[CPF] The 7 Tenet Series: Second Tenet
Derphoof
So, making accounting and funding more open and important. In recent days, funding has become an interesting topic. This is mainly due to the tanking economy and the lack of proper MU’s funding. Let’s take a look at the meaning of this tenet.
“Accounting” and “More Open”
So here’s some questions:
How many of you know how much money we have?
Do you know where it goes?
Do you know where it’s kept?
Did you know there’s a simple spreadsheet that makes all of this info available to you?
If you know this, then good for you! However, not many articles are published with this kind of information. Its not something your average player thinks about every day. However it is something central to gov’t. The apportioning of gov’t funds keeps our treaties intact and military funding sufficient. These things should be put out in the open so the people know how much money is doled out and to whom. Bad record keeping is not acceptable and shows a lack of care for our 2nd tenet value.
The gov’t funds are apportioned by the Comptroller and is subject to the vote of Congress. Voting and proposals should be made public along with the budgets passed each month. Links to debates and the gov’t spreadsheet should be included in gov’t articles. In order to inform the general public, all financial votes and information should be relayed to the people via the media. Things should be stated clearly and links should be provided to make it more accessible.
There are other times during which gov’t has had no accountability. Take Merc Funds for example. There were no requirements and no one really knew to whom the money went. It was just listed as 50k for mercs. It could have easily been spent in other places or stolen. No rules applied. Things like that and executive orders should probably be accounted for in the future.
“Important”
The accounting and financial reports of the gov’t should be taken seriously. If a RL gov’t didn’t publish its budget and made no mention of financial plans or transactions, they would be scrutinized on all sides. This is how it should be. The people of Canada have a right to know where their money is going. They likely don’t have much of a clue at the moment because this info is not published. To take the second tenet seriously is to make gov’t finances important. The economic side of this game should be just as important as the military side of the game and should be treated as such. To withhold this information is to keep the public in the dark.
Well that sums it up pretty well! Next time we’ll look at CPF Tenet #3!
3. Enhance our place in TERRA (Up Next!)
4. To respect, recognize and uphold the supremacy of the mechanics of the game
5. Develop a positive political sphere
6. Bring in Canadians to eRepublik
7. To encourage growth and stability to the eCanadian economy, by making forever available credit and bursaries to the general public.
Comments
Government transparency ftw!
It's actually super easy.
You go to the open congress forums and open the budget thread. There you will find a link to a googledoc (most months).
When you open that you will see all of the economic information. Money in, money out, where it's going, who it's going to, etc...
This tenet seems out of date to me.
nice!
and muglack, what do we do if, say, we dont use the forums? apart from registering, theres not much i can think of that will give me that budget information.
o7
Great Article, we need more in game info.
I have absolute zero interest in using the forums, as do many other players in this game, does that mean that we are not entitled to know what is going on? I get it several years ago forums were crucial to game play, now they are not so why do we keep try to force people to use them.
Googledoc and some rules found on the forum do not enforce accountability or transparency in govt spending. People have to value it and new players need to be reminded of it. Consider the Merc Fund a while ago that was put through the budget without any oversight or record of how the money would be held or used. The main reason attention was given to the loose strings of the Merc Fund was because of the 2nd Tenet (because that's what made me write an article about it)
Take a look at the first couple lines to see how Tenet 2 motivated a transparency debate:
http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/the-merc-fund-make-war-not-cookies-2073171/1/20
Best of luck man
If you can't be bothered to go on the forum where the budget is debated, discussed, and voted on, then you can't complain about not being able to get information about it.
What do you want? The MoF to link the budget googledoc once a month in a newspaper article?
Do your own legwork. Get involved, and get active. Don't expect to be spoonfed like a child.
That should be the 8th tenet. "Don't be a baby. Do some of the work yourself."
seven days ago, congress donated 280k to the comptroller for distribution. It has not been distributed and the comptroller doesn't know when to distribute or to whom.
amounts donated by congress pursuant to the budget are for immediate distribution. The split is determined by MU rosters which are to be updated twice a month. Rosters are google documents in prescribed form. The Minister of Finance is to adjust splits as required upon review of the roster.
It might be useful to, periodically, publish links to the appropriate google documents namely:
1. the budget
2. The Ministry of Finance transaction records
3. The MU rosters.
perhaps plug, perhaps. Serious players are aware, of course, that the budget donation due sept 7 has not been proposed and that there isn't enough money in treasury to make it.
I liked this part of the article: "These things should be put out in the open so the people know how much money is doled out and to whom." It was better than the comptroller's recent forum post: "kk so there's 280k in the org at the moment. When am I supposed to give it away, and using which numbers?"
😁😁^ hah 🙂 plugson!!! deleting comments makes me look a bit foolish 🙂
~hyuu~
mellors is talking to himself again. Everybody PANIC!!!
That comment was up for about 1 minute at almost 2 in the morning, oliver, as I prepared to log off for the night. I seriously never expected you to read it, ha! I felt too tired to try to edit it so that the idea came out better.But thanks for the reply, and even if you did talk to yourself, the conversation would have produced something quite informative, even if only for you(but that was quite revealing what you posted above...googledocs alone may not be enough to keep things steady)
o7