[MEGATHREAD] Unusual Issue Effects Since New Update

[Lawyer suicide]

“What are these lunatics on about?!” yells Calvin Mendeleev, a concerned parent. “Smacking children has been an effective form of punishment since the dawn of mankind! Outlaw it and I guarantee you the next generation will be a disorderly disaster! Children need, nay CRAVE discipline! Sometimes the only language they understand is the cane, and the government has to respect that!”

Civil Rights increased from 55.14 to 61.05 (10.7%)

[Pencil Sharpeners 2]

I answered 654.4 with this nation. I suffered significant decreases across the board with my industries, income, and business subsidisation, which seems strange given the line "Use that money to prop up some of our domestic industries".

[Noahs Second Country]

“What are these lunatics on about?!” yells Calvin Mendeleev, a concerned parent. “Smacking children has been an effective form of punishment since the dawn of mankind! Outlaw it and I guarantee you the next generation will be a disorderly disaster! Children need, nay CRAVE discipline! Sometimes the only language they understand is the cane, and the government has to respect that!”

Civil Rights increased from 55.14 to 61.05 (10.7%)

The government is giving parents a right to smack their children. The rights of the parents go up.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

This decrease recently happened in my nation.

"I'm not giving any of my hard-earned wages to a bunch of old fossils," says @@RANDOMNAME@@, a devout taxpayer. "If they weren't smart enough to save enough money for their later years, then why should the government pay out for them now? They had their chance and they didn't take it. If they really want money so bad, they can go out and work for it like everyone else."

I understand that such option is cruel, but I don't understand why it lowered inclusiveness. My point is that pension system is about discrimination, old people get the privilege to stop working at expense of younger workers. In other words, there is a state-enforced discrimination between old people and younger people. I'm NOT saying that it's a bad thing, I'm just saying it's a discrimination. And if we abolish such privilege, then (considering absence of complicated side-effects decreasing "inclusiveness") our "inclusiveness" stat must increase because there is less discrimination in our society (the same logic will work in case of legalisation of child labour, for example).

Fair point, but the editor responsible took the opposite view, I presume, of saying that a society that doesn't care for the elderly is less inclusive, as the infirm and elderly are more likely to be marginalised than the able-bodied younger folk.

It's a bit like asserting that positive discrimination in favour of women, ethnic minorities or non-hetero sexualities is pro-diversity. We say this, because we determine diversity as a measure of how much your nation aims to include the marginalised or disempowered portion of society.

While any pro-female discrimination is going to be anti-male by nature, the existent balance of power means that it's a pro-diversity move, unless you swing wildly to the other extreme ("all men must obey all women!") then that would be encouraging disempowerment of a new second-class set of the population.

In real life, and in this issue's narrative, the retired elderly are the marginalised, disempowered and voiceless portion of society. Thus any measures that look to protect them are pro-diversity.

As I said, you could argue it either way, but I think the stats can remain as they are.

Incidentally, this is an explanation of the current position. It is emphatically NOT an invitation to debate the matter on this thread.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

The effect: "Employers may fire workers without giving any reason."

Income Equality: From 0.05 to 0.34 (580% increase).

I have no idea how giving the employers right to fire workers on the spot can increase the Income Equality stat so much. Especially considering that there wasn't any increase of the Employment.

Your income equality was already very low, so even a tiny change appears massive in terms of percentages.
You should see what happens when stats go across zero.

This. As to the direction of the change, MOST nations would see a decrease in income equality from this. However your starting position, and the complex emergent nature of the simulation meant that you got a small paradoxical change.

This happens IRL too.

[TolerastiyaUnlimited]

This happens IRL too.

What do you mean?

[Candlewhisper Archive]

I answered 654.4 with this nation. I suffered significant decreases across the board with my industries, income, and business subsidisation, which seems strange given the line "Use that money to prop up some of our domestic industries".

Working as intended. To a given definition of intended.

The government aid budget contributes to general industrial growth for reasons. What you saw was the secondary effect change of wiping out that spending.

Not sure of the reasons for this game engine decision, but I'm guessing its to do with their being an infrastructure underlying all government work, so shrinking government spending in any department results in a gap in demand for that infrastructure of industries.

[Phydios]

This happens IRL too.

What do you mean?

IRL: in real life

[British West Zuzunia]

#555 "It's An Honor Just To Be Nominated!", option 1 (hold open democratic primaries in response to voter demand) reduced my Political Freedoms.

Options 2 (restrict voting to party members) and 3 (ideological purity tests) are also fairly obvious Political Freedom reducers, and 4 (hold beauty contests instead of elections) is the nutjob answer, and I would guess should also reduce Political Freedoms. So this issue is just "screw your Political Freedoms" and I should always dismiss it out of hand?

[Candlewhisper Archive]

#555 "It's An Honor Just To Be Nominated!", option 1 (hold open democratic primaries in response to voter demand) reduced my Political Freedoms.

https://www.nationstates.net/nation=can ... /id=743343

In particular note comments on freedom to lobby.

[Aclion]

554.2 Welcome To —CENSORED—

All industries fell, but economic output went up.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

554.2 Welcome To —CENSORED—

All industries fell, but economic output went up.

One industry rose, which accounts for the increase in economic output. All other industries fell, as the simulation always applies a tiny loss to all remaining industries in response to a rise in specific industries. If Industry A increases by 1 point, then industries B, C, D, E, F, etc decrease by a smidgen, but the net effect is that industries as a whole (economic output) grows.

[Really stateless nation]

“Why bother with retirement anyway?” asks Genghis Reagan, a rather young basket weaving CEO whose employees consist mostly of his aging relatives. “I mean, the only reason it exists is just so old people can laze around doing nothing, right? So why don’t we remove it altogether and make it so that people have to work no matter how old they are? Sure, incidents like that doctor who left his false teeth inside a patient might be more common than before; but that’s the price you have to pay for the sake of productivity.”

It decreased my economic freedom from 91.22 to 86.11 (5.6% down)

[Drasnia]

“Why bother with retirement anyway?” asks Genghis Reagan, a rather young basket weaving CEO whose employees consist mostly of his aging relatives. “I mean, the only reason it exists is just so old people can laze around doing nothing, right? So why don’t we remove it altogether and make it so that people have to work no matter how old they are? Sure, incidents like that doctor who left his false teeth inside a patient might be more common than before; but that’s the price you have to pay for the sake of productivity.”

It decreased my economic freedom from 91.22 to 86.11 (5.6% down)

You're disallowing people from retiring. They must work. If that doesn't lower freedoms, I don't know what does.

[Really stateless nation]

It decreased my economic freedom from 91.22 to 86.11 (5.6% down)

You're disallowing people from retiring. They must work. If that doesn't lower freedoms, I don't know what does.

I see your point, but in my case, the state doesn't lift a finger to redistribute money from younger workers to the old. And at the same time, it forbade them from working after reaching a particular age. So on one hand, the old don't get money from the state and on the other hand, they were forbidden from supporting themselves. By cancelling retirement the state allowed them to support themselves and this gave a significant boost to my economy. So it looks like they received more freedom, not less, imho.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Drasnia is correct. This may help:

https://www.nationstates.net/nation=can ... /id=743343

[SuperRegulatedCapitalism]

“The government has been covering up UFO activity for years,” claims Arnold Wiener, host of the esoteric TV show ‘Death from the Skies’. “We’re tired of hearing about weather balloons and hoaxes. If there are little green men watching and abducting us, we deserve to know. We demand that the government release all documents regarding UFOs... and everything else too! Besides, we’re better off if our military doesn’t organize shady, expensive projects.”

I choose this option in order to decrease the Black Market by making my government more transparent. It decreased corruption, but paradoxically it increased the Black Market.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

“The government has been covering up UFO activity for years,” claims Arnold Wiener, host of the esoteric TV show ‘Death from the Skies’. “We’re tired of hearing about weather balloons and hoaxes. If there are little green men watching and abducting us, we deserve to know. We demand that the government release all documents regarding UFOs... and everything else too! Besides, we’re better off if our military doesn’t organize shady, expensive projects.”

I choose this option in order to decrease the Black Market by making my government more transparent. It decreased corruption, but paradoxically it increased the Black Market.

The issue and the option has - unsurprisingly - no direct instructions to the Black Market stat. I don't see the logic chain as to why you think it should.

Economic output shrank from arms manufacturing decreasing, so all market sectors shrank. That's all.

[SuperRegulatedCapitalism]

The issue and the option has - unsurprisingly - no direct instructions to the Black Market stat. I don't see the logic chain as to why you think it should.

Because I've noticed a correlation between level of corruption and size of the black market. So I hoped that by making my government transparent I would reduce the corruption stat and as a side-effect it would reduce the Black Market too.

Economic output shrank from arms manufacturing decreasing, so all market sectors shrank. That's all.

What did you mention it? I wasn't complaining about Economic Output if you read my message carefully. I was complaining about increasement of the Black Market.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Oh right, I misread.

Anyway, nothing more to say on this. Secondary effect. Live with it.

[SuperRegulatedCapitalism]

Are we supposed to complain only about direct effects in this thread?

[Candlewhisper Archive]

You're supposed to be happy with what answers you get.

I answer people ONCE. I'm not paid here, I'm spending my own time. I look into it, I give you an answer.

You don't like it, I don't care. You keep bothering me, I block you.

Can't stand whining. User blocked.

Feel free to be pissed off about my treatment of you here, I owe you nothing.

Damn, my life here is so much easier since I've stopped bothering trying to help or listen to people that I dislike.

[Aclion]

307.1 doesn't seem to have any downsides. Now this may be a result of how high my integrity stat is already, but I was expecting that it would lower it just a little, as politicians living on poverty wages might be more susceptible to bribery.

Not that I'm complaining. It's getting harder to increase integrity without big tradeoff, so it was a nice surprise.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Well, depends what you mean by downside, as everyone has different goals for their nations. The stats seem consistent with the option though.

One thing that is happening here, however, is the old "freedom to influence politics with money", which as I've noted before, the game engine interprets paradoxically, with increased freedom to bribe being reflected by a decrease in corruption. I suspect once this is fixed, the option and the game as a whole will make more sense in a lot of places.

[Golden State Warriorz]

After I selected choice 3 on issue 265 "To Bail Or Not To Bail", my average income decreased from 38,800 to 35,000 dollars (the fact that income fell didn't surprise me in itself, but the amount that it decreased by shocked me a little) and most importantly, taxes were raised from 43.1% to almost 51%. The description of choice 3 didn't indicate or suggest a tax hike of that magnitude, and doesn't seem like it would result in one. Option 1 is the only choice that seems like it would raise taxes so much.