Stupid decision is stupid

Day 1,564, 17:52 • Published in China China • by mihail.cazacu

So let's recap:

1) For whatever reasons, most of the Bulgarian players don't want Turkey in EDEN. Yes, that doesn't make strategic sense. At all. And eRepublik is a game of strategy, not Farmville. But that is how the things are now and that is the reality we need to work with;

2) Bulgaria has the right to veto Turkey's membership in EDEN. All the countries who join EDEN do so in full knowledge that one day a single country might have a different opinion than anybody else. That opinion might not make any strategic sense. But as long as a country has the right to veto another country, this is the reality we need to work with;

3) The "creativity" is highly damaging when somebody tries to "creatively" bend the rules in the midst of a conflict situation;

4) Both in Real Life and in this game, if somebody behaves in a way that seems illogical, the best approach is to take a closer look at what is really going on.

More to the point:

- Those who opposed Turkey's membership weren't a monolithic bloc. Out of the 62% who said NO in the referendum, the hardliners represented slightly less than 20%. How do we know that? By adding all the votes received by the "anti-Turkey no matter what" candidates. The other 42% remembered Turkey's recent behavior in-game;

- Those who were against Turkey's membership because of Turkey's past behavior would change their mind in case Turkey's current behavior changes as well.

If Turkey fights now for say Finland, that's not changed behavior. That's expected behavior.

Turkey sabotaged Bulgaria's attempt to get access to resources in the past, while being allied with Bulgaria. A changed behavior would be to allow Bulgaria's access to resources without being allied to Bulgaria. To give Bulgaria access to resources while being allied to Bulgaria would be like fighting for Finland - an expected behavior, nothing extraordinary and therefore nothing impressive;

So all what the members of EDEN HQ and the presidents needed to do was to think for a while and dig deeper into publicly available information.

The results of the elections were public, the results of the referendum were public, the list of in-game problems between Turkey and Bulgaria was also published in the newspaper of the Bulgarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

So what should we understand from how some members of the HQ and some presidents (unfortunately 9 of them) dealt with the publicly available information?

That they were unable to piece the information together?

That they didn't bother to look the information up?

That they understood what was really going on in Bulgaria but didn't care?

In addition to that easily available public information, there were a few more additional pieces of info which could have helped.

Say we are convinced the Bulgarians are chauvinists who just hate Turks. Very well, we still need to understand why. A very superficial reading of Wikipedia could turn out two pieces of information:

1) That Bulgaria's national hero Vasil Levski was hanged by the Turks in February 1873 and that episode is commemorated every year. It's in the media, in schools, in official ceremonies etc every February.

What does it mean?

It means that even those people who do not mix a stupid Internet game with Real Life would have hard time to put a lot of energy into defending good in-game relations with Turkey during the month of February. It would sound bizarre given the context and sane people don't do odd things for the sake of a computer game.

2) Yet another superficial use of Wikipedia would have revealed that March 3rd is the Liberation Day in Bulgaria. Liberation from what? If you thought "500 years of Turkish occupation" you guessed it right. Just like the commemoration of Vasil Levski, Liberation Day is all over the media, etc.

So how smart is it to get Bulgaria punished for her in-game conflict with Turkey on March 3rd?

Due to what happens in Real Life to the people who play this game, even those who are careful to keep eRepublik separate from life have hard time to accept the sanctions.

And sanctions for what?! For exercising the right to veto (even though it makes more sense to accept Turkey as an ally) and for trying to get by force the resources Turkey (allegedly EDEN-friendly) doesn't need?

Yes, it's true the sanctions are void of any real significance (a real in-game sanction would be to refuse to sign MPPs with Bulgaria or to RW the Bulgarian colonies in Russia).

Yes, it's also true that if Bulgaria's attempts to gain those resources by force drives Turkey away, EDEN will be back in trouble.

But if Bulgaria leaves because the members of the HQ and 9 presidents didn't bother to use the publicly available info, is EDEN better off?!

Fortunately there is a solution at hand very soon: the Presidential elections on March 5th.

If we manage to elect people who do their homework before voting sanctions we can avoid the same type of stupid decisions at least for the next month.

So vote carefully!