Option that favors the rich = decrease in rich income?

[The Chiss Descendancy]

For the past few weeks, I've been getting very odd, almost nonsensical issue effects that seem totally out of the norm. Specifically, whenever I'm confronted with an issue and choose the option that generally favors the rich (abolishing minimum wage, making life harder for the working class in general) my rich income decreases quite alarmingly, even up to 10% at a time. Rich income remains one of my best stats, but huge cuts like that have severely affected it recently.

Is there some variable in the game I'm not aware of? I know that different issues can have different affects for individual nations, but I have no idea why this has been happening. Any help would be appreciated.

[Trotterdam]

Did it do this by increasing income equality (transferring wealth from the rich to the poor), or just by making everyone lose money, rich and poor alike?

[The Chiss Descendancy]

Did it this by increasing income equality (transferring wealth from the rich to the poor), or just by making everyone lose money, rich and poor alike?

The former. Rich income went down and poor went up.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Give us some specific examples (date and issue number) and can look into it.

[The Chiss Descendancy]

Give us some specific examples (date and issue number) and can look into it.

Three days ago, choosing option 2 (the option that favored the rich and powerful) of issue #330 "Supermarkets Gobbling Up All the Customers" significantly reduced rich income.

Yesterday, choosing option 3 (once again, the rich option) of issue #454 "Don't Stead On Me" also reduced rich income.

I don't have a specific date, but abolishing the minimum wage a few weeks ago (#224) cut rich income by around 10%.

[Trotterdam]

Three days ago, choosing option 2 (the option that favored the rich and powerful) of issue #330 "Supermarkets Gobbling Up All the Customers" significantly reduced rich income.

This is due to the game's inconsistent definition of "economic freedom". Usually economic freedom means supporting the free market, but in this issue "freedom" is taken to mean "suppressing the free market when it would hurt the poor"... even though the game is coded to make economic freedom consistently correlated with income inequality, because hurting the poor is in fact what a free market does. It's been reported multiple times (see exhibits 1a 1b 2), but the editors aren't interested in fixing it because "who needs logic or common sense or even internal consistency?".

Yesterday, choosing option 3 (once again, the rich option) of issue #454 "Don't Stead On Me" also reduced rich income.

I'm less familiar with that option, but I would assume something similar applies.

I don't have a specific date, but abolishing the minimum wage a few weeks ago (#224) cut rich income by around 10%.

That issue doesn't actually have an option for abolishing minimum wage, as such. Its options are 1. create minimum wage, 2. create something that functions differently from minimum wage but has a similar effect, or 3. institute slavery. That's because the issue is for nations that already don't have minimum wage laws - if you want to keep it that way, dismissal is the correct answer.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Actually, as a team we're very interested in fixing things, Trotterdam. We spend a lot of time listening to people's concerns, and acting on them. So let's try and be constructive, eh, and leave off on the presumption of our motivations.

You're broadly right, however, that income equality is more or less dependent on restricting economic freedom. This is the nature of the underlying simulation, and not a conscious choice by editors. Without going into much detail, it looks to me as if the game determines average income, and then uses the inequality ratio to tell us where rich and poor income go from there.

If anything, I'd say this game massively under-plays income equality, with the vast majority of nations having income inequality levels far lower than most RL nations. You have to try really hard in game to get more income inequality than the real life USA.

There's baseline coding questions that I've mentioned before I was an editor over in technical, and of course, the technical team always have these things under continuous review.

[New Owca]

Three days ago, choosing option 2 (the option that favored the rich and powerful) of issue #330 "Supermarkets Gobbling Up All the Customers" significantly reduced rich income.

This is due to the game's inconsistent definition of "economic freedom". Usually economic freedom means supporting the free market, but in this issue "freedom" is taken to mean "suppressing the free market when it would hurt the poor"... even though the game is coded to make economic freedom consistently correlated with income inequality, because hurting the poor is in fact what a free market does. It's been reported multiple times (see exhibits 1a 1b 2), but the editors aren't interested in fixing it because "who needs logic or common sense or even internal consistency?".

Yesterday, choosing option 3 (once again, the rich option) of issue #454 "Don't Stead On Me" also reduced rich income.

I'm less familiar with that option, but I would assume something similar applies.

I don't have a specific date, but abolishing the minimum wage a few weeks ago (#224) cut rich income by around 10%.

That issue doesn't actually have an option for abolishing minimum wage, as such. Its options are 1. create minimum wage, 2. create something that functions differently from minimum wage but has a similar effect, or 3. institute slavery. That's because the issue is for nations that already don't have minimum wage laws - if you want to keep it that way, dismissal is the correct answer.

Suppressing the free market doesn't help the poor necessarily, nor does boosting the free market hurt them. Economic freedom is just how many restrictions are on a country's businesses - higher freedom, less restrictions

[Trotterdam]

Actually, as a team we're very interested in fixing things, Trotterdam. We spend a lot of time listening to people's concerns, and acting on them. So let's try and be constructive, eh, and leave off on the presumption of our motivations.

An assertion not borne out by facts.

Sometimes the editors use "freedom" to mean "the government staying out of things and letting people sort things out themselves" (like the popular example of legalizing terrorism raising political freedom, or a nation with high freedoms across the board being known as an Anarchy, or a low-other-freedoms but high-economic-freedom Corporate Police State "oppressing anyone who isn't on the board of a Fortune 500 company" such as, say, mom-and-pop stores). Sometimes the editors use "freedom" to mean "government intervention to prevent bad stuff from happening to whichever group of people whose interests we're biased to today" (like in the issue we're discussing here). This is inconsistent and leads to the stats not meaning much of anything, and to the simulation not working properly. This is not the simulation's fault. Garbage in, garbage out.

This has been pointed out multiple times, but such attempts are dismissed with spurious arguments about how "from a certain point of view", freedom is slavery. However, in my experience, additional repetition can sometimes get through to them. This has happened with #216, where the first several times the editors ignored complaints by players that the government taking citizen's stuff without their permission should not count as "freedom", but eventually one complaint managed to stick and the issue has now been fixed.

Without going into much detail, it looks to me as if the game determines average income, and then uses the inequality ratio to tell us where rich and poor income go from there.

Yeah, duh. I figured out as much.

It's most visible from the large number of issues that seem to massively change Average Income of Poor and Average Income of Rich which having negligible or no effect on Average Income.

If anything, I'd say this game massively under-plays income equality, with the vast majority of nations having income inequality levels far lower than most RL nations. You have to try really hard in game to get more income inequality than the real life USA.

Way to change the subject. If the magnitude of income inequality is misrepresented, that is a different thing from moving in the wrong direction.

An issue option that's supposed to help the rich changing income inequality from "huge" to "merely largish" would be just as incorrect as changing it from "small" to "tiny".

Suppressing the free market doesn't help the poor necessarily, nor does boosting the free market hurt them.

It does in this game. Regadless of whether it should in other issues, in the one we're talking about now, the conflict is megacorps vs mom-and-pop stores, and it is explicitly states in the issue text that a free market would favor the former while the latter want government protection in the form of laws restricting their competitors. The monopolies in this issue are not asking to ban mom-and-pop stores, only to not give them special priviledge.

Read the following parts of the issue text.
Option 1: "we need more regulations"
Option 2: "we need less government meddling"
Option 3: "the government needs to step in and take control"
Then check the options for whether they raise or lower economic freedom. Do the effects match the text? No.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Trotterdam, take a step back, engage empathy-mode, and think how it might make me (or another editor) feel when we see comments like the last post you've written.

I hope you'll believe me that I put a lot of unpaid man hours into trying to make this game a more positive experience for everyone involved, and that I am a strong believer in 360-feedback, fixing problems and accepting criticism.

However, comments like "An assertion not borne out by facts" and "Garbage in, garbage out" essentially convince me that you have no appreciation for the hard work the editing team is doing, and that you perceive some vast conspiracy by us to ignore your feedback and ruin the game.

I have to tell you that the team are constantly on the verge of asking you to be an editor: you've got a fantastic eye for detail, you're enthusiastic and engaged.

However, every time you near that threshold, you come up with some aggressive stuff like this, and put us all on the defensive.

Can you please, please, try to stop attacking us for trying to do our jobs? It does not motivate any of us to do anything you want us to, it just makes us want to ignore you. I mean, you're no G-Max, but you just need to cut back a little on the acid and bile.

Broadly, you have some misconceptions about how the game engine works. I could explain those misconceptions, but I'm not allowed to. What I can say, is that it is NOT editorial fiat that directs which way a country's economic freedom goes in response to a complex issue like the one you're referencing. The simulation is both simpler and more complex than you might believe.

Maybe, one day, if you can play nice and talk nice, someone will let you see it.

[Trotterdam]

I have to tell you that the team are constantly on the verge of asking you to be an editor: you've got a fantastic eye for detail, you're enthusiastic and engaged.

They already asked, actually. Even before you joined. I turned the offer down because I wanted to retain the moral high ground.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

I have to tell you that the team are constantly on the verge of asking you to be an editor: you've got a fantastic eye for detail, you're enthusiastic and engaged.

They already asked, actually. Even before you joined. I turned the offer down because I wanted to retain the moral high ground.

Yeah, I know that that. I mean since then, its been discussed a few times, but we're always on the fence.

"Moral high ground", heh, that says it all.

You mean you want to be in position to make criticism, but not receive it? You want to be able to say that the decisions are wrong, but you don't want to take part in the decision making process?

Well done, you are achieving that goal!

[Trotterdam]

"Moral high ground", heh, that says it all.

You mean you want to be in position to make criticism, but not receive it? You want to be able to say that the decisions are wrong, but you don't want to take part in the decision making process?

Actually, the main sticking point was that I wanted to be able to help other players by explaining what I've figured out about how things work, offering advice on how to answer issues, etc., and I am unwilling to accept any position that would require me to stop doing that. So yes, "moral high ground" - because joining the team means promising to be unhelpful to players.

I play this game to have fun, and signing away the right to do something I was previously allowed to do does not sound like fun to me. I would rather be a genius among players than a rookie among editors. Or at least the one-eyed man in the land of the blind.

You mean you want to be in position to make criticism, but not receive it?

I didn't see you contributing when I tried to post issue drafts.

You mean you want to be in position to make criticism, but not receive it?

No, I don't want to receive criticism for things that I could fix but am not allowed to by the rest of the team. I don't want to receive criticism for things that I can't defend myself against in open debate because the reason I can't fix it is a state secret.

You want to be able to say that the decisions are wrong, but you don't want to take part in the decision making process?

When I raised the problem with this issue last time (again: exhibits 1a 1b), you didn't say "you're right that it's broken, but we can't fix it right now for reasons we're contractually forbidden from disclosing" (which, as infuriating as it would have been, would at least be honest - and as I am, indeed, not privy to the game's inner details, I would be unable to meaningfully respond and would be forced to drop the issue, aside from hoping that you've jotted it down on the list of things to fix if it ever becomes possible). You outright told me that I'm wrong and the issue is working correctly, based on patently absurd logic. This does not convince me that I need to be "more involved in the decision process" to convey accurate criticism, or that you would listen to me if I were.

I could probably give far more detailed criticism about many issues if I saw how they work behind the scenes, but as I have consciously chosen that I do not agree to the terms that would allow that, that will not happen. As such, I do not attempt to give that criticism, but only the lesser criticism about things that I can actually tell are wrong from my perspective as a player.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Cheers for the explanation, though I'm aware of the previous discussions you had when you were invited to join the team. These things are fully visible in our archives.
I find it a shame that you equate being part of the team as a promise to be unhelpful to players. I think I'm both part of the editing team AND helpful to players. Yes, there are limits as to what I can say, and as a supporter of full transparency IRL, I'm not keen on the hiding of the game mechanics. But just as I exercise confidentiality in my medical practice (while being opposed to the idea), I'm capable of maintaining the required level of non-disclosure while being in principle against the idea.

With access to core information, I can offer limited explanations, and point out when we hit that brick wall of non-disclosure. Without access to core information, you may well be the one-eyed genius, but there's still a load of stuff you can't see, which often makes your assertions wildly off-base. I can point out to you when your assertions are off base, but it seems you don't believe me when I do so.

I tried to explain to you about that issue, and I thought the replies you referenced were pretty complete.

I'll try to elaborate:

Economic Freedom is a stat that emerges from multiple inputs. Most of the time, the results are exactly what everyone expects, because the narrative of an option tends to thrust heavily in one direction.

That option, in that issue, is unusual. It does indeed restrict the freedoms of large corporations to operate without government interference. However, the government's intervention also protects the small trader, and supports their freedom to trade.

I'll observe as I did then, that absolute economic freedom =/= zero government. Examples:
A monopoly is a restriction on the economic freedoms of those who want to enter into a sector.
A nation where anyone can take what they want from anyone else is a restriction of the freedom to own property.

Setting aside the socialist definition of economic freedom as "freedom from want" (which clearly is NOT the definition used by this game), we can look at the capitalist definition, which draws from Adam Smith:

"basic institutions that protect the liberty of individuals to pursue their own economic interests result in greater prosperity for the larger society"

This is the basis that the Index of Economic Freedoms use. There's also the far more Libertarian Fraser Institute measurements, and here a degree of editorial judgment / prerogative comes into play: I don't believe that absolute freedom from government is in line with Adam Smith's definition.

In game, of course, we're not directly saying "this issue causes a rise in economic freedom". Rather, we're saying that "this issue's narrative should have these effects", and then leaving the game engine to work out the rest. We test every issue across a bunch of test nations, of course, to see what happens with the inputs we give.

Some issues in the mechanics do exist, which have been flagged and discussed: the way the game handles Lifespan, Tourism and a few other things aren't really that workable. However, economic freedom is one of those things that I think is handled well. Defining Economic Freedom is always going to be up for some debate, just as Civil Rights can be debated in definition. However, broadly, we're looking at the liberty to pursue economic interests. Whose liberty? Well, happily, the simulation is granular enough to make those distinctions.

So I'll say it once and again. Your exhibits 1a and 1b are the system working correctly. The logic is not absurd, its just that you disagree with the interpretation.