The Bastion: Activity
Spir Tus
In this series, The Bastion, I will take a look at the political system and I will expose the conspicious things. These theories are mostly my thoughts and are supposed to be a different sight on things and create discussion. This second article in this series is about activity.
Democracy
The most important thing for me personally is a democratic, good-working political system as possible with the restrictions of the ingame mechanics. When you first join this game, you think Democracy is really the most important thing. As you can read in my first article of this series, a democratic erepublikan society is an utopia. Some of the most important values of democracy aren't present in eNL and it is impossible to change this. Even in my own party I struggle sometimes with the general opinion of our community about activity. My personal goal is to understand this general opinion and trying to change this, because democracy won't be possible if everyone thinks the way they do now.
The biggest problem for achieving democracy is activity. We need a lot of active players to participate in our community. In the ideal situation we have at least 40 active people for full congress power and some people who will be in the government. With activity I mean participating in discussions on the forum, being on IRC and comment on the eNL articles. In this ideal situation there will be no double roles where one person can be in government and congress at the same time. According to the reactions on my first article, we have not enough active people to achieve this. Of course, there is a choice between democracy and activity. We can choose for a more democratic system, but due to activity problems, the activity will further drop down and it will be a very weird version of Democrcy. Apparently our community has chosen for Activity, so activity is more important than Democracy in this game.
Activity
To improve democracy, we need to improve activity. This means that the general opinion needs to change from a activity-centered general opinion to a democracy-centered general opinion. The only way to achieve this, is to solve the activity problem. This seems impossible, but is this true? Yes, there are some big problems with our activity the last couple of months. The number of active people has decreased the couple of months, which is a global erepublik trend and there are even some really active people of our community who moved to another eCountry and even people who stopped completely with the game. So I'm not going to deny the activity problem, but maybe there are some more problems than only activity.
Power
There is something that is more frightening than the decrease in activity, something more threatening than the complete absence of democracy and something more complicated than the writing of the new Law Book. The Bastion, the people who are in charge, are afraid of the loss of their power. Everything can be traced back to power conservation. The elite, the Bastion, are the people who are in charge. This aren't only the people with official functions, but everyone who is active. Because we have a small community, with a decrease in activity, we all are part of the elite and there is no opposition. We are avoiding crises. We are avoiding taking risks. We are waiting for other countries to take initiative, because we think we can't do anything. Our country has a great potential, but sadly last elections a lot of people thought otherwise.
Power is more important than activity, and thus more important than democracy. Maybe even democracy isn't possible due to the people who want to keep the power. The desperate grasp on power is everywhere.
We are afraid of our "ally" Poland, who is stronger than we are. Afraid for a wipe of our whole country, we are too passive in foreign affairs. I'm not saying MoFa is doing nothing, but we aren't taking initiative with the reforming of alliances or improving the relationship with Poland (in anyway, not with sufficient result). We are more afraid of foreign people who want to be part of our community than domestic people leaving the community. We are afraid of PTO in every way. In my opinion a PTO is basically not bad. Yes, of course, there are some people whose aim is to take over the power and change the country without taking the community into account. But if there is a big group of people who wants to be part of our country, and the political landscape is changing because of them, that doesn't mean it's a Political Take Over. When there are in this situation CP elections with a candidate of this immigrant group and an other candidate, and the results show a majority for the candidate of this immigrant group, than it isn't a PTO in my opinion, but just a democratic result of what our community, including this group, wants. Only if this new elected CP is stealing the money, or changing the law without approval of congress, than it's a PTO in my opinion. A lot of people who want to be part of our community are doubted and even refused because of their potential to change the community.
Also the use of Multi accounts in elections, the aversion of congress, the lack of change and the fear for the comeback of de Admiraal are also effects of power conservation. I'm not saying we, the active community, is conserving power deliberately, but it's happening subconscious.
If we want to achieve a more democratic community, we need to improve activity. To partly solve the activity problem, we need to change the general opinion and taking more risks. We need to make a choice between taking risks with the consequences of losing power and playing safe with the consequences of losing activity. At this moment, we are doing the latter.
Our country has got a great potential to be a player in the international world. We are one of the few countries where English is the main language, so everyone of the whole world is able to join us and understand us. We need to stop with only blaming Plato and take responsibility for our problems.
I hope the next CP elections will have wonderful candidates who will paying attention to this problem. I would like to thank Aries Prime for running this month and giving us insight in the way our community thinks about this.
Spir Tus
A Bastion of Truth
Comments
Absolutely agree
V
Crónicas eRepublicanas Capítulo Primero
erepublik.com/en/article/cr-nicas-erepublicanas-cap-i-es-en-2469863/1/20
good article!
some nice insights! endorsed!
I remember you were seeking people to help you write a newspaper.
I suggest that using the endorsement feature of the game you are able to pay the co-writers of the article with a centain percentage of the endorsement money you receive 😉 this might just be the way to make things happen.
I've found someone who is willing to write an article sometimes. He won't be a co writer, but it will improve my newspaper and I hope the activity of our community. I expect there will be an article soon.
Voted
Voted
"Some of the most important values of democracy aren't present in eNL and it is impossible to change this."
True, it's more of an aristocracy. Plenty other countries have it worse though. The easier it is for newer players to rise in politics, the deeper the 'elitists' are embedded into power behind the screens. Especially in larger countries (e.g. eUSA).
Goed artikel, maar ...
het niet goed functioneren van de democratie komt niet alleen door inactiviteit. Er zijn meer redenen. Een belangrijke is dat een kleine groepje spelers zich vaak zo belangrijk vindt, dat het alle macht en invloed naar zich toetrekt.
Waardoor anderen uiteindelijk afhaken.
Ik heb dat zelf meegemaakt. Een tijdlang was ik de leider van Iron and Wine. Ik wist die partij vanuit een slechte stand op te krikken, maar een paar bobo's wilden alle touwtjes in handen houden, dus dat liep uiteindelijk spaak.
Democratie werkt alleen als iedereen wordt betrokken en dezelfde rechten krijgt.
Daar heb je gelijk in. Dat is ook die elite die de macht wil behouden. Dat gaat ten kosten van activiteit en inderdaad van de democratie. Jammer genoeg vertrekken de mensen die daartegen in gaan vaak naar andere landen of stoppen er helemaal mee.
lol uit een slechte stand op te krikken... het ledenaantal op dat moment schommelde elke week -1 +1. dat lag echt niet aan degene die PP was.
Apart dat de elite altijd de touwtjes in handen heeft. Je zou toch denken dat ze een meerderheid van stemmen nodig hebben? Je beweert nu dus dat ze ofwel bestaan uit een meerderheid van spelers of ze spelen vals.
Er waren 8 leden inclusief mijzelf toen ik vorig jaar terug kwam. Ik noem dat een slechte stand. Ik heb die partij overigens 2x heropgericht en ben er al 5 jaar lid van, dus ik vind dat ik meer recht heb om te beslissen wat in die partij gebeurd. Dit werkt hetzelfde in het echte leven, waar ook een partijbestuur bestaat die de continue lijn van de partij waarborgt.
Het niet functioneren van de democratie komt niet alleen door inactiviteit, maar ook door nieuwe spelers die slecht geinformeerd zijn en dus met domme ideeen komen. Ik werk niet mee aan domme ideeen de wereld in helpen, en die nieuwe spelers worden dan boos en roepen dat er geen democratie is. Je kan hier niet zo even als leider binnenlopen en verwachten dat iedereen luistert, je begint gewoon in het congress en op lagere ministeries en zo werk je je weg door het spel tot je alles begrijpt en dan blijkt het dat je het eigenlijk toch wel vaak eens bent met de grote boze elite en je er zelf ook bij hoort.