The Economist ~ Focusing on what is important

Day 1,033, 11:04 • Published in United Kingdom United Kingdom • by Spite313



Dear friends,

Over the past few days I have become increasingly frustrated with what I can only describe as a reactionary movement within the UK, led by the People’s Communist Party, to undo much of what we have achieved over the past year. When I first joined this game, we had so much bureaucracy that every decision needed to be ratified, discussed, debated and fought over for weeks. By the time anything was done, it was too late. We were a marginalised country with no war, no army, and a thousand whiny forum-goers who spent all their time calling each other “sheep” and exploiting loopholes in legislation for their own ends.

It was pathetic.

Then came the man we know now as King Kumnaa, with some big plans. Over the course of his Presidency the legislation went onto the fire, and the bureaucrats were tossed on afterwards. The UK stopped being a place where a few geeky people with a narrow interest in minor legislation fought, and started being a fun place to spend time. Instead of spending all our time arguing over how we should do things, we spent time deciding what to do. Yes, we still had the communists calling for us to smash the state. We still had them moaning about bourgeois classes exploiting people and talking such a load of rhetorical tosh that nobody could even understand their point (especially the citizenry, supposedly their audience). But for the most part, we got on with things.


A day at the office of bureaucratic bureaucracy before the cull

Since that period, the UK has been pulled out of the dark ages. We have a functioning government; a functioning military; a society where goals are national and not just personal. We have conquered our neighbours, participated in great wars. The government has intervened in markets both in favour of and to regulate private enterprise. We have acted again and again to keep the UK on the straight and narrow.

For nearly all of that period I have been a private citizen. I have watched as the Presidents of the day have made incredibly difficult decisions, and how congress has worked together to back them. I have watched players, inspired by their example, take up the reins of government themselves. I have seen them educate themselves about the issues, take an increasingly active role, and finally contribute and improve upon our way of doing things. Improve it for everyone.

Now all I can see is people waving the banner of democracy with one hand and the banner of self-interest with the other. People who were and are in favour of cabalistic elites arguing for direct democracy simply to further their own goals, cynically using a universally supported goal - retention and citizen empowerment - as a means to push their own agenda.



So we see a slow withdrawal into the UK of old. The first Act proposed by this new democratic model: The House of Lords Act. A bill which if passed will recreate that old body of elitists who Lorded it over us for over two years without a single election. The point of this? More role-playing. Whilst this goes on, our economy is in tatters, our military shrinking by the day, our foreign acquisitions lost to enemies. But do these people care about that? Of course not. They would rather focus on the minor and petty legislation which achieves nothing. What is worse, now they think that by exporting this meaningless role playing to the general citizenship they legitimise their position.

I ask you, as one citizen to another, do you actually care about the Legislative Procedure Rules Amendment? Or the House of Lords Act? Because quite frankly, I don’t, and I spent ten months in congress.

When citizens say “I want more from my government” what they mean is they want more success, more action, and more results: They want the wage issues addressed; they want to see their country fight and win battles; they want to see a path to a golden age and the first foot on that path. What most people (including myself) don’t want is to wake up one morning with a mail in my inbox telling me it’s my lucky day because guess what? The new legislative procedure rules are up for voting and you know sub-paragraph (b) of section 2.vii is pretty tasty!

Don’t get me wrong. I would love referendums for important stuff, like which alliance we are part of, whether or not we should rent a region to another country, even whether or not we should spend a large amount of gold on some infrastructure, like hospitals. All these things, to a certain extent, are both justifiable and rare. A referendum over such a crucial issue as joining PEACE last year was something often discussed, but never implemented. Of course, it didn’t suit people to implement it then. And of course, this was shortly after the Kumnaa revolution, and people were still being sensible.

Now today, reading the forums, I hear that my old friend Roadrunnerspeed has made a nice referendum website. Apparently his admitted thievery of over three thousand gold from the UK last time he had access to our passwords has been put aside. So when you log in to vote for the next amendment to the Pointless Bureaucracy Act, remember exactly whose site you’re submitting your account name and password to. Yeah, I won’t be doing that either.

In the name of common sense, undo this massive mistake. Citizen empowerment is about giving people the chance to progress their erep career, not destroying the career ladder. Retention is about achievement, not removing the need to achieve. Recruitment is about a golden future, not a past which is rightfully dead.

Iain Keers