C2C - Civics Discussion Thread

[strategyonly]

Ok here's a newer upgraded one then, alittle of ur's and Civ8's, I think this might work???

 

[strategyonly]

A slightly different version .. . now on SVN

 

[JosEPh_II]

I will be Tweaking 1 Civic today, Irreligion's -25% Culture. Will reduce the malus to -20%.
EDIT: This is currently on hold.

EDIT: Adjust Civic Anarchism Unhappiness, Reduce from 3 to 2 Added +1 to Largest City



JosEPh

 

[JosEPh_II]

Reverted Civics Back to SO's 9281 set. I worked on the 9280 set today instead of the 9281! dumb screws up again!

with myself for making such a base mistake. Luckily SO caught it fast.

Thanks SO for your vigilance.

JosEPh

 

[Thunderbrd]

Interesting information to consider for civic designers and auditors.
http://kentfreedommovement.com/profiles/blogs/history-truth-behind-the-birth-certificate
And anyone else for that matter... Fascinating stuff.

 

[Noriad2]

Interesting information to consider for civic designers and auditors.
http://kentfreedommovement.com/profiles/blogs/history-truth-behind-the-birth-certificate
And anyone else for that matter... Fascinating stuff.

He seems to advocate globalism (the dissolution of all borders).

However, many have pointed out (e.g. Milton Friedman) that the modern welfare state is incompable with the concept of no borders. Open borders + welfare state leads to the bankrupcy of said welfare state as the poor of the whole world want to enjoy the free money the welfare state provides.

A generous welfare state requires a high level of taxation, which requires high wages among the populace, which requires a high level of labour productivity. Any laborer whose labour productivity is lower than the minimum wage (for whatever reason), will be permanently unemployed.

This is what is happening in Europe today. For example, in my country (Netherlands) of the Somalis who got refugee status in the 1990's (mostly young men) 70% of them have been permanently unemployed and on welfare benefits up to this year. They are also highly overrepresented in criminality.

 

[Thunderbrd]

He seems to advocate globalism (the dissolution of all borders).

You have an equally fascinating response!

However, many have pointed out (e.g. Milton Friedman) that the modern welfare state is incompatible with the concept of no borders. Open borders + welfare state leads to the bankruptcy of said welfare state as the poor of the whole world want to enjoy the free money the welfare state provides.

This makes sense. This, then, is to suggest that people must be banded into groups that are willing to coldly allow outsiders to suffer and perish of starvation to be able to ensure their own survival?

What if there were, say, only one group?

There appear to be two forms of globalization it would seem. Globalization for the cause of the benefit of all, and Globalization for the cause of the exploitation of the masses by a few. Is the first a truly technical impossibility? Is it that we must truly admit that people somewhere are GOING to starve and we MUST be prepared to eliminate them from our concern or only allow them in so long as they are properly exploitable?

A generous welfare state requires a high level of taxation,

Allow me to re-propose an alternative viewpoint on this. A generous welfare state requires a high level of wealth redistribution, which is quickly disfavored by those with wealth who would see such redistribution as theft by the state. Thus those with accumulated wealth have used their wealth for ages to propagate the idea that A generous welfare state requires a high level of taxation on the entire community.

But the truth is that enabling the accumulation of excess wealth in the hands of a few is to also enable the wealth of the community to be unevenly distributed and thus to allow those who fail to 'produce' in society, for whatever reason, to suffer tremendously, often unjustly, and become criminally parasitic to the society to survive.

which requires high wages among the populace, which requires a high level of labour productivity.

So long as the society produces enough resource to support the population that exists, any given member of the population should, under a just and fair system, be capable of easily earning the necessary wages. Only where wealth imbalances exist do we find this becomes difficult. There are always going to be people that MUST rely on the system due to disability, but even they usually contribute something of value. The problem is that our concept of 'something of value' pretty much purely includes only 'that which can derive wealth for the individual'. And in a society which is heavily automated, which strongly devalues the time and effort of the laborer yet provides mightily for the community, a shrinking few have access to opportunity to even provide something of value to the community that the community doesn't already have plenty of. Should abundance really be cause for mass poverty??? That is exactly what our current views are allowing to happen today, globally and even within the confines of each 'district' or nation.

We cannot continue to pretend that we are not one human race, no matter what nation we hail from and what our forebearers earned or achieved in comparison with the ancestors in other regions of the world. The amassment of wealth is the amassment of the right to survive and we gleefully accept that it's ok for the wealthy to strip that from others to accumulate it for themselves so that they can squander those resources for no other reason than we can. Even the majority has been convinced this is the best system we can come up with and that it works fairly.

Any laborer whose labour productivity is lower than the minimum wage (for whatever reason), will be permanently unemployed.

When a community has all it needs, how exactly do you quantify productivity? Where does the artist play in here when many who operate creatively would never have what they create become recognized as valuable until long after their deaths, or at all? Embracing risk vs reward as a system means we accept that most of the human beings whom would contribute the most rewarding elements to the community, are likely to vanish into obscure failure simply because the contribution could not be understood, communicated properly, or provided more to the well being of all, while challenging the ability of the wealthy to profit (example Tesla.) And many of the best would-be contributions get shuffled under the leaves of poverty entirely, never seeing the light of day because the know-how or ability to provide the overhead to launch the idea into production has been made an absolute impossibility.

I shudder to think how many homeless out there might have provided the world with something that would have greatly enriched us all.

This is what is happening in Europe today. For example, in my country (Netherlands) of the Somalis who got refugee status in the 1990's (mostly young men) 70% of them have been permanently unemployed and on welfare benefits up to this year. They are also highly overrepresented in criminality.

Of course they are a drain on the system. Who wants to employ them when the majority of the natives wants them gone because they don't trust them? And of course ,any group of people that are not being given truly equal opportunity and are fearful for their survival will engage in crime. Soc 101: Criminal behavior is deviancy. Deviancy, in most cases, is the result of an individual being unable to meet their needs through the standardly provided and acceptable means the community considers non-deviant.

In other words, you're going to steal to eat if you can't get enough wealth lawfully to not starve. This is very basic... there are far more 'needs' humans have and this is where you see all the rest of the kinds of crimes. One of the most powerful perceived needs in the human mind is that of dignity and respect, and having a meaningful place in society. Immigrants would emotionally struggle with this tremendously, and the more of them that act out in criminal ways thanks to this struggle, the more the community wants to reject this sub-culture, the more they struggle with feeling like they have a meaningful place in the society, the more of them act out in criminal ways. It's a downward spiral that leads to civil war and atrocity or the evolution of a tremendous amount of higher cognitive coping skills on both sides of the argument such that they can finally start to allow the differences between them to dissolve in the perception of the community.

It's a tough thing for a nation to heal from because the indigenous people must accept the outsiders that bear the obvious visual genetic markers of BEING outsiders as being equal and just as valid as they are, while at the same time the outsiders must completely accept not only that the people of the nation they are making their new home in are equal to them as well and also believe completely that they are accepted and seen as equals. This then becomes almost impossible when the cultural norms and customs are extremely different, when morality itself is defined in differing and opposing viewpoints, and when the incoming people are already deeply conditioned to feel as if they are of a downtrodden class even in their native society (thus leading them to bring along with them that emotional baggage and preparedness to act out in unhealthy and criminal ways into the new culture.)




Ultimately, however, is it really so difficult for us all to simply accept that no person is truly better or more valid than another? To accept that the accumulation of wealth and natural resources does not REALLY make a person more valuable than anyone else?

Until we can accept that there is no hierarchy of the value of one human life to the next, we will never be rid of the problems that plague our world and that are leading us to an eventual dramatic self-destruction. We will evolve to understand this or we will all perish. Regardless of parish.

 

[tmv]

You have an equally fascinating response!


This makes sense. This, then, is to suggest that people must be banded into groups that are willing to coldly allow outsiders to suffer and perish of starvation to be able to ensure their own survival?

This is less about people who are starving and more about people who want to receive what a richer society can produce. Of course neither all nor most of the "outsiders" are a problem, just some of them. And these people make it impossible.

What if there were, say, only one group?

There appear to be two forms of globalization it would seem. Globalization for the cause of the benefit of all, and Globalization for the cause of the exploitation of the masses by a few. Is the first a truly technical impossibility? Is it that we must truly admit that people somewhere are GOING to starve and we MUST be prepared to eliminate them from our concern or only allow them in so long as they are properly exploitable?

The world would be a much better place if only the rich people did the "exploiting".

Then there are a few cases of very well meaning actions with terrible outcomes: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/jun/24/g8.debtrelief (Warning: very depressing). Another report on this topic: http://www.spin.com/featured/live-aid-the-terrible-truth-ethiopia-bob-geldof-feature/ So now we also have to watch cases where the proverb about the "road to hell" becomes terrible reality.

Allow me to re-propose an alternative viewpoint on this. A generous welfare state requires a high level of wealth redistribution, which is quickly disfavored by those with wealth who would see such redistribution as theft by the state. Thus those with accumulated wealth have used their wealth for ages to propagate the idea that A generous welfare state requires a high level of taxation on the entire community.

But the truth is that enabling the accumulation of excess wealth in the hands of a few is to also enable the wealth of the community to be unevenly distributed and thus to allow those who fail to 'produce' in society, for whatever reason, to suffer tremendously, often unjustly, and become criminally parasitic to the society to survive.

The fact that the wealth is unevenly distributed does not come from any kind of redistribution, but from the fact that abilities are unevenly distributed. This is, of course, only the first "step", but even this is enough to reach the conclusion that uneven distribution, no matter how you look at it, is not the "unnatural state". And until we find a cure for laziness, it remains for some people the only reason to go to work at all.

So long as the society produces enough resource to support the population that exists, any given member of the population should, under a just and fair system, be capable of easily earning the necessary wages. Only where wealth imbalances exist do we find this becomes difficult. There are always going to be people that MUST rely on the system due to disability, but even they usually contribute something of value. The problem is that our concept of 'something of value' pretty much purely includes only 'that which can derive wealth for the individual'. And in a society which is heavily automated, which strongly devalues the time and effort of the laborer yet provides mightily for the community, a shrinking few have access to opportunity to even provide something of value to the community that the community doesn't already have plenty of. Should abundance really be cause for mass poverty??? That is exactly what our current views are allowing to happen today, globally and even within the confines of each 'district' or nation.

Even good wages are just the second step to escape mass poverty. The first step is to have a lot of goods available that you can buy with your money. Abundance has the primary effect of driving the prices down, so the wage you receive can give you a better lifestyle already. Sorry for this truism, but people are not just part of the workforce (well, most of them), they are also consumers. OTOH if you increase the wages without there being more goods on the market, the only thing you really produce is inflation. And it's not the rich who suffer the most, but those who have all their savings in their bank account.

We cannot continue to pretend that we are not one human race, no matter what nation we hail from and what our forebearers earned or achieved in comparison with the ancestors in other regions of the world. The amassment of wealth is the amassment of the right to survive and we gleefully accept that it's ok for the wealthy to strip that from others to accumulate it for themselves so that they can squander those resources for no other reason than we can. Even the majority has been convinced this is the best system we can come up with and that it works fairly.


When a community has all it needs, how exactly do you quantify productivity? Where does the artist play in here when many who operate creatively would never have what they create become recognized as valuable until long after their deaths, or at all? Embracing risk vs reward as a system means we accept that most of the human beings whom would contribute the most rewarding elements to the community, are likely to vanish into obscure failure simply because the contribution could not be understood, communicated properly, or provided more to the well being of all, while challenging the ability of the wealthy to profit (example Tesla.) And many of the best would-be contributions get shuffled under the leaves of poverty entirely, never seeing the light of day because the know-how or ability to provide the overhead to launch the idea into production has been made an absolute impossibility.

You can define productivity by the amount of work someone gets done, or by the price someone can demand on the market. Of course this system is not error-proof, but nobody has so far constructed a system that is. If you just assume that an innovation is good (without it standing the "test of time"), you can still make mistakes (alchemists were funded by various governments and it was mostly a waste), and then there are people who cheat to get funding (http://stemcellbioethics.wikischolars.columbia.edu/The+Cloning+Scandal+of+Hwang+Woo-Suk).

I shudder to think how many homeless out there might have provided the world with something that would have greatly enriched us all.


Of course they are a drain on the system. Who wants to employ them when the majority of the natives wants them gone because they don't trust them? And of course ,any group of people that are not being given truly equal opportunity and are fearful for their survival will engage in crime. Soc 101: Criminal behavior is deviancy. Deviancy, in most cases, is the result of an individual being unable to meet their needs through the standardly provided and acceptable means the community considers non-deviant.

In many cases their productivity is less than the minimum wage (often education-related, if only because of a language barrier), so you cannot employ them without suffering a (sometimes heavy) net loss. This is part of the reason why it's hard for a country to be both a welfare state and an immigration country.

In other words, you're going to steal to eat if you can't get enough wealth lawfully to not starve. This is very basic... there are far more 'needs' humans have and this is where you see all the rest of the kinds of crimes. One of the most powerful perceived needs in the human mind is that of dignity and respect, and having a meaningful place in society. Immigrants would emotionally struggle with this tremendously, and the more of them that act out in criminal ways thanks to this struggle, the more the community wants to reject this sub-culture, the more they struggle with feeling like they have a meaningful place in the society, the more of them act out in criminal ways. It's a downward spiral that leads to civil war and atrocity or the evolution of a tremendous amount of higher cognitive coping skills on both sides of the argument such that they can finally start to allow the differences between them to dissolve in the perception of the community.

It's a tough thing for a nation to heal from because the indigenous people must accept the outsiders that bear the obvious visual genetic markers of BEING outsiders as being equal and just as valid as they are, while at the same time the outsiders must completely accept not only that the people of the nation they are making their new home in are equal to them as well and also believe completely that they are accepted and seen as equals. This then becomes almost impossible when the cultural norms and customs are extremely different, when morality itself is defined in differing and opposing viewpoints, and when the incoming people are already deeply conditioned to feel as if they are of a downtrodden class even in their native society (thus leading them to bring along with them that emotional baggage and preparedness to act out in unhealthy and criminal ways into the new culture.)




Ultimately, however, is it really so difficult for us all to simply accept that no person is truly better or more valid than another? To accept that the accumulation of wealth and natural resources does not REALLY make a person more valuable than anyone else?

Until we can accept that there is no hierarchy of the value of one human life to the next, we will never be rid of the problems that plague our world and that are leading us to an eventual dramatic self-destruction. We will evolve to understand this or we will all perish. Regardless of parish.

Pretty much no libertarian argues that market economy is nice or aims at reducing poverty. They merely argue that market economy is applied mathematics. And make no mistake, no system is completely devoid of the market. If the political system outlaws the market (soviet economy), you have the black market.

If you are interested how market theorists argue these cases, a good start is here: http://www.friesian.com/smith.htm (Warning: It is a bit long. And it is part of a rather large website, containing IMO some interesting ideas, often not well known.)

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

The amassment of wealth is the amassment of the right to survive and we gleefully accept that it's ok for the wealthy to strip that from others to accumulate it for themselves so that they can squander those resources for no other reason than we can. Even the majority has been convinced this is the best system we can come up with and that it works fairly.

There used to be a counter not so much to "the amassement of wealth" but to the actions of those with the wealth if they were seen to not be using said wealth for the betterment of others. Almost all religions and codes of ethics say that you should help those who are not as fortunate as yourself. The rise of "individualism" aided by democracy and in particular the rule of law has lead to some individuals thinking that such rules of ethical behaviour do not apply to them and the group feeling that there is nothing they can do to correct such behaviour.

The people behaving unethically are not breaking any law, so the justice system can't resolve this problem. Minor revolts to kill off the offending "noble" and family are no longer fashionable or desirable. What can be done?

edit The nature of wealth, whatever it is measuring, is that it will always form into clumbs, so some people will become wealthy. According to the mathematics such clumping happens no matter what people do don't do to "deserve" a clump. Luckilly the maths also tells us that it doesn't stay in the same clump for ever. The maths I saw did not have a time interval duration defined in days and hours just a generic time flow.

 

[tmv]

Sometimes even today something gets done: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_&_Melinda_Gates_Foundation (interestingly, "Foundation" is the civic-building for private welfare in C2C)

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Sometimes even today something gets done: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_&_Melinda_Gates_Foundation (interestingly, "Foundation" is the civic-building for private welfare in C2C)

They are examples of "well behaved" rich . From what I hear they tried to use existing organisations but those organisations could not handle the amount of money involved so they had to invent the Foundation. There are so many constraints on many charitable organisations when it comes to donations of money that they just could not handle the amounts involved.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Great discussion. Gets to the heart of the human condition imo. I'd like to read some of those links given before replying though.

Hopefully someone will take some of this history and philosophy to heart in our civic designs, even if some of it already has found its way in.

 

[Thunderbrd]

This is less about people who are starving and more about people who want to receive what a richer society can produce. Of course neither all nor most of the "outsiders" are a problem, just some of them. And these people make it impossible.

Rules of justice and law must always be enforced, but must be enforced fairly. And we must not fall prey to the human tendency to draw lines between our 'groups'. The US vs THEM mentality is half our problem here.

Of course people want fair access and the perversion of an honest sense of justified entitlement is always going to be an issue as such misperception can be so easily adopted as most of us have no clue just how self centered we are. This is gradually counterable by the promotion of the value of the community (all humanity) over the individual. We have a hard time imagining how this could work because most of us in the developed West live in societies that value individual over community. The people of Tibet knew how to make this community over individual value system work for all. It comes down to what individual values we choose to adopt and spread.

The world would be a much better place if only the rich people did the "exploiting".

I find this a baffling statement. Of course there are many who would do the exploiting but if only the rich do it, the rest of us would die off at the whim of a market that only values us as a commodity that is only as necessary as it is needed to achieve the desires of those rich few. The rest would be allowed to wither and die and may even just be made test subjects, as if we aren't already unwitting participants in many such efforts. If we keep allowing them to destabilize the balance of power between the common masses and the wealthy few, we will begin to wake up to realize we've already lost all hope of averting a nightmare we could barely imagine. It's beginning to look like the Nazis may go down in history as rather tame.

Then there are a few cases of very well meaning actions with terrible outcomes: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/jun/24/g8.debtrelief (Warning: very depressing). Another report on this topic: http://www.spin.com/featured/live-aid-the-terrible-truth-ethiopia-bob-geldof-feature/ So now we also have to watch cases where the proverb about the "road to hell" becomes terrible reality.

Once again, in large part the problem was mostly how a wealthy powerful few perverted and stole from the efforts to aid. Improved oversight and enforcement of fair principles cannot be achieved by purely private goodwill efforts. Powerfull government that serves the wellbeing of the people must be in place wherever there is to be a hope of the people thriving. Such governing bodies must be well-structured to prevent abuse of the system by any and all. This is an element we have not achieved on Earth yet on a macro scale but I would argue that this is due to the fact that large governments were almost universally formed, chartered and designed, by wealthy few with special interests to begin with.

The fact that the wealth is unevenly distributed does not come from any kind of redistribution, but from the fact that abilities are unevenly distributed. This is, of course, only the first "step", but even this is enough to reach the conclusion that uneven distribution, no matter how you look at it, is not the "unnatural state". And until we find a cure for laziness, it remains for some people the only reason to go to work at all.

I propose the radical concept that in the approaching and arguably arrived future where technology and automation have made abundance and plenty capable with very little true human effort (I find most jobs are invented just so a job can be had these days) our destiny as human beings should be to reap the rewards of this grand accomplishment as a species of eliminating the requirement to work. Our time is better spent free to explore the meaning of life in whatever peaceful means we see fit. Who knows... perhaps we may really figure out why we're here and what this is all about and in the process find true joy as we are freed to contribute to our society what we feel is our own inner calling.

AKA, there is no 'cure' for laziness because 'slack' is the ultimate goal which reaps its own tremendous rewards. Any time I've been lucky enough to find that 'slack' myself, I always find I drive myself to do something meaningful with it... like this mod. Not all contributions to society can be converted into financial gain and the best contributions are done by people who simply love what they are doing. We will quickly find, once being 'lazy' is made a perfectly acceptable choice, that we want our existence to mean more than lazing around all the time will ever provide us. Pride, love, appreciation, and awakening self-awareness will drive us to contribute when contribution becomes an option rather than a demand. And suddenly, 'we the people' find what real happiness actually means. We won't find that without the freedom to experience slack at will.

Over time, I believe we would find that what we 'feel like' contributing is exactly what the community actually needed the most. Let greed and fear die as our primary motivator and we'd find there is a stronger motivator within.

Even good wages are just the second step to escape mass poverty. The first step is to have a lot of goods available that you can buy with your money. Abundance has the primary effect of driving the prices down, so the wage you receive can give you a better lifestyle already. Sorry for this truism, but people are not just part of the workforce (well, most of them), they are also consumers. OTOH if you increase the wages without there being more goods on the market, the only thing you really produce is inflation. And it's not the rich who suffer the most, but those who have all their savings in their bank account.

Agreed. You cannot just raise a minimum wage to fix things. This is a prop up. You must instead make the value of labor greater. To do so in an environment where there are far more people to provide labor than there is labor required, you MUST enable a society to outgrow the need to require all to labor to survive. It is good to allow those who would choose to labor to reap some above average wealth reward for so doing, but one who would hoard great wealth should be met with a strong law of diminishing returns on efforts (from which we derive wealth to redistribute.)

You can define productivity by the amount of work someone gets done, or by the price someone can demand on the market. Of course this system is not error-proof, but nobody has so far constructed a system that is.

It can only be done organically, which is what capitalism gets right. But we must evolve past the Adam Smith capitalist ideals of every man for himself and find a more communal way to uplift all of us. We too easily forget that if you make life better for another you make life better for yourself. This is a spiritually true macro-principle.

If you just assume that an innovation is good (without it standing the "test of time"), you can still make mistakes (alchemists were funded by various governments and it was mostly a waste), and then there are people who cheat to get funding (http://stemcellbioethics.wikischolars.columbia.edu/The+Cloning+Scandal+of+Hwang+Woo-Suk).

This is always going to be a little tricky. What I'm advocating is that people never be allowed to be so swamped by the system of imbalanced wealth distribution that the opportunity to explore the validity and potential for any innovation is squashed before it's given a chance to be evaluated in a fair measure. I'm advocating that companies should not be so motivated by greed and profit that they purchase the intellectual property rights to ideas and innovations that make them completely obsolete and unnecessary, particularly when the operations of that company are damaging to the environment and the public, and hold onto those innovations in vaults that will never see the light of day. Profit should not be more valuable than the well-being of the people. This should not be too difficult for us to create a society that upholds this greater value than wealth as well, given that it is people who run the show. If people can see that something is good for people then those people should be easily motivated to support that something. But the current economic principles fly in the face of this concept as a company is a risk for reward and thus has a will to live itself, even if it destroys and corrupts.

In many cases their productivity is less than the minimum wage (often education-related, if only because of a language barrier), so you cannot employ them without suffering a (sometimes heavy) net loss. This is part of the reason why it's hard for a country to be both a welfare state and an immigration country.

Very true. Interesting you mention language barrier. I am a strong advocate for advancing a singular language globally as well. I believe our societal boundaries should be primarily defined by our operational languages and if we are to draw lines of competition, let it be based on that.

Pretty much no libertarian argues that market economy is nice or aims at reducing poverty. They merely argue that market economy is applied mathematics. And make no mistake, no system is completely devoid of the market. If the political system outlaws the market (soviet economy), you have the black market.

I suppose I'm not a libertarian because I don't believe that a LESS regulated free market is the answer. I believe in heavy regulation and increasing taxation as income and wealth amasses so that taxation can be used to reallocate for the invigoration of those on the bottom - redistribution in short. I guess that makes me a true Democratic Socialist eh?

Perhaps eventually we can dispense with the need for money altogether once we evolve to understand there are more important things to live for.

If you are interested how market theorists argue these cases, a good start is here: http://www.friesian.com/smith.htm (Warning: It is a bit long. And it is part of a rather large website, containing IMO some interesting ideas, often not well known.)

Thanks for this link! I shall certainly be reading further here as I've become rather interested in the subject.

There used to be a counter not so much to "the amassement of wealth" but to the actions of those with the wealth if they were seen to not be using said wealth for the betterment of others. Almost all religions and codes of ethics say that you should help those who are not as fortunate as yourself. The rise of "individualism" aided by democracy and in particular the rule of law has lead to some individuals thinking that such rules of ethical behaviour do not apply to them and the group feeling that there is nothing they can do to correct such behaviour.

The people behaving unethically are not breaking any law, so the justice system can't resolve this problem. Minor revolts to kill off the offending "noble" and family are no longer fashionable or desirable. What can be done?

My answer to this is redistribution. Don't ease up because the wealthy passed a certain point of wealth where they now have the means to pay professionals to find taxation loopholes for them. The more you have and earn, the greater % you are taxed and the wealthy should understand this is a benefit to them because to reinvigorate the economy from the bottom up is to give them more opportunity to market new products and earn yet more!

edit The nature of wealth, whatever it is measuring, is that it will always form into clumbs, so some people will become wealthy. According to the mathematics such clumping happens no matter what people do don't do to "deserve" a clump. Luckilly the maths also tells us that it doesn't stay in the same clump for ever. The maths I saw did not have a time interval duration defined in days and hours just a generic time flow.

The point goes to show how unjust this clumping actually is. People who argue that the wealthy are only wealthy because they put in 'harder work' are completely ignorant to the fact that usually it is the poorest who work the hardest. I admit it cannot be avoided, which is exactly why it should be allowed, but subject to diminishing return as wealth accumulates, with greater redistribution efforts dipping into the pockets of those who are far more fortunate and can afford to be taxed deeper for the benefit of the community.


It's funny, I used to be very libertarian/republican in my views, feeling like the economy is healthiest when government stays out of it and lets the market go. But since the manipulations I've learned this approach enables corporations to craft and how detrimental that has become to the well being of the system, the planet, and the people IN the system, I no longer support rampant, unchecked capitalism. Instead, I believe that a socialist approach muct be in perfect balance with a capitalist approach for the system to truly be healthy.

 

[tmv]

I think mixed economies have become the norm these days. There is no truly free market economy on the planet, anywhere. And if you consult http://www.heritage.org/index/ the USA is not even in the top 10 any more. The fact that the freest economy on earth is Hong Kong according to that site (and has been in a long time) is rather baffling when you consider that Hong Kong has been part of the PRC for almost 20 years.

I think mixed economies have a special problem unique to them. When a "boom-and-bust-cycle" reaches a new bust, people look for someone to blame. You have no clear responsibility here (because of the mixed state), so people start finding excuses for themselves and blaming others. Unfortunately, there is no arbiter between the government and the private sector, and no balance of power either, which could lead to a fair verdict. Instead, the government uses its power to blame the private sector. This is not a remote possibility, it has already happened.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not typical enterprises from a free market, and there was pressure on them (Housing and Community Development Act) to grant loans backed up by little or no security. Now I'm not saying that they are entirely to blame, but the fact that this aspect is almost never spoken about is worrying. In Germany, one of the contributors to the crisis (KfW) is even more directly government controlled, and again, that fact seems to be completely forgotten.

But blaming the private sector (to avoid responsibility) is only the first step. After that, there will be public pressure to increase the public sector, in order to avoid these mistakes in the future. Now (assuming there is some responsibility for the crisis on the government side, not an unreasonable assumption in a mixed economy) the government has two choices in this situation:

• Owning up to their mistakes and admitting that they shifted blame to avoid trouble
• Accepting the increase of the public sector, leading to new jobs for government officials

It would take really special people in the government to go for the first option, so the second option will be taken more and more often. This can create a slippery slope.

In that case, the mixed economy is unstable. And when you judge an unstable state you must always take the "equilibrium" that will be reached into consideration. With a bit of bad luck, there will be no equilibrium before you go all the way to Karl Marx.

 

[JosEPh_II]

The current set of Civics (after SO's merges with CivPlayer8's last set) still need some touch ups here and there. Some later Civic choices (per category) really don't make getting off an early Civic in that category a good viable solution, for a long long time. Too long actually from what I'm seeing during game play.

And I'm finally getting test games into the Med Era on Marathon!

JosEPh

 

[strategyonly]

OK, i need some ideas of a better Tribal Warfare to get people from staying on Banditry. . . . .

attached are both Civics . .

 

[tmv]

Why does Banditry have additional trade routes? You could either remove them or give trade routes to Tribal Warfare as well. And the crime malus could be increased. Other than that, perhaps the Warrior Hut should be improved.

Also, perhaps Banditry should have a higher upkeep. You are paying for the services of criminals, and you don't have a regular army to protect yourself. At least after a certain point, Danegeld should come into play.

 

[JosEPh_II]

I've put out the idea before that the Civic Banditry should either be removed or come After Tribal Warfare. With the idea that the Bandit Hideout can be introduced as a stand alone building from the appropriate early tech, that gives ientrance into the game to the units it supports, without the aid of being a Civic choice. But it has always met with dissension from some of the other modders.

Banditry is OP because the buildings and units it allows are seemingly glued to it. And they do not have to be that way to be in the game and keep their individual places in the mod.

My 2's.

JosEPh

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I agree Banditry should not have trade routes.

Having it reduce the cost of the buildings rather than have the buildings linked to the civic may work. The only problem is that the ai prefers to build hidden nationality units to other unit types so expect them to only have armies of bandits if you do that.

 

[strategyonly]

I agree Banditry should not have trade routes.

Having it reduce the cost of the buildings rather than have the buildings linked to the civic may work. The only problem is that the ai prefers to build hidden nationality units to other unit types so expect them to only have armies of bandits if you do that.

So to try something (for now), would it be better to deleted trade routes or move Banditry lower than Tribal Warfare??