What makes a govt form a good one?

[Bizmut]

Lord God Jinnai:

I beleive you are searching for a rule system to define corruption/waste in your game...
So here is my 'formula'...

Efficiency = 100% - ((100% - RulerTech) * (100% - RulerPower))
Corruption = (100% - RulerTech) * RulerPower * (100% - NonRulerPower)

RulerPower = RulerAverageSkill * PopRuler%
NonRulerPower = NonRulerAverageSkill * PopNonRuler%

RulerAverageSkill = the average 'Ruling Skill ' of individuals that are in the ruling class
PopRuler% = Percentage of the population that are in the ruling class

NonRulerAverageSkill = the average 'Ruling Skill' of individuals that are NOT in the ruling class
PopNonRuler% = Percentage of the population that are NOT in the ruling class

PopRuler% & PopNonRuler% should consider individual as dividable...
For example, even if in the US 'everyone' can vote, the signifiance of individuals in the ruling is much less than what it should be...

If 5% of someone's skill is used for ruling, 95% of that someone's skill will be used for 'anti-corruption' purposes...

....

That's the basic idea...
YOU BETTER LIKE IT ... OR ELSE!!!

Bismuth
idaniel@biosys.net

[roquijad]

Mega Post follows.

Give me your opinion about these proposals to improve govt and econ models regarding corruption, stability and centrally planned economies. They try to take into account several elements you have mentioned that I agree with:

CORRUPTION
Suppose corruption can be summarized as a fraction discounted from the govt public fund, so if tax totals X, the player only has (1-C)% of X to do things, where C is the magnitude of corruption. This is to simulate a number of corruption effects such as: a)people paying less taxes than they should; b)govt employees keeping a part of the govt money through different mechanisms; c)corrupt companies/persons paid by the govt to do things that eventually they don't do (or do in a deficient way in order to keep most of that payment to themselves); d)etc. So, (1-C)X is the Effective public fund the civ has and the larger C is, the less available effective funds are and the worse the govt performs. The question is how C is determined. IMO C is determined by the following factors:
1. Bureaucracy: As long as the govt. have specific rules and regulations regarding how money is spent and reports are demanded giving info about govt. spending for supervisors and rulers to see, the corruption level should lower. These regulations and controls over govt. employees are essentially bureaucracy implementation. In Clash, I propose the govt should have a "Bureaucratic Spending". That is, the ruler/player invest money in implementing bureaucracy to lower C. It's important to notice that this is a double-edged sword. The greater the investment in bureaucracy, the lower the C, but at a certain point, you start to spend in bureaucracy the money you "rescued" from corruption, so there's no real gaining. In an extreme case, you spend more money in bureaucracy than you get lowering C through bureaucracy implementation. In this way bureaucracy is simulated in its correct way, since it's good in a general case, but it might become a problem if enlarged too much.
2. Law Enforcement: In the econ model provinces invest money in such things as police and justice system. We can get a measure of how good the civ law enforcement policy is looking at those investments. The greater the investment, the lower the C. This is to simulate the justice system controlling corruption and sending to prison the offenders and then making corruption less attractive. Also, police officers are less sensitive to corruption if their wages are good (high investment in police).
3. Govt. Transparency: If the people is allowed to take legal actions against their govt and their employees and politicians using public govt information, one may expect corruption should be low. IMO these practices are much of the cornerstone in developed countries regarding corruption control. So, if at the govt. level we have some variable describing the level of legal power the people has over their own govt., the higher its value, the lower C you have.
4. Telecommunications/Transportation techs: This factor should change the effectiveness of the three factors above. If you have bank accounts to collect taxes instead of sending mounted soldiers to collect them or if you have public internet access to govt. policies or if the police have computers to help their tasks, then the effectiveness of those policies should increase.

We can see that a dictatorship can indeed have a low C within this scheme, but probably a democracy would do better, since the people would have political power to force govt policies to go in the direction of better law enforcement and more govt. transparency. In this way, a democracy is not the only govt type to have a low level of corruption, but the most likely to. Also, in democracy we wouldn't have a zero C, but only low. I think this goes just in the way Paul Crocker and LGJ envision democratic/not-democratic govts.

STABILITY/CORRUPTION
I think Axi's comment on the unpleasant stability of civ2 and ctp govts and the comment regarding "corruptive force of large political power" are very good. However, Mark's right about the possibility of having too many fluctuations that may lead us to a frustrating game play. I think it can be solved like this: Suppose C is also affected by the magnitude of ruler/player pol.power, but the amount in which this pol.power affects C is given randomly using pol.power value. This means that ruler's pol.power value (maybe re-scaled to a more suitable value) is used as a range in which we choose a random number to influence C. So, the larger its political power, the greater the chance of being corrupt, but only a Chance. The random number is changed (chosen again) after a number of turns (say, 50). This is to reflect the change of ruler (the player is the same, of course, but the king is other) and this way each king has its own level of corruption. This way you have corrupted monarchs and "good" monarchs along the way and causing the govt. to be somewhat more unstable. Under a more democratic rule, ruler's pol.power is low and the mean of ruler's corruption level is lower, leading to a more stable govt.
This proposal puts in some elements to make the govt more unstable in dictatorships and also makes dictatorships more likely to be corrupt, but not making it corrupt by default. The fluctuations can be easily managed just changing the number of turn in which the random number is recalculated.


CENTRALLY PLANNED ECONOMIES
I see two major drawbacks in CPE that I'm proposing to include: First, the flexibility mentioned by F_Smith: You need a Huge State apparatus to determine prices, where and what to produce and all kind of economic variables. Second, a low productivity. This one rises from the fact that in a communist system (the extreme case) all people earns about the same no matter what they do. This element tell us that even if you work harder, you get the same, and if you work less, you get the same.... so, obviously, you work less!! In fact, TFP (Total Factors Productivity) in the USSR were going down and down in the last 20 years aprox. of its existence. That means for each year they produced less than the past year with the same labor and machines!. To include this in Clash, I think people should have a productivity value (maybe they already have it in the econ model, I don't remember). The more centrally planned an economy is, the lower their productivity. Also, scientific development should be lowered in some similar fashion representing the impossibility of someone getting profit from inventing something, then reducing common people's inventive.
To include the first element, flexibility, I think we can use Mark's "80% penalty" (I know you didn't want to be cited on that, Mark ) with a 100% tax. My reasoning is this: After people has produced economic goods and given it all in taxes, the State has to spend lots of money planning the economy and then give back to the people. The penalty reflects exactly that: the money used to maintain the Huge State apparatus. Since it's Huge, the money needed to maintain it should also be huge. In a freemarket economy, there's still exist some planning and also special agencies to deal with monopolistic markets and other market imperfections, so the penalty should still exist, but being much lower. One important thing is that the money used in planning should have an effect. In the case of dealing with monopolies, controlling them actually prevents abusive behaviors creating a healthier economy. So, under this view, the penalty shouldn't be called such, but a "Planning Investment" (PI). In this sense, the govt (player) should be allowed to choose the level of PI. Choosing a large PI leaves him less money to do things, but that money he resigns to is used to control markets. If he wants, he can set a 0% PI leaving a crude "pure" free market or going to the other extreme with a 100% for a communist system. The effect of the level of PI should be: The greater the PI, the lower the productivity (to include what I said about productivity) and the flatter the income distribution. This, of course, implies we have to get track of an income distribution, but I believe it's a very important variable to measure social tensions that actually may lead to communist revolutions, FE. So there you have all the ingredients and PI becomes THE variable to define how centrally planned your economy is. Going to a centrally planned economy (high PI) protects people from the abuses of a free market making income distribution nearly flat, but loses in productivity/science. Going to a pure free market system (low PI) makes income distribution very extreme (social tension) but gains in productivity. Furthermore, you can set PI somewhere in the middle which is the most common case today.
The real goodness of any economic system will be measured computing people's happiness regarding economic goods they posses. That's the bottom line. All what I described above only represents the mechanisms to know people's wealth, so there isn't really a bias toward any particular system.

So... what do you think?

[Kanzid Stonebreath]

roquijad

If the people is allowed to take legal actions against their govt and their
employees and politician

Just wondering about this statement are you sure you ment employees and not employers which I think would make more sense.

Also you mention the players corruption being modified every 50 years or so to show a new ruler in charge of the nation personally unless we state that the player is specificly not the king, and set precisly what they are e.g. high priest, king, god, disembodied entity etc. Then this shouldn't happen the only thing that should modify the players characteristics like that is the player themselves.

[Mark_Everson]

Hello Rodrigo:

It looks really good!

Your notion of corruption being represented by losing a factor of revenues, is a good start at what I had in mind. I also envisioned it having a dampening effect on technology, the people's happiness, and other things. But as I said, what you have is a very good start, and we can certainly tack on more things later as appropriate.

On bureaucracy with respect to corruption, I think bureaucracy is a two-edged sword. A Byzantine bureaucracy can also enhance corruption. But I will allow that throwing money at corruption to reduce it is certainly possible, so let's not quibble too much on this one. I agree completely with your point on law-enforcement! Government transparency is also very good... part of this really comes from how much power the "little guy" has in the system. Other things like freedom of the press are also clearly important. On No. 4 these again cut both ways. In my opinion good telecommunications and transportation can make both a democracy and a totalitarian state stronger. So I'd like to hear a little further what you had in mind for No. 4.

I think your proposal is very solid! The only point I'd like to raise is that I don't think corruption levels should change immediately with the new king or whatever. Once corruption gets going, IMO it is very difficult to reverse. I think this is the problem a lot of regimes in the middle of Africa are having. So, in short, I think the culture should have a corruption level associated with it. Even a great ruler IMO cannot turn around a corrupt culture in a very short period of time. So the dynamics would be such that when the new ruler comes along, it will change both the inherent corruption level a little bit immediately, and the amount that the corruption changes each turn by a great deal. As to what exact corruption mechanism we should use, heck if I know.

I don't have any criticism of your proposal for handling non-market forces (Surprise! ) It may need to be tweaked later, but I think it is good enough to start with.

I guess we'll have to see what everyone else thinks...


Kanzid:

I think we are pretty much viewing the player as a "guiding spirit" of the civ. So individual rulers, dynasties, and forms of government will come and go, but the player is still there.

[roquijad]

Kanzid:
employees/employers: I meant govt. employees, that is, if my english isn't too bad, the people working for the govt. The idea is a common person can take legal actions against, FE, an abusive policeman. Is that clearer?

About your second point, I do agree with you about the player being the only responsable for the ruler's actions and behavior, but I fear in that way we cannot simulate a dictator keeping some money to himself from the national fund or a king building to himself a huge palace full of riches in which he uses an important share of public funds. The reason is a player doesn't really need that super palace and he doesn't want to steal money from the govt. because he wants that money to play (build units, etc). What I was trying to do was to FORCE the player to accept less money to play with if he wants a large political power simulating the ruler he is playing has some level of corruption. Does this sound reasonable to you?


Mark:
You wrote: "I also envisioned [corruption] having a dampening effect on technology, the people's happiness, and other things". I'm looking forward to see a more precise speech on that since that's exactly what I was trying to encourage with this thread!

Telecom/Transport techs: I'm not sure I'm understanding why you want me to go further on this. It seems you're maybe worried that the type of govt. has no effect on the bonuses techs can add to corruption control. If that's the case, I think in fact techs can help democratic or despotic govts in the same way.

About corruption changing with the ruler, we're on the same side, man! For sure corruption is much harder to change than only changing the ruler. That's why my proposal computes corruption with variables like govt.transparency or law enforcement which are independant from the ruler and allowing a civ to change ruler but keep their corruption level. The corruption coming from the ruler I proposed is only one more ingredient, so a corrupt ruler just steal some extra dollars. A corrupt ruler only enlarges corruption levels a little more...
About including culture as a factor for corruption, I chose not to include it because I wasn't seeing much concensus in this thread about that topic.

Planned Economies: No criticism! Indeed a surprise... I guess that's good coming from the econ model developer... I'm hoping Axi will give me a comment on this since he was worried about the econ model being able to simulate centrally planned economies.... are you still there, Axi?

Rodrigo

[Mark_Everson]

Rodrigo:

I guess I misunderstood you on the transport thing...

[Kull]

I guess it's time for my two pesetas.

The original Six Questions:

1)Gov't Stability: It may seem obvious, but ultimately it comes down to peoples' willingness to accept a certain type of rule. We talk about Democracy as if it's the greatest form of government ever devised, and it may be, but the experiment is really rather short. The Chinese had an autocratic Emperor for thousands of years, and their culture was more stable than any other in history. It's natural to be blinded by what I'll call the "Today Effect". In other words, it looks like all of history has come together to create what we see before us today. Which it has. But there is NO INHERENT PERMANENCE in what you see today. It will soon be "tomorrow", and mankind will have moved on to something else. This applies equally to technology AND governments, IMO. It's quite possible that Democracy, as currently practiced in the West, has some form of inherent weakness which will ultimately doom it to failure. This will be just as obvious to historians of the future as Democracy's inherent superiority is obvious to us today.

My point is that Government Type should not be the deciding issue. The true determining factor in Government Stability is Popular Acceptance. (I'm reluctant to call it happiness.) So long as those you rule are more afraid of change than they are of the status quo, your government will be stable.

2) Corruption relationship to Gov't Type: Others have addressed this far more eloquently than I!

3) CPE vs. MFS: Again, I defer to the earlier discussions. Adding my opinions would be the equivalent of "making the rubble bounce".

4) Multiethnic Civs vs. Monoethnic Civs: Remember my comments about the "Today Effect"? Here's a classic example. We live in a time in which Nationalism is so omnipresent, that it seems to be the natural order of the universe. But it's a VERY recent phenomenon, in it's current form dating back only a 100 years or so. (albeit with roots several centuries older.) I don't want to bore you with a string of examples, but they are legion. If you think back to the Middle Ages, the nobility often switched allegiances from one King to another, without the slightest consideration that their people were "German" or "French". You SPOKE French or German, YOU weren't French or German. That's a pretty fundamental difference in mindset! The Roman empire was one of the most multiethnic civs in history, and it was VERY successful for a long period of time.

So where am I going with this? Ethnicity should play almost no part in determining civ "success" until the development of Nationalism. Even then, some forms of government are more sensitive to it than others. For example, look at what happened to the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia once Communism gave up the ghost. We should also consider that Nationalism is probably not a permanent condition, but rather one more phase humanity must pass through on the road to wherever it is we're going!

5) Cultural Impacts on Economy and Gov't: Will there be any? Yes. Can we model it? Probably. Is it incredibly complicated?
I'll defer to others on this.

6) Is Religion a Technology Inhibitor? There are plenty of examples which would suggest that it is, such as the Catholic Church's anti-scientific attitude in the Middle Ages and today's Fundamentalist Iran. But if you go way back to the beginnings of civilization, religion was probably one of the chief technology drivers! We are fairly certain that Astronomy was developed and encouraged by priesthoods throughout the world. Architecture and Writing probably received a similar boost. I think we need to be VERY careful about this one. Perhaps over time religion changes from a plus factor to a minus? On the other hand, insofar as religion encourages cultural cohesiveness and stability, the improvement in THOSE areas would ipso facto be a plus to research. So this whole issue may be too complicated to model effectively.

==============================

Rodrigos Survey (I think you guys have a pretty good handle on corruption, but here it is anyway):
1) Impact of Culture: Yes!
2) Size of State/Bureacracy: Yes. I caught the Banana Republic comment, so let me expand on that answer a bit. Not on the basis of "Pure" size (ie. Germany's government is larger than Colombia's), but rather as a percentage of the total workforce.
3) Police/Justice Expenditures: Yes
4) Poverty: No
5) Power correlation to Corruption: Somewhat. A distant fourth behind 1, 3, & 2.
6) Are these the biggest impactors? Yes.

[Kanzid Stonebreath]

roquijad
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
but I fear in that way we cannot simulate a dictator keeping some money to himself from the national fund or a king building to himself a huge palace full of riches in which he uses an important share of public funds. <<<<<<<<<<

Why do dictators generally keep money? would it be possible to make the players think these were good reasons, on building palaces prehaps make them useful for improving morale, or giving diplomats a plae to stay when they come
>>>>>>>

The reason is a player doesn't really need that super palace and he doesn't want to steal money from the govt. because he wants that money to play (build units, etc).
<<<<<<<

But what if he wants to build the palace to show off to the other players.
>>>>>>>

What I was trying to do was to FORCE the player to accept less money to play with if he wants a large political power simulating the ruler he is playing has some level of corruption. Does this sound reasonable to you?
>>>>>>>>>
How about decreasing the money but allowing the player to spend it for themselves like in the palace on Civ I, and II which I found to be great features.

[Lord God Jinnai]

I'm only making a quick reply here:

First I will only say this once and further discussion should be put in the app forum. We have addressed the prob of religion and tech in the social forum. Go check it out and if you don't like what was decided give us your opinion and perhaps a solution there.

Also I hope my thoughts on the judical sys are being heard since I seem to be outnumbered here.

[Mark_Everson]

LGJ:

I completely agree with your basic premise with regard the Judicial system. If the judicial system is under control by the ruler, or a limited group, there won't really be justice. So I guess when discussing Rodrigo's notion that more money in the judicial system indicates better justice, we need a corollary that that is only true when the judicial system is independent. Otherwise it is just a well-paid lackey of the state, religious authority, or whomever the controlling interest is. However, as I've tried to say all along, without distributed power in the government this will never happen. (Or won't last very long) So really in my opinion the best measure at a Clash level of whether the judicial is independent or not, is whether there is balanced power between the classes with in the state.

[axi]

Planned Economies: No criticism! Indeed a surprise... I guess that's good coming from the econ model developer... I'm hoping Axi will give me a comment on this since he was worried about the econ model being able to simulate centrally planned economies.... are you still there, Axi?

Don't worry pal, it's just that I'm a busy man (although my collegues don't think so).

Rodrigo, I think you've got it! I can hardly find something to criticise about your post. It is clear, simple and easily transferable to the econ model through some quite simple formulae. I believe we should stick to it. Unfortunately, all that praise is meant only for the corruption part of your post.

At this point, I am compelled to make a case on behalf of planned economies, a thing that I have intended to do further on, since my earlier posts concerned only the government issues.

I will begin by stating that I firmly believe in planned economics, even though this goes against the current trend, in my country as much as globally. This belief is based on three axioms:

a)Man is a benevolent creature, which means that an ordinary person, if treated fairly, will strive to be helpful.

b) One should be rewarded according to his efforts, and not according to his actual output, since it's nobody's fault if he was born less able than the others.

c) In a liberal economy, efficiency is compulsory and justice is voluntary, while in a planned one, it is the other way around.

The result of those three combined is that a planned economy is the likelier vessel to host both of these values, since promoting justice encourages efficiency, while promoting efficiency discourages justice.

Of course, the prime requisite for a successful planned economy is that power should emanate from beneath. (beneath means the productive base - Mark's "little guys") An authoritarian system with a centrally planned economy (like the communist states we have seen up to this date) although it grants justice, it makes some exceptions for the elite (vide Animal farm: "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others") thus killing the motive for efficiency in the "little guys". Such a state can persist only by using deceit.

If you dislike my theoretical outlook, here are some facts, to show that a liberal economy, although it may be more productive(in it's peak - the inevitable periods of crisis are another matter) it is in the same time extremely wasteful, thus being inefficient:

1) A liberal economy is haunted by unemployment, while a planned one makes full use of the labor provided.

2) In a liberal economy nothing is produced unless it yields some profit, in spite of the actual demand. For the same reason all installations usually function below their capacity.

3) A liberal economy creates a needlessly vast number of jobs that are go-between or outright parasitic to the system, thus not productive.

4) In a liberal economy vast resources are wasted on products with little or no social returns, since all values are distorted by marketing.

Let's return to Rodrigo's post now: I think that the PI idea is a must, but the effects of raising the PI should be reconsidered:

Why should PI affect the income distribution? A big corporation internally functions like a planned economy, but there are great inequalities of income. The fact that economic planning performed by western governments is usually targeted to such an effect (through taxation, social security, etc), only means that PI gives the ruler control over the income distribution. What the ruler does with the control he gains is another matter. In the case of western governments, some low PI is maintained chiefly in order to prevent excessive unbalances in the income distribution. A very unbalanced distribution of income indicates only that axiom b) that I have mentioned above is violated, and nothing more.

Why should PI directly affect productivity? It should affect it, but only in indirect ways. Productivity should be affected by:

1) Class specific happiness level [ I propose: P=Po(1-expH) ], while happiness, apart from other factors, should be affected by:
a) Working hours (Remember ctp?)
b) The income distribution (Maybe from the difference between the class's mean income and the total PCI, with either a positive or a negative effect, or from the % of population to earn x% of the total income, with a predetermined effect for each class).
c) Material standards (Percentile rate of amelioration/deterioration of the the clas's mean income, with effects balanced a little bit towards positive numbers, to indicate belief in the necessity of progress).
d) What else?

2) Bureaucratic spending (Maybe the diminishing returns of bureaucratic spending will derive from productivity losses, and not from the spending itself, urging the player to find more inventive ways to deal with corruption.)

3) Any administrative techs (optional)

4) What else?


------------------
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
George Orwell

[korn469]

in responce to the original questions


1) What makes a govt stable?

i believe what makes a government stable is a combination of these factors, popular acceptance of the government's rule, people have to accept the legitamacy of the government's decisions...politics determine what people get, and since there is a limited amount of resources some group will alway get less than they want...to use an example, in a football game one side must lose (at least in the playoffs) nobody wants to lose but as long as the officiating is correct the losing teams agrees the loss was fair and accepts the loss...for a stable government people must accept when they don't get what they want, and to maintain the stability they must be willing to work within the confines of the government framework to change things...groups willing to go outside the constitution to change things will lead to instability...keeping groups from going outside of the government means that you have to make them accept the rule of law and means that your government has to provide enough services for your people to keep them satisifed with your government...if your government is inadequate then people will look outside of your government then this will cause instability, the government doesn't have to be all things to all people but it does have to provide adequate services to enough people, to keep them satisfied with your rule...also the army and beurocracy must submit to rule of law too...the government must not be above the laws

2) Is corruption more or less related to a specific govt. type?

i think that corruption is not specifically related to government type...but i think that besides corruption you also have to address inefficency and waste...let me define corruption waste and inefficency...

you have a government run farm right beside of a town you have three government warehouse a great distance away...the food from the farm goes from the farm to the warehouses then to the town...along the way a government official takes 10% of the food that is corruption...it goes the great distance and sets in the warehouse for a while, during this time the government lets half the food rot...that is waste...along the way at each and every warehouse the truck driver has to write a 100 page report on his trip...that is inefficency

i think that corruption is most related to the individual and the culture of corruption that exists in the government...prosecution of these corrupt individuals can end corruption, but waste and inefficency are more a result of poor performance or poor government organization or size than individual action

3) What makes a centraly planned economy perform worse than a free market system?

planned economies don't have the flexability or the economic incentive to improve performance like what a free market system does

4) Do multiethnic civs have a lower chance of success compared to monoethnic civs?

other people have handled this question better than me

5) In what way culture affects the performance of an economy or a govt. type?

need to put more thought into this one

6) Clergy political power: does it keep a nation away from advancing technologicaly and/or economicaly?

i definantly do not think that a clergy's political power would always hurt a nation either technologically or economically...indeed there are many examples both for and against the clergy helping and hurting technology and the economy...i think it depends solely on the values that the clergy holds

korn469

[Mark_Everson]

Axi:

Your theory on central planning is beautiful! Unfortunately it doesn't fit the facts IMO... it seems that fear and greed are much more powerful motivators than the desire to do good. A market economy uses fear and greed for a laudable purpose; to accomplish the task of distributing goods in an at least somewhat reasonable manner. Central planning IMO has two major defects. First, and foremost, rather than using the whole "intelligence of the market" it uses some very much smaller set of inputs to determine which goods to make, and where they should go. In essence, the effective power of the computations is Very much less than that for a market economy. Secondly, because the actual administrators of a centrally planned economy don't share in the rewards of good decisions, and the punishment for bad decisions, anywhere near as strongly as in a market economy, the quality of those decisions is IMO somewhat degraded.

I don't mean that all central planning is bad by any means. For instance scientific research is one area where central support of the endeavor is Essential to maximizing progress IMO. And I would characterize this system in the U.S., which I don't think is too bad, is at least of the order 20% to 30% centrally planned. I clearly don't think that an unfettered market economy is the best solution either. The evils that result from such a system are I think we can agree, larger than the good which would come from it.

Your point b is laudable in spirit, but leads to some really bizarre consequences in practice. This is because people generally look to their own good, and perhaps the good of their family, rather than the general good. For instance, one can use the example of a brain surgeon, and a house painter. If they are paid equally, then it is quite rational for the brain surgeon to take a month off to paint his house. Unfortunately, the consequence to society of this is that many fewer brain surgeries are undertaken, and many people that desperately need this operation don't get it. The house painter clearly cannot take his place in the operating theater. However, If the brain surgeon receives a salary much larger than the house painter, then it is an obvious good from everyone's point of view for the brain surgeon to keep performing his operations, and to pay the house painter to paint the house.

You may be able to raise objections to my particular example. Feel free to do so. However, endlessly debating topics like this, that have kept many of the great minds of history well occupied, isn't going to get us anywhere. At this point in history it appears that the balance of the (admittedly incomplete) experiment comes down on the side of "bridled" capitalism (as opposed to unbridled) as the better functional system given the facts of human nature.

Anyway, I share the same desire as you, to not impose from above by our choices one proscribed Best system that everyone must follow to do well in Clash. For one thing, it would make a less interesting game! For that reason, I think we should take whatever way we handle the economies, and see how they actually work in gameplay. After evaluating the merits of each, we can balance things so that if there does turn out to be a disadvantage to a centrally planned economy, that it is not too onerous.

[axi]

In my last post, my thoughts seem to have gone a bit astray, but Mark you have to excuse me for this one. That was partially my anger breaking out, cause I'm really stuffed up to the neck with all those capitalist scum that our society seems to be full of nowdays. It's just that there is nowhere else that I could make such a case and know that it's heard and not blindly s******ed at. (I tried this once in the OT forum - what did I expect? )

Anyway, the really constructive (IMHO) part of my post, concerning what should really affect productivity is still not criticized or confronted or extended. I believe that the essence of our discussion is there.


------------------
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
George Orwell

[Mark_Everson]

Axi:

You tried this in off topic? Ouch.

But remember when you say "capitalist scum", that there are scum of every persuasion in every society. That's just life. No system is devoid of lousy people, just as no system is devoid of good people.

Yes, I basically agree with the happiness part of your post. I'm sure we can come up with a system that captures much of what you are aiming for, and yet does not penalize mixed capitalism. It will just take a bunch of work first!