A Treatise on Probability
Day 4,750, 13:20
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Published in USA 
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by
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by Blande
The Economic Consequences of the Parkleds, a rip-off of one of the greats, demands a response. The thought of Keynes being in any way associated with the arguments set forth in that article rankles. And so, I use another of Keynes' works to push back.
The argument in that article rambles on, but it boils down to this: the eUS current participation in TWs on its cores is terrible for the country based on a GDP argument, an affinity for one’s RL region argument, and a communications argument. I respond to these below and then I dive into the issue using a probability argument, concluding with Keynes’ original argument in The Economic Consequences of the Peace.
The GDP Argument:
The argument here is that the eUS is losing out on huge amounts of GDP by giving up some of its regions. This loss comes about due to citizens who remain in these TW regions and continue to produce. Setting aside the veracity of this GDP loss argument (I’ll take on this in the probability section), I have one major question. Why specifically should we care about GDP in and of itself? To quote George, “the key about tax revenues is they represent only about 10% of the actual value lost to the economy”. He makes the argument that GDP itself is important, going forward to back it up by saying these are “food people can eat, weapons people can fight with -- disappeared without a trace.”
This argument exposes a fundamental misunderstanding of the eUS economic module. The food and weapons that he talks about here make no difference whatsoever on the global eRep market. The additional production has 0 influence whatsoever in the demand and supply in these markets. Why? Because the eUS market is broken for lack of a better word. It is oversupplied and a few additional supplies makes no difference. Add in the global nature of the market and we do not need that additional production. In effect, the only reason GDP is important in this game is due to the tax revenue that can be derived from it. That is the main and only concern of the government here. So, if the argument is about tax revenue lost, then sure we can talk about that (and I will do so shortly), anything else is just a smokescreen that does not warrant any real debate.
The “BUT my State” Argument:
This is an argument that is so irrational I hate wasting ink to address it in any way. It is time for people to get it into their heads, eRep is not RL! eRep is not RL! eRep is not RL!!! When you get into this game and decide to participate in a country you best be ready to play according to the game mechanics. If you decide to stick to some RL principles, like I want to only live in my RL region, then you are acting irrationally and that is on you. The rest of us should not in any way have to make sacrifices in order to accommodate the irrational desires of others. Just NO!
The “NO Communication” Argument:
“Communication from the government has been almost non-existent”
“Resources were NOT set aside, they had no plans at all”
These are quotes from George. I can’t even begin to state how disingenuous these statements are. As Drummertheman was very quick to point out in the comment section of the article, there have been numerous articles written on these issues. Here are two articles just for example. There have been more from others as well: (Credit to Drummertheman for putting this out there)
https://www.erepublik.com/en/article/-doe-factory-relocation-extravaganza--2725957/1/20
https://www.erepublik.com/en/article/-vp-holdings-relocation-program-3-where-is-the-neodynium-yui--2726067/1/20
Communication about the new safe regions has been there. Resources have also been set aside, with Congress passing legislation setting out funds to cover moving costs for producers (and this is not the first time Congress has done this). Articles about this were also written. When this was pointed out to George, he made a comment:
“As I have repeatedly pointed out, PEOPLE DO NOT READ THOSE ARTICLES. Certainly not the kind of people inclined to get caught up in this. A drastic change like this required a more sophisticated outreach, and it wasn't there.”
Take a second and think about this. The main mode of communication in this game is through articles. That’s the whole point of the media module. You write articles to communicate your message and you also post on the national feeds. That is how the government communicates. If a citizen refuses to listen to the government by not reading articles, that is on the citizen. The government has done its part and the rest is on the citizen. This is especially true in the case where the government is offering a service to producers. As a producer, your goal should be maximizing your profits, and this entails taking advantage of the resources provided to you. You have a responsibility to do your part to listen to government communications. To say the government needs to do something even more sophisticated because to help people who are too lazy to read an article and fill out forms is wrong. People need to take some personal responsibility!
A Word on Probability:
With those arguments dealt with, it is time to address the underlying issue here. The eUS has a lot of regions. Over time our population has been dwindling. And we are susceptible to being wiped by a coordinated effort from other countries. Taking these together, this brings us to a quandary. Do we keep all our regions and open ourselves to being continuously wiped as we were between 2018 and 2020, or do we make a deal that can be mutually beneficial to everyone involved?
Let’s start with the first option. Assume we make the choice to keep all our regions and fight to protect it. Under such a scenario due to the resources we have and game mechanics, we are an inviting target for multiple invaders. It becomes difficult for us to have any real friends we can count on, as everyone wants a piece of our resources. This means we are constantly under threat of being wiped by everyone. If the past 2 years are any indication, we will be wiped most of the time. In such a scenario our production basically grinds to a halt. The vaunted GDP George likes to speak about basically goes to zero right as we are occupied by invading forces all the time. Here’s a probability exercise for you George. Let’s assume the probability we are under occupation if we try to keep all our regions and resources for ourselves is 80% (people in the know will tell you it is higher than that, closer to 95% perhaps). And to even help your case, let’s assume that even under occupation we can somehow manage 20% of our normal production (let’s assume normal GDP is $100). Then our expected GDP under this scenario is
EGDP = 0.8*20 + 0.2*100 = $36.
Let’s turn to the second scenario. Rather than try to keep all our regions, we instead keep a few core regions and move most of our production there. We then rent out the rest of the regions to others for a fee. The obvious goal in moving all our production to a few regions will be to allow us to maintain our $100 production, but of course, some people won’t move, so this is not truly achieved. Let us assume that we can move 80% of our production to this new region. Then without even including the fees and tax repayments we get from renting out our regions to allies, we already have an expected GDP of $80. Even arguing we only get 60% of our production to move to the safe regions, that is still $60 which is much higher than the $36 we found above. When we add in repayments, we are getting 90-95% of our production rather than only 36% if we tried to keep all our regions.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is the reason we do the deal. From an economic standpoint, the second option is more optimal. The expected returns from that are much greater than that from the first option which results in us being permanently wiped.
We haven’t even looked at the question of retention because it is a more complex one. On the one hand, as George argues people coming in and seeing us renting our regions might be pushed away from staying, but the same holds true for the option he wants. If we try to keep all our regions and end up permanently wiped, people come in and once again see us being occupied and leave. You can’t eat your cake and have it too. One could argue that with the renting option, we get to retain more of our current members. People are more likely to leave if the country is permanently wiped than if we have a rental agreement.
The Economic Consequence of the Peace
This all brings us to the Economic Consequences of the Peace. When Keynes wrote this masterpiece, his argument was simple. An effort by the Allies to punish Germany will lead to economic devastation in Germany and the breakdown of civil society, which could lead to even worse results. Rather, the Allies should work hand in hand with Germany to rebuild and create a stable society. We all know how this insistence on dominating Germany by the Allies after WWI turned out.
The same holds true for us here in a sense. An attempt to hold on to all our regions despite not having the manpower to do it, will have led to devastation as we got wiped by other countries who want to get their hands on our resources. Rather, it was better for us to cooperate and keep some of those resources. Rather than follow the disastrous path taken by the Allies in 1919, we learned from history and listened to the wise words of the great John Maynard Keynes.
And with that, I rest my case. The arguments made by George are shortsighted as they refuse to take into consideration everything facing the country. It is ok to want to have control of all your regions, but when you make decisions on these things, you have to take into consideration the ability of the country to actually maintain this control. When everything is considered, the optimal choice has to be made, and as I have demonstrated, the better choice economically and possibly even retention wise is the training war option.
Best Regards,
Blande
The argument in that article rambles on, but it boils down to this: the eUS current participation in TWs on its cores is terrible for the country based on a GDP argument, an affinity for one’s RL region argument, and a communications argument. I respond to these below and then I dive into the issue using a probability argument, concluding with Keynes’ original argument in The Economic Consequences of the Peace.
The GDP Argument:
The argument here is that the eUS is losing out on huge amounts of GDP by giving up some of its regions. This loss comes about due to citizens who remain in these TW regions and continue to produce. Setting aside the veracity of this GDP loss argument (I’ll take on this in the probability section), I have one major question. Why specifically should we care about GDP in and of itself? To quote George, “the key about tax revenues is they represent only about 10% of the actual value lost to the economy”. He makes the argument that GDP itself is important, going forward to back it up by saying these are “food people can eat, weapons people can fight with -- disappeared without a trace.”
This argument exposes a fundamental misunderstanding of the eUS economic module. The food and weapons that he talks about here make no difference whatsoever on the global eRep market. The additional production has 0 influence whatsoever in the demand and supply in these markets. Why? Because the eUS market is broken for lack of a better word. It is oversupplied and a few additional supplies makes no difference. Add in the global nature of the market and we do not need that additional production. In effect, the only reason GDP is important in this game is due to the tax revenue that can be derived from it. That is the main and only concern of the government here. So, if the argument is about tax revenue lost, then sure we can talk about that (and I will do so shortly), anything else is just a smokescreen that does not warrant any real debate.
The “BUT my State” Argument:
This is an argument that is so irrational I hate wasting ink to address it in any way. It is time for people to get it into their heads, eRep is not RL! eRep is not RL! eRep is not RL!!! When you get into this game and decide to participate in a country you best be ready to play according to the game mechanics. If you decide to stick to some RL principles, like I want to only live in my RL region, then you are acting irrationally and that is on you. The rest of us should not in any way have to make sacrifices in order to accommodate the irrational desires of others. Just NO!
The “NO Communication” Argument:
“Communication from the government has been almost non-existent”
“Resources were NOT set aside, they had no plans at all”
These are quotes from George. I can’t even begin to state how disingenuous these statements are. As Drummertheman was very quick to point out in the comment section of the article, there have been numerous articles written on these issues. Here are two articles just for example. There have been more from others as well: (Credit to Drummertheman for putting this out there)
https://www.erepublik.com/en/article/-doe-factory-relocation-extravaganza--2725957/1/20
https://www.erepublik.com/en/article/-vp-holdings-relocation-program-3-where-is-the-neodynium-yui--2726067/1/20
Communication about the new safe regions has been there. Resources have also been set aside, with Congress passing legislation setting out funds to cover moving costs for producers (and this is not the first time Congress has done this). Articles about this were also written. When this was pointed out to George, he made a comment:
“As I have repeatedly pointed out, PEOPLE DO NOT READ THOSE ARTICLES. Certainly not the kind of people inclined to get caught up in this. A drastic change like this required a more sophisticated outreach, and it wasn't there.”
Take a second and think about this. The main mode of communication in this game is through articles. That’s the whole point of the media module. You write articles to communicate your message and you also post on the national feeds. That is how the government communicates. If a citizen refuses to listen to the government by not reading articles, that is on the citizen. The government has done its part and the rest is on the citizen. This is especially true in the case where the government is offering a service to producers. As a producer, your goal should be maximizing your profits, and this entails taking advantage of the resources provided to you. You have a responsibility to do your part to listen to government communications. To say the government needs to do something even more sophisticated because to help people who are too lazy to read an article and fill out forms is wrong. People need to take some personal responsibility!
A Word on Probability:
With those arguments dealt with, it is time to address the underlying issue here. The eUS has a lot of regions. Over time our population has been dwindling. And we are susceptible to being wiped by a coordinated effort from other countries. Taking these together, this brings us to a quandary. Do we keep all our regions and open ourselves to being continuously wiped as we were between 2018 and 2020, or do we make a deal that can be mutually beneficial to everyone involved?
Let’s start with the first option. Assume we make the choice to keep all our regions and fight to protect it. Under such a scenario due to the resources we have and game mechanics, we are an inviting target for multiple invaders. It becomes difficult for us to have any real friends we can count on, as everyone wants a piece of our resources. This means we are constantly under threat of being wiped by everyone. If the past 2 years are any indication, we will be wiped most of the time. In such a scenario our production basically grinds to a halt. The vaunted GDP George likes to speak about basically goes to zero right as we are occupied by invading forces all the time. Here’s a probability exercise for you George. Let’s assume the probability we are under occupation if we try to keep all our regions and resources for ourselves is 80% (people in the know will tell you it is higher than that, closer to 95% perhaps). And to even help your case, let’s assume that even under occupation we can somehow manage 20% of our normal production (let’s assume normal GDP is $100). Then our expected GDP under this scenario is
EGDP = 0.8*20 + 0.2*100 = $36.
Let’s turn to the second scenario. Rather than try to keep all our regions, we instead keep a few core regions and move most of our production there. We then rent out the rest of the regions to others for a fee. The obvious goal in moving all our production to a few regions will be to allow us to maintain our $100 production, but of course, some people won’t move, so this is not truly achieved. Let us assume that we can move 80% of our production to this new region. Then without even including the fees and tax repayments we get from renting out our regions to allies, we already have an expected GDP of $80. Even arguing we only get 60% of our production to move to the safe regions, that is still $60 which is much higher than the $36 we found above. When we add in repayments, we are getting 90-95% of our production rather than only 36% if we tried to keep all our regions.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is the reason we do the deal. From an economic standpoint, the second option is more optimal. The expected returns from that are much greater than that from the first option which results in us being permanently wiped.
We haven’t even looked at the question of retention because it is a more complex one. On the one hand, as George argues people coming in and seeing us renting our regions might be pushed away from staying, but the same holds true for the option he wants. If we try to keep all our regions and end up permanently wiped, people come in and once again see us being occupied and leave. You can’t eat your cake and have it too. One could argue that with the renting option, we get to retain more of our current members. People are more likely to leave if the country is permanently wiped than if we have a rental agreement.
The Economic Consequence of the Peace
This all brings us to the Economic Consequences of the Peace. When Keynes wrote this masterpiece, his argument was simple. An effort by the Allies to punish Germany will lead to economic devastation in Germany and the breakdown of civil society, which could lead to even worse results. Rather, the Allies should work hand in hand with Germany to rebuild and create a stable society. We all know how this insistence on dominating Germany by the Allies after WWI turned out.
The same holds true for us here in a sense. An attempt to hold on to all our regions despite not having the manpower to do it, will have led to devastation as we got wiped by other countries who want to get their hands on our resources. Rather, it was better for us to cooperate and keep some of those resources. Rather than follow the disastrous path taken by the Allies in 1919, we learned from history and listened to the wise words of the great John Maynard Keynes.
And with that, I rest my case. The arguments made by George are shortsighted as they refuse to take into consideration everything facing the country. It is ok to want to have control of all your regions, but when you make decisions on these things, you have to take into consideration the ability of the country to actually maintain this control. When everything is considered, the optimal choice has to be made, and as I have demonstrated, the better choice economically and possibly even retention wise is the training war option.
Best Regards,
Blande
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Looking in from outside, this seems perfectly logical.
blande i love you
Dude just bodied him
fully roasted
You mis-stated my argument from the start. My argument was, and is, that the benefits of the RWs are outweighed by the costs. I didn't say "huge" -- that's your straw man --, but to the tune of a few hundred thousand dollars on a bad day, depending on how many BHs and RW medals are won. I've actually done some of the work and given examples, not pulled massaged hypothetical figures out of my ass to support my argument, as you did. While I appreciate your attempts to impress people with inflated academese, if you can't get that part right, you can't get the rest of it right, either. That aside I will say I've been messaging some people (which you people ought to have done) in affected regions and none of them was aware of the rather lame attempts at communications that were made, so you're wrong there, too. But ultimately the stupidity of this is demonstrated by the fact that you had to spend time writing this inflated tripe out when some basic cost/benefit analysis should have been done -- using real figures -- before implementing such a drastic policy change, and clearly was not. This is just a lame attempt at covering up for the laziness, dishonesty, and ineptitude that has afflicted the eUS for the past several months. I'll say it again: you guys are literally killing this country, and you don't care, going to whatever lengths it took (Jesus, you were gone hours -- it took you that long to write garbage like this?) to type this nonsense out rather than try to figure out ways to fix your screwup. Because this is about you and your fragile egos, not what's good for the US.
I responded to the argument you made in that article. If you want to go into the weeds of RW medals and BHs, we can do that too. I will again show even there that your argument is once again lacking in that arena as well. Because you still fail to reason through to the end. If we are wiped, we are not going to be winning RW medals all over the place. In fact we get to win more through these TWs than we will if we were being occupied. The BH medals should be the same in either scenario. You really have no true arguments other than to occasionally write and condemn the people who actually sit and make the tough choices.
Back to the hypotheticals: "If we are wiped." If we are wiped your figures are worth less than the ass you pulled them out of. That's just foolish. As for "getting in the weeds," DO IT. Since you clearly don't know where to get the information -- because you and your cohorts are so lazy and so out of touch with the basic mechanics of the game -- here's the link: https://www.erepublik.com/en/country/economy/USA See that? See the steep decline in WAM revenue? With no offsetting gains in medal revenue? YOU GUYS F*CKED UP. Admit it. Figure out how to solve it. Do something useful instead of whine about "hard choices" when the problem here isn't hard choices but WRONG CHOICES. And stop embarrassing yourself by pretending to be an academic, you disgraceful fool.
Let me know when you actually have something serious. Let me help you out with some direction. Pull the data you want to use and make a coherent argument of the differences between what we were bringing in when we were wiped vs what we are bringing in now. You say this is your argument, so go ahead and make it. Here is why you won't do it: Because you know that the results will clearly favor the current system by a lot. It is not even close. And that's with medals included. Anyone with any little bit of a brain will understand that we get more in medals now than we will do under a complete wipe.
The results are there. I presented them to you. You should have known about them already. Really, you spent all that time typing up bullshit, when the facts have always been there, and for what? Ridiculous. And they think you're the smart one? I'm done with you.
The results you want to talk about are not actually there. What you have done is point to a page. I have looked at the data and it doesn't support your argument if you take time to actually understand what is there. As for taking time, I have been busy in rl. It is a Saturday after all. I quickly put that article together. There was no need for too much effort when rebutting your arguments because of how weak they are.
George, you failed to take into account the number of WAM factories that people with foreign citizenship moved out when their own countries or allies gained resource bonuses. 🤔
It's funny to hear George use the same argument on you that he has used elsewhere, that anyone who presents a solid case that his argument doesn't hold water is accused of "inflated academese" or some other rail against erudition.
I also think you were soft on him. His article was a rant, not an argument. He is wrong and neither can nor will ever admit it.
No, in my own estimates, I didn't. But it doesn't matter. The medal revenue is hardly budging, which means the entire rationale for this disaster falls on its face there alone. That being said, I started doing casual peeks at this weeks ago. Almost nobody major that I saw moved out of Denver, which is what got my focus, except Leroy Combs, who moved to Kentucky, so his numbers wash, assuming he continued working at the same rate. Maybe there were more foreigners elsewhere, but I find it hard to believe there were THAT many who moved, especially given the data is granular enough to see weapons and food production going down, and the people who were most likely to move would have been in aircraft and housing -- and you can see that decline as well, and I chose my starting point specifically to exclude housing and aircraft production, for obvious reasons. That being said, I give you credit for being willing and able to think some of this through. I wish it had been done before. BTW, before printing my article, which I wasn't going to do, I sent the page through a couple of different channels to whoever is supposed to be in charge, and published it on the BSP discord channel. Nothing. So here we are. You guys have heads of stone, that's all there is to it. When you guys decide to do something no facts or arguments ever change anything, and you never, ever admit when you're wrong.
My reply above was to WDIBT. The other guy.... well.
Here's a parting gift, since again, it seems you guys don't know even this much about how to dig up information: https://www.erepublik.com/en/main/city/Denver/residents
Notice how many of those people are using houses, so they're active even if they aren't talking about e-peens on discord, or racking up BH medals. I've contacted some of these guys and gotten no meaningful replies except from wolfthug. One person said he would never move. It seems to me that someone who has been working the better part of 208 companies for years (Chavo Ellison), but hardly fights, so doesn't have tokens, is worth talking to, and plans made to try to salvage that production. But hey, as you people keep saying, I don't know what's going on. But you do. Ultimately, instead of spending well over a million dollars to move his companies -- if he even agrees to move -- and almost that much to move the rest -- again, even if they agree to move -- it would be cheaper, easier, and a sure thing to make Colorado, and several other states, safe zones, especially since you have data showing no big explosion in medal revenue. But again you guys are never wrong. Nobody else knows what's going on. You make hard choices. You have a plan. A good plan. One you've thought out. One backed by ..."data" ... and "probability" (sorry, I laugh every time I see that shit. JFC.) You communicate effectively, and people who don't respond to your communication are "willfully ignorant," and so don't count. My guess is those companies are generating at least $15,000,000 in GDP a year for the country, but willful ignorance deserves punishment, so f*ck them. Besides, it b ears repeating you're never wrong. And now I'm done with all y'all. I haven't had so much fun in this game in years.
And here is something you don't seem to get. We can't make every region that has someone that has companies a safe region. We can only keep so many regions safe as our TWs require movements. The next thing you should understand is that people like Chavo Ellison pay taxes, part of the taxes come to the eUS, the other part goes to the country occupying it. At the end of the month, those countries refund taxes from those regions back to the eUS. It is part of the deal we struck with them for the TWs. As a result, we ARE NOT losing tax revenues, since we get these refunds back. You could say we lose the GDP, but GDP by itself is useless, what matters is the tax refunds which we get
I'm mentioned in this thread so I'll comment here if that's acceptable.
Why would I WAM in an occupied state w/ no bonuses?
Why can CG PM me every time he publishes an article but you guys make me read this drivel?
Why include the "probability exercise"?
Why say "eRep is not RL! eRep is not RL! eRep is not RL!!!" then try so hard to name check everyone's favorite economist from intro to macro that you end up Tommy Boy-ing the reference?
Why use this many words to convey your point?
Also, I wouldn't worry about a new article to address retention, this one nails it for me.
I have only one question for you? Why are you in an occupied state when we have safe regions with bonuses?
We have provided funds to help you move your companies, take advantage of it.
Me: "People don't read the few articles you send out, and don't know what's going on. And your programs, such as they are, are insufficient anyway."
You: "They are willfully ignorant."
Them: "We didn't know anything about this, and you aren't communicating with us."
You: "Why didn't you move, and use the programs we set up?"
Once again, you guys don't care about the US, don't care if what you've done works or makes sense. The only thing you care about is your own egos. You did it, so it was perfect. No amount of data or facts will make a dent in your rock hard skulls.
The only person in this entire debate that is focusing attention upon himself is you, George.
The people volunteering in government are not the ones with the ego problems.
Also, you said you would be "done" with us. Please keep your word.
That's nice but let's try to phrase it in a way that accepts your responsibility in the situation while addressing my onus in moving the companies using a semi-personal approach.
You: I see you still have companies in Colorado. What difficulties are you facing in relocating your companies since our administration was forced to make the tough choice of removing Colorado's safe region designation? Have you applied for the relocation program that reimburses you the cost of a new holding company?
Literally everything I've typed has been done so with the goal of improving things. You guys have the evidence that what you've done hurts the country, have put no evidence or argument forward showing otherwise that isn't instantly and easily shot down, yet still refuse to change anything. You're dug in because you don't have the guts to admit you're wrong and make even minor changes. It's about YOU and the rest of your gang, gnilkrap, not the country. Just like your multis and bots. BTW, why is it when you post something particularly stupid you choose to do it from your krapis account instead of using your gnilraps account? It makes no sense. Everyone knows it's the same dunce either way.
1) GDP is not equal to taxes. If we lose/get GDP, it only matters if we have a concession of resource from other country. And we can't work in "occupied" regions while war is open. That is a concern, but we can relocate companies. My complaint is about that gvt does not want to pay that relocation as we are not supposed to pay it by ourselves as we were told to build companies in safe regions which are not safe anymore.
2) "BUT my state" is really irrational argument as I don't know e-country which has all of it's regions under their control, everyone has guests on it's own regions. This is a game and there is a use from doing that with friendly countries.
3) Connected to 1), the problem is that our taxes go to other countries, but we get tax refunds, so that is actually not a problem at all.
Excellent analysis. +1
"And now I'm done with all y'all." -George Barker
Let's all hope so.
You're a shit person and you should be embarrassed.
I wish you had said that to my face instead of acting like you were my friend in private.
I just did.
To your face, in response to you acting like a piece of shit.
V!!
This is one of those times where I simply nod my head and pretend I know what’s going on. Very well-written response though! 😀
It's really not. It's a lot of words. That any of you think it's in any way applicable is more a reflection of your (general you, not specific) low intellect than of George. This audience are easily swayed and it's pretty gross.
o7
Thank you for taking the time to write this all out.. I just completely ran out of willpower to keep arguing with someone so bloody-minded.
o7
[removed]
The problem is not the TW's but its excessive quantity, at some point I counted 15. That means, in addition to fiscal, and GDP problems, that there are 15 closed markets for American producers, aggravating the problem of local oversupply.
This is a shit article and you should be embarrassed