[MEGATHREAD] Unusual Issue Effects

[Ransium]

Issue 279 Option 1 Causes a decrease in inclusiveness.

It's not a huge effect, but I'll check in backstage and see if others agree to tweak the option a bit.

[Ransium]

Issue 279 Option 1 Causes a decrease in inclusiveness.

It's not a huge effect, but I'll check in backstage and see if others agree to tweak the option a bit.

And changed so it won't happen in the future.

[Minoa]

Guys, I have informed two of the most influential Issues Effects contributors on NSindex today that it was no longer possible to continue with the user-contributed effects on the wiki. The letter reads:

This is not an easy decision for me to make, but I feel that it is necessary that we start removing user-contributed issues effects due to growing complaints from NationStates Forum users. The decision does not affect the national happenings results.

I am sorry for any inconvenience that this may cause, but the last thing we want is for NationStates to ban links to this site (NSindex).

NSindex will turn 5 years old next year, and this is an opportunity to given the site a boost, by shifting focus to other parts of NationStates, such as gameplay and roleplay, other technical aspects and significant events that shaped NationStates in the last 15 years to this day.

Yes, it is 15 years to the day since NationStates was born.

-- Minoa

[Fauxia]

Guys, I have informed two of the most influential Issues Effects contributors on NSindex today that it was no longer possible to continue with the user-contributed effects on the wiki. The letter reads:

This is not an easy decision for me to make, but I feel that it is necessary that we start removing user-contributed issues effects due to growing complaints from NationStates Forum users. The decision does not affect the national happenings results.

I am sorry for any inconvenience that this may cause, but the last thing we want is for NationStates to ban links to this site (NSindex).

NSindex will turn 5 years old next year, and this is an opportunity to given the site a boost, by shifting focus to other parts of NationStates, such as gameplay and roleplay, other technical aspects and significant events that shaped NationStates in the last 15 years to this day.

Yes, it is 15 years to the day since NationStates was born.

-- Minoa

Well, thanks.

I have nothing against you, or the idea in theory. But it is in practice, misleading. Thank you for your cooperation. I appreciate it

[Trotterdam]

Why does #734 3 lower civil rights? Banning advertisements really seems more like an economic right.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Why does #734 3 lower civil rights? Banning advertisements really seems more like an economic right.

For the most part it is, but there's a small (very small) free speech element there as well. Arguable it could be removed though.

Will leave it off for now.

[Trotterdam]

I would consider free speech relevant if you're also banning word-of-mouth advertising, rather than corporate we-pay-you-to-show-our-stuff advertising. Practically, most advertisements on television are by stations that don't particularly support the products being shown beyond that they're being paid to do so.

[Fauxia]

Why did option 118.1 raise taxation on Liberated Anarchist Utopia? Did it shrink industry?

[Candlewhisper Archive]

I would consider free speech relevant if you're also banning word-of-mouth advertising, rather than corporate we-pay-you-to-show-our-stuff advertising. Practically, most advertisements on television are by stations that don't particularly support the products being shown beyond that they're being paid to do so.

Yeah okay, that's pretty persuasive. Changed the issue to make it solely about economic freedom for all three options.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Why did option 118.1 raise taxation on Liberated Anarchist Utopia? Did it shrink industry?

More that your overall economic output fell, for various secondary reasons. This is an emergent effect from complex simulation, not a primary coded effect, and will vary from nation to nation taking the same option.

[Samudera]

I got issue #472 weeks ago, but just realised this issue makes my employment jumped up from 45-something into 85. Is this normal? Kind of a really huge leap

[Candlewhisper Archive]

I got issue #472 weeks ago, but just realised this issue makes my employment jumped up from 45-something into 85. Is this normal? Kind of a really huge leap

Yes, it comes from going from capitalism to a planned economy. You put a computer in charge of the economy, you should expect fairly big effects.

Of course, in a planned economy, high employment rates are somewhat artificial...

[Sennianus]

#097: Landfills Filling Up

Choosing option 1 of recycling and sending it into space made my taxrate go up by 60%.

I chose this option before, several time, and it never had such an extreme effect.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

#097: Landfills Filling Up

Choosing option 1 of recycling and sending it into space made my taxrate go up by 60%.

I chose this option before, several time, and it never had such an extreme effect.

Indeed, I recently changed it to be more realistic.

https://www.universetoday.com/25431/why ... nto-space/

The option does warn it would be expensive, but till recently, it wasn't. Now it is.

Actually, you're tax rate went from 9.87% to 16.44%, which while is not a small rise, is also probably a massive underestimate of the costs involved.

[Sennianus]

#097: Landfills Filling Up

Choosing option 1 of recycling and sending it into space made my taxrate go up by 60%.

I chose this option before, several time, and it never had such an extreme effect.

Indeed, I recently changed it to be more realistic.

https://www.universetoday.com/25431/why ... nto-space/

The option does warn it would be expensive, but till recently, it wasn't. Now it is.

Actually, you're tax rate went from 9.87% to 16.44%, which while is not a small rise, is also probably a massive underestimate of the costs involved.

D'oh! The 2% ecofriendliness isbt worth it though, and should information tech and science not go up more if you do this?

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Well, if a nation isn't spacefaring before it triggers this issue, it'll see a significant rise in scientific advancement. If it is already in space, then the technology is already there. I'll give it an extra IT boost though, to represent the increased scale of operations.

[Trotterdam]

I've long dismissed that issue because I figured none of the options looked reasonable. Looks like I've now been retconned into being right.

Using "we should launch rubbish into space" as the "pro-environmentalist" option is just clearly showing a disconnect with reality.

[Jutsa]

Oh, for certain. Putting aside the extensive cost and potential environmental damage of rockets, it's incredibly dangerous. Say something goes wrong?
Well, then you may just end up with a garbage bomb - which frankly might not be the worst weapon if it weren't so costly.

On the other hand, I also notice there's no option to just chuck the garbage out the window, which is something that apparently was more-or-less done in old-timey Europe.

[Alpha Centouri]

542.1 Results in a decrease in economic freedom.

[Anarcho-primitive4]

848 Option 2 Has decreased my civil rights?

[New Mushroom Kingdom]

So I picked the first option in Any Body For Science and got a small 6% civil rights decrease. This initially seemed unusual, but is it reflecting any lack of consent that might happen in some tests?

[Fauxia]

So I picked the first option in Any Body For Science and got a small 6% civil rights decrease. This initially seemed unusual, but is it reflecting any lack of consent that might happen in some tests?

Forcing people to do things will always lower civil rights, so yes.

848 Option 2 Has decreased my civil rights?

Not sure, but I think yes because gender roles discourage people from doing what they want

[Uan aa Boa]

I picked option 1 in #453 Parliamentary Playground (introduce a code of conduct to make parliamentarians behave themselves in the chamber) and this cancelled freedom of the press under policies. Seems a bit of a non-sequiter.

[Azurius]

I hope this is the right place to discuss unusual policies.

When did I implement child labor?

Probably with an issue I had quite recently that dealt with disabled people in school... Wait let me try to find it.... Issue #830, "Unreasonable Adjustments".

Choosing to send them to simple workforce like mining(since intellectual wise, they will be incapable anyways) automatically enables child labour, even if this is actually only tied to disabled that are denied education and sent to workforce directly...

I personally have mixed feelings about that one. It is definitely true that this is child labour no matter how you twist or turn it. At the same time, it really is only a small portion of disabled kids sooo... Yeah, not really fully fledged child labour either. As said my feelings are mixed and I can´t give you a good answer on how to exactly fix this. Guess that as said technically it is child labour, and hence it is correct to label your nation one that has child labour due to that.

Anyway, you will sooner or later get an issue to remove child labour again like I did.

[Azurius]

New Rikerland
November 9th 2017
Issue 780 (Vexing VAT) option 1

This issue has 3 options, the first is to side with businesses and remove the VAT, the other two options are to keep VAT or raise VAT on the rich. I went with the first option to remove the tax, but got the direct effect of my Taxation score going up and my freedom from taxation going down. Granted there is dialog about getting rid of vat and replacing with with other taxes, but what is the point of having a question about a tax where every outcome is just to raise taxes?

The "Taxation" stat has been taken to only represent income tax, not other sources of taxation. This issue and in particular this choice does a great job of highlighting the deficiencies and limitations of the model that the simulation is run by and therefore often complained about. I'm not a fan but I don't really have a solution.

Well true. Adding things like consumer taxes especially now that we have so many issues and constantly growing is practically impossible. However, yet the overall tax system really needs a fix of that there is no doubt.

I thought about it and I propose a simple solution for that:

Base a nations income tax(which is the only form of taxation there is in NS) on a nations government spendings in percentage. While probably still not perfect this would be much MUCH better and accurate. This would also be easy to implement code wise, since all you would need to do is tie taxation rate to the actual government spending in percent.

For example, my nation currently has a 100% tax rate lol. Yet, government services only make up for 26% of my nations GDP. Which is also what my effective tax rate should be, 26%. Why? Well because that is what my nation effectively spends on ALL public services in total, and hence should be the tax rate. Also obviously this includes the salaries for people working in these public services too, since it is INCOME tax after all(and what your nation taxes in perent is already calculated into the average income per person working in these public services).

Anything else currently makes no logical sense at all. Since that is what a nation spends on public services and hence should be their rate of taxation. Especially also when things like a black market are strangely absent like in my case. So ask yourself... Or let me try to explain it easier...

Income tax rate is 100% but total spendings on public services are only 26%. 100 - 26 = 74%

So tell me... WHERE on earth do these other 74% go....? No it can´t be the black market either as this as said is strangely enough absent. It can´t be income either as this is directly tied to average income and hence earnings of those working in these public services too(i.e. the average income per person working in any public sector, for example public transport. Currently mine is at 6.508. Which covers both the income those people make working in this area, as well as the 5.8% of my total public spendings, which in total make up 26% including all public services together). So yeah, where do these other 74% go....?

As of such the easiest way would be to simply tie a nations taxation to what they spend on public/government services. That is my proposed solution. As said this wouldn´t be hard to mathematically code either, since you already have effective codes running for things such as income, percentage of GDP as well as a good black market rating too.

That is the only viable solution I can think of that is not only easy but also prevents highly complicated coding and maths to induce an at least somewhat proper tax system in this game. All you would need to do is somehow adjust the freedom of taxation rate to this. Which I guess wouldn´t be too hard now would it? Or actually probably you won´t even have to do that either, since taxation is already tied to freedom of taxation(if my assumption is correct), and taxation itself would now simply be tied to your government spending in % of your GDP. Problem solved and we would finally have a far more realistic taxation system.

Ok, discussion done. The game no longer makes you a "slavery" nation when you institute forced labour on convicts.

Semantically, I'd say this is still slavery, but the narrative uses of that tag imply commercial slavery in the private sector, so the amendments have been made.

Thanks I really appreciate that. And as said in my semantics gulag or private prisoning is not the same as slavery(also we got some issues to embrace actual slavery already so), but I guess everyone has their own oppinion.

Though I have another issue on that... I introduced "slavery" in the old, unfixed system which shot my wealthgaps up from 1.7 to 4.3. However, once I REMOVED slavery again my wealthgap reduction only went down to 3.14 from 4.41!!!

The hell is up with that...? Shouldn´t my wealthgaps be back down to 1,8 then...? But alas they weren´t! Alas I also lost any plus of income that introducing "slavery" has brought me too! I was basically left with no extra income but left with considerably higher wealthgaps despite removing slavery again!

Not only that I didn´t get my cheerfullness and niceness back that dropped by introducing "slavery" either. This really should be fixed as well. As it also makes perfect sense that the loss of cheerfullness would return, at least most of it, but there was no increase at all...