Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2019 11:17 pm
The Free Joy State wrote:Kommunes Consiviz wrote:Gotcha.
I've actually had income equality higher in the past. Am I to take it then that if I keep answering questions in a way that increases it, that it will push my score up eventually, even if it didn't do anything this time? If this is the case, will my answer to this question be noted, or will it not have any effect on my future answers?
Economic freedoms and income equality are actually two separate stats.
Income equality can rise much higher.Temosia wrote:Hey!
So I just answered issue No. 229 with option 2, to enact freedom of information. My political freedom just went down, which doesn't make a lick of sense to me.
So I understand how that could happen if I chose option 1, because that option just punishes individual politicians for corruption without making the process any more democratic, but option 2 increases governmental transparency, which logically should increase political freedom by making politicians more accountable to voters and the laws that they pass. After all, political freedom would increase if the dealings of a country's dictator were made publicly available, I'm sure you'd agree. Option 3 is obviously the pro-corruption choice, and one could make an argument as to whether allowing bribery increases political freedom or not, but among the three choices, and certainly between the two anti-corruption choices, option 2 is clearly making the country more democratic and thus more politically free. But I'm being pedantic because all of this is self-evident to you all. L.o.l.
The choice also had other weird affects, like making my country's ignorance go up. I mean, I'm trying to have an ignorant populace so that's not an issue for me in particular, but I think it only stands to reason that my country's ignorance should go down as a trade-off to making my citizens more aware of what their country's politicians are doing: knowledge being power and all that jazz.
I read that in the initial post that issues with bribery and political freedom had just been "fixed" in an update, so I'm confused as to why this happened.
This is definitely something you should take a look at.
Freedoms in NS work on a specific metric: freedom from government control.
People gain the right to vote for whoever they want, you gain rights.
People gain the right to marry whoever they want, you gain rights.
People gain the right to protest however they want, you gain rights.
(Be aware that some effects may not be felt on all nations due to their personal stats and some options may have a trade-off between two conflicting freedoms, which may impact the result).
Here -- by compelling ministers to detail all financial gifts and contributions and depriving them of their privacy -- you are reducing their freedoms to keep such details private.
I agree that the politicians' civil rights are being lessened, so personal freedom goes down; that makes sense to me. But in terms of political freedom it's definitely going up.
This is a case of a conflict of freedoms: personal freedom vs. political freedom. In option 2, the political freedom of the voting public is being supported over the freedom of the politicians to take bribes and act against their voters' will without them being aware of it. From the perspective of the politicians, I agree that they're losing their freedom of privacy, but from the perspective of the voters, they're gaining the freedom to know how their elected politicians are acting, which ensures that future votes and candidates adhere to the public's political will, increasing voters' political power. In summary, the public becomes more free from the whims of their government, which is to say the politicians.
Therefore, political freedom should be going up, not down.
Additionally, ignorance going up from enacting freedom of information makes no sense whatsoever. Knowledge =/= ignorance.