Government - Economic models interconnections

[axi]

Hi Mark!

Whatever I will try to do on infrastructure, it will be based on what already exists in the econ model thread and webpage, so don't worry about that. I only want to model government intervention, which is the missing part.

EP: You say that the player can have as much economic planning as he wants, if he has the money to pay for it. You overlook the fact that it is not the player who will does the planning, but the govt, which represents much more power centres than just the player. They must have some kind of EP agenda, shouldn't they? Well EP is the best way to represent that. EP will be chiefly meant to limit the extent of player intervention; we don't want the player to be omnipotent, do we?

As for subsidies, they are not the only way of "pushing" a certain infrastructure class. Housing f.e. can be subsidised, but it also can be constructed and given away by the state, so can education, temples, armaments, etc. I have a feeling though that in Clash, as you say, such things might not matter. In the real world, the difference is fundamental, but in Clash, exactly because of point #8 above, there might not be a difference after all. I'll have to think some more about this.

I feel that the answers to such problems can be given only during or after coding (Or, maybe they could show up in a spreadsheet version. Who knows?). Right now the discussion in the govt model thread is the most vital and I await your comments there.

[Richard Bruns]

I think that the EP variable should be included in the game. As a definition of the state of the economy and a limit of the player's power, it is an important factor.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Well with EP at any level, except the 2 extremes, you'd still haveto worry about the fact that people tend to want to regulate the societies differntly. One country wants to give its citizens free soap while the other wants to give them free towels, but neither side wants to give both, nor simply lowering prices on both a little, so how would EP then affect that?

Also i am with mark in that EP doesn't need to be in there? To answer your question how will it be handled to make the ruler nonomnipitant? Simple, use the existing goverment, social and eventually character models to modify what the player wants. So the player wants grain to be free for everyone? Well he can try that and put that in his policy, but others who control the power might not like that idea.

The only thing you'd haveto worry about is the other groups arbitrarly socializing a capatalistic market without your notification and other "incentives" of theirs.

[Mark_Everson]

Axi:

Welcome Back! Sorry you feel lousy, but we will take you in whatever shape available .

Your ideas on tax rate seem to be what I had in the beginning. There is a tax rate, and an 'effective tax rate' that includes what the govt gives back. Is there further distinction between your post and my original that I'm missing? I know you don't like it if what the govt gives back is not valued as highly by the people as what they could buy themselves. That is just a philosophical difference between us that won't be resolved here, or likely ever.

EP:
In my view the government can exercise whatever level of EP that is desired If it can pay for it directly through a subsidy. You want the price of housing to be low, say X per unit, then the govt will make up the difference if the price. So I view EP as redundant in this simple model where there aren't really many rules and regulations explicitly handled. This is clearly a simplification of what happens in the real world. But that's the nature of a game... This abstraction can handle everything you talk about except perhaps working hours, since it would be Very expensive to pay for all those hours people might work during.

Please do not take a 'first shot' at the infrastructure model, since it is already a fair fraction developed! See the econ page on the web site under infrastructure IIRC.

I don't understand your meaning in (8). Can you rephrase what you are meaning?

[roquijad]

I'll just concentrate my attack in EP:

Why EP had all mixed up with ruler's freedom of action? EP, SP and PP were originally meant (or was it just me?) to give the shape of the economy. They have nothing to do with how powerful the ruler is.

My understanding is the political structure, plus SP and PP, determine a guideline for a spending agenda, like defining lower and upper limits for investments in military, health, etc. Within those ranges (which would be large if R.pp is high and vise versa), the ruler sets the values he wants. No EP is necessary for this.

In the monarchy example above, you say EP is low because the king doesn't control what's produced. If he were controling it, but not with a redistributive intention, then what is he controling it for? Other than forcing a higher production of military stuff, I can't imagine any other thing.

[Richard Bruns]

I think that the planning attributes should control the player's power. If we assume the player is the government and the model says that there is zero planning, then how can the player implement policies? It does not make sense to me. I think that if the player wants to manage something, then they should increase the planning attribute. If players could easily plan when the planning value is very low, the game would seem a bit incoherent IMO.

[axi]

I'll second that Mr Bruns!

Look Guys, I don't think that we can do any progress here simply by theorising. Only trying to create the needed functions for player control over the economy will show us if we need EP or not. Some basic formulae I have already made in my spreadsheet, using EP and I plan to use it with infrastructure too. Maybe we should dicuss these formulae one by one, to serve us as examples (even if they won't be what we will eventually have).

F.e. Working Hours for the LC are computed as follows:
WH(LC)=12-8*SP+EP*(4*WHs-2)

Where SP and EP are from the govt model and WHs is a slider ranging 0-1, set directly by the player. This formula can return anything between 2 and 14 hours (per day). As you can see, EP is used to control the extent of player intervention, which is maximum -2/+2 hours. Now, how could this be done otherwise?

[F_Smith]

I'm starting to think about fleshing out the econ code in my beast, so I'm starting to look this stuff over.

At first glance, the first suggestion I'd like to make -- the 'slider' for setting working hours can *not* sensibly be ranged from 0 to 1. It *must* have the actual hours in it's range (4 - 20, or whatever).

Consider the Player's choices,

"Set Working Hours: (0 or 1)"

is *not* intuitive.

[axi]

I thought that for this type of interface there would be sliders. I assumed that a slider gets recognised from the system as a number between 0 and 1. Of course the slider will be graded, but the numbers you will see on either end of the slider (the limits, in WH) will vary, according to EP and the 12-8*SP factor. If the interface wants another range for the WHs, the formula will be thus modified, it's no big deal.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Well don't do EP now, atleast till we agree whether to have it or not.

[roquijad]

Axi:
So you're using EP to control the level of ruler intervention (ruler as an individual, that is)... This means EP has not the role of defining a type of economic system, but to define the level of despotism in the economic field. I don't see a need for this. We can use the overall level of despotism (ruler_pol.power) for things like that.

In that equation of yours (that I don't necessarily agree with) I'd use ruler's pol.power instead of EP if what you wanted was to model ruler's power over WH.

I find weird having a variable for "economic despotic level" which can be different to the level of despotism in other areas like politics.

[axi]

I didn't know where to post this, so I put it in my own thread. Besides bumping the thread up, I think it is somewhat related.

I'm sorry to have dissappeared from the forum the last couple of days, but I wasn't really into discussing. I made a mini-upgrade to my PC (just bought more memory and a 20 gig HD), but this has caused me some trouble with my CD-ROM unit, which isn't recognised by the system 2/3 of the time. So I spend half my time trying to solve the problem (Btw, do you have any ideas about it, besides downloading the CDROM drivers or reinstalling Windows 98?) and half playing games and rearranging things in my new disc space.

My attempt on modelling infrastructure is pretty much finished, but I am (was) giving some thought on some issues that still do not please me. I also have to write a description in text. When it's all done (I don't know when, since I have to study from time to time too, I'm a student after all ), I will post a new topic, and send the stuff to Mark, Chris Wilkinson (Our new webmaster! It's about time we had an update on the web) and anybody else that might be interested (I'm sure that many of you will be).

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

[Richard Bruns]

I have a few comments and questions about the working hours:

Maximum working hours should be defined seperately by race. We shouldn't hard code them and make them the same for everybody. FE andriods could probably work 24 hours a day while humans cannot be made to work over 18 hours a day. This number should probably be defined in the Race Creation process in the population model, and of course the work hours of the different races would have to be tracked seperately.

Is the model already tracking seperate work hours for different ethnic groups or classes? I think that including this would be a good way to help model social inequalities.

The day might not always be 24 hours. Space colonists somewhere might adapt to a different day length. We might want to add this flexibility.

What does the model do about the times before clocks were invented? In many cases, people worked from sunup to sundown, no matter how long the day was.