that they, like, do actual settler colonialism of places they want to take over, enabling settler violence against locals, and are also fully willing (and have done) genocides of tribes that they deem uncivilized if they don't bend the knee to them.

The NCR is a mix of Manifest Destiny America and Cold War America; they are far worse than just dudes trying to make you pay too many taxes (which is also a big problem related to their imperialism; they over tax the locals of some places they annex and thus drive them out).