The Writers' Block

[Australian rePublic]

I got a new issue in the woodworks. Can we say "crap" in issues?

No problem with that given appropriate context.

(Two precedents: "we'll just bomb the crap out of them" in #1285, and "they get fed crap and are left in the dark" in #1314)

Cheers!

[West Barack and East Obama]

Issue idea: people in a vegetarian nation are farming and eating insects. What do people think?

[Australian rePublic]

Issue idea: people in a vegetarian nation are farming and eating insects. What do people think?

Interesting

[Trotterdam]

We already have an issue about eating insects, though it's intended for nations where other forms of meat are already eaten. I guess there's room for an issue that asks just how far "animal rights" extend when it comes to "lower animals" that people don't have much respect for.

On the other tarsus, the idea of eating insects provokes an instinctual "ew ew EW" reaction in most humans that makes it difficult to isolate the animal rights question specifically.

[Bears Armed]

On the other tarsus, the idea of eating insects provokes an instinctual "ew ew EW" reaction in most humans that makes it difficult to isolate the animal rights question specifically.

So, maybe 'shellfish' of some kind would be a better idea?

[Trotterdam]

So, maybe 'shellfish' of some kind would be a better idea?

Huh, yeah, good point. Crustaceans are definitely more popular food than insects, even though they're both arthropods and have the same kind of "lower animals" reputation.

Clams/oysters would work too. They're even sessile, further giving the impression that they barely count as animals.

Go for it, I say!

[Lord Dominator]

Fish is also popular as an exception irl I believe

[West Barack and East Obama]

Fish and shellfish and molluscs are certainly more popular than bugs. Dunno how I thought about insects instead of those

[Trotterdam]

Fish is also popular as an exception irl I believe

Yeah. I wonder if there's some bias that makes people have less empathy for aquatic animals than terrestrial ones. It's not universal, though - cetaceans and cephalopods are widely respected for their intelligence.

Still, the case for allowing fish as an exception is rather weaker than the case for allowing clams as an exception.

There are animals even more "primitive" than the mentioned invertebrates (sponges, corals, jellyfish...), but I'm not aware of anyone eating those...

[Lord Dominator]

Fish is also popular as an exception irl I believe

Yeah. I wonder if there's some bias that makes people have less empathy for aquatic animals than terrestrial ones. It's not universal, though - cetaceans and cephalopods are widely respected for their intelligence.

Still, the case for allowing fish as an exception is rather weaker than the case for allowing clams as an exception.

There are animals even more "primitive" than the mentioned invertebrates (sponges, corals, jellyfish...), but I'm not aware of anyone eating those...

Certainly the case is weaker from an animal rights perspective, I only raise it because it’s fairly common.

In regards to empathy, I believe many theories have to do with similarity - most food animals are mammals or birds which we still generally see as similar, whereas fish are much more obviously different in appearance.

[Bears Armed]

Fish is also popular as an exception irl I believe

Yeah. I wonder if there's some bias that makes people have less empathy for aquatic animals than terrestrial ones. It's not universal, though - cetaceans and cephalopods are widely respected for their intelligence.

Still, the case for allowing fish as an exception is rather weaker than the case for allowing clams as an exception.

There are animals even more "primitive" than the mentioned invertebrates (sponges, corals, jellyfish...), but I'm not aware of anyone eating those...

Jellyfish are sometimes eaten in some coastal parts of southern China.

[Alt Capitalist Britain]

(An opposite to #24, which asks which industry gains more funding (or none if the tax cut if chosen), the issue asks which industry will gain less money in response to a tax cut.)

Title: Cutting to the Chase

Description: To the joy of the citizens, your government has decided to announce a tax cut. The big question is, which department will lose money?

Validity: all nations

Option 1a: Multimillionaire @@RANDOMNAME@@ enters your office with a briefcase filled with @@CURRENCY@@. “Abolish Welfare. It’ll hurt the poor, yes, but those lazy bums are contributing nothing anyway, and removing their support will make them either get a life for once or die trying. Darwinism at its finest.”
Effect: The homeless starve with now unemoloyed welfare workers.
Validity: nation is Capitalist

Option 1b: Your Secretary of Labor proposes, “Comrade, am I glad to meet you. We’ve made a Worker’s Paradise of a nation, it’s about time we relax on some of the regulations, right? How about slashing the welfare budget and using the money for the tax cut and giving those affected jobs. With more workers, what could possibly go wrong?”
Effect: All @@DEMONYMPLURAL@@ are equal, but some are more equal than others.
Validity: nation is Socialist

Option 2: “Yes, and how about executing the poorest of the poor while you’re at it?” sarcastically remarks Farmer @@RANDOMFIRSTNAME@@, who has made a scarecrow out of the blue. “If you go along with that plan, @@NAME@@ will dissolve into an oligarchy filled to the brim with corruption. If you wanna proceed with cuting taxes, then cut away some useless environment regulations that are driving my farm out of business!”
Effect: Pristine forests are being destroyed and turned into farmland.

Option 3: “No way, man. Don’t harm Mother Nature.”, says the surprisingly chill Environmental Minister, placing a wreath with a peace sign on the scarecrow’s chest. “Why don’t we chillax the military and law force a bit? They’re getting a bit too huge for comfort, and cutting some of its funding won’t hurt, won’t it?”
Effect: The nation’s lush fields and small military attract foreign powers.

Option 4: “No, you blithering idiot! You probably know NOTHING about modern politics!”, barks your Minister of Defense, placing a novelty pistol on the scarecrow’s right hand. “We’ll all be dead before you can even say ‘give peace a chance’! If anything, it’s those nerds in the Education Department who need to get less money!” @@HE@@ then grins menacingly and pats your shoulder, “Besides, who would even want to challenge your wisdom if your greatest adversary is an ignoramus?”
Effect: The government has proclaimed that ‘Ignorance is Strength’.

Option 5: “This was a horrible decision in the first place!” yells radical pro-spending advocate @@RANDOMNAME@@, who begins setting up a line of books. “We need more taxes, not less! If we proceed with cutting taxes, the @@DEMONYMPLURAL@@ will beg for less taxes again! Then, we run out of money to do anything and will be defenseless against crime, turning our nation into an anarchy! Then Bigtopia sees the commotion and invades us! Do you want @@NAME@@ to turn into an anarchist Bigtopian puppet?! Repeal that announcement and raise up the taxes! Otherwise you will start a chain of events, like this!” @@HE@@ topples the books like dominoes, and the last book topples the scarecrow, which shatters one of your antique vases upon falling.
Effect: @@NAME@@ has begun thinking of 100% Tax Rate.

[Outer Sparta]

Please make your draft in a separate thread, this is not the place to share drafts, only to conceptualize issue ideas.

[Alt Capitalist Britain]

Please make your draft in a separate thread, this is not the place to share drafts, only to conceptualize issue ideas.

Got it. Thanks for the info.

[RedBrickLand]

Is there an issue about a citizen impersonating the nation's monarch by having the same name or parents naming their child the same as the nation's monarch to impersonate them?

Also, quick question, is the leader the nation's reigning monarch if you have the Monarchy policy?

[Verdant Haven]

Also, quick question, is the leader the nation's reigning monarch if you have the Monarchy policy?

Not inherently, no. They may or may not be (which is one of the challenges of monarchy issues, in particular).

[Bears Armed]

I've thought of another possibility for an issue about would-be meat-eaters in nations with compulsory vegetarianism, if there's room for this as well as for EB&WO's one and if it's not considered too "unsuitable" by the Editors.
Given that the main arguments used against meat-eating are environmental damage and the fact that the animals used are [generally] sentient but can't & don't consent to being butchered... Well, there's an obvious species whose reduction in numbers would be good for the environment, and whose members could give consent, isn't there...

So, I'm thinking about drafting an issue in which @@LEADER@@ is asked to legalize duels to the death between volunteers from @@HIS@@ nation's people, with the winner getting the loser's [suitably prepared & preserved] remains as their prize...

(DISCLAIMER: There's an extraterrestrial species in Terry Pratchett's 'Strata', one of the books that he wrote before starting on the Discworld, whose members -- at least sometimes -- do this.)

[Pogaria]

So, I'm thinking about drafting an issue in which @@LEADER@@ is asked to legalize duels to the death between volunteers from @@HIS@@ nation's people, with the winner getting the loser's [suitably prepared & preserved] remains as their prize...

I like that idea (for an issue, not in real life).

[Trotterdam]

I've thought of another possibility for an issue about would-be meat-eaters in nations with compulsory vegetarianism, if there's room for this as well as for EB&WO's one and if it's not considered too "unsuitable" by the Editors.
Given that the main arguments used against meat-eating are environmental damage and the fact that the animals used are [generally] sentient but can't & don't consent to being butchered... Well, there's an obvious species whose reduction in numbers would be good for the environment, and whose members could give consent, isn't there...

So, I'm thinking about drafting an issue in which @@LEADER@@ is asked to legalize duels to the death between volunteers from @@HIS@@ nation's people, with the winner getting the loser's [suitably prepared & preserved] remains as their prize...

(DISCLAIMER: There's an extraterrestrial species in Terry Pratchett's 'Strata', one of the books that he wrote before starting on the Discworld, whose members -- at least sometimes -- do this.)

Supposedly, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy also had a similar idea. At some point, a far-future society decided that what's really unethical about meat-eating is how it's exploiting animals that can't give consent, so they genetically engineered a livestock species to both be intelligent enough to understand what's going on, and to actually want to be eaten. It's traditional for restaurants to actually bring out the about-to-be-butchered animal to meet the customers so it can assure them "yup, please eat me!", which ends up freaking out the not-used-to-this-kind-of-thing 20th-century-human protagonist and makes him want to cancel his order, causing the animal to get offended that he won't eat it after it was so nice to him.

That kind of genetic engineering is probably outside of NationStates's techlevel, but I can certainly see certain things happening with suitably-crazy humans. Supply of volunteers is likely to be limited, but there'll always be someone.

It would require some adjustment to the NationStates backend, though, a currently the Vegetarianism policy is coded to override the Cannibalism policy, so it's impossible for a nation to (visibly) have both despite the logical arguments for such a position. If this were fixed, then honestly some of the existing pro-cannibalism issues could plausibly suffice to model this viewpoint without needing an issue that's explicitly tailored to cannibalism in vegetarian nations, though that doesn't necessarily preclude having one.

Specifically selecting your entrees using duels is far from the only way to to handle the idea of consensual cannibalism, but it is at least one we don't already have.

[RedBrickLand]

Also, quick question, is the leader the nation's reigning monarch if you have the Monarchy policy?

Not inherently, no. They may or may not be (which is one of the challenges of monarchy issues, in particular).

Given that If I tried to make an issue based off that idea it would be very difficult, I think it would be best if a person tried to impersonate a feudal lord rather than a reigning monarch.

What do you think of that issue idea?

[The Liberal International]

Thinking specifically because it's an idea I've had and have mostly fleshed out in my head: is there an issue about alternative communication? (I'm thinking like PECS or equivalent for those of you who have any clue what I'm referring to.)

[Verdant Haven]

Thinking specifically because it's an idea I've had and have mostly fleshed out in my head: is there an issue about alternative communication? (I'm thinking like PECS or equivalent for those of you who have any clue what I'm referring to.)

While there are some issues on various aspects of accessibility, I'm not aware of any that revolve particularly around PECS or equivalent communication systems. Issues related to broad-based adoption of sign language interpreters for governmental purposes are likely the closest comparison points.

[The Liberal International]

Thinking specifically because it's an idea I've had and have mostly fleshed out in my head: is there an issue about alternative communication? (I'm thinking like PECS or equivalent for those of you who have any clue what I'm referring to.)

While there are some issues on various aspects of accessibility, I'm not aware of any that revolve particularly around PECS or equivalent communication systems. Issues related to broad-based adoption of sign language interpreters for governmental purposes are likely the closest comparison points.

So something surrounding the adoption of alternative communication methods for mute/otherwise disabled people would be something “not covered”?

[Meretica]

I've had an idea for nations that have at least 15% of their people die from being "lost in the wilderness." The only way that I've found to solve this issue is to give in to businesses and boost the Timber Industry, though the actual disappearances aren't addressed. There are, I think, a few ways that this could be addressed in an issue that I've decided to call Where The Wild Things Aren't.

Due to concerns about the rising number of people that are lost in the woods and never seen again, the typical jumble of advisors, capitalists, liberals, etc that we see in every other issue barge into your room as they often do.

-An environmentalist that became an orphan after his parents took a walk and never return advocates for volunteer programs that send people into the woods to search for missing people; this, of course, results in more people going missing, thereby increasing the percentage of people that are "lost in the wilderness" to begin with.

-A businessman proposes reducing regulations on the timber industry and throwing in some subsidies to clear out areas and, hopefully, locate missing people. A few people are found alive, thereby lowering the percentage of people that are "lost in the wilderness" by a noticeable amount; these people can then be moved into the other death-related categories.

-A man that was deemed missing for several years appears in your office wearing clothes made from various plants and shrubs. He wears paint on his face and looks like some kind of "savage island native;" that is, how natives were described during various exploration expeditions in the real world. The man claims that many that end up lost do not die and have instead ended up in a jungle village made from natural resources. He offers to lead s group to the village but ultimately gets lost on the way there, returning with no changes having been made to the number of people "lost in the wilderness."

[Trotterdam]

Take note of #590, which is in fact about this exact premise (too many people getting lost in the wilderness). However, due to limitations of the current game system, even options that seem like they would reduce those deaths don't necessarily actually do so. Reducing the environment is the only way that works. (It doesn't have to be timber industry specifically - other industries can also worsen the environment, as can nonprofit mismanagement - but that is an effective way.)