Policy improvements

[Trotterdam]

These have been discussed in the Got Issues? forum and have received some vocal support from the issue editors, but nothing seems to have actually come of them, so I'm seeing if reposting them in Technical will help.

Suggested changes:

• Sortition should shadow Autocracy. Although the current description for Autocracy ("The nation does not hold democratic elections.") is applicable to Sortition, the common-language definition of "autocracy" does not include sortition, which is very different in intended goals. Additionally, the display of both policies is redundant, as there's no such thing as a sortition that does hold elections to contrast it with.
• Autocracy and Sortition should not shadow Devolution. There is no reason devolution would be limited to democratic societies. Autocratic devolution was a major aspect of medieval feudalism (though the policy actually called Feudalism on NationStates focusses on a different aspect), and while I don't believe any nation using sortition has historically been large enough for devolution to be an issue, but it seems entirely plausible for a sortition-based government to have policitians for local constituencies be selected from lotteries including only residents of those constituencies, and to give significant power to those randomly-selected local governments.
• Autocracy and Sortition should not shadow Native Representation, which should maybe be renamed. The current description explicitly applies only to democracies, but with a slight wording change, I think it would be just as relevant under Sortition. Autocracy is harder to pin down - particularly if you have hereditary leadership (or if your leader is just @@LEADER@@ and only @@LEADER@@ and nobody else), you could easily end up with a ruling caste limited to a particular ethnicity without explicitly saying that people of other ethnicities are banned, so it's hard to unambiguously describe such nations as either allowing or not allowing foreign politicians. (Though since the policy is actually about where you're born rather than what your ethnicity is, it could still be applied to a question of whether a noble family that moves to another nation should be stripped of its titles. In fact, I just remembered that we actually have an issue about something like this, so I'm moving this out of the "iffy" section, even though that's actually keyed off Feudalism rather than Autocracy.) It has also been suggested that Native Representation be renamed to Natural-Born Leaders, due to confusion over what "native" means.
• No Sex should be renamed. It does not actually describe nations where sex is banned, but rather ones where citizens are grown in vats. Some nations that grow citizens in vats still allow non-reproductive sex, whereas at least one issue in the game allows you to ban sex without instituting vats (instead favoring artificial insemination). Suggested alternatives include "Born in a Vat" or the plaintive "Vat-Grown Citizens".
• Banning reproductive sex should shadow No Contraception. This is a weird one. On one hand, such a policy can be interpreted as making contraception mandatory, which is obviously the opposite of making it illegal. On the other hand, if everyone is already supposed to be sterilized (as is the case when using vats) or if even non-reproductive sex is banned (as is the case in the option that advocates artificial insemination), then there would be no legal use for contraceptives, and so someone trying to buy them would certainly be a clue that (s)he's up to something illegal. Either way, standard contraception debate narratives would not be applicable in such a nation.
• More iffy: several other policies, such as No Abortion and Sex Education, are also of questionable relevance in nations where sex is banned and/or citizens are grown in vats (the vagaries of the several different ways NationStates has to do such things makes it more applicable to some than to others - abortion would still be an important issue when using artificial insemination, but not so much when using vats). It's slightly easier to come up with scenarios where these issues would come up in such nations than No Contraception, but they're still something of a stretch, and it wouldn't be any of the normal narratives.

Discussion:
http://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic.php?p=33855870#p33855870
http://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic.php?p=33850817#p33850817
And one or more backstage threads, but you'll need an editor to link you to those.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Thanks, these have already been flagged for technical attention backstage. You can take it as read that if you've discussed it with editors and we've agreed with you that a process of discussing change has already begun.

[Trotterdam]

Adding to the relationship between Autocracy and Sortition, Minoa noticed that the the Sortition policy is hidden in nations that don't have Autocracy, but not always removed, meaning that it might reappear if you institute Autocracy again later. This means that #202 1 and #267 4 can turn your nation into sortitions rather than proper autocracies under certain conditions, which is clearly not those options' intent.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Adding to the relationship between Autocracy and Sortition, Minoa noticed that the the Sortition policy is hidden in nations that don't have Autocracy, but not always removed, meaning that it might reappear if you institute Autocracy again later. This means that #202 1 and #267 4 can turn your nation into sortitions rather than proper autocracies under certain conditions, which is clearly not those options' intent.

Good point. Not sure how to approach that. We'll have to talk it over as a team.

[Trotterdam]

Good point. Not sure how to approach that. We'll have to talk it over as a team.

Well, at the very least, I would expect a stopgap solution of tweaking all issues that explicitly turn you into a democracy or an autocracy (probably, any issue option that changes the Autocracy flag in either direction without explicitly being pro-sortition) to also delete the Sortition flag.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Your expectations are noted. We'll talk over it.

[The Glorious Third Reign of Templedom]

Quick jump in, I agree that Devolution should be de-coupled from Autocracy, but Monarchy may be the iffy one as it could be medieval/autocratic or modern/constitutional. The description for Monarchy simply states that the royal family's status is enshrined in law.

[Trotterdam]

Quick jump in, I agree that Devolution should be de-coupled from Autocracy, but Monarchy may be the iffy one as it could be medieval/autocratic or modern/constitutional. The description for Monarchy simply states that the royal family's status is enshrined in law.

Since the January 2018 rewrite of #527, there no longer exist any issues in the game that can grant the Monarchy flag without your nation already being an Autocracy (and clearly stating that @@LEADER@@ is the monarch). However, it appears that most issues that abolish Autocracy let you keep Monarchy if you had it before, so it's possible to become a constitutional monarchy by first becoming an absolute monarchy (via #461) and then making democratic reforms (which, to be fair, is how real-life nations did it).

In fact, according to my data, 0.227% of nations in the game are constitutional monarchies with sortition...

I don't know why you mentioned it anyway, since Monarchy was not among the policies I discussed in my opening post.

[The Glorious Third Reign of Templedom]

Quick jump in, I agree that Devolution should be de-coupled from Autocracy, but Monarchy may be the iffy one as it could be medieval/autocratic or modern/constitutional. The description for Monarchy simply states that the royal family's status is enshrined in law.

Since the January 2018 rewrite of #527, there no longer exist any issues in the game that can grant the Monarchy flag without your nation already being an Autocracy (and clearly stating that @@LEADER@@ is the monarch). However, it appears that most issues that abolish Autocracy let you keep Monarchy if you had it before, so it's possible to become a constitutional monarchy by first becoming an absolute monarchy (via #461) and then making democratic reforms (which, to be fair, is how real-life nations did it).

In fact, according to my data, 0.227% of nations in the game are constitutional monarchies with sortition...

I don't know why you mentioned it anyway, since Monarchy was not among the policies I discussed in my opening post.

Oh cos I always thought of Autocracy in the likeness of commie singular parties, military juntas, etc. and Monarchy as (openly) hereditary feudalistic office.

Wouldn't it be cool though to merge policies into EPIC policies, since the pool might get even bigger in the future - eg.
Monarchy + Autocracy = Absolute Monarchy
Monarchy + [any] Representation = Constitutional Monarchy
No sex Legalize cannabis+ DNA harvesting = Brave New World
Euthanasia + Organs harvesting = Soylent Green, etc.

THIS GAME NEEDS EPICS.

[Trotterdam]

Oh cos I always thought of Autocracy in the likeness of commie singular parties, military juntas, etc. and Monarchy as (openly) hereditary feudalistic office.

Autocracy is any government where one person (or a small closed group) rules with absolute (or near-absolute) power, including both traditional monarchies and self-proclaimed dictatorships.

[Trotterdam]

• More iffy: several other policies, such as No Abortion and Sex Education, are also of questionable relevance in nations where sex is banned and/or citizens are grown in vats (the vagaries of the several different ways NationStates has to do such things makes it more applicable to some than to others - abortion would still be an important issue when using artificial insemination, but not so much when using vats). It's slightly easier to come up with scenarios where these issues would come up in such nations than No Contraception, but they're still something of a stretch, and it wouldn't be any of the normal narratives.

Hmm, so I just noticed that No Sex and Sex Education actually are currently mutually exclusive. If No Sex doesn't actually mean no sex, then that's a bit questionable. Unwanted pregnancy may no longer be an issue, but STDs still are.

[Trotterdam]

I have to wonder what's going on with this. I can see how some of the things I suggested could be difficult to implement, but merely renaming an existing policy shouldn't take much time.

The reason I'm bumping this, though, is to ask about the relation between the No Computers and No Internet policies. Oddly, it is currently possible for a nation to have either one without the other. In particular, a fair number of nations have the No Computers policy without the No Internet policy (in fact, my data suggests slightly more than the nations that have both, although not to a statistically-significant degree - examples: Rizarity, Aeisonia, Yumza), even though it is pretty hard to imagine how this could work. There is a year-old editor post claiming that No Internet is implied by No Computers, which is clearly incorrect at the moment, but suggests that it may be the intent. There is also a month-old report in the spoiler thread where a nation with No Computers but not No Internet nonetheless got an issue option variant where presence/absence of the internet would seem to be the more logical basis for the distinction, suggesting that at least some issues might be coded to treat No Computers as implying No Internet even though the policy page does not (I cannot tell if this is applied consistently across the issues base). In a particularly odd case, #41 option 3, effect line "citizens frequently whisper of the Internet as 'the domain of the devil'", does not actually give the No Internet policy, only No Computers.