Civil Disobedience - Keeping Taxes for Ourselves
Sever Vetrovnik
First of all, I'd like to introduce myself to the eCanadian gaming community. I came here from Serbia a few months ago, but didn't have enough time to write an article and present myself "officially". So, here I come. 🙂
I used to define myself as an e-journalist in the first place, with foreign relations as my main field of interest. After being a politician for a (too) long time, I am nothing more than a common player now, who likes his peaceful and quiet way of playing the game when and how it suits him. I hope that I would fit in. I'm not as active as I used to be, but I will contribute as much as I can to eCanada. 🙂
Now, this article presents a proposal to enrich the game with civil disobedience. The idea is to let the citizens decide whether they will pay manager taxes if a dictator is in office in their country. As I wrote in a post on the erepublik forum:
Democracy that we used to know, that was our way of governing society, has lost its purpose as many dictators have risen to power and subjugated whole nations, rendering political parties and ordinary citizens essentially powerless. We now do not have our voice in government anymore. We do not have a say in what laws will be accepted or what our foreign policy will be. Being overpowered in military terms, we can only submit to dictators as revolutions against them usually result in no more than approximately ten days of liberty.
This was my motivation for proposing civil disobedience. I believe that ordinary citizens will feel more involved in the game even if a dictator runs their country and, by definition, does not have to take their opinion into account. Of course, some nations agreed to adopt dictatorship as a governing system. To take such cases into account, I believe that refusal to pay taxes should be voluntary. That way the citizens that do not support dictatorship can effectively influence the dictator, and those that support their dictator may still pay the tax. The dictators could be offered to buy currency by special price to compensate for the lost taxes. One may argue that citizens can fight the dictator on the battlefield, but the mechanism of military coup is such that only damage matters. Theoretically, one strong player can keep dozens of other players under his power forever, with only occasional 10-day breaks to reset determination. But if those subjugated players quit the game, so will the dictator. Introducing some sort of balance between them is the way to make things more sustainable and interesting.
Now, this idea is a stubble, and may not be the best version of disobedience that one can think of. But, it does introduce new dynamics to the game, and if the game is interesting to the players, then it fulfills its purpose.
Possible modifications are:
- Letting citizens keep only half of the tax.
- Expanding this idea to democracy and not limiting disobedience to dictatorships.
Feel free to comment (and subscribe 😁
. The poll in the forum is open for voting so don't forget to cast your vote. 🙂
At least, we might motivate the admins and programmers to think of and introduce something new, no matter if this very idea gets accepted or not. 🙂
Shout:
*
*
*
The title says it all 🙂
https://www.erepublik.com/en/article/civil-disobedience-keeping-taxes-for-ourselves-2617991/1/20#comments
*
*
*
Comments
prvi
o7
Love the idea but most people would just do it to save money and it would not be about civil disobedience.
I wonder if there was away to have some kind of Democracy fund where the money would go into? i just cannot think of away to do it that the dictator and his supporters could not subvert.
This is a good extension of the basic idea. The fund from which the democracy activists would support their war against the dictator is really a good way to gather the money for democratic revolutions. However, who would manage the fund? I guess that the elected president or Congress should do it.
Could just got into a fund exactly like the AS fund is displayed but any country MU could push the button once it is full.
Yes, I agree. 🙂 The fund could operate just like the one for airstrikes. But if any MU can press the button once there is enough money, wouldn't that let prodictatorship MUs abuse it to reset determination or simply waste it? It's not just the cost of revolution that we have to consider, but CO expenses as well. If there is not enough money to cover CO, raising a revolution will not give the desired results. I'm more for the option where the fund is controlled by Congress/President since they come from democracy. Once they decide that the time is right, they could simply pass the money to any MU's account and use it to raise the revolution and pay the CO. 🙂
Yes it is very difficult because it is impossible to determine intent but the fund can only be used for one purpose. Moving from dictatorship to Democracy.
You could also leave it open to donations so an MU could top it up for a surprise just like now.
It would also give countries more of an incentive to keep playing at democracy. You get all your tax revenue. Right now the strategic advantage favors dictatorship. This would make an economic advantage to staying at democracy.
So the economic incentive of being at democracy is more important then the actual mechanics of how this will work in this case.
Finally a word from you 🙂
It took me more than I thought it would. 🙂
Obviously 🙂
Good to see you writing!
Thanks. 🙂 It is good to write again, too. 🙂
Vote with a bullet 🙂
Great idea. It is Sound and I do hope if enough players vote that the Admin will make a change in game mechanics.
A good first article in Canada 😃
Truly, you are a Top Guzicamaxxx Confirm
Give all your money to me. That will show them!
Welcome to eCanada
In real life, if you don't pay your taxes there are consequences. It's no that you just don't pay because you don't like the guy in charge.
I like your idea, I love tax resistance in real life but I think you need to polish your idea a little bit more.
Thanks for the comment. 🙂
Some other players have suggested a variety of consequences for those who don't pay taxes, from confiscating their factories and private assets, to restricting bonuses from resources and taking away their citizenship. Those would be possible counter measures for the dictator to impose on them if he decides so.
I agree that such scenario would be more realistic, however, I'm not inclined to the idea of dictators punishing ordinary citizens so drastically for disobedience. The thing is that in a dictatorship we are all "punished" in advance. The dictator nullifies our political rights. Tax resistance would be our reaction to it and a way to set some sort of balance between democracy and dictatorship.
I will try to figure out what counter measures could be left to dictators so that they can punish resistance, but that the balance is preserved.