The Economist ~ Thieves in the Night

Day 945, 06:13 Published in United Kingdom United Kingdom by Spite313
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Dear friends,

Let me present to you a scenario. You wake up, make yourself a cup of tea, put some toast on. Opening your laptop you quickly log into erep before work/school/uni/whatever to check eRepublik. After work/train you log out and log into a government org to check RM or jobs or whatever in a company, and find that the company is gone, along with all your gold and currency. Heart thumping, you realise the government has been robbed. Whether it’s 20 gold or 2000 gold, the feeling is dreadful. Betrayal is the hardest thing to bear, especially when it comes from somebody you know.

Why do people steal from the government, or from anyone for that matter? Partly, it is due to greed. At some point the desire for money outweighs the persons relationship with the nation and the people who trusted them with their resources. Partly, it is due to vengeance issues, ie. “you did something that annoyed me, so I’m going to kick you where it hurts”. The last reason, and most common, is that people think they can get away with it. Admins are rubbish at recovering lost gold- I know the UK government has only retrieved maybe half the assets stolen from it in the last year.




When you’re robbed, it isn’t just the government being robbed, it is the people: The people who pay taxes and work in the system; who buy and sell goods; who fight for the UK and dozens of other nations globally. They log in and do this to provide the state with the means of functioning, and when a thief takes that he ruins the game for hundreds of people. Steal a hundred gold and you might put the UK back a few days, steal a thousand and you might put it back a month. The resources can never be regained, only replaced, and each thief cuts at the collective whole of the nation.

So where am I going with this? Well in my last article I discussed how there is a relationship between individual citizens and their alliance. This is something which can be brought to bear on this situation. If we think about it, every citizen pays a portion of their taxes towards Phoenix. This is because their taxes fund the government(s) and the government of each country pays fees towards Phoenix based on the income of each country. If the UK struggles to pay because of theft, then it hurts the whole alliance.




The logical conclusion of this is to extend the citizen blacklist to cover the whole alliance, and perhaps even further. In the past, thieves have found homes in other, allied nations. The idea that someone stealing from Bulgaria or Indonesia should find a home and a new beginning in the UK, spending our allies hard earned gold, isn’t a pleasant one. In as many cases as possible, we try our best to stop this sort of thing happening. But there are cases. Theft hurts us all. We can’t extradite our criminals in eRepublik, but we can make sure that the meeting they get when crossing the border is far from friendly.

Recently, 1ronman was accused by the Canadian government of stealing from them. The evidence is quite compelling, though obviously it is a decision for the admins. If he’s proven to be the cause of the theft, he will likely be locked out of the Canadian government, their forums, army and so on indefinitely. It’s unlikely he will get a warm reception in the USA or Ireland either. So what does that leave? Another EDEN country or maybe even an unaligned /Phoenix country. But does his country of origin make the crime of theft any less severe or the trustworthiness of the man any greater? Of course not. A thief is a thief, regardless of who it was they chose to steal from.




So should we perhaps extend this blacklist to cover all nations in the spirit of international co-operation? It seems unlikely that this would wash, especially since many thefts are deliberately done in collaboration with enemy governments. However the idea is a nice one, and one which could be expanded on if a Phoenix-wide system comes into place. For me, a traitor is a traitor, and anyone who would steal from their home country can’t be trusted not to steal from an adopted one. I wonder how many army chiefs, presidents and governments would set aside the incidental chance of a spy giving them control of the enemies orgs in exchange for a guaranteed blacklist of any criminals which attacked them. I think most people would prefer the security of their own organisations against the chance stealing of others property.

Like all ideas, this is best kept simple. A publicly viewable google doc containing all known thieves would be a good start, though of course there would have to be a cut off point to start counting from, otherwise the list would start at huge length. An independent arbitrator to quickly check cases over for evidence to make sure nobody is added without compelling evidence. From this simple little idea we send a clear message to thieves and potential thieves everywhere: stealing from the government means the end of your game, the death of your character, nobody will ever trust you again, anywhere. There is no way to stop thieves, but maybe we can make them think twice.