I ought to’ve said this closer to when they were patched in, but I’d like to clarify how much I enjoy the addition of Workers’ Dividends. It rolls many socialist concepts that’ve been discussed and proposed in this forum and elsewhere into one simple, effective thing.
It’s a huge step forward to the social-democratic economies many players are interested in creating in the game. The missing link to actualise it all sits in creating the “mental health” simulation Cliff once suggested, or a specific Worker Satisfaction value, which may well be similar enough to merge.
Another cool thing would be to acknowledge the economic upshot of high wages and strong welfare in an increase to the velocity of money, due to a richer majority population distributing a disposable income, increasing inflation and GDP.
Either of those are strong, proven economic reasons to value workers and distribute wealth, and i’d love to see policies like Workers’ Dividends fuelling their realisation.
Plexus, this meta-study backs up your assertion that greater worker’s rights, democracy, wages and dividends (except in high collectivization and high co-determination) do not undermine productivity, instead they increase it. Whether it’s socialism or participatory capitalism (distributism?). So maybe worker’s boards, dividends, workplace safety, state enterprises etc. should not impact productivity negatively, except at really high values.
I would say that they can impact productivity in a negative way, as long as there is other metric called workers satisfation/stability boosting it,influenced by workers on boards, workers’ dividends, workplace safety, and even things like high wages and low working week, representing the increase in motivation, the build up of know-how and that in the long term they tend to align the interest of workers with the interest of the corporation.
Thank you so much @Chantern15! This is fantastic. I do agree with @javive11 that this effect is likely a “tipping point” moment though, in the same way that high labour laws and low public service funding don’t mix and create strikes in the current build.
History shows us that worker-orientated economies and production lines can be highly efficient and world-leading, but I’d assume it’d be a set of high inertia events in the game, requiring the deliberate construction of such a culture. Many workers today are treated like drones, and learn to avoid thinking about how they might contribute meaningfully. That would take years to deprogram.