Latest Developer blog video #19: USA!

Enjoy!

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The calculations for religious membership in the game definitely need to change quite often I end up with 0% religious population.
Also are most socialists really against selective schooling base on ability? This seems like the kind of thing they would support. (based on the whole no ones background should affect their position in society thing)

The whole idea with selective schooling is that backgrounds will affect position in society though.

Granted you could go extreme and have something like schooling- (and, heck, work-) lotteries wherein it’s literally just random chance (given low corruption) where you end up, and there’s literally no way backgrounds may affect you, lol.
Doing that ought to piss off everyone though.

I think some socialists like it, but I find the majority view to be that it enhances division and inequality because you are basically deciding on winners and losers at an early age. Without selective schooling, the high-skill kids can help their low-skill classmates, which is a fairly socialist idea, whereas separating the elite into their own schools is the opposite.

I mean, that’s the theory, in practice nothing breeds contempt for one’s lower-skilled classmates quite like having to wait for them and/or being expected to do their work for them.

Edit: Also, shouldn’t it boost education?

It might make some people get a better education, but lumping all the not-so-bright kids together means there’s no chance they will ever learn anything.

In my experience students are generally taught mostly by the teacher, not the other students.

Also, we are capitalist/liberal. Just because you decided to base your political compass on lefty stereotypes doesn’t mean reality is going to oblige you.

There are lots of pilot school programs that try to involve students in tutoring their mates, and from what I heard, it’s a pretty darn successful strategy.

  • One of the fastest ways to learn is trying to teach
  • Gifted students aren’t sitting around bored and get something to do which actually helps them improve further
  • Slower students get way more attention 'cause not just a single (or in some systems, two) teacher(s) is/are available to teach the class
  • It turns out what often is seen as “gifted”, especially early on, is just a small head start that other people CAN make up if given the opportunity. People just happen to get stuck in different places.

Not saying this should be explicitly modelled or anything, but rather, it’s not quite as easy as “gifted classes” make it seem. :slight_smile:

I think the implication is not so much that the kids teach each other, but that a teacher can teach more material and at a faster rate if they are only teaching those students that learn the fastest, so the gap between the fastest students and the rest will grow more dramatically than it would with mixed ability classes.

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Also, that budget pie chart misses that the government does spend a ton of money on healthcare:

As for our credit rating, US treasury bonds have a 0.13% yearly yield, if that helps.

As for religion, you need to get over the stereotype that technology makes religious people shrivel up and die.

As a democracy 3/4 modder from the US, I have some suggestions for the US.

  1. Slightly less tobacco usage, or at least more campaigning against tobacco usage. (From my experience there is less tobacco in the US than some countries in Europe)
  2. More obese population. (Fast food is very common in the US and has led to many health problems)
  3. Less socialism. (Overall most of the US has drowned out left wing politicians)
  4. Military increasing GDP (I think this one should be more for every country but the military industrial complex has created many manufacturing jobs that generally help boost the economy)
  5. Liberals upset at police (Again, another general one that could go for all countries)
  6. Police reducing alcohol usage (This may just be from where I’m from in the US, but a lot of officers look for drunk drivers and are usually harsh with giving DUIs)
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Great video as always, I recently got the alpha build for the game and for what it’s worth its great, however I think that some balancing is needed as I found it too easy to garner a huge electoral lead and victory without facing much difficulty, I know that it may raise the difficulty for some more new players but I think it would add to their experiences as much as everyone else, best of luck with the mod!

True but its quite hard to model that into the game given that it can’t exactly emulate all the different forms of healthcare system each respective nation has, but it can get close to recreating it so there’s that

Personally, I’d model it by giving us a bunch of healthcare programs that are all individually underfunded and less effective, but in aggregate cost a ton of money.

But that wouldn’t actually boost average education then. The peak is smarter perhaps, but the ones further behind are worse off. On average it’s probably about a net zero?
There are other variants that imo would be more helpful (such as the student-to-student tutoring initiative) but eh.

What I think could be true is that it might very effectively and directly address skills shortage, so effectively you can spend less on education and still be clear of that issue.

:rofl:
I mean, you’re not wrong, but that got me

I think that’s a great point. At high funding, military spending should definitely boost technology and technological advantage, quite a bit, and possibly Productivity and/or GDP too. In fact, it seems to me that some of the high cost of the US military is directly a result of expensive R’n’D, and a good number of technologies that started in such military efforts did end up trickling down into general life.
For one, that’s how we got Radio and the Internet. Imagine life today without either of those technologies! But there are other examples as well.
Oh and while we’re at it, technically speaking, the military’s job is to generally assess, control, and mitigate threats, right? Which does, in fact, include climate change. There’s threat assessments and recommendations about climate change in the US military and afaik they are actually rather comprehensive. The main issue is that certain commanders in chief care very little about this. - But at any rate, technically the military, at least in the US, partially has jobs relating to the environment as well, so maybe extreme spending should also help boost The Environment?

I think that one might arguably be about anything more than the base package of police? Like, they are upset about armed police, rubber bullets, tear gas, CCTV…
All of those things make the US police much worse in Liberal eyes.
I don’t think the state of affairs that’s come to pass in the US today actually would have happened without what amounts to paramilitary level police.
There’s more nuance to it. Like, the way police officers are trained, and the kinds of responsibilities they tend to get (especially in schooling and social care) really make things much worse, especially in the US, but potentially everywhere. (From what I’ve heard, UK police are also occasionally seen as social care workers when they really, really shouldn’t be)

I think it’s fair to have all those extra gadgets (tasers, military grade equipment) be standins for the training portion of police. And the schooling and social care issues could actually be addressed by other policies:

  • school vouchers, promoting private schooling, potentially ought to increase police cost a little bit (police being ordered to guard schools)
  • public schools definitely ought to decrease police cost a little bit at sufficient spending
  • Social Care should decrease police cost a moderate amount at sufficient spending

I’d have to read up more carefully on what abolish/defund efforts actually would suggest beyond this. I know a core defund-issue is to get rid of insane excess spending (US police budgets are absurd) and redirect those funds towards social care. So that part is definitely covered above, I think.
AFAI heard there might be more to it than that though.

Maybe the current Prison Regime policy should either be paired up with or expanded into Policing Regime that would cover that kind of thing. Certainly current protests, and how police act during them, suggests the US has a huge police brutality problem, and while part of it certainly lies in ridiculous overblown equipment, part of it also literally lies in direct instructions. I mean, plenty of police officers were seen and filmed walking up to complying protesters (who were told to lie down or what ever), removing any protective gear (masks, glasses, goggles) on their faces, and spraying them with tear gas. That kind of behavior goes well beyond just having ridiculous equipment.

In summary, the US has suffered a lot from Tough On Crime policies.

Oh and additionally, prisoner voting is a huge issue there, because a ridiculous number of people are literally barred from voting for life (depending on the state) for even minor offenses. Pretty sure it’s a large enough population there to seriously potentially skew election results. It’s probably not true for almost any other nation, but for the US, technically prisoner population ought to be explicitly modelled and part of the voting simulation.
Really, imo, prisoner voting rights shouldn’t be a cancelable policy at all. It should always be there and slide from Can’t Ever Vote Again (Even After Serving Sentence) to Full Voting Rights.
And to be clear, where the US is at with this actually depends on the state. So probably you’d have to go for an average in the US. In Florida more than 10% of the population can’t vote because of previous sentences! But in Maine and Vermont, everybody may vote, even while in prison.

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HELP - Where is AMERICA??

Thought the United States was in 1.06? :confused:
If it is, it not showing, even uninstalled D4 and reinstalled 1.06 after downloading a new copy from HB.

Also on a side note @cliffski still having issues with the laptop and the desktop per our conversations and emails. The large screen desktop works with the tweaks discussed but the standard laptop at 1600 x 900 causes no mouse and at 1280 x 720 barely works while the mouse is back but the images are too large and you lose stuff on the sides and top/bottom making game unplayable IDK if others are having that issue as well?
Thank you for fixing the issue with the 4 second lag when hovering over an icon.

Thanks in advance for any response that can help me find The US.

It’s in the next version.

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