Join the new world

My heart is gladdened to see all the competitors we have in the upcoming election for POTUS. For those of you who aren’t aware, we have Joe Newton, Josh Frost, PigInZen and even a foreign contender, Zoli. Click on any of those names to see the original article where they announced their candidacy and basic platforms: they all have also released subsequent articles concerning VP picks and further development of their platform (even if it wasn’t always called that, after you announce candidacy everything you say is part of your platform). Now the thing I don’t like, and perhaps I’ve just missed the articles (though I doubt it) is that there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of debate amongst the people over who they’ll be supporting. Perhaps it’s still a little early, but those are some big and even controversial names; why wait?

Military



First, it is important to note that all of the candidates have promised some sort of warfare, mostly for the fun, citing boredom as a reason for players leaving the game (as noted by a drop in voting figures from the last elections). The platforms published before our attack on the eUK promised to finally push that button if it wasn’t done by the time they took office, but also said that would only be the beginning of further operations. Of these further operations, Joe Newton wants to launch attacks into Mexico and Colombia. The other three candidates have all mentioned that they and their cabinet are currently planning similar operations. There isn’t a lot to go on here, but I’ve never been a fan of even hinting at where we might attack (sorry Joe) until necessary. As far as military experience goes I think Zoli and Josh Frost probably have the lion’s share in this group. At the same time there can be no doubt that PigInZen is very competent and I’m sure, if elected, his plans will be as sound as any others. All the same, in the military department, Josh Frost gets my support.

Economy

For the most part our candidates seem certain that warfare will spur economic activity (people will buy guns, associated prices go up, wages go up, other markets have to compete with those wages and must raise prices to do so – a fairly safe presumption) and only Zoli offers a very different approach to what we know (and even love). First he wants to raise the minimum wage to 2 USD in order to drive private employers away from skill 0 workers, making sure only a government skill 0 hub will pick them up and educate them properly. I think that would be ok if it happened. I don’t think it will. I still don’t believe our retention efforts have enough volunteers (not that the volunteers we have are inadequate or not doing more than is called for) and such an effort may only be marginally better than what we have currently. Not only that, but it makes it a bit harder for private citizens like Colin Lantrip and Max McFarland 2 to maintain their ‘noob-training’ businesses.
Second he would hike the import tax to 15% except for on diamonds. Some articles were published recently concerning taxes (sydiot laid out the eUS tax plan quite nicely) and I’m still of the mind that such protectionist efforts are not necessary. If the market is saturated it is typically because businesses are quite easy to start and our own citizens are flooding them, not so much from foreign competitors. Not only that but a robust black market means a lot of taxes like these can be avoided by buyers who know how.

What Zoli did mention that I like is increasing exports by helping businesses buy export licenses to allies. An exact plan would have to be ironed out and perhaps if we are really going to fire up the wars we don’t want to spend money in this manner, but if it seems a fine idea worthy of more consideration at the least.

No matter what the government does, the economy will keep chugging, generally as it would. Furthermore, I don’t think it’s broken right now, despite the apparent problems. We’re simply not in wartime and the economy reflects this. I would not vote for someone advocating rather substantial changes to our taxes and wages. sydiot and others have put quite a bit of thought into this and what we have does indeed work.

Retention



Every candidate also made note of retention efforts but ultimately, aside from the Welcoming Committee (and similar efforts) getting more help, I do believe warfare is the best immediate retention tool. As such their plans for increased warfare should do fine here. However it is worth noting that Joe Newton mentioned use of Facebook, both an eRep group and actually buying ads, which is something I think is a really grand idea. FB ads are cheap and can be targeted to as specific an audience as you want (and can even link through your referral link so you get eRep gold if enough join) and could be quite powerful. I don’t know if he plans on footing some money himself or simply encouraging this from a national level, but either way I like it. PiZ also mentioned placing Q2 hospitals in certain regions. At the very least we’ll finally be able to put the ceaseless arguments to rest if this is at least tried. At worst we lose a few hospitals and at best it actually does help retention.

It’s worth noting that none of the retention efforts are exclusive of others. We can do it all! Increased mentorship and Welcoming Committee members, Facebook ads, infrastructure, posts on other forums and all, let’s throw whatever we’ve got at this, by far our worst problem at the moment. I’d love to see Newton or PigInZen able to push their ideas on a consistent national level.

Security



On a different note entirely, I highly suggest every eAmerican eye Zoli’s candidacy with the utmost suspicion, especially in light of the recent PTO of our congressional elections. Remember that Zoli is HUNGARIAN and has fought even in the past few days against America and EDEN. Despite his promises and his glamorous cabinet (who have no actual, in game power should Zoli start handing over regions or getting us into bad wars) there is simply no way we can be sure of his intentions. We have three excellent eAmericans with a proven track record and great desire to help America. There is no reason any one of them should lose to an enemy propaganda specialist.

Zanmor’s Pick

At this point I’m still not certain about my vote. I hope something really awesome will set one of the teams apart in the next few days. Until I see that, and were the election today, I would cast my ballot for Josh Frost. He did us proud back in November (seems like a long time ago) and I know he’ll do it again. But as I’ve said, all the candidates are quite awesome.