How do you distinguish between like, for example, a liberal capitalist who is the “bootstraps” type and a liberal capitalist who values the equality of opportunity? (The sort who likes school vouchers for example)
Every voter has different membership level.
I guess “bootstrap” capitalist would be closer to right edge of compass than one valuing equality of opportunity.
Membership level scales voter group opinion.
There are some policies that affect multiple voter groups happiness.
There was thing, where voter was capitalist and socialist/liberal and conservative.
It was removed, but was pretty realistic - someone in center would care equally about socialist, capitalist, liberal and conservative happiness changing things.
Now there is very strong edge effect, when voter switches group - 50% membership in x then suddenly 50% membership in y just because voter moved tiny bit on compass.
Maybe the solution to that threshold problem is that people independently calculate their socialism/capitalism, but the sum of the two can’t exceed 1? That would stuff up the compass I guess. You could have it start at 0 instead but as you say there were definitely significant strengths to having the possibility for two groups in the same voter.
Regarding my OP, it’s also worth noting that socialism only captures equality of outcome (at least according to the game), not equality of opportunity. Currently liberals sort of sit in for that one, but not consistently.
I’m not sure the closer to the edge of the compass thing makes so much sense as an analogy. For example: let’s say I have state hospitals. Controlling for everything else, all capitalists dislike state hospitals to some degree. But if I compensate for that by making them socialist to reflect some appreciation for equality, suddenly that means the same capitalists who are indifferent to state hospitals are less pissed off by a punitive superstore tax, or less happy about privatising prisons. That’s part of the reason cliff removed it in the first place, I suspect.
If instead I make the voter liberal and add a bonus there, now every voter who is displeased by rubber bullets likes state hospitals more.
The tl;dr is that on a voter by voter basis, you can’t have certain kinds of irl voters, like a libertarian who hates the unemployment benefit (which liberals like and capitalists dislike), without them also not caring as much about unrelated issues like gun rights, for example.
Its all a real simplification, because real life people are complex :D. For example, where I live in the UK, its REALLY unusual for people to oppose the NHS, which is state-owned and run socialised medicine. We are also fairly OK with the idea of nationalizing railways, but the idea of nationalized telecoms/internet was widely riiducled and rejected at a recent election.
The reasoning is likely that we have had state health for so long that we cant imagine not having it (even capitalists like me), and our railways kinda suck (for historical infrastructural reasons), so we assume the grass is greener, but generally the UK is against state ownership in everything else.
Its hard to model nuance like that for all industries and all countries, so we have to lump a variety of views together.
Correct me if I’m wrong but from what I heard, railways specifically got terrible upon a botched privatization process (it having previously been a state enterprise), and the issue vaguely was that different portions of the whole thing got split into several pieces that didn’t end up working together all too well?
Like something weird like giving a different few companies the trains vs. the rails and what not, and they ended up cutting corners with the rail maintenance? Been a while that I heard the story but roughly this is what I remember.
Yes, that is true, and partly the reason (AFAIK) that the UK railways sucks, but its also because England was VERY early in developing railways, so we built them everywhere, with the very first, very early, very basic technology, so our existing infrastructure is all based on the worst possible tech, and is also embarrasingly narrow-gauge (based on cart horses etc). We have the same problem with copper telephone wire instead of fiber.
UK rail unions are also relatively powerful, which has possibly held back innovation in terms of signalling etc. On the other hand, we have the safest railways in Europe. YMMV :D. Personally I find them to be hugely expensive.
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Yeah, if y’all did nationalize your railways I suspect you’d have a majority for re-privatization in about a week.
Certainly with the current government.
I think how well nationalized efforts work depends a lot on how committed those efforts are, which changes with the political climate of the times.
And today’s UK government, as far as I can tell from the outside, commits to nothing other than making the current leaders’ richest fans more money.
And today’s UK government, as far as I can tell from the outside, commits to nothing other than making the current leaders’ richest fans more money.
And they wonder why extremists and conspiracy theories keep multiplying like virus…
It wouldn’t be as serious if they didn’t piss off certain voter groups.
Railways are a difficult one in general, because it involves HUGE investment over the very long term. No private company is interested in major long-term capital investment in the UK railways if they think it will all get nationalised later (and it might). I think the government tries to take that into account with the way the companies are structured but its really complex and messy…
Still at least UK trains can achieve faster tan walking speed, which the USA seems to weirdly struggle with 
The US system is optimized for freight traffic, because that’s where the money is.
I assumed that just the wider geographic distribution of the US meant fewer people working in city A and living in city B, which is fairly common in a lot of Europe. Some people even lvie in country A and work in country B!
Figured it was something like that: just not sure the extent of the impact that might have on elections.