Confused about voter identity

Democracy 4 Alpha Feedback
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So, basically I’m not sure that the usage of certain voter groups is consistent across sim values and policies, especially given their descriptions. I have some examples:

Trade unionists are “concerned about worker’s rights in large organisations, want higher pay, shorter hours”. They seem to get confused with socialists quite often:
Trade unionists dislike private prisons, not socialists, despite socialists like state schooling and healthcare, not trade unionists (I should think state employees would care about this too tbh)
Socialists like the minimum wage, not trade unionists, despite trade unionists liking work safety law, not socialists
Trade unionists dislike high private industries of various kinds, not socialists. You’ve said before that this is because you suppose that they like state enterprise, but why would they have no preference between a weak private sector because of low GDP and a weak private sector because of state enterprise?

There’s a lot of overlap between conservatives and religious on social issues. Why do conservatives not care about gay marriage, despite being about “family values”, and when they already care about gender transition, gender discrimination act and family values? Why do conservatives care about private prisons?

Capitalists seem to not care about a whole host of things that you’d think they would, like food stamps, faith school subsidies, business confidence, food standards agency, science funding, biofuel subsidies, work safety law and the petrol tax. I’d less confidently say that they should probably care about immigration and driverless car laws too. And I have no idea why they like import tariffs (I’d argue that trade unionists are the ones who should like protectionism, not capitalists). Self employed suffer kind of the same problem, they don’t care about minimum wage or labour laws, despite caring about “too much state regulation and workers rights”.

Liberals too have some weird interactions- they lose money from internet currency taxation and their relationship with “equality of opportunity” policies is pretty spotty: they don’t care about the disability benefit or equitable schooling or healthcare policies, but like foreign aid and the child benefit.

Ultimately, I understand there can be said to be ideological overlap between a lot of these groups (though I think the amount currently is a bit excessive, given that people can be a member of multiple groups to differing extents anyway) but the inconsistency between policies and values is what confuses me a lot. It makes groups like trade unionists feel redundant and groups like liberals and capitalists feel poorly defined.

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Are you american? The terminology in the game seems to align more with mainstream european politics, and the absolute majority of european conservatives have nothing against same sex couples but do oppose gender transistion and “forcing” gender equality through government action.

Socialists seem more focused on economic equality (which makes sense) hence why they favor minimum wage and unionists caring more about working conditions also makes sense. Setting the minimum wage by law rather than through collective bargaining agreements moves power away from the unions. Private prisons sound like a horrible place for work safety.

I don’t understand why capitalists would oppose science funding, they are usually the ones taking advantage of publicly funded inventions.

Why would self emplyed care about labor laws? If you are a buisness owner employing people then you are a capitalist.

Tariffs and liberals being inconsistent I do agree with.

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Capitalist - Socialist is spectrum, same with Liberal - Conservative, Poor - Middle Class and Middle Class - Wealthy.

So Self Employed voter can be 70% Socialist 30% Capitalist too.

Self Employed is small business owner, or at least someone, who knows who has small business.

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Eh, not really? That’s gonna depend on the prisons. Well-managed prisons tend to be rather safe places, not just because of very strict safety measures, but actually mostly because most inmates aren’t actually gonna be prone to violence, if you treat them with a modicum of respect.

Of course, to be fair, private prisons are likely gonna be poor at exactly that last bit. But I suspect with tight regulations (which the US with its massive private prison sector does not have), they could totally work.

Here’s a clip on how different US and, say, Norwegian prisons can be

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No I’m not American, and it wouldn’t matter if I were, my observations are based on the descriptions the game itself provides and the inconsistencies in their reactions to policies and sim values. It has nothing to do with choice of labels.

Science funding is state intervention. Capitalists potentially benefit from a bunch of stuff they oppose, that doesn’t matter. If trade unionists shouldn’t like minimum wage because it weakens unions, why do they like work safety law? This is exactly the problem I’m talking about.

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That sounds correct to me. Unions generally like to negotiate their own compensation, not the government.

Adding on to that, I’d make abortion more of a conservative bugbear than a religious one. Based on how liberal/religious America has a more liberal stance on the issue than secular/conservative countries in Europe.

I’m not so sure. Capitalists already have the issue where interacting with the game in any way makes them angry. Moving them away from “capitalism is the government not doing things, so the government doing nothing is the only acceptable state” is honestly sorely needed.

This 100%. Import tariffs should make capitalists furious.

I think the ideological groups (Cap,Soc,Lib,Con) tend to get way too much assigned to them and the material groups way too little. And there tend not to be enough cleavages between aligned groups (Self-employed v capitalist, union v socialist, liberal v minority, conservative v religious), which I’d also like to see more of.

I mean, I’d be up for cutting the whole internet currency mechanic entirely and replacing it with something that actually matters.

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The intention is definitely that self employed refers to small business owners as well as the lone worker. The capitalist is more of a high principle thing than self-employed, which is just circumstance. I know a bunch of socialists who run small businesses, and have a mix of socialist and small-biz views on stuff like minimum wages, labor laws and so on. Capitalist concerns are more macroeconomics than micro.

Obviously there is a slight european bias as thats my background. I think in general trade unions prefer to have state-ownership of where they work, because it opens up the possibility of political pressure as well as economic pressure, when it comes to getting their demands met. Maybe thats a bit out of date? (but in the UK at least, trade unions are very very vocal about supporting nationalisations).

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The problem with socialists liking minimum wage instead of trade unionists is just that it’s inconsistent with their description in-game and with their reactions to stuff like work safety. It also makes them feel pointless. I agree that all those groups need more distinct identities.

I agree with your assessment about capitalists- I think there needs to be something of a re-think of what capitalists should actually value. If socialists like equality of outcome as stated in their description, maybe capitalists should like (material) equality of opportunity (giving people school vouchers instead of buying the education for them). Or at least not care about stuff that isn’t really distortionary, idk (e.g. sales tax, carbon tax). Some of the things I mentioned would be positives (e.g. business confidence, immigration).

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Wouldn’t that be because a lot of trade unionists are socialist to some extent? I think your assessment from a self-interest POV makes sense though, on balance.

I do think there needs to be something of a rethink about what each group actually should be reacting to. It feels confused atm, and unbalanced too.