It takes 27% off my GDP, which I feel like is a bit too much? As it leads to destruction of entire economy, and whist I do understand the fact that Corporations own a lot, I think them being able to literally destroy entire economy of country, with you having no recourse but to work with them is a bit too railroad-y. I do understand that happening in let’s say country like Ghana, or Ivory Coast, smaller and less populous third world countries, but I don’t think such amount of leverage over government is possible in 1st world country like UK.
And just as with other topic that I started, I feel like main problem here is not the fact that it is too strong, that can be balanced easily, but the fact you cannot do anything about it, you either are pro-corporate, or your entire economy goes into gutter, even if you nationalised everything you can nationalise. And whist yes, nationalisation has it’s own set of problems, I believe that at least in this case, it could help. Generally, my issue here is that you cannot do anything against them, but swim with current, even if you establish de-facto dictatorship.
Corporate Exodus and Brain Drain were your premiere threats as a late game socialist government, and they’ve historically been unavoidable. I often thought they were flat roadblocks to being too economically left.
I understand why they’re there, as you shouldn’t necessarily be able to have your cake and eat it. These are realistic and challenging obstacles. But I have often hoped for some costly workaround to entrench a more rigorously philanthropic wealthy and corporate class in the vein of the Nordic systems, if only to give you a fighting chance.
Whist I understand Brain Drain being a late game threat to a socialist government, I do not understand corporate exodus, it simply is too ‘general’ in my view. Of course, companies like Amazon or Microsoft could be easily able to pull corporate exodus off, but a company like Tesla doing so in now authoritarian right/left dictatorship? That seems less likely.
Whist service sector could definitely go away, it couldn’t just take down entire economy with it, especially if you can actually in game take steps that make corporations less powerful, from nationalisations (Meaning that they cannot do anything to you) to outright abolishing IP rights, which could work as a solution to certain companies going away. (Can’t get Microsoft to give you an OS? Just steal theirs.)
I just think these should have effect on corporate exodus.
As far as corporate exodus being tied historically to low GDP, well…
(I could not find a graph like this for PRC, but enough to say, Their GDP in 1954 was 33.02 billion USD, 1964 it was 59.71 bilion USD, 1974 it was 144.18 bilion USD.)
Hence I don’t think that this is too realistic, corporations just going away would not put GDP at 0. As we can see, two economies that outright did not had private corporations did grown their GDP, and did not expected an usually long time sustained shrinkage of it, especially not a never ending depression, like currently you’d have in Democracy 4.
Why shouldn’t there be corporate exodus if your policies are set up in such a way that gives no incentive for those corporations to set up operations there? What specific policies under corporate exodus led to that? I did have corporate exodus in game too and adjusted accordingly. But if I didn’t want to make those adjustments, then that is just something I’d have to deal with as a trade-off for a high-tax socialist economy.
I never argued that there shouldn’t be corporate exodus, I argued that there should be ways to stop corporate exodus other then working with said corporations.
To give player choice of what route they want to take, as there have been working economies without privately owned corporations that were able to exist and growth without their input, as it is currently in the game, corporate exodus is something you get, and then you have to do certain set of things that game requires from you, otherwise your GDP is in the toilet, and you can do nothing about it. Whereas in history, that just simply haven’t been a case.
Even if there was corporate exodus in economies that produced a lot of stuff, a central planned economy with many regulations (which is what is roughly modeled in game) still causes misallocation of goods (shortages), disincentive for talented and ambitious people, and overall an economy that is not allowing for the market activity to move rapidly with the changing peoples’ needs and unlimited wants. It may be simplistic to label that all under corporate exodus, but it certainly should cause a sharp GDP penalty and cause brain drain, because the best and brightest will want to move to meritocratic countries where there are less limits on their potential; corporations too have more freedom than ever to pick their lot for the countries with the least government interference. Even in the Nordic countries so praised for their bigger welfare state made possible by high taxes, their ease of doing business is higher than the United States.
This is simply not true, please, look at Graph GDP of USSR per capita.
In year 1928 (End of NEP) Last vestiges of private companies were removed in Soviet Union, and that lasted until 1989. As you can see, Soviet Union did not had private enterprises until 1989. In that time, GDP per capita went from slightly above 1k USD (in 1990 USD) to 7k USD, that simply does not compute with what you said, as any private companies simply didn’t existed in Soviet Union in that time frame, yet the GDP/C increases seven times. (Something literally impossible to have in Democracy 4.)
And I personally find it hard to think that if I’m able to make it so there are secret courts in my nation, people are getting borderline kidnapped and tortured, yet increased control of economy is something that I cannot achieve, it does look realistic.
And yes, you are right about brain drain happening, however, brain drain is already other modifier in the game then Corporate Exodus, besides, brain drain should be quite easy to deal with if one would add ban on emigration from the country, as many authoritarian governments from both left and right did, and as some today still in fact do.
How much higher could that GDP have been if it weren’t for Soviet policies? An economy could still grow even with detrimental policies like removing the entire private sector, just not as high as possible. The corporate exodus in-game does not cause no economic growth, just a reduction. The oil and gas industry thrived for a time in the Soviet Union, like other authoritarian communist countries, but their dependence on it became a liability.
Also interesting that despite the fact that their nominal GDP may have grown, there were many problems with getting essential goods and quality of life goods into the hands of the people, due to price controls and central, top-down planning, because prices transmit information. The more that bureaucrats decide about what is produced in the society, and when, and how much, and how much you get to keep, and what kind of life you can live, etc. etc. it makes total sense that there would be a cap on GDP that would be lifted when you start to free up the economy.
Maybe one day, in an authoritarian’s wet dream, a complex AI will be able to instantly predict, change and enact the relevant plans stored in the minds of millions in a nation’s economy- and the billions of a global economy- with the same efficiency as they could, but possibly until then, central planning will not supersede the advantage of spontaneous order in a free market economy.
Despite everything you said, data paints a different story, whist yes, there have been shortages, because as every authoritarian country, money and power was concentrated in hand of elite, life in Soviet Union in year 1980 was far better then living in Russian Empire in year 1880. Mass immunisation and eradication of many diereses that yearly were killing hundreds of thousands comes to mind.
And everything that you said still doesn’t change the fact that if you’d play Democracy 4, you’d notice that Corporate Exodus does in fact turn your GDP to 0 unless you had worked to getting it to be at it best with every other resource available, which in my eyes is something that Democracy series isn’t about.
Remember, you can have perfectly fine working country that has 100% of people living under a dictatorship with taxes that are going through the roof, yet in elections that aren’t directly tampered with, you get 99% of support because of these damn free bus passes. Democracy series is not meant to directly simulate everything, hence everything is, or should be, possible in it. you can have a theocracy that is leader of world’s technological growth, or a technocracy which makes church attendance compulsory. Hence I argue that it should be possible to deal with Corporate Exodus in other way then by offering concession to corporations.
I can’t seem to link that Chicago Tribune article but it was interesting because it was from 1989, with many accounts of the Soviet people having trouble buying a car, other goods, how much longer they had to work to get basic goods, and how the Soviet Union wouldn’t even allow proper statistics so that there was no transparency for these problems.
