[TRL] The eUK meta, is it morribund? / Defensive Dictatorship
FightAndProduce
Lately, I’ve noticed that our entire meta system has ground to a halt, not only that but the game mechanics have changed to a point where we must reconsider the option of a defensive dictatorship at the very least. I’ll go through a few things which show how the meta could be crumbling. I really don’t intend to point fingers and blame individuals, but the problems exist and they will be addressed.
Congress inactivity
thanks colourbox
While this may be down to the fact things are going okay, the eUK congress still has been very inactive. Even during Rathena’s terms it wasn’t very active, they don’t really keep the CP to account (which is their main job) and they don’t propose things for the most part.
-Committee’s have failed due to the lack of activity from congress members, very few people in the committee’s ever did anything (barring the Citizenship committee, which is successful)
-I’ll tell you how inactive congress is, they don’t seem to realise that AMD hasn’t proposed a budget yet.
-Parties are not putting up good people, and if the people they’re putting up are the best they have, they need to attract members who know what they’re doing.
This inactivity in congress becomes incompetence, as congress cannot fulfill its basic roles.
Chaos
There has recently been a disregard for the meta, no budgets being proposed and Woldys Angels not being actioned (though that is something I should have done during my term) While something has been proposed now, it will not happen due to a lack of a Speaker.
I should say very clearly, the inaction in terms of budgets is not meant to criticise AMD. The CP and congress are meant to compete, the CP wants to get stuff done, congress needs to hold them to account. If a CP wants to try and get around meta and congress doesn’t try and stop them, the meta has been for nothing. That is the fault of congress. They're here to keep him to account.
The decreasing need for a defensive dictatorship
God bless King Woldy, ofc o7.
It’s hard for me to say whether a defensive dictatorship is definitely not worth keeping in place, though it should be discussed, if the defensive dictatorship no longer exists, the meta dies. Its as simple as that.
Increased cost to coup/liberation
With an increase from 200k to 1m, it’s going to be harder for us to keep a defensive dictatorship going. Our income won’t go up, while the cycles of defensive dictatorship may grow longer I don’t think this will make up the increased cost.
Dictatorship upkeep
We don’t know much about this, but it will happen. I’ll run through a few hypotheticals to see where we might stand with dictatorship upkeep
Upkeep cost is fixed to the size of the country
We’re talking about moderate costs with this hypothetical, we’re a mid sized country and so it may be possible we could continue with the defensive dictatorship but the cost will provoke massive debate. This coupled with the increased cost of a coup would almost definitely make this unsustainable. I’d say this is reasonably likely to be how upkeep will work
Upkeep cost is a set value, the same across the world
I’d say that it would be low-mid costs, we’d be in the same boat as all the other countries in terms of costs, and our income isn’t too bad. We could continue with a defensive dictatorship with this model (if the coup costs aren’t too much to bear) However I’d say this is unlikely to be the case, the only way I could see this happen is if eRepublik wants to keep upkeep costs low to keep people who want to be a dictator interested and willing to spend money to get there, costs which are too high wouldn’t be good for that.
Remember, when we’re talking about any erepublik decision, it is keeping the whales online at all costs.
Upkeep cost works alongside determination, as determination increases the upkeep cost increases
So there would be a base value or a starting upkeep cost based on the size of the country, but as determination rises the upkeep cost is multiplied by the determination. This would have very high costs, all countries would feel the pinch. It would stop defensive dictatorships in their tracks. My point before stands though, it would also really discourage dictatorship players. But at the same time they are bringing down all the defensive dictatorships, which would encourage dictatorship players.
I honestly don’t know how likely this is, though I think it's somewhat feasible. Never say never
None of the above
eRepublik always amaze us with their abilities to screw up on implementation and game design. They introduced taxes to CO and Medals, and instead of making politics more worthwhile and making CO and Medal tax separate they just lumped it in with Work Tax. So really who knows? However I do think one of the above situations will occur.
So what does the eUK need to do?
It needs to tell its congress to buck up its ideas or it's getting replaced. The eUK needs to start discussing what we want to do in terms of dictatorship or democracy and we need to wait until some
Thanks for Reading!
-FightAndProduce (Opinionated)
Comments
"Lately, I've noticed that our entire meta system has ground to a halt" Well, every system that relies on only one person is not stable...
I've been holding 100k of eUK money for months now as a trusted citizen. I don't mind holding this money forever but I don't really see why I am holding it now to be honest. I very much doubt a CP is going to request the money back. We may as well put it to good use.
If I'm honest with you, Congress hasn't been that good at doing things for months. They've spent a majority of their "active" time debating legislation but when the time comes where we need legislation (when we had no Congress for example) it has been useless and couldn't really do much. I support legislation (I didn't when we first got it) but if that is all Congress wants to do then its a waste of an in-game position. I think the poor quality of Congress is linked to less people being active in the game now - we've gone weeks without a Dapper rant, that's how inactive the country has become.
tl;dr
Get rid of trusted citizens
Congress is boring
Can someone propose this to UK congress? The 100k cc trusted to CheetahCurtis will be transferred to Shawtyl0w who is a NL citizen and will use it to sponsor NL citizens who don't have maxed Training Grounds yet.
Thanks *evil laugh*
how much gold does 100k cc buy me? I could really use a company upgrade
pls don't take away my 100k I like looking at it
This looks like a serious article so I refuse to read it
You realise if we got rid of the dictatorship it would give congress more power than it currently has right?
But I think there will be more activity.
People don't like using things outside of the mechanics, going back to the mechanics would make things less complicated.
Bro im not sure you remember what congress was like prior to the dictatorship.
Better option is just reduce importance/size/complexity of congress within current system
Anyway, I haven't said we definitely need to move to democracy, simply that we must consider them. Its the only reasonable thing to do after mechanical changes.
More activity or more stupidity? Also, giving Congress their CS passes back isn't necessarily a good thing either.
Regardless of whether we retain the current bloated meta-system or return the shiny buttons to Congress, it's still going to do stupid.
What? I thought returning to democracy would suddenly make congress intelligent?
That's why I also said parties need to be better at picking congress members. We can't eliminate all stupidity, but as much as possible.
I agree with a lot of what you say here, but I don't think that reverting to democracy is the solution. Not only do I still think that it would put us at risk of MTO (What is 1m cc to some of the rich players on this game), I actually prefer the greater flexibility that the dictatorship gives us with regards to how we govern ourselves.
The solution to an inactive congress and a complex system which falls to bits without a very active person (myself or yourself) holding the tiller is to reform it under the dictatorship.
Reduce the size of congress, or perhaps abolish it all together.
tf is a morribund
I'd thought things were eerily quiet but I couldn't quite pinpoint why.
My plan's become relevant again: https://www.erepublik.com/en/article/just-burn-it-all-down-pls-reform-deform--2579552/1/20
From the Congressional Procedures Act:
"The Speaker will remain in office until he leaves Congress, resigns the position, or loses a motion of no confidence."
Don't see where it says that if he takes a cabinet position he stops being Speaker.
True, I dun goofed there.
I got it mixed up with committee's.
Though imo a Speaker shouldn't hold a Ministerial position as it can cause issues.
It would be nice to return to true democracy as I think it does create more work and possibly accountability for the Government (although unfortunately a mixture of good and unnecessary). However currently I see know reason to spend 1,000,000.00 to start the revolution although Dictatorship upkeep costs might provide a reason.
The Woldy’s Angels Act needs a review and we could possible revoke it as the Dictator and Organisations are as secure as they'll ever be, if a revolution is started we have 10 days to decide as a nation where our treasury is the safest. I'm also very much in favour of not holding a large reserve of public money, what to gather as income we should have a clear spending plan (with very clear accountability and record keeping) or if we do not need the high rate of income we could consider lowering the tax rate and letting the UK citizens hold on it among themselves as a result.
Also I don't see the issue with a Speaker holding a Cabinet position as long as they act impartially and have the confidence of Congress.
We definitely need a shake up and radical simplification of the system we have. For sure.
Let popovic handle this
I for one have rather got used to not having to deal with random laws/cits that usually plagued us in an unrestrained democracy 😛
There were initially two reasons for having "trusted citizens" holding government funds.
Firstly to reduce the amount sitting in the Country Accounts (looking all shiny and tempting for potential MTOers).
Secondly to have the cash ready at a moment's notice to start a coup to put back in place our defensive dictatorship if either a potential MTOer or a random anti-Woldyite decided to 'liberate' us from it.
Both points still stand IF we believe that the new £1m price tag is no real deterrent to the moneybags players out there and IF we think that it is best for 'trusted' players to hold cash rather than stashing it in orgs that are, according to the rules, the property of either the dictator or CP (if not under dictatorship) and therefore at risk of theft if an unscrupulous player somehow gets to either position.
My own thoughts are that if the game changes and dictatorship becomes too costly to maintain, then we need to seriously think about reverting to democracy.
But that does mean our country's cash is more at risk, we've not had the best track record at keeping hold of our treasury in the past....and also we'd still need to have enough cash to hand in case we needed to liberate ourselves from a MTOer.
So I would say the trusted citizen scheme is still relevant and necessary even under democracy.
Regarding simplifying Congressional procedures, I think we definitely need to look at that regardless.
When will people realise that the meta isn't the game? Let it die the death it so obviously deserves
People complain when there's meta, people complain when there's no meta.
This is a game about complaining, we need meta sometimes just to switch it up a bit.
The only time we need meta is when someone at eRep Labs creates a button for it
What is meta ? (serious question)
All the unnecessary legislation created by dumbos to make themselves feel important.
meta is typically defined as an abstraction - in this case a customization of the legal module
DOWN WITH THE DICTATOR
Good article. RE: Congress, inactivity is bred by having not much to do or crap people being ran (maybe because not enough non crap people?), or by both these things. A regional voting system would be good, ie the old way because Congressmen had to compete against one another for votes. Under the new system we lost that, and our efforts to point out which parties are poor or good in terms of their congress output have been a bit inconsistent