[MEGATHREAD] Unusual Issue Effects Since New Update

[[violet]]

Yep. Corruption definitely increases. Lyssenlik just answered the issue, Corruption went up by 7.1%. And I'm sure I chose the right option: "2 minutes ago: Following new legislation in Lyssenlik, political parties are banned from advertising and receiving private donations. "

This option can certainly increase corruption. It doesn't do so directly--its immediate effect is the opposite, to decrease corruption--but as a secondary effect, political corruption will rise the farther away political freedom is from a certain ideal point. That is, if there's a very large amount of political regulation, there will also be political corruption, since there are so many people and systems involved. But if there is no regulation at all, there will also be political corruption since there are no regulations to stop, for example, vote-buying.

Arguably this issue option should shift its particular political freedom modifier toward the ideal point rather than toward the extreme, but that's up to Issue Editors.

[Ratateague]

Yep. Corruption definitely increases. Lyssenlik just answered the issue, Corruption went up by 7.1%. And I'm sure I chose the right option: "2 minutes ago: Following new legislation in Lyssenlik, political parties are banned from advertising and receiving private donations. "

This option can certainly increase corruption. It doesn't do so directly--its immediate effect is the opposite, to decrease corruption--but as a secondary effect, political corruption will rise the farther away political freedom is from a certain ideal point. That is, if there's a very large amount of political regulation, there will also be political corruption, since there are so many people and systems involved. But if there is no regulation at all, there will also be political corruption since there are no regulations to stop, for example, vote-buying.

Arguably this issue option should shift its particular political freedom modifier toward the ideal point rather than toward the extreme, but that's up to Issue Editors.

I'm trying to understand it, but I don't. That just doesn't make any sense to me. Especially concerning a new nation that's hardly answered any issues nor made many laws at all. The textbook definition of corruption involves circumventing the public's will and breaking a promise/contract with them to pursue a side deal. To reduce corruption, which is freedom at its highest to ignore existing social contracts and to pursue self-interest, laws are required to prevent it. Laws, at the very least, implicity reduce individual freedoms in the sense that it restricts what someone can do (in the form of Negative Liberty), even if it means preventing someone from infringing on someone else's freedoms and rights. Not doing so could allow Negative Liberty to take away from Positive Liberty, thereby reducing political freedoms in another sense. If the logic here is that reducing political freedoms increases corruption, then by default it increases corruption period.

[Djornaruz]

There are two issues regarding marriage that are inconsistent with one another. I can't find their numbers. One, "Brotherly Love - A Bit Too Close to Home?" results in a major decrease in civil rights if option 2 is selected, with the result "divorce lawyers are found begging on the streets." Why on earth? The government butting out of marriage should increase CR, not decrease it and certainly not by a lot.

The other one, which I think (but can't confirm because the Activity page doesn't go back beyond 6 days) is "Quickie Marriages Under Scrutiny", results in the sensible outcome of a CR increase by choosing the same option of the gov't butting out ("there are reports of people marrying house plants").

Inconsistent, and IMO the former is outright incorrect.

[Mettia]

Still not seeing it. Your nation is already so unbelievably incorruptible that changes are going to be hard to come by for you in that stat period.

Neither of your Corruption or Compliance graphs show a change at all. If there was a change, it would have had to be extremely minute and due to how on the fringe you are corruption-wise.

Yep. Corruption definitely increases. Lyssenlik just answered the issue, Corruption went up by 7.1%. And I'm sure I chose the right option: "2 minutes ago: Following new legislation in Lyssenlik, political parties are banned from advertising and receiving private donations. "

If you ban receiving private donations, all private donations will be illegal. The amount doesn't change, but you made them illegal, hence the corruption rises.

[Luna Amore]

Looking those two over, they aren't really inconsistent.

#236: Quickie Marriages Under Scrutiny Opt 2 opens up divorce/annulments. You have more freedom over marriage
#274: Brotherly Love - A Bit Too Close To Home? Opt 4 completely bans marriage. You are limiting someone's freedom to do as they please.

Merged to the general thread about odd effects.

[[violet]]

If the logic here is that reducing political freedoms increases corruption, then by default it increases corruption period.

The logic isn't that freedom increases corruption; it's that absolute freedom leads to corruption, but so does totalitarianism, and there is an optimal low point for corruption somewhere between these two extremes ("some regulation but not too much").

Therefore a reduction to political freedom can increase or decrease corruption, depending on whether you are moving toward the optimal low point or away from it.

[Daoine pacaiste]

So for a long time I was a fully socilist state which was fun, but eventually I got a issue that allowed me to legalize some private industry(turned out to be about 35%) mostly because a lot of the issues are based around private industry and I was getting them in a socilist state and it was breaking my immersion.

So anyway this turned out pretty good and gave my economy a big boost which was good.

Getting to the point, the weird thing that happens was that my employment dropped out of nowhere when I did this by over half. So my economy grew greatly but employment drops? And income equality actually stayed about the same.

Fully socialist states don't work like capitalist ones in a few key ways. One of these is workforce participation, and transitioning from socialist to capitalist like you describe will almost always lead to an immediate rise in unemployment.

This is because a socialist state is exempt from many of the usual pressures on job creation, such as each job needing to be profitable for the employer and worthwhile to the employee. For example, in a capitalist state, high regulation, high taxes, and strong welfare all usually create unemployment, since they make it both harder to employ people and less worthwhile to be employed. (Why work if I'm going to lose all the extra income in taxes, or if the extra income isn't much more than welfare?) In socialist states, however, those things are far less relevant, and workforce participation tends to be naturally high since mass employment is a socialist priority.

oh okay. thank you, I am not very good at economics I guess. I will see if I can find a good way to fix my employment.

[Date Clan]

Reposted from the fix old issues thread, as this'd probably be the better place:

In issue #240 (Plea Bargaining - Tipping the Scales of Justice?), option 3 apparently makes crime go up and law enforcement go down. I can understand the raise in authoritarianism and corruption, but if they're arresting more people, wouldn't that increase law enforcement, and at least minorly lower crime?

[Ratateague]

If the logic here is that reducing political freedoms increases corruption, then by default it increases corruption period.

The logic isn't that freedom increases corruption; it's that absolute freedom leads to corruption, but so does totalitarianism, and there is an optimal low point for corruption somewhere between these two extremes ("some regulation but not too much").

Therefore a reduction to political freedom can increase or decrease corruption, depending on whether you are moving toward the optimal low point or away from it.

My point was that it has less to do with freedoms, and more to do with laws, the enforcement of them, economic conditions / how well said enforcers are paid / how much resources are dedicated to certain departments, etc. I can see that I'm not going to change anyone's mind though.

So, in other words, all I have to do is wait for an issue to arbitrarily drop my political freedoms temporarily to activate the issue? Sounds easy enough.

[Pterodoria]

With my nation Iguanarctica I selected option option 2 of issue 241 (the national capital one) a couple of days ago and a few weird things happened. I can't remember them all but I seem to remember a significant drop in my eco-friendliness (17% or something). I'm wondering what the reason for such a large change is.

[Luna Amore]

With my nation Iguanarctica I selected option option 2 of issue 241 (the national capital one) a couple of days ago and a few weird things happened. I can't remember them all but I seem to remember a significant drop in my eco-friendliness (17% or something). I'm wondering what the reason for such a large change is.

It could cause an extremely small drop in that. It's a broadly anti-govt option.

Looking at your eco-friendliness graph, you went from -60.08 to -60.25 which is a change of .17 not 17%.

[Pterodoria]

With my nation Iguanarctica I selected option option 2 of issue 241 (the national capital one) a couple of days ago and a few weird things happened. I can't remember them all but I seem to remember a significant drop in my eco-friendliness (17% or something). I'm wondering what the reason for such a large change is.

It could cause an extremely small drop in that. It's a broadly anti-govt option.

Looking at your eco-friendliness graph, you went from -60.08 to -60.25 which is a change of .17 not 17%.

I think you looked at the wrong nation, Iguanarctica's score went from 906 to 809 (http://www.nationstates.net/nation=igua ... censusid=7). It's also worth noting that the next issue I answered (which is still in the same day) was to build more wind farms, which will probably have increased my eco-friendliness and cancelled out the effect of the previous issue. Your anti-government explanation makes sense though, I'll see if I can recreate this in another puppet.

[Dingbats]

I've encountered some strange effects as well. E.g. 492.1, endowing a private art collection to a museum, resulted in drops in book publishing and cheese exports, among other industries. I'm guessing that some effects might be linked? Business subsidization dropped with the same amount. Also public education, eco-friendliness and welfare. Which... uh, why? Also, book publishing and cheese exports should be going up if anything: a new exhibition featuring the acquired art, accompanied by a catalog. A fancy black tie opening for said exhibition where they probably serve some good cheese.

Looking at the results of an another issue, I'm not so sure about the linking anymore. 220.1, which allows online voting, increased business subsidization, but also affected drops in book publishing, cheese exports, beverage sales, retail and automobile manufacturing. "Well I just voted online and now to hell with this horrible cola. I'm a milk guy now."

060.6, allowing the public to vote on supreme court judges, resulted in drops in intelligence, tourism, public education, welfare, business subsidization and more. Yet somehow increased cheese exports, book publishing etc. "I just voted Judge Judy in office (perhaps via the internet) better go and eat some cheese."

[Mushet]

Leaving the internet providers to run themselves in Broadband going to the birds raises taxes +0.22% and lowers freedom from taxation -0.15%

This is a tiny change: I see your tax rate is 9.55%, so we're talking about a rise from 9.53%. This is so small it's not really worth figuring out whether it should have been positive or negative.

But what you're seeing is the result of several competing effects, and some ever-so-slightly overpowering the others. The prime effect of this issue choice is indeed to cut government spending on IT providers, which can only lower taxes. However, another effect is to crimp the size of the IT industry. That's one of your nation's largest industries, and a major source of tax revenue. So there is a counterbalancing effect there where the shrinking private industry means the same tax burden has to be spread over a smaller private sector, which can cause a rise in the tax rate.

Also, in some cases, cutting government support for business can have quite drastic economic consequences, if industry is largely dependent on that support rather than being honed by a competitive market. That doesn't seem to be the case in this nation, though.

[violet] responded to me, I'm starstruck

This was with one of my long line of puppets Mercado

[Mushet]

I don't want to be nitpicky but I also don't understand how option 2 in issue #117 raises business subsidization, when you're allowing lawsuits against the medical industry, I'm sure it benefits law firms but I don't know about subsidizing them, going the other way and outlawing them sounds more like corporate welfare to me. And I also got a bump in it from allowing public displays of affection for the S&M community in issue #50, I understand how the supporting their hobbies option will increase this but simply allowing it is subsidies? Though the last one I believe was more minute. It seems like a broad definition of business subsidization.

[[violet]]

I will see if I can find a good way to fix my employment.

It's probably worth mentioning that most of the ways to boost workforce participation in a capitalist nation are unpleasant for citizens, since people will only seek more work if there's some kind of pressure on them to do so. You can reach high levels of workforce participation if you abolish all welfare, for example, as it then becomes a matter of survival. But you might not want to run that kind of nation.

[[violet]]

In issue #240 (Plea Bargaining - Tipping the Scales of Justice?), option 3 apparently makes crime go up and law enforcement go down. I can understand the raise in authoritarianism and corruption, but if they're arresting more people, wouldn't that increase law enforcement, and at least minorly lower crime?

Please bear in mind that the effects of many (most?) issues depend on the nation in question. This option lowers crime in my nation!

But it does involve a direct cut in Law & Order spending, which usually translates into higher crime. (The reason it didn't in my nation is I had no L&O spending to start with.) I can see an argument that it should also deliver a direct decrease in crime and bump in corruption, but that's up to Issue Editors.

[[violet]]

With my nation Iguanarctica I selected option option 2 of issue 241 (the national capital one) a couple of days ago and a few weird things happened. I can't remember them all but I seem to remember a significant drop in my eco-friendliness (17% or something). I'm wondering what the reason for such a large change is.

Ha, I have protested this one with Issue Editors before. Choosing not to have a capital city triggers an across-the-board spending cut in government. (Although it's not as big as it used to be.) That means it will shave off spending in Education, the Environment, Law & Order... anything you currently spend public money on. Therefore you can see drops in all the related rankings, such as Eco-Friendliness.

[[violet]]

492.1, endowing a private art collection to a museum, resulted in drops in book publishing and cheese exports, among other industries. I'm guessing that some effects might be linked?

I would guess that the drops were very small, in the order of 1%. What you're seeing there is the "quirk" discussed earlier, where a large rise in any one industry or government leeches a small amount of labor/talent/capital/etc from the others.

This occurs mainly so that nations aren't penalized for specializing. It's a long, boring, technical explanation, but the simple version is that this is what happens so that nations won't be forced to maintain a broad base of industries to achieve high economic output.

So while it can be alarming to see an industry fall, bear in mind that if it's a tiny change, it's nothing to be concerned over.

Book Publishing will often benefit from the culture bump in this issue option, but it depends on the nation. There is a limit to how much culture can help, and if your Book Publishing industry is bottlenecked on something else, like economic regulation, then it won't benefit.

[Leppikania]

So, for You've Got a Friend in Bee, (answered by Tornavia) why does option one decrease eco-friendliness?

[[violet]]

So, for You've Got a Friend in Bee, (answered by Tornavia) why does option one decrease eco-friendliness?

Ordinarily it will increase eco-friendliness! In this unusual case, however, Tornavia knocked out one of the last remaining areas of government support to business, which, coupled with other factors such as high regulation, caused a sharp economic drop (economic output down 13%), which shrank the overall government budget, which meant there was less money to be spent on the Environment.

The Eco-Friendliness ranking measures absolute government spending, not how good the environment is, or its priority. In this case Eco-Friendliness fell even as Environment Beauty rose.

[Pterodoria]

With my nation Iguanarctica I selected option option 2 of issue 241 (the national capital one) a couple of days ago and a few weird things happened. I can't remember them all but I seem to remember a significant drop in my eco-friendliness (17% or something). I'm wondering what the reason for such a large change is.

Ha, I have protested this one with Issue Editors before. Choosing not to have a capital city triggers an across-the-board spending cut in government. (Although it's not as big as it used to be.) That means it will shave off spending in Education, the Environment, Law & Order... anything you currently spend public money on. Therefore you can see drops in all the related rankings, such as Eco-Friendliness.

Thanks!

[Dingbats]

492.1, endowing a private art collection to a museum, resulted in drops in book publishing and cheese exports, among other industries. I'm guessing that some effects might be linked?

I would guess that the drops were very small, in the order of 1%. What you're seeing there is the "quirk" discussed earlier, where a large rise in any one industry or government leeches a small amount of labor/talent/capital/etc from the others.

This occurs mainly so that nations aren't penalized for specializing. It's a long, boring, technical explanation, but the simple version is that this is what happens so that nations won't be forced to maintain a broad base of industries to achieve high economic output.

So while it can be alarming to see an industry fall, bear in mind that if it's a tiny change, it's nothing to be concerned over.

Book Publishing will often benefit from the culture bump in this issue option, but it depends on the nation. There is a limit to how much culture can help, and if your Book Publishing industry is bottlenecked on something else, like economic regulation, then it won't benefit.

In the case of 220.1 it's probably "the quirk": rises in information technology, public education and government size, resulting in minor 0.15% drops in unrelated industries. However, regarding 492.1, there was only a 0.07% rise in tourism (which was expected, if underwhelming), yet saw drops of 0.13% in six industries and public education to, by your logic, facilitate that growth. Now, it's hard to compare tourists per hour to the value in currency of say book publishing (if separate rankings are even comparable at all? I don't know), but it seems a bit much. My tourism sector is probably so big it's difficult to grow it even further, I get that, however it seems to be at a point where, generally speaking, the actual effects of an issue are dwarfed by the so-called side effects. Unless the culture index also includes some sort of, let's say Industry: Culture component? Because if so, the staggering 0.75% increase there might explain it.

[Naasseners]

I've seen a lot weird ones, but most have some plausible explanation.
I can't figure out 97.4, though: 'sell your trash to poor nations' significantly increases nudity. ...probably just a side effect from the other changes, but still weird.

[Luna Amore]

I've seen a lot weird ones, but most have some plausible explanation.
I can't figure out 97.4, though: 'sell your trash to poor nations' significantly increases nudity. ...probably just a side effect from the other changes, but still weird.

Not seeing that one at all. Nudity shouldn't be touched by this option. When I test it on you it isn't.