Questioning our Political System
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by Peter A Wiggin
eRepublik is a simulation of the world. It covers politics, economics and warfare. At least, to a certain extent. In the real world, there is no formalised government. Sure, we have government, but it's not set in stone. If every citizen of Australia simultaneously decided our system of government was crap, they could bring it down in a matter of days. Governments, countries and empires rise and fall with time, do they not? I think you'll find that eRepublik has no allowance for that. There is a government set in stone, with a fixed amount of congress members and fixed dates for elections. All our e-politicians have the power to do is pull together flimsy non-aggression pacts and some unofficial unenforceable policies. They don't have the power to force players this way and that, but is that really a good thing? Sure, it'd ruin your game experience if on your first day the best player in the game and dictator of your country farmed you of your money using automatic (and somehow legal) services; but that's part of life, the oppression some experience. And the truth is, this can't be simulated, because no-one wants to be the oppressed player if they have the power to not be so. Put simply, we can't have the perfect simulation of the real political world. But we can have something closer than we already have, can we not?
Take for example the creation of political parties. You need, what, 40 gold to do that? Why is there such a hefty fee to be able to express your opinions? In the real Australia there is no such barrier. Take the entire political system in itself! We have no president or congress or civilian military. So why is it that we have these things in game? Well, for starters, Australia, whilst it has vast amounts of land, it has a minute population of just 23 million people. If any country were to receive some kind of 'special treatment' reorganising the political system to be a mirror image of the real world, it wouldn't be us, at least to begin with. There's also the fact that it would take a considerable amount of time and work to make those changes, and the developers of this game mayn't see any correlation between the feature and income. But that doesn't mean that there aren't reasons as to why making these changes is a good idea.
There are plenty of biased things about this game. To start off with Australia's territorial size gives each of us a bigger portion of cash than other countries would experience, even though much of our land is unusable. Yes, there is plenty of stuff biased toward us. But that doesn't mean that the bias is a good thing by any measure. Sure, in reality we are a wealthy country and the land based bias allows for that, but shouldn't our political playground be a clean slate more than an exact model of the real world? At least, better than a very rough model of two thirds of the world, which happens to be what we have currently. Though one problem with having a model of the real world is that you happen to be able to choose where you live. If this simulation were any closer to perfection than it currently is, I'd be questioning the validity of the extra 50% of signups in America and other rich world powers that would become present.
And I appreciate eRepublik in that sense; it's got a good balance between perfection and the clean slate, so that people can interact with their nation and other nations as if they were in the real world, but not so intensely that the actual gameplay is ruined. This is, after all, a political testing zone. Whilst some may argue it's a war game, where's the strategy in sheer numbers versus numbers? There's not even one formal army! The e-government has zero power over what each military unit does! Others may argue it's also about economics, but I ask those of you, where are the stocks? Where's the finance market? The advertising, the bargains and deals and trickery and trumping and above all, creativity? No, sir, this is a political playground, with those little things on the side as distractions from the real game of politics, behind the HTML making up our puny little profile pages. That's something worth sitting on.
- Peter
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This is your first erep account ? Anyway, pertinent ideas.
No, it's not, but my previous one is long lost. I've even forgotten it's name.
"Take for example the creation of political parties. You need, what, 40 gold to do that? Why is there such a hefty fee to be able to express your opinions? In the real Australia there is no such barrier"
Actually there is the Electoral Act 1918 (Cth) and the respective State Acts that set out some hefty procedures, such as, 500 signatures or the endorsement of at least 1 sitting Member of Parliament of the jurisdiction registering in. Not to mention that it costs $500 (House) and $750 (Senate) to stand for election. Cheap as chips really, but it's certainly not without process.
Well, yes, but 500 signatures is perfectly reasonable. You need to have people willing to follow you if you're going to be a politician. A reasonable substitute in the eRepublik world would be 4 or 5 people hitting a button that generates and e-signature. And the $500/$750 is presumably just the cost of the paperwork processing; which should really be the cost of creating a party, not 40 gold.
More germane to the issue is that were political parties absolutely free, there would be an absolute glut of them and apart from being somewhat unwieldy it would likely detract from the value of this part of the game module. Setting some fee does limit the creation of 100 new parties for 100 new citizens, and encourages people to work together - even if it is just for an individual to exert their influence and try to take over one of the existing ones.
Besides, you do not have to be in a political party to express your democratic view, as has well been demonstrated in the past. Parties are if you wish to be endorsed for CP, or to get elected (in game functions anyway, I'm not talking about any RP that occurs outside of the function).
While I'm not opposed to the notion of 4-5 people clicking a button to make a party, again, this would over time create many many more political parties that what we have. Given most functions are reserved for the top political parties in any case, it would mean a rethink of how the entire module operated to make this work effectively though.
Not pooping your comment. There are sound concepts here. But it would need a wider think of how the parties work in game to do it.
There are an absolute glut of political parties in the real world, just you don't hear about them at all other than at elections. Just look at this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_Australia.
Anyway, the ideas I've presented here are anything but complete. They are designed to make people think about the way our e-political system works, and how to make it better.
True. But not all of them equate to much and with the recent changes to RL legislation not will they in the future. I'm all for people expressing their views. I'm even all for people making a political party should they choose to. But the mechanics of this game versus RL politics (be it here or elsewhere) would present some challenges given the already low population of this country. Consider 100 parties with 100 different CP candidates among a population of 170 voters. Would you really endorse a model whereby someone could obstansibly be elected CP on three votes (if people voted their own party with some non-party voters)? This would greatly enhance a risk of PTO.
Now were they to implement a preferential voting system it might address - but this comes back to my point, being a wider rethink of how the political module in this game would be needed.
Very true. I guess that would present some serious problems. The whole point would be that all of the minor parties wouldn't equate to much, but if people were to feasibly be able to start creating alternate accounts to get them into congress, then it would really affect the gameplay. It never really occurred to me during the writing of this article that just about everyone who plays this game actively does it for the political side of things. That does make a huge difference in the ratio of parties to citizens, possibly a dangerous one, if all the major parties were to break down to create their own one man parties.
Prime Minister = President (Although I'll admit the way they get to the job is somewhat different).
Senate = Congress (although there are no longer state by state elections as there once were in the game).
Army Reserve = Civilian Military (although granted it doesn't come into action quite as much IRL. Some players are more or less professional military though by real world standards).
For upcoming changes, hopefully going back to a more complex strategy game, see this:
https://forum.erepublik.com/index.php?/topic/4701-resource-wars-prologue/
In real life a Prime Minister (or for commies like me Premier) is head of government while a President is usually a Head of State. "Head of government is a generic term used for either the highest or second highest official in the executive branch of a sovereign state, a federated state, or a self-governing colony who often presides over a cabinet." "A head of state is the highest-ranking position in a sovereign state and is vested with powers to act as the chief public representative of that state. In most countries, the head of state is a natural person, he role and functions of the office of a head of state may range from being purely ceremonial figurehead to one that wields autocratic executive power" Sorry, I just comeback to read the daily's 😛
Yeah I know, the above is just how we adapt the mechanics in eAustralia to make it as close as possible to RL. Except for the lynching of Whitlam, the Governor General is purely a rubber stamp and isn't elected, but appointed by the PM and rubber stamped by the Queen. The PM has the major executive powers.
I must say, that article has me intrigued. I'm looking forward to these changes, as it's always bugged me how plain the battle interface is. There's simply no strategy.