What do you think of the idea I bring up in occupational, where there is an X number of whatever profession per sub chief, and then the sub chiefs vote on their representative and then these representatives vote on their own etc until that Valleyhome Farmer Chief? It sounds rather similar to what we already do, and I remember somewhere that AN said we have a Valleyhome specific Admin advisor.
What sorts of exploits are there and how do we fix them?
As mentioned earlier, it's basically the Guild system.
The big challenges are:
-Occupational
--What consistutes a trade? An Artisan chief is not going to be simultaneously able to address the concerns of Masons, Potters, Weavers, Carpenters, Smiths and Cartmakers.
---So you split it up fine by each trade, and then somebody realizes they can get a extra vote just by creating a new sub-trade, resulting in the proliferation of oddly specific careers such as Underwater Basketweavers, Tall Narrow Glazed Vasemakers and Parkour Prostitutes.
----So you have to establish certain minimum numbers for a trade to be counted, and then you realize theres like three masons for every weaver, which means the masons are underrepresented, but you can't split them up because they really are doing the same thing. Maybe you can give the Masons more votes?
-----Which means the Trade Chiefs will as a whole, resist adding more divisions. Even if another branch of authority has to decide the divisions, they can lean on thins
------So we wind up with a pretty functional city, unless the trades come into direct conflict. The carpenters want more wood, but the carters are using their position to make things difficult unless the carpenters make more carts cheaply. At lower Stability, you'd see things like strikes and murder happen to leverage each other.
--Guild jurisdiction, we only have one city at present, so it's easy, one guild can manage one city. When we have two cities, then we'd need two Guilds. And so forth. Relatively simple...at least until they start colluding or competing anyways.
The big long term issue of Guilds is that they will find disproportionate influence over their city quite easily, the nature of the economy is that all the essential guilds like carters, millers, smiths, etc, can all force the city to a halt to force a demand, as they will have the loyalties of their members and our Honor of Elites will back them up.
They will also be able to keep their own trade's secrets, which weakens the shaman influence over society as lorekeepers.
However, none of them are self contained, they can't really threaten a splintering or rebellion on their own, just stop things from functioning(which means everyone else will probably beat their ass in if they take it too far for being Disharmonious).
Particular hazards might be that warriors and shamans may get roped in as well, while every guild will need clerks and administrators to function anyways.
-Geographical
--What constitutes a region? Do you try to slice the districts by physical landmarks, or by raw population distribution.
---If by landmarks, then you have to set population quotas for each district and adjust it as things change and population capacity rises to ensure fairness. Boosting the vote for those areas with high populations?
---If by population, then you have to reslice the administrative districts over time, which I refer to the recent abuse trick of pump and dump, flooding a district with extra people during the assessment period so it gets sliced up into smaller chunks.
--How do you prevent someone from voting multiple times by wandering between districts?
---By instituting population mobility controls between districts. You will of course run into problems with trades which span districts or need to move, so you will develop administrative lodging addresses.
----Which requires a census or limiting people's ability to travel to prevent cheating.
-----Which in turn produces odd cases like traders not fitting in anywhere in the system.
The chief advantage of geographical sectioning is the simplicity. It's very hard to truly fuck it up completely.
Drawbacks are that it makes usage of space in the city difficult. Construction and particularly tearing down and rebuilding stuff will be harder, as districts will not be very happy about having to rebuild to house new facilities and services that primarily benefit other districts. Nobody wants the slaughterhouse or the sewerage piping in their area after all.
It's also easy to abuse for those in power(as opposed to the Occupations being abusable by those not currently in power and the Clans equal opportunity fuckery)
-Clan
--What constitutes a clan? We've seen it right here. Maximum clan sizes, minimum clan composition. These are all things that can be exploited.
--Clan loyalties and integrity with adoption. How do clan members ensure that their family head are taking care of their issues? How do you ensure you don't get forced to adopt a jackass?
--Clan administration. How does a clan spread out across a wider area function? How do you encourage an outstretched clan to split up to better service it's members when the Trader clans do not split up when they're spread over a huge area.
What this ultimately leads to is the Great Families.
Micronations inside a nation, they have plenty of influence and power, being self contained in structure, but that leads to further rivalries between the families, and entrenching power.
On the other hand, this is a very stable power structure, clan ties are easy to maintain without an external force enforcing it, and both growth and splintering are difficult once checks and balances are put in. But the benefit is also the catch, they have a lot of diversity, so there is a greater risk to the state , as they are functional on their own, which is good for surviving social collapse intact and colonizing new areas...but also makes them less invested overall without checks from central authority.
*looks up*
Oh dear. *Backing away slowly*
Being Excellent to one another is mandatory citizen!
Harmony!
