I’d think that the military would have some issues with a national service, getting every rabble-rouser into the army, would upset them, as you are now diluting the armed forces with untrained people who will come and go and reduce the effectiveness of a professional military.
I don’t think that the game has a direct variable in it to answer these questions.
My base contention is that, in a relatively liberal social and policy environment which encourages women to enter into education and labor, sex segregation would improve the efficiency with which the entire student population is educated. This contention also applies to female education - though there are fewer economically significant industries which are dominated by women, nursing is an exceptional example, along with medical assistants broadly - dental hygienists, dental assistants, and so on.
There is, apparently, an almost equal gender ratio in medical school enrollments.
Since women are significantly over-represented in positions working under physicians (nurses, medical assistants, medical secretaries and so on) they comprise 80% of the healthcare workforce.
Since this is a significant industry with a significant gender imbalance, it would also stand to reason that the sex-segregation of education would allow pre-medical education to be more efficiently concentrated around demand, and thereby increase the education level of women by better correlating their primary education to their future employment distribution. With such a policy, the average healthcare worker would have received a higher level of preparation in their basic education.
To your question, one could, in theory, institute a gender-regressive education policy through the sex-segregation of education, as in some fundamentalist Islamic countries. It is necessary to sex-segregate education in order to have a gender-regressive education policy, but it is not necessary to have a gender-regressive education policy in order to sex-segregate education. If the game wants to model a gender-regressive education policy, it can add that, but that does not seem to be a high development priority, because such a policy would be so economically disastrous that no one would use it. There are much cheaper ways to placate conservatives.
Though, conversely, it could make the game more fun by increasing disaster opportunities.
I think that, in the real world, if you were interested in cost-efficient war-readiness and not in military pork, you would significantly cut certain areas of military spending, while instituting a national service, achieving a much greater cost-efficiency at a similar or much higher degree of war readiness, and pissing off the military, in this case State Employees, by choking their money.
However, if you were to add a national service while keeping military spending the same, they shouldn’t mind. The professionals and the conscripts would be working in mostly different areas, and the professionals would be ordering around the conscripts, not vice versa. So, you would be increasing “patriotism”, the perception of war-readiness and military commitment of the professionals, and give them new people to boss around. They should be happier. They will not want to be displaced by a national service, but they should approve of being supplemented by one.
Military spending, in the game, does not increase Patriotism (membership). It should do that, if we are to assume that the average person employed by the military is more patriotic than average. If it were to do that, then the effect of a national service on their happiness would be correctly modeled, since military spending would increase the membership of patriots, and a national service would improve their opinion.
Hmmm…I see your point, I guess this is something that Cliff would rather leave up to the modding community.
I guess that is a fair assessment. Join the military if you are poor or a patriot. But the amount of patriotism in the army might drop, which would depend on how aggressive your national service laws were. Does joining the military increase your patriotism? If so, these two could balance each other out.
I don’t know - I can ban women from driving, which is pretty fringe and would also be an economic disaster if there was high female workforce participation and high dependency on motor vehicles for transport. That policy doesn’t seem to reduce productivity, which it should.
Well, the “Military Spending” produced patriotism would remain constant. The total patriotism of the armed services, aggregating both professional military and national services would drop, since the national services would be less patriotic than the professional military. But, the national services would be more patriotic than the general population, if they had not been conscripted.
Yes, joining the military increases your patriotism. I can’t think of a politically neutral way to say this, so - they brainwash you. This is a significant part of what goes on in the military, since “morale” is a real factor in military effectiveness.
If you join the military for the sake of patriotism, they make you more patriotic. If you join the military for the money, they still make you more patriotic. So, it goes up either way.
Narcotics and Conservative Opinion
Even at fully “banned”, the “Narcotics” slider still slightly reduces Conservative opinion.
What else do they want? There’s no pleasing these people on this issue.
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Edit, RE: Public Housing
Addendum: Public Housing does, in fact, significantly affect the private housing market, and modestly increase middle income earnings.
In this case, I would say that, in the game, it seems very inexpensive considering the effect of obliterating private housing. The scale at which public housing investment would need to take place, in order to do that, would be Soviet-esque. No one really knows how much that cost, since they didn’t price things (lol, lmao) and no one else has gone so hard on public housing to the extent of my knowledge. But, if you are going to get the Soviet effect of effectively eliminating the private housing market, without even banning it outright, then you should expect to pay costs that could easily leave you “in the red.”
Body Cameras, Conservative Opinion, and State Employee opinion
In the current version, Conservatives and State Employees have a moderate negative opinion of body cameras.
Is that still really an accurate model of opinion?
Pew Research, here, found that 93% of the public supports using body cameras, and 66% of police officers.
With respect to the police officers, that is clear data that this sector of “State Employees” does not generally object to the policy - though it is possible that the police objectors object very strongly, and the police supporters are mildly supportive but not enthusiastic.
With respect to “Conservatives”, even if the 6% of the public which Pew records as being in opposition to body cameras were all conservatives, conservatives make up a much greater percentage of the total population. So, it appears that opposition to police body cameras is a minority opinion, even among conservatives, who generally support the policy.
I do remember a time when the game model of public opinion for this issue was likely accurate. However, it appears that the public opinion around this issue has considerably improved, and the game model should update to reflect this.
Right to Die, Palliative Care, End Of Life Care, Death Panels
“Spending during the last twelve months of life made up a modest share of aggregate spending, ranging from 8.5 percent in the United States to 11.2 percent in Taiwan, but spending in the last three calendar years of life reached 24.5 percent in Taiwan.”
The only game policy which models reducing futile expenditures on end-of-life medical care is the “Right To Die” policy. In reality, elective or assisted suicide is not a significant cost-savings policy, as end-of-life suicide is not significantly cheaper than simply not providing medical care and letting these people die naturally. It is a politically sensitive opinion issue.
The question of reducing end-of-life medical costs would probably be better modeled by a “Palliative Care” policy, providing financial incentives to families, and legal incentives to private healthcare, to defer old and dying people to a palliative care regime.
Currently, in reality, the private healthcare system in the United States is inefficient on this issue, as their financial incentive is towards performing futile, drastic interventions on the moribund. When you die anyway, you don’t get a refund - you are still dead, and they keep the money. It is not even clear to me that this is popular with anyone except for healthcare industry capitalists.
Dying in palliative care, in which the goal is to reduce discomfort, is much more popular than suicide, and more politically popular than promoting suicide. It seems that this would also be a more significant factor in reducing healthcare demand, because of its relative popularity as an exit strategy.
Yes, it probably should.
I think that the idea is that if people survive the interventions, they will continue providing to society as opposed to just letting them die.
Most consumption of futile end-of-life care occurs in people who are already past retirement age. Any attempt to reduce wasteful healthcare consumption by referring people to palliative care, is going to exclusively concern itself with people who are already past their expiration date, hence net consumers, not net providers. The medical system will generally fight to the bitter end for someone who is gravely ill, but young enough that a significant amount of lifespan, and a worker can be saved - though they are usually not thinking about production, as much as they are thinking about the ability of younger people to survive extreme medical interventions.
State Broadcaster Doesn’t Increase Telecoms Industry
I wonder how much telecoms is used up by the BBC. It might be something.
I agree about your point about the BBC. Although I must point out, if you’re talking about strictly economic terms, consumption is just as important as production. You can’t grow GDP without consumption.
Well, in the special case of the BBC, it may be said that it is force-consumed, in the sense that people pay for it through their television tax whether or not they suffer to watch it, and this revenue employs people to run the BBC.
As for the telecoms getting the government opinion from point A to point B, I really don’t know enough about the breakdown of the industry to answer my own question here.
Small Business Grants, Enterprise Investment Scheme, and Unemployment
Should not both of these policies reduce unemployment? If you are throwing money at people to operate or create businesses which would not be profitable in the free market, then isn’t this just an indirect mechanism of spending public money to create unprofitable employment, similar to what is achieved through the various methods of directly creating state employees?
Diversity Quotas and Productivity
The cost-efficiency of employment is what we call “Productivity.”
The “Diversity Quotas” policy does not reduce productivity in the game. In the real world, the objective of a business is to make money, and if left unregulated, businesses which pursue the most cost-efficient employment policies will have a competitive advantage over those which do not.
If the State attempts to impose any other consideration upon private employment policies, this consideration will modulate their attendance to their only natural interest in employment policy, which is productivity. Therefore, if applied, this policy will reduce productivity. I do not know by how much.
Subsidized School Buses and Productivity
The subsidy of school buses does not increase productivity in the game. In the real world, it is more labor-efficient for one school bus driver to transport children to school, than for several parents to do so. Though the labor of parents in providing child transport is not commodified, it is still labor, and it offsets other, commodified labor. Like “Childcare Provision”, this should increase productivity by reducing private childcare labor. School bus subsidies are, in effect, childcare provision constrained to one specific task of childcare, which is school transport.
Trade Agreement Event
If I’m not mistaken, refusing to sign in the “Trade Agreement” event increases international relations, hence indirectly increasing international trade. However, signing it has no effect on international trade.
Child Benefit, Free Parenting Classes and Productivity
Inversely to the “Childcare Provision” and “Subsidized School Bus” policies, which do and should increase productivity by diverting non-monetized labor into monetized labor, the “Child Benefit” policy incentivizes people to have children, which diverts monetized labor into non-monetized labor, hence should reduce productivity. The “Maternity Leave” policy should, and does have a similar effect, by increasing the amount of average non-monetized labor spent on childcare.
Even in a policy environment in which non-monetized childcare labor is minimized significantly by “Childcare Provision” and marginally by “Subsidized School Bus” and by the absence of a “Maternity Leave” policy, it is not zero, and in fact, will remain significantly above zero as a sizeable percentage of the real economy.
https://www.nber.org/digest/apr11/how-childbearing-affects-womens-wages
“Free Parenting Classes” should have a similar negative effect on productivity, from encouraging people to divert monetized labor into non-monetized labor.
I am finding it difficult to even find a real world country that would model this policy environment, as every country which comes to mind with State childcare provision, also has maternity leave and other such anti-production policies.
Still, it stands to reason that there is a major, unmodeled negative effect on production from these policies. The most productive population policy would be to simply import large volumes of working-age adults, and then send them back to their countries of origin once they hit retirement age, in the style of Singapore.
GDP and Population
Severe economic recessions, such as the one in 2020, significantly depress birth rates. Disposable income appears to be the mono-variable affecting birth rates, and policies such as childcare provision, maternity leave and child benefits appear to affect birth rates only indirectly, by artificially reducing the amount of disposable income necessary to produce children. These policies have very little impact on the fertility of “Wealthy” people, as these people already have enough disposable income to produce children without this price manipulation.
The only fertility policies directly unrelated to disposable income would be cultural policies such as “Ban Divorce”, but even in this case, disposable income would have a significant modulation on the effect.
Family Planning and Productivity
Like other “Birth Rate” policies, “Family Planning” should directly increase productivity by depressing birth rates, as long as “Birth Rate” remains unmodeled. Otherwise, “Birth Rate” should be modeled, directly affecting both productivity and the “Young, Retired” demographics with significant inertia.
Same thing for “Abortion” policy.
Ban Divorce, Population, and Productivity
Banning Divorce would also significantly increase birth rates, and reduce productivity.
Just Model The Birth Rate
The more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that, even if productivity adjustments were made to policies affecting the unmodeled “Birth Rate”, this still needs to be modeled directly. In the real world, countries with significant sub-replacement birth rates, such as Spain, Italy, Germany, Japan and South Korea, are on track for a significant crunch in their dependency ratios, to place significant stress on their economies in the next 40 years, if trends continue.
It is, if I may say, rather silly and transparently biased towards mainstream or popular political dialectics, that the game attempts to model significant, but difficult to assess long term factors like average temperature increase, but neglects to model significant, easy to assess factors like birth rate, with immediate negative effects on productivity via non-monetized labor, offset by preventing long term negative effects on productivity via dependency ratios.
These are much more predictable and easy to model than future geophysics.
Out in think tank world, away from proletarian election rhetoric world, these represent “looming economic crisis” for Spain, Italy, Germany, South Korea, Japan, (and increasingly China) for which a much greater degree of certainty may be determined for both the crisis itself and for policy effects upon crisis emergence.
In simple terms, increasing birth rate is a significant public investment, depressing birth rates is significant public borrowing, in this case simply borrowing from human capital instead of from liquid capital. All of this creates strong policy incentives towards the importation of human capital, as long as it is of comparable productivity to domestically-produced capital, which is not always the case, as it is difficult to attract significant volumes of high quality human capital.
If an economy can manage to do that, this is the most cost-effective population policy it can employ, though only very small countries seem able to do this at a rate which significantly displaces the need for the domestic production of human capital to fill middle income production roles.
Raise the Inertia Cap
Inertia is capped at 8 years, in the game.
You would have to raise this, not only for this, but for other factors. For example, “School Prayers” should not give me an immediate bump to “Religious” membership - it should take 16 years for the two-year-olds being forced to pray in “Childcare Provision” facilities to turn out and vote for The Party. Same thing for “National Anthems in Schools”.
In the game, the inertia effects are so low that I can get elected and significantly transform the ideological demographics in time for the next election. In the real world, a government which went full pedal on ideological homogenization policies would be getting shelled in the polls by the opposite-ideological demographic, until they gracelessly expired after a saecula. A complete, cradle-to-grave population turnover is necessary for some policies to take their full effect.
Average Temperature and Food Price
Well, it depends where you are in the world, doesn’t it?
If we’re talking about Canada, then, no. Average temperature increases will decrease the food prices in Canada, which is significantly below the average temperature which it needs for optimal food production.
Does Canada get “Cyclones” and the “Hurricane” event, related to “Average Temperature”? I have not played Canada, but if this is a thing, it should definitely not be a thing. Canada has only positive effects to look forward to from an increase in average temperature.
For the United States, I don’t know. The country does get wider at the north, so it seems that as the “goldilocks zone” band for agriculture moves north, it should cover a greater area.
I would need to see more data to be convinced that this effect should be modeled for the United States. The inverse effect should most definitely be modeled for Canada. Where a negative effect should be modeled, Spain and Italy seem like the best candidates for a significant effect.
Federal Land in the United States
It comes to mind that, if the agricultural band were to move north, then this would add significant stress to the federal land policy in the United States.
Even without this stress, this policy seems significant enough to “Environmentalist”, “Environment”, “Farmers”, “GDP” and so on, that I would like to see the ability to make decisions on it modeled in the game. If relaxed, this policy would be extremely difficult to tighten up again.
Immediately, it would create huge State revenues to privatize some of this land.
Success Rates for Publicity Stunts Displayed Incorrectly
I have tried enough of these stunts that I can tell you with statistically overwhelming certainty, that stunts which display a 99% percent success rate have a significantly lower real success rate. This is done with the displayed (but perhaps not effective) effect of full “Media Censorship”.
Tobacco Tax, Alcohol Tax Completely Eliminate Consumption
In the game, these taxes completely eliminate the consumption of the taxed substances, at least under otherwise optimal conditions.
Poland, for example, has a cigarette consumption rate of 30%, despite the taxes.
These taxes appear to function to a limit, and this limit is reached where disposable income is high enough that paying these taxes are not a prohibitively significant percentage of total household expenses.
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Birth and death are simplified in population, but it currently has no positive effects.
Rent Controls, Automation Tax Reduce “Capitalist” Income
Shouldn’t these reduce “Wealthy” income, and not “Capitalist” income?
An electrician who ideologically self-identifies as a “Capitalist” and votes along those lines, is not going to have his income reduced by either of these policies, because he is not going to have enough money to invest in rental properties or automated factories.
A wealthy person who does not self-identify as a “Capitalist” is going to have his income reduced by these policies, because they reduce the profits of ownership.
As it is now, these policies would seem to significantly depress total wages in a highly Capitalist-ideological population, even if they are Ayn Rand fanboys living in low-income housing, griping about how their rent is too low because of government manipulation.
Citizenship For Sale
Speaking of immigration, maxxing the “Citizenship for sale” slider up to “Middle Class” should do a lot more than it does, both in terms of revenues and immigration. There are, I think, millions and millions of middle-class people, all over the world, wanting to get in. That’s basically what the H1B visa program is, and that’s a lottery, because there are many more people who want it than those who get it.
There are more skills waiting to get in than capital, but for these cases, the State could just let them pay in installments.
Climate Change Adaption Fund Decreases Unemployment, But No Effect on State Employees
Well, if it decreases unemployment, what are they? Private employees?
This should increase State Employee membership, and probably satisfaction, like most other policies.
Road Building and State Employees
There is no relation here. Is the unemployment reduced through contractors? I don’t know how this is done.
Fusion Project and State Employees
Again, there is no membership or opinion for “State Employees” proportional to the employment of the Fusion Project. It’s difficult to imagine how these could be anything but direct State employees.
A lot of other direct employment policies, and “State Employees” opinion and membership
Other direct employment policies show opinion bonus, but no membership bonus to State Employees, such as the Space Program and Mars Program. “State Broadcaster” displays neither membership nor opinion effects on “State Employees”, despite reducing unemployment.