I’m not entirely sure who you think my forefathers were, exactly. Perhaps you’re threatening to make me harvest your fields? Either way, you have my apologies; I’ll try to maintain higher standards of reasoning and discourse.
So if your house is on fire, would you try to put it out with a bucket brigade? As a libertarian, I assume you won’t be needing the fire department because that’s the government.
I offer my garden hose and water for $100.
Volunteer, fire departments through out the US. Way to be obtuse though.
We’re not talking about local government here, now are we. In American terms, it’s Fed versus State versus Local. The fire department is funded LOCALLY. Nice try though.
I assumed you were British, given your past comments m.
Anyway it’s clear there’s going to be no revision in thinking here with all the Marxists lurking. Have fun taxing your citizens into oblivion.
You are entitled to your beliefs and opinions, but you are throwing them about as if they are untouchable truth (this, by the way, could be called ‘faith’). For instance, I’m a professional historian… I teach college history and have done so for just under a decade now, and I can assure you that the issue of : more weapons = less violence : is not true. Frankly, there is no significant period in human history of which I am aware where people with significant numbers of arms lived in close quarters and didn’t proceed to kill one other.
As for the 2nd Amendment, I can assure you–because the focus of my research is, in part, on Jefferson’s military policies such as his desire to see an all militia defense establishment–that what was intended was for citizens to have arms ONLY as a regulated militia, just as it reads. The historical evidence that supports this is very strong. If you don’t believe me I’ll gladly show you.
-AEWHistory
LMAO… yea, this is the very first thing I think of when I hear Libertarians whine… Frankly, why play a simulation about government if you want to abolish government?
What’s next? I know, atheists playing g-d sims… heh heh…
Well. Tory liberalism, at least, is the classical Democracy 2 flavour - when it suits them. “Liberals” in Dem2 seem to be an odd fudge of the US and UK nomenclature. I can’t quite understand why spending more on prisons pleases Liberals of any kind, for a start - apart from older “Conservatives”.
Er… we don’t have gay marriage. Labour (social democrats) introduced “civil partnerships” 6 years ago; the Tory contribution was to ban the promotion of homosexuality and to attempt to expand civil partnerships to blood relatives. Policies of a small-state character is a very, very recent thing for UK conservatives, and doesn’t really feature in Cameron’s policies apart from in rhetoric. The previously dominant One-Nation faction idealises institutions like the welfare state, for a start. You will find small-state policies much more consistently with the UK Liberal party. Who, incidentally, introduced the abortion laws in the 1960s - but you are right in that the UK conservatives have generally tended to see that politics and morals should be kept seperate, and Macmillian’s Tory gov’t allowed the laws a free vote (which were passed). This is no longer the case though.
I am impressed with rboni’s contributions to the game via this forum. I hope you’ll be collaborating to fill in the economic gaps for Dem 3 cliff!
If you see my post that I just did you may find many of your points to be wrong.
For instance, I ELIMINATED infectious disease and lung problems by canceling healthcare, how you ask? Simple, putting that money into fighting poverty and reducing emissions. I also removed my techno backwater by canceling the schools and funding techno companies instead.
Also, cutting taxes raised my gdp, after a 20% income tax cut my gdp went up so much I earned more than the pre-cut.
My only issue is that I managed to remove most of the commuter (i didn’t fund buses at all), motorist (toll roads and tailpipe limits), how did people get around in my country? walking? And they most likely didn’t work from home because of a hefty internet tax.
The game is actually quite harsh on any real socialist state as it forces it to deal with capitalists for example. 
There is also no ability for the state to finance itself without fines or taxes.
(It is a grave misconception that “socialists”(leftists) of any type desire high taxes, the high taxes are usually remedies for the effects of income inequality brought forth by the insistence on a capitalist model due to perceived higher overall efficiency).
I’ve actually recently “won” the game with a liberal state.
It does have a stabile educational and hospital sector but no state housing, no state pension, minimal unemployment benifits and such. I don’t even have corporate taxes nor sales taxes. But I do have reasonably high income taxes and some property/inheritence taxes. I imagine this being an incentive to re-invest and consume.
Besides facts speak for themselves. There’s not been one really successfull country that’s gone for either maxim within the frames of a liberal democracy.
The few that have managed staying afloat or even having a good standard of living with extremely low taxes and no regulations are small countries that are tax havens. On the other hand having very high taxes as America once had (95% for the richest percentille) and todays Scandinavian countries seem to work but only as long as alot of those taxes are put back into development, education and infranstructure which makes it easier for companies to flourish.
I have achieved Capitalist Utopia time and again. The whole premise of this thread is based on some individual saying “my ideology does not achieve my desired results, so the game must be wrong or biased.”
Nonsense. Those complaining appear to be Americans following an ideology supposedly based on the Austrian school of economics, who’s ideas since 1980 have been tried in the US and proved to be nothing more than justification for an unfree market designed to funnel the wealth of the nation to large corporations and the wealthiest. It is an ideology, not a working economics.
I noticed the ones arguing for it’s features can’t explain how they are supposed to work, but mearly complain that they don’t. That’s because they don’t.
Trickle down economics has NEVER worked. In the game Corporate tax cuts work within limits to draw corporations to your country or not chase them out. Tax Shelters work towards technological advantage by encouraging investment, but you can’t just blindly follow an ideology and expect results.
You have to understand why it’s supposed to work, or why it’s just political nonsense justifying what you want to do.
Aiming for a small priviledged class ruling over an uneducated, superstitious, peasant / slave class will not work. It is the nation’s working class that generates the wealth, and it is their ABILITY to generate wealth that determines how much wealth is generated.
Focusing on achieving the lowest wages possible and the lowest labor costs does not create an economic engine. It creates an unskilled uncapable workforce unable to generate wealth.
If you want to win Capitalist, you have to focus on creating the most powerful economic engine you can. This means you need to create the largest, most educated, most capable workforce you can.
In other words, the more you facilitate your workforce, the more wealth is generated.
Capitalism and taking care of your workforce are not mutually exclusive. They actually go hand in hand.
Because historically it is a fact that cutting spending on public housing hurts the poor; that cutting spending on public healthcare hurts life expectancy which is measured from the population at large; that cutting pensions and welfare lead to bigger gaps in wealth.
Hilarious to hear conservatives complaining that their policies don’t work in this game–they don’t work in real life either.
ahem.
they worked to create what was once the most prosperous nation on the planet.
“Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”
–James Madison
"Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers, and destroyers press upon them so fast, that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachment upon the American constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the pensioners urge for more revenue. The people grow less steady, spirited, and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality, become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, foppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole society. "
–John Adams,
“They are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare… [G]iving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which may be good for the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please.”
– Thomas Jefferson
Not what history shows. Trickle-down economics came around in the latter half of the 20th century. Prior to that, the middle class was on the rise, the economy was booming, labor unions were going strong, taxes were higher on the wealthy. We prospered after WWII because the gov’t had been buying what factories were producing, putting money into the people’s hands for them to spend when the war ended. And immediately after the war, Europe couldn’t provide for itself so we were producing extra goods for them, which made us even more prosperous. But then, Europe recovered. And then trickle-down economics comes along, and after that we see the middle class slowly being chipped away at, labor unions lose their power, welfare being whittled down. We never recaptured that prosperity because the gov’t played into the hands of corporations and the wealthy.
In short, trickle-down economics is not smaller gov’t, it’s bigger gov’t in the pockets of the rich and powerful. It’s about empowering the wealthy by taking away from the foundations of society.
There’s a separate forum for political debate. If you’ll post a thesis on Trickle-down economics, then I’ll explain the difference between it and free-market (or “fair-market”) capitalism. Hint: We both agree that trickle down is bogus, but perhaps for different reasons.
I love the conversation in this thread from 2009 about incorporating private sector logic. As a “misguided” Libertarian, I disagree that a Libertarian policy agenda can’t be successful. I’m not talking privatizing everything, but the idea of true Limited Government is a proven model historically. I just bought the game today and with my first try I was able to balance the budget and improve overall efficiency, but still got voted out because I chose the Freedom Party. lol Oh well…still a great game. I’ll be picking one of the two major parties moving forward though…
Even though I believe socialist government almost always bankrupts itself in the long run(In case you haven’t been watching Europe lately…), I can play the game with those unrealistic Utopian rules embedded into the games logic. 
It’s still fun even though I can’t effectively create my own Utopian Libertarian paradise where everyone gets stoned and pays no taxes. lol
I look forward to the next generation. Thanks for the great experience thus far!